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The below picture is cropped from an image at Ancestry.com's UK, Royal Hospital, Chelsea: Regimental Registers of Pensioners, 1713-1882:

enter image description here

It relates to my 4th great grandfather Edmund Rouse who has been the subject of a previous Q&A here about Establishing identity of Edmund Rouse of St Clement, Cabinet Maker, Private in Napoleonic Wars and Weaver?

In previous columns of the same row are pieces of information that give me confidence that this is the same Edmund Rouse that I have identified as my 4th great grandfather:

  • Admission: May 1812
  • Name: Edmd Rouse
  • Age: 34
  • something about 28 Foot (which is the regiment the earlier Q&A said he was in 1804-1809)
  • something in the Private column that I cannot read but it may be the numbers of years he had that rank in different regiments
  • Service: 9 4/12 (presumably 9 years, 4 months)
  • Rate per day: 6d
  • Complaint: nodes on his legs from repeated venereal complaints
  • Where Born: Truro, Cornwall
  • Trade or Occupation: Carpet Weaver

The row from which the cropped image comes is the Remarks, and I think it says:

D. D. Pagent's list / 24 June 181?

Is anybody able to work out the significance of this remark?

I am wondering whether D. D. Pagent may have been a military commander, and whether the date is perhaps the date of a battle.

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    That's a truly nasty set of scans. Very poor detail, really needs rescanning in decent greyscale or colour. Ancestry UK link. "DD" seems to be a fairly common note on other entries, usually followed by a date and reference. "Died" is also common and "Discharged" appears too. I'm wondering if "DD" stands for "Discharged Deceased" or similar. Possibly followed by a reference to "agents list" then the date?
    – AndyW
    Feb 8, 2019 at 11:10
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    @ColeValleyGirl The first page of the image set is an index, which states that the first folio of records (including this entry) are from the 59th foot. There's a note in Rouse's row (or perhaps the one below) that mentions the 28th foot too, but the rest is sadly illegible.
    – AndyW
    Feb 8, 2019 at 11:13
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    @PolyGeo I did think that "deceased" was less likely after I posted. But that date at the end could be 1819. Do you know when Edmund died that year?
    – AndyW
    Feb 8, 2019 at 11:40
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    Also, Discharged Deceased might refer to why his pension stopped being paid not why he left the Army.
    – user6485
    Feb 8, 2019 at 12:15
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    I always think that DD means Discharged, Dead - discharged from the pension that is - and if the illegible year matched his burial, that would fit. Is it DD payouts list?
    – AdrianB38
    Feb 8, 2019 at 13:24

1 Answer 1

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+50

In "Tracing Your Army Ancestors, Third Edition: A Guide for Family Historians" by Simon Fowler (ISBN 9781473876392), there is a section on Pension Records. From a Google Books scan:

The most common entry was 'DD' for discharged dead. Occasionally the date of death is given as well.

"DD" is certainly a common remark, based on a brief perusal of the record set linked in the question. So I think it is reasonable to conclude that this is the case in Rouse's entry, and that the date relates to that as well. This doesn't look like his date of death, as he was buried months earlier, so is probably the date when the pension administrators discharged Edmund having had his death reported to them.

The "Tracing Ancestors" page on the webiste of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the Pensioners, says:

Out-Pensioners: those who lived 'Out', in the UK or abroad and received their pension in cash from agents around the country.

These same agents probably sent news of out-pensioner deaths back to the administrators, as the "agent's list" in the record.

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