6

My 2x Great Grandfather served in the Royal Sussex Regiment from 1889 to 1902. I have a copy of his service records. Which I have downloaded from FindMyPast, the images can be found at the bottom of this question.

In the records it says that on 19 Nov 1894 he was "Convicted of Resisting an escort &c. & imp[risone]d, H[ard] L[abour] 2 cal[endar] months 24 days." after "Awaiting trial" since 10 Nov 1894.

As shown below, service number 3352:

James Walter Juden Service Records Clipping

Are there records relating to such convictions and if so where can I find them?

Source:

(Can also be found on FindMyPast searching 'James Walter Juden', in British Army Service Records 1760-1915)

10
  • 1
    I think this question in general is too broad to provide a really useful answer. The second bullet in particular is extremely broad - see Wikipedia for some info about the British Raj. It may be better to ask what was his regiment doing in India in the 1890s. I also feel that these questions are quite different and you may get a more useful answer if you ask them as separate questions - perhaps someone else could give input as to whether they should be split up.
    – Harry V.
    Nov 9, 2015 at 13:17
  • I was actually thinking that when I posted about splitting it up but I wasn't sure what would make good separate questions.
    – Danny B
    Nov 9, 2015 at 13:19
  • I agree with @vervet that this appears too broad for a single question. I think you should split it according to your three dot points: finding more information about ancestor's conviction? what may ancestor have done in British Raj? what may ancestor have done in Second Boer War? For more general facts about British Raj and Second Boer War it may also be worth researching/asking at History. Even if you split them quite roughly we can help you to further refine each.
    – PolyGeo
    Nov 9, 2015 at 20:56
  • 1
    Could you add his service number to the question please? I find the linked images very difficult to read.
    – Jan Murphy
    Nov 10, 2015 at 16:45
  • 1
    It's 3352, I'll add it now.
    – Danny B
    Nov 10, 2015 at 16:46

1 Answer 1

5

One place you could start is with TNA's research guide on How to Look for Courts martial and desertion in the British Army 17th-20th centuries (tip courtesy of David Underdown on Twitter).

Make a timeline of the events, combining the entries from the Service at Home and Abroad page:

Service at home and Abroad

and the page Statement of the Services which you've posted above:

enter image description here

Keeping in mind his rank (I'm reading 'Pte' as Private) and the dates of the trial, you can go through the different lists of records outlined in the TNA Research Guide to see what record groups he might be mentioned in.

If a search for your 2great-grandfather's name doesn't yield any results, try searching for the names of the officers in the right-most column who signed off on the entries in the Statement of Services (assuming you can make out the signatures).

I also have pages from military records downloaded from Find My Past which are very dark. For this question, I imported a snippet with the Windows snipping tool into IrfanView and used "Image > Auto Correct Colors" (Shift-U) to produce the snippets above.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.