April 8th, 2025: Pay & War Gratuity: When a Soldier was Killed on Active Service.
When a man was killed on active service his ‘legatees’ received his outstanding pay and a war gratuity. Somewhere deep in Army administration were clerks who were responsible for ensuring legatees received what was due them and recorded it all carefully in War Department ledgers. The contents of these ledgers are starkly factual as demonstrated by the column titles which include: Record No; Registry No; Soldiers Name; Regiment, Rank, No.; Date and Place of Death; Credits; Charges; Date of Authoirty; To whom authorised; Amount authorised. But the ledgers can also tell an interesting story about each man and the family he left back home. Thomas Johnstone, one of the young men featured in ‘The Soldiers of Hoar Oak Cottage’ can be found in just such a War Department Ledger. The page on which his name appears is shown below:
Before we get to Thomas’s story have a look at Record No. 525642 which shows that Edwin James Heppard, who died in action on the 16th August 1917, had 7s 4d (seven shillings and four pence) deducted from his salary before it was passed on to his ‘sole legatee’ his wife Alma. This deduction is most likely because he had been paid in advance, say a month in advance but died before the end of the month and was therefore ‘overpaid’ by 7s 4d. The remaining amount, minus the overpayment, was £6/6/1 – six pounds, six shillings and one pence and this went to Alma who also received a War Gratuity of £14. These gratuities were based on the soldier’s rank, length of service and time served overseas. So Alma received around £20 – equivalent to approximately £1000 today. It seems small compansation for the death of a husband but this was a reality which she and millions of other WW1 wives faced. We don’t know how many children, if any, they had but she would soon need to find another source of income in order to live. It is not surprising to find that many war widows are recorded as quickly remarrying. It looks a bit heartless but often it is more about sheer necessity.
Also have a look at Record No. 525645 which is, interestingly, for another Thomas Johnson. Not ‘our’ Thomas Johnstone with a ‘t’ and an ‘e’ but just like our Thomas he was also a Corporal in the 5th Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment and also died on 16th August 1917. Thomas’s widow Emily, was ‘sole legatee’ and received £9/18/5 in pay as well as the War Gratuity of £13. Why Emily received less as a widow than Alma may have been to do with the number of dependent children left. The records for Edwin & Alma Heppard and Thomas & Emily Johnson are both quite straightforward. The men were killed in action. Their wives received their husband’s salary (minus deductions if they applied) plus a War Gratuity for their widow status.
Turning to ‘our’ Thomas Johnstone’s of Hoar Oak Cottage record – Record No. 525644 – we find a rather more complex story of the task that the Army clerk had to disperse Thomas’s money to his legatees. Some readers may remember that Shepherd James Johnstone and his wife Sarah had 13 children at Hoar Oak Cottage. James died in 1904 and Sarah was left a widow with 7 or 8 of the children still at home. Her son, Thomas, had already left home but clearly didn’t want to forget any of his family when making arrangements for how his money should be disbursed if he was killed whilst serving his country.
The record shows that Thomas had wages of £13/14/8d plus a War Gratuity of £13 making a total of £27/4/8d to disburse. Compared to the other entries in the ledger, the two close-ups of Thomas Johnstone’s entry (below) show it was a complex job for the War Office clerks.
Below is a transcript of Thomas’s disbursements, shown in the image above. Where the clerk has used different colour inks to denote comments and notes in the ledger, the same colours have been noted in the transcript below.
Bro(ther) James £1/1/0d Authority cancelled (blue) NB: Pd (red) added later
Mo(ther) Sarah £2/2/3d
Bro(ther) Samuel £1/1/2d
Sis(ter) Jane £1/1/2d
Sis(ter) Norah £1/1/1d
Mo(ther) Sarah £12/9/3d Pd NB: £13 War Gratuity minus 2/9d
Sis(ter) Mary A £1/1/1d
Bro(ther) James £1/0/9d Authority cancelled (blue) NB: Pd (red) added later
Sis(ter) Maggie £1/1/1d
Sis(ter) Mrs. E Latham £1/1/2d (married sister Ellen)
Sis(ter) Mrs. Marion Bowden £1/1/2d (married sister Marion)
Sis(ter) Mrs Emily Stevens £1/1/2d (married sister Emily)
Sis(ter) Mrs Sarah Groves £1/1/2d (married sister Sarah)
Brother in Law Fred Harvey £1/1/1d
It appears that Thomas’s Mother, Sarah, received the majority of the War Gratuity but it’s not stated where the other 10s 9d of the £13 gratuity went. Brother James is twice struck from Thomas’s disbursements list (Authority cancelled) but this is not to do with a lack of brotherly love and all to do with the difficulty for the clerk to track down Jame’s whereabouts. He was located serving in India and his money from Thomas ‘paid’. The note to the side of Thomas’s entry about his brother James says:
31/2/20 NB: this would be the date that the note, below in red, was added.
Bro(ther) James £1/0/9d
OS (Overseas)
18th R. Hussars (serving with the 18th (Queen Mary’s Own) Royal Hussars)
Trimulgherry, Sunderabad
NB: Trimulgherry is a suburb of Sunderabad in the state of Telengana in central southern India. Trimulgherry (today Tirumalagiri) was a well established British-Indian Army base.
It is charming to see that Thomas Johnstone left money to his two brothers, Samuel and James, whose own war stories can be found in the ‘Soldiers of Hoar Oak Cottage’ book. And that he left something to each of his sisters including newly married Ada who, unknown to Thomas, had also died aged only 29 shortly after his own death in Belgium. A later note added to Thomas’s disbursements by the authorities grants the £1/1/1d due to Ada to her widowed husband Fred Harvey.
This page from a simple Army accounts book can tell such stories. Not just about Thomas Johnstone of Hoar Oak Cottage but of the other men listed on ‘his’ page. It captures a group of men who all died on the same day during the same battle. It is very likely that Thomas knew the ‘other’ Thomas Johnson (the next one in the ledger but without the ‘t’ and ‘e’). They were both Corporals in the 5th Dorsets and would have both been deployed in the attack which took both of their lives against the heavily defended German held village of Langemarck – close to the besieged city of Ypres. This battle became known as the 3rd Battle of Ypres – often referred to simply as Passchendaele.
It also tells the story of the family and loved ones that these men left behind and the recompense they received for the loss of their husband/son/father. Did they think it was a meagre recompense? Who knows. Perhaps it was a very welcome, if small, sum of money to help them along at their own personal time of change and loss. As for Thomas Johnstone’s family. Well he didn’t seem to want to leave anyone out and one can imagine the family gathering at one of their home’s in and around Lynton and looking at their £1/1/2d or £1/1/1d and remembering their young brother with love and a laugh. In today’s money they’d have received approximately £60 each. What did Mum – Sarah – do with her War Gratuity money? In total is was £12/9/3 – approximately £750 in today’s money. Probably, like most mothers she gave it to her children and grandchildren and said something like, “You have it. I don’t need it.” Sarah kept a photo of Thomas in an oval frame surrounded by flowers – a lovely little memento – and The Friends have an image of it in the Archive.
If you would like to buy a copy of The Soldiers of Hoar Oak Cottage – just £5 + P&P go to Books4Sale – hoaroak to find details or email info@hoaroakcottage.org directly.
