Irish Battalions and the Great War

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, 10Div said:

Martin - sorry I may have given the wrong impression. What I have given you is the daily returns for each recruiting office (presumably the recruiting offices in Belfast and Dublin have been amalgamated) for the period 23/8/1914 (which if I remember correctly was the first date available) to 31/10/1914. I have analysed the data in various forms including Provinces but not by regimental district but I will try to do some work on this over the next couple of days.

Steve

 

Steve. Thanks again. I am causing considerable confusion and that is entirely my fault.

 

What I am driving at is: do you have the underlying data day by day, or is the chart a consolidation of this?

 

By way of comparison, I have fortnightly data for Battalion recruiting for the Army for 1914 (WO 114 series). Large parts are transcribed,viz all of K1 including 10th, plus 16th, 36th Divs (already shown) - which allows us to manipulate the data (in a good way) and possibly extract some interesting thematics. 

 

If, for example the daily/weekly/fortnightly/monthly data existed for Ireland I could transcribe it and reconstruct these charts by town, regimental recruiting district, Province etc. which might provide some insights. I am happy to do the hard yards in transcription, but I don't yet have access to the raw data and, more importantly I don't know if it still exists. The chart shown suggests some underlying data exists somewhere and if a consolidation, possibly reveals the data was underpinned by consolidating data one level or two levels down. I am interested in getting the hard data as the chart is simply extracting one view from a multitude of possible views - some of which might be more revealing. 

 

Apologies for the confusion. 

 

Martin

[Guest]

   2 odd thoughts, one of which you will have the data for.

      It is a commonplace that many Irish served in the British Army for peacetime soldiering careers. Now,of course, this would be in a spread of regiments,not just the Irish ones. Does your analysis of 1911 Census enable you to give a total (number and percentage??) as to the number of Irish-born men in non-Irish regiments at that date- so that we might have a reasonable guess at the total number of Irish regulars and likewise, reservists in the British Regular Army of 1914..

 

2) A small suspicion- (based on Inter-Allied service agreements of both wars-tripped across them re Russian nationals and conscription in East London)-  I suspect a number of reservists had emigrated- OK, 60% of GB emigrants went to the US, so the situation would be complicated there up to 1917) But I have a suspicion that British immigrants in the Dominions who were Reservists could serve in local units-which were short of experienced men anyway (Think I have a candidate in my own local files-CSM Thomas Oswald Nesbit,Canadian Infantry, KIA 1915- ex-British Regular. Enlisted in 1900, extended his service commitment in 1904, left army 1910, emigrated Canada-Winnipeg 1911-Suspect he might still have been a Reservist)

      Much admire the sheer amount of hard work put in by you on the structure of the army-and your tolerance of idiot questions by Your Humble

 

10 Div- Look forward to anything you produce on London Irish- I suspect this regiment was known in 1914 for turning a blind eye to under-age recruits.

 

[Guest]

On 13/01/2017 at 09:35, voltaire60 said:

    2 odd thoughts, one of which you will have the data for.

      It is a commonplace that many Irish served in the British Army for peacetime soldiering careers. Now,of course, this would be in a spread of regiments,not just the Irish ones. Does your analysis of 1911 Census enable you to give a total (number and percentage??) as to the number of Irish-born men in non-Irish regiments at that date- so that we might have a reasonable guess at the total number of Irish regulars and likewise, reservists in the British Regular Army of 1914..

 

2) A small suspicion- (based on Inter-Allied service agreements of both wars-tripped across them re Russian nationals and conscription in East London)-  I suspect a number of reservists had emigrated- OK, 60% of GB emigrants went to the US, so the situation would be complicated there up to 1917) But I have a suspicion that British immigrants in the Dominions who were Reservists could serve in local units-which were short of experienced men anyway (Think I have a candidate in my own local files-CSM Thomas Oswald Nesbit,Canadian Infantry, KIA 1915- ex-British Regular. Enlisted in 1900, extended his service commitment in 1904, left army 1910, emigrated Canada-Winnipeg 1911-Suspect he might still have been a Reservist)

      Much admire the sheer amount of hard work put in by you on the structure of the army-and your tolerance of idiot questions by Your Humble

 

10 Div- Look forward to anything you produce on London Irish- I suspect this regiment was known in 1914 for turning a blind eye to under-age recruits.

 

 

 

1. GARBA provides a breakdown by nationality further broken down by Arm. Nothing by Regiment or Battalion. I have analysed the stat based on 1911 Census for around 20 Battalions and the percentage of Irish born in English regiments is extremely low, even among those regiments recruiting nationally. It is not conclusive, and will never be conclusive unless one does this exercise for all 148 battalions, however one can make some pretty solid predictions as the limit factor will be the number of Irish Born in the infantry. Statistically speaking they were marginally over represented in the infantry. I can post the data tomorrow.but there is a thread with the relevant data already posted somewhere. 

 

2. I have the data for Overseas Resevists. They needed permission to serve out their Reserve commitment Overseas. The majority were in Canada and while anecdotally we are led to believe they mostly returned, one needs to be mindful that the PPCLI was formed from overseas Reservists, so clearly many hundreds didn't make it backroad the original regiments.. I have often wondered if this partially explains the Irish shortfall as Canada was a popular destination for Irish emigrants. I will post the data tomorrow but from memory the numbers are between 4-5 thousand. Edit. It was 8 thousand and represented 5.5% of all Army Reservists. 

It it is important not to confuse Reservists with time expired men who re-enlisted. There were also thousands of the latter who joined up in 1914-1915 and some made it into the 1914 Star medal rolls. The sharp eyed will notice three Reservists living in Germany and one in Turkey. 

[Guest]

GARBA 1913

 

Edited 13 January , 2017 by Guest

[10Div]

Martin

 

If you click on  Book2.csv  just above my graph it should open a spreadsheet. Is this what you are looking for?

 

Steve

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, 10Div said:

Martin

 

If you click on  Book2.csv  just above my graph it should open a spreadsheet. Is this what you are looking for?

 

Steve

 

Steve. Perfect. I missed it first time. Thank you. Do recall which WO file this came from? 

 

Thanks again. Some great detail.

[10Div]

Martin

 

Almost certain it came from NAT 1/398.

 

Steve

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, 10Div said:

Martin

 

Almost certain it came from NAT 1/398.

 

Steve

 Thanks. The spreadsheets shows total for Ireland and total for UK and %. 

 

Can you clarify the UK figure? Does this include or exclude the Irish numbers (I assume UK includes Ireland in 1914). I ask because on 19th Sep 1914 the Irish recruiting is nearly a quarter of the UK recruiting. It is a major out-lier in the data. More than two standard deviations out in fact, which raises some obvious questions. 

 

Martin 

[10Div]

The UK figure includes Ireland. The significance of the 19th September 1914 is that it is the day the Belfast battalions of the Ulster Volunteer Force enlisted to form the basis of the Ulster Division and was probably the highest day of enlistments in Ireland throughout the entire war. Have you seen Pat Callan's work on recruitment in Ireland. I found a few  errors but on the whole it appears to be sound.

 

Steve

[Guest]

1 hour ago, 10Div said:

The UK figure includes Ireland. The significance of the 19th September 1914 is that it is the day the Belfast battalions of the Ulster Volunteer Force enlisted to form the basis of the Ulster Division and was probably the highest day of enlistments in Ireland throughout the entire war. Have you seen Pat Callan's work on recruitment in Ireland. I found a few  errors but on the whole it appears to be sound.

 

Steve

 Steve - thanks for the clarification and the explanation. An important day in Ulster's history. 

 

I am not familiar with Callan's work - can you provide any pointers?  M

[10Div]

Martin 

 

Will have to dig this out; could take a couple of days.

 

Steve

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, 10Div said:

Martin 

 

Will have to dig this out; could take a couple of days.

 

Steve

Thanks. A quick search reveals a few papers but all under lock and key with academic publishers/distributors. Tried to register with two but the keep asking which university I am at and since I left academia in the 1980s it is not letting me progress. The idea that a non-academic might also be a researcher seems to be a matter of debate with some of the outlets....MG

[10Div]

Martin

 

Taken a little longer than I thought to locate Callan's paper on Irish recruitment and it contains more than can be really discussed at one sitting. The paper was written in 1987 and might usefully be re-examined to reflect research that has been undertaken since. Callan's index assumes the first 6 month's recruitment as a 100 and shows all other 6-month periods in relation to that bench-mark. The index shows an almost constant decline in recruitment in Ireland. Using the same periods for recruitment in GB during the 1st period 1,292,540 men were recruited, 641,000 and 503,991 in the 2nd and 3rd periods and using the first period as a bench-mark the index for the first three periods of 100, 50 and 39 shows a marked similarity in the decline of voluntary recruitment between GB and Ireland (later comparison being impossible due to the introduction of conscription in GB.

 

The second table shows recruitment by regimental district. It is apparent from this that while recruitment declined in all regimental areas during the war that overall 49% of all Irish recruitment was in Ulster.

 

Steve