John CLEAL aka CLAYHILL

Tuesday 8 Apr

Be warned this is going to be a very genealogical discussion, as I want to remember it all. Non-genealogists may wish to skim or even skip today’s reading.

First, the background, so family can at least pretend they know who I am talking about. John CLEAL (1791 – about 1863) is my 3-greats grandfather on Dad’s side – it is John's son Charles who came to NZ in 1865. Checking the family before I left, I remembered that on two different census, John described himself as a ‘Pensioner’. Since old age pensions were introduced in England around 1907, this had to mean that he had been in the army, and was a ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ (CP) - see the explanation below for more about them. With so many records coming online I was lucky to find two that referred to him – first his discharge to pension from the 1^st Foot (Royal Scots) Brigade (very prestigious, they are!), reason given as ‘wounded in the right hand at Waterloo!!' Those who were at the NZSG library that night will remember that I was somewhat excited.

This is a transcript of what I found on Ancestry - 

Royal Scots Regimental Registers of Pensioners, 1st Foot
Admission - 26 Apr 1816
Name -         Jno CLAYHILL
Age -            26
Private -       6 [yrs] 7/12 [mths]. Plus Waterloo 2yrs (they got extra years 'service' added on for important battles, so that meant a greater pension rate)
Total Service -  8 [yrs] 7/12 [mths]
Rate Pd -    9
Complaint - Wounded right hand at Waterloo
Where Born - Ilminster, Somerset
Trade or Occupation - Labourer
Remarks - 5' 3", brown [hair], grey [eyes], brown [complexion] 

Then his medal entitlement on Find My Past

Waterloo Medal Roll 1815 

Name:   John CLAYHILL
Rank:     Private
Regt:     3rd Battalion, Royal Scots
Sub-unit: Captain Thomas Moss's Company No 3

I did not have time to follow up any further before I left, but was very keen to see what TNA might hold. 

Next a brief overview of the subject of the day – Chelsea Pensioners. The following is courtesy of Wikipedia, since I couldn’t say it any better.

“During the reign of King William III and Queen Mary II, the Royal Hospital was still under construction, so they introduced a system for distribution of army pensions in 1689. The pension was to be made available to all former soldiers who had been injured in service, [my italics] or who had served for more than 20 years.
By the time the Hospital was completed, there were more pensioners than places available in the Hospital. Eligible ex-soldiers who could not be housed in the Hospital were termed out-pensioners, receiving their pension from the Royal Hospital but living outside it. In-pensioners, by contrast, surrender their army pension and live within the Royal Hospital.
In 1703, there were only 51 out-pensioners. By 1815 this figure had risen to 36,757.
The Royal Hospital remained responsible for distributing army pensions until 1955, following which the phrase ‘out-pensioner’ became less common, and ‘Chelsea pensioner’ was used largely to refer to ‘in-pensioners’.”

So now you understand what I am talking about. CP’s still supply the guards at the Tower of London today, and many will have seen them in their distinctive red coats and black tricorn hats.

I left for Kew nice and early, and spent the whole day working my way through the records of the WO 22 series, which are the Chelsea Regimental Registers of Pensioners.

These records were kept by the districts where the pensioners received their quarterly payments. I had hoped that it would be a record of the actual payments, however what I got was a four-page Monthly Return form listing the changes that occurred in the district that month and sent to the War Office. These are bound together in about ten-year bundles. The full title of this form is the ‘Monthly Return of Changes which have taken place among the Out-Patients of the Chelsea [Army] and Greenwich [Navy] Hospitals in the ________ District, from  __________ to__________ inclusive.” 

There are eight sections on the form, and some of them make fascinating reading.

I)                   Pensioners transferred from this district

II)                 Pensioners transferred to this district

III)              Pensioners newly admitted to out-pension

IV)              Pensions renewed, made permanent, or increased – sometimes this was because they acquired another dependant

V)                Pensions expired or reduced – when judged to be recovered, or when a child reached the age where they would be sent out to work

VI)              Pensions ceased by death – it would be great to find John in this one, as I do not know where or when he died. There are several possibilities, and there is a limit to the number of certificates I can afford. This column also included the spouses, as they continued to receive the pension, or part thereof, after the death of the soldier (John's wife died before him, so no chance of finding her listed.)

VII)           Pensions cancelled by order of the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital – with a column to write in the crime for which they were struck off! (Naturally John will never be here.)

VIII)         List of correspondence received from the War Office – my first sight of John was in this column, so it certainly pays to read every one

Most sections detail the Regiment, date of discharge to pension, pension amount, and then where they are being transferred from or to, or other information as the section requires.

Since I knew that John was living in Ilminster in Somerset on both the 1841 and 1851 census, I started by ordering WO 22/105, the returns for Taunton, from 1842-1852.                                   

John CLAYHILL (obviously the way they write his surname is the Somerset accent as interpreted by his admitting officer) was first discovered, as I mentioned earlier, as the subject of a War Office letter.

                                   John CLAYHILL 1st Foot: Correction (WO 22/105 Aug 1845)

He is the very last entry on this page. Perhaps one day I will find the original communication.

In the following book, Taunton 1852-62 (WO 22/106), he appeared again, this time leaving the Taunton district for London, in April 1854. 

1st Foot - [Daily Pay Rate] 9d - [Date Admitted] 1816, 3rd May - Pte - John CLAYHILL - to London - [Paid To] 1854, 30th June - Permanent

Ninepence per day is what he got back in 1816 when he was discharged to pension. 38 years later he is still on the same rate - they certainly didn't believe in pay rises back then. To be fair, he may have had increases and decreases before these books start, as he acquired a wife (in 1819) and then at least six children. All of the children would have been over fourteen in 1854, in fact all but Charles were married or dead by then. On reflection, it does not look like his wife (Susan TAYLOR) was being included after all, as she was still alive at this time.

There are 17 books covering the London area, fortunately only ten for the 1854-62 time frame – North, South, East and West areas. Naturally there was no mention of which District in London he was heading for. I took a stab and ordered WO 22/63, London South. By the time I worked my way through the ten years in that book without any result, it was home-time.

Current Reading:Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree