Old Age Pension records?

[David Douglas]

I was wondering if it's possible to access Old Age Pension records, and if so what information they might contain? At http://pensear.org they have records of applications for old age pensions in pre-partition Ireland, but what about the rest of the UK?

I am in fact looking for an ancestor born in Ireland around 1846, but who moved to Scotland around 1880, and died there in 1927. She had been married twice in Ireland, was widowed twice before coming to Scotland, and married again in Scotland in 1884. Her last husband died between 1901 and 1927.

Would she have got a pension in her own right, or only her husband (who was also born in Ireland around 1844)? Would she have received something after his death? I'm particularly interested in finding out where she was born (probably Donegal or Derry).

[Chris Paton]

Hi David,

Some pension records are available from 1854 - 1930 at the National Archives in Edinburgh, though these are for Civil List pensions. They are catalogued under E810, but it's a very long shot at best, as they are annuities paid to the great and the good, and not the pensions that us mere mortals hope for one day!

Various military pensions can also be accessed through the National Archives at Kew (Army, Marines, Navy etc). If your ancestor's partner was a war widow for example, you are in with a chance of finding something on her. Ancestry is now hosting the Burnt and Unburnt First World War Pensions records, which contain service records. The Unburnt records are all online, the burnt records have so far been listed for A - C, and are due to be completed late 2008.

The pensear.org records you refer to are not in fact formal pension records, but extracts from the 1841 and 1851 Irish censuses, which were used to prove applicant's ages when pensions were introduced in Ireland at the start of the 20th C. The 1841 and 1851 censuses no longer exist in Ireland, so these extracts are all that survive.

Chris

[nelmit]

Hello David,

Can't help with the pension records but have you tried searching for her marriages in Ireland at Emerald Ancestors?

I found a couple of mine from Donegal in that era indexed at that site. It helped me pinpoint a near exact location for them.

Kind regards,
Annette M

[David Douglas]

Yes, I have been looking in EmeraldAncestors, but without luck. Still, it's good to see Irish sites with online data appearing, and I will keep looking back as new data is digitised.

The woman in question is Margaret Jane Wray, daughter of Samuel Alexander Wray, police sergeant, and Rebecca Steen. I have found no records in Ireland for the parents. The father must not have been in the RIC as he's not listed there.

She married an Archibald Douglas, labourer (don't know when or where). A son was born in Derry in 1871, but the following year she married William John McCarthy, clerk, in Derry and a son was born in 1873. I'm assuming Archibald was dead. Her second husband was dead by 1884, when she married James Henry, an Irish shipyard labourer in Scotland.

On Margaret Jane's death cert in 1927, only the second two husbands are listed. Here William John McCarthy is listed as a soldier, so the War Widows' pension might be a possibility (though I don't know when, where or how he died). But I'm assuming any such pension would have stopped on her remarrying.

Does anyone know how the British Old Age Pension was administered when it was introduced? For the first few years they would have been unable to use the post-1855 statutory birth records as proof - did they look up the 1841 and 1851 censuses like they did in Ireland? For Margaret Jane Wray, that would have meant looking up the Irish census for those years. Or would she have had to apply to an office in Ireland?

[LesleyB]

Hi David
Does not give much detail, but at least there are some dates to work with.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2488513.stm

• 1908 Old Age Pensions Act - introduced first general old age pension paying a non-contributory amount of between 10p and 25p a week, from age 70, on a means-tested basis from January 1 1909 - "Pensions Day". This was introduced during the Liberal government of David Lloyd-George. Sir William Beveridge, father of the welfare state, was an adviser.
  
  1925 Contributory Pensions Act - set up a contributory State scheme for manual workers and others earning up to £250 a year. The pension was 50p a week from age 65.
  
  1946 National Insurance Act - introduced contributory State pension for all. Initially pensions were £1.30 a week for a single person and £2.10 for a married couple. Paid from age 65 for men and 60 for women, effective from 1948.

See also http://www.incipit.co.uk/pages/pension-history.php
Best wishes
Lesley

[Currie]

In Australia, Federal Age, Invalid and Widows Pension files were destroyed 12 months after a pensioner’s death. They were retained longer only if there was a reason to keep them, such as an outstanding debt. Every year, from each office, a truck load was taken to the local incinerator or wherever for a “burn off”.

These were bulky files containing every scrap of paper that had accumulated, including annual income and property statements, statements of family breakdowns, you name it. Some files were over 50 years old. That was Australian Government policy. There was nowhere to send them and no space to keep them and in any case no-one gave it a second thought.

My grandparents died 40 years ago, I wasn’t remotely interested in family history at the time, not many people were. Had I been I would have put their files under my shirt and taken them home and they would be the most comprehensive record of their lives in my possession.

Alan

[LesleyB]

Hi Alan

These were bulky files containing every scrap of paper that had accumulated, including annual income and property statements, statements of family breakdowns, you name it. Some files were over 50 years old.

Oh boy, what a waste of wonderful information. But sadly, I'm sure it happens everyday somewhere in the world. I was recently trying to track down some pub licensing records from about 20-30 years ago and was informed by the local authority that they only keep the last 5 years worth. They said they had a database with older info but it didn't work anymore. They did not seem at all concerned about this (!) and the local archives only hold stuff from long before these dates which made me wonder about the fate of the info which appears to have fallen into this void in the middle...

Best wishes
Lesley

[David Douglas]

I can understand authorities not keeping files any longer than they were required to, particularly if they would have required lots of archive buildings to hold them. But the situation may even be worse today, despite data requiring much less space to store. The example Lesley give with the database that is no longer accessible is likely to be all too common in the future. So many proprietary software formats have come and gone, so that even if the original tapes are still ok, the hardware it ran on will have been scrapped, the software and manuals unavailable, and few people who know how to use these systems.

There's the example of the 1980's multimedia 'new Domesday Book' on Laser disk running on the BBC micro where a copy of it was only saved at the last moment. Or the archive of BBC radio recordings stored in a digital format on Betamax tapes.Much of the 1951, 61, 71 censuses have also been lost, according to reports.

There is research underway among archivists to develop a virtual, software-based computer that could easily be installed on to run on top of any current operating system, and that would provide a stable permanent virtual operating system and data formats that could be guaranteed to work in the future. But before it becomes a reality, a lot more will probably be lost.