Michael: If we just, open it up.
Robyn: On the bottom of each scroll was the soldier’s full name.
Michael: He took it on as a labour of love to recognise the fact that these soldiers had died.
Today we will be looking at the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages registers of all the Queensland soldiers who were enlisted in Queensland, who died during World War 1.
In front of me I have a typical register that was complied using information that was taken from the soldiers’ service record, and also information that was received from the soldier’s family.
And these records there’s around about 9,600 of them, were all complied with a thousand names in each register and one death register with 600 names in them.
Queensland’s unique in this fact. We’re the only state in Australia holding such a comprehensive collection of deaths for World War 1.
This is a very interesting story about the compilation of these registers. They were a work of love by a gentleman called George Porter.
George Porter was originally a clerk in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and he rose through the ranks to actually become the Registrar-General.
On his way through when he was a senior clerk he thought it would be a great thing to honor the dead from World War 1, our Queenslanders.
He did it all in his own time with a group of volunteers from the registry. Not a cent government, or not a shilling of government money was spent on this at the time because. He had asked, he requested that he be allocated resources and time to do this. He didn’t receive a response back, so he went and did it himself.
So, when Porter received his information back from the War Office, he confirmed that the soldier had in fact died in Queensland. He then prepared letters for the families. He sourced the address and contact details from the soldiers’ service record. He attached a blank death registration form and he sent those out to the families by post.
Now if we think back to the 1920s, post wasn’t in postal trucks as it is today. So, and this is the reason basically why it took so many years to compile these registers.
So, these letters were sent out the families and the families complied information on the death registration form and then sent that back to Porter.
Once Porter got all the information back these registers are actually in alphabetically order. So, all of the responses needed to be sorted out. And we can see by the register,
If we have a quick look.
They were all handwritten. And again, the only record that exists in Australia of such a comprehensive list of registrations for deaths of soldiers.
Robyn: We’ve got dozens of collections here at the State Library and they really complement the, the death registers at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Queensland.
Many of the collections we have here, have all sorts of items, objects pertaining to the soldier’s service.
And some of those pertain to the soldier’s death. So, some of these things are official documents or objects and some of them are unofficial. All of them have been kept by their families, and passed down through the generations, and now find themselves in the State Library’s collection.
Michael: So, we can see here that the detail that Porter and his crew when to compile these registers and the information in here basically states where, or who the soldier was, the family of the soldier, how the soldier died, and a lot of the times where he died.
But a lot of the times we’ve got unknown as the place that he died, which is a bit sad.
And you can also, as I said before, we can identify the battle that the solider was killed and some of them are wounds.
This soldier died of pneumonia and as we, we mentioned before we can even identify sometimes brothers.
Robyn: So, two of the names we will find in the death registers are William and John Fraser. Brothers from Cooloolabin near Yandina. They both unfortunately died.
The Fraser family had three sons. Two of whom went to war and neither of whom came home.
We have a nice little collection here at the State Library containing some images, and some letters, and some little memorial cards.
So, there’s an image of here of William Fraser and it says who his parents were, and when he died, and how old he was. And you could choose a little verse to go in the bottom caption.
Similarly, there’s one for John as well, so one of the unofficial things families could collect to indicate and memorialise their dead sons, or husbands, or fathers.
Michael: So, there were quite a number of letters from families about their son.
One letter was from a mother who didn’t actually know her son had passed away until she received Porter’s letters.
All of these letters along with the registrations have been digitised.
So, they’re all available now online in our search engine and then you can search for them, and you can see, you can download these for a cost. Then you can download them immediately to your computer.
Robyn: So, one of the collections we have here at the State Library is the collection of Frances Henry Staunton or Frank to his family.
So, he was as shearer from Richmond, and he enlisted in the end of 1914 and went to war with 25th battalion. So unfortunately, he died at Pozières in July 1916.
Franks was particularly close to his mother. He sent home various souvenir items for her and wrote letters home.
So, in the collection are some lovely and heartfelt letters from Frank’s superior officer a Captain O’Connor who he knew, actually from the Richmond District. And he wrote to his Mum expressing his condolences at Frank’s passing.
Michael: As part of the commemoration of World War 1 between 2014 and 2018 they produced or we produced two certificates.
There are two quite tasteful certificate obviously different designs; one of poppy, one of the soldiers, or solders. And if you, if you go into your search engine and you identify the person that you want, you can actually request to order one of these.
So, and they are obviously a nice keepsake to recognise the details of the, of the fallen soldier.
