Record of Conduct and Service SAC

[Nick_Ips]

I recently discovered through the NAAIRS database that the archive holds a file for the Record of Conduct and Service in the South African Constabulary of my great grandfather. I contacted the archive in Pretoria to find out about access to the file and received the standard paid-for researchers list.

I already know his birth details and just about everything up to and including his home address immediately before going to South Africa. From postcards he sent home I have a good idea of when he arrived and when he left. I also know what happened to him after he came back to the UK.

So my interest in the document is only whether it contains anything interesting about his time in South Africa (I think his claim to have met Winston Churchill is improbable  )

Has anyone else looked at a Record of Conduct and Service for the SAC and is it likely to contain anything other than dates of birth, date of enlistment, next-of-kin etc? Is it likely to be worth the cost of using a paid-for look up service?

I've also found a result on the ancestors-co-za website in their Constabulary alphabetical index. I'm a bit confused about what this site actually is - do they have copies of the original documents like Ancestry/FindMyPast, or is it just an index of people?

Many thanks for any advice you can offer.

[Gillian Mauchan]

Hi I am not sure what is in the record - an alternative to paying a researcher to go and look at the document is to go through eggsa.org and ask them to get you photographs of the documents - they will probably turn out cheaper than a professional researcher if all you want is a copy of the documents.
Instructions on how to engage them and costs are on the site.
regards
Gillian

[Nick_Ips]

Thanks Gillian, I'd already seen the eggsa service and that would be the route I'd be most likely to go down if I do go ahead. But even their service is not that cheap if it involves a multi-page document, which if they are anything like the British Army pension files could mean 10 or more pages, some of them duplicated.

I'd just like to get a feel for whether the document is likely to have anything in it which I haven't already found, which would help me justify raiding my family history piggy bank.