Discharged whilst serving overseas, late 1800s

[SmallTownGirl]

General question!

If a regular serviceman was discharged, say, time served or due to injury/illness rather than due to bad behaviour, whilst serving overseas, would the Army have paid for his passage back to the UK?  Also, if his wife and family were with him, would the Army pay for their passage too, please?

Thanks
STG

[Andy J2022]

You don't mention the time frame for your (hypothetical?) question but it may be relevant.
Normally the default was that a soldier (and his family if he was accompanied and the family was 'on the strength')) would be moved back to the UK at public expense and discharged there. If he elected to be discharged locally overseas,  then I would imagine that the Army would no longer be responsible for paying for his return to the UK assuming he changed his mind. Ireland was a special case because from 1800 to 1923 Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and a solider serving in Ireland was deemed to be on a home posting, so there were special provisions for Irish soldiers who enlisted in Ireland (pre 1922): they could elect to be discharged at the end of their service back in Ireland or in Britain. If they were eligible for a pension this decision would have affected the place that administered their pension, the Royal Hospital Chelsea or the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

What the rules for families were I don't know, but I assume that if the soldier intended to settle locally outside the UK, but his family wanted to return the the UK, the Army would have paid for the family's movement home. If this was in the days when all movement was by sea, it wouldn't actually have cost any more to put a family on a troop ship which was already returning to the UK.

You may have heard about something called marching money. This is an ex gratia payment made to the soldier which was intended to cover the number of days it would take him to march (ie walk) from the depot where he was discharged to his intended residence as a civilian. After the arrival of the railways, a rail warrant would be issued instead.   I assume that something similar would have existed for soldiers who applied to be discharged locally overseas.

[Andy J2022]

If you have a particular soldier in mind, and his service was during the nineteenth century (or possibly earlier), it might be worth checking the WO12 series at TNA - the series covers 13,307 separate files, none of which, as far as I know, have been digitised or indexed.  These are the muster rolls for the infantry and cavalry, and if you know the actual date of his discharge, you may be able to pinpoint what allowances were paid to him, and whether these included additional payments for his family. If he was discharged in the UK you would need to find the muster rolls for the regimental depot.

Going back to my earlier remarks about marching pay, in the first quarter of the 1800's the rate for a private solider was 4½d per mile day, based on the soldier being to march 10 miles in a day, and would be intended to cover overnight accommodation en route. A wife was allowed 1½d and a child 1d per mile. It's not clear from the records I have seen what allowance might have been paid to an incapacitated soldier who was not be able to walk long distances and might have to rely on public transport of some kind. That said an incapacity caused by his service might make him eligible to become an indention at Chelsea.

[SmallTownGirl]

You don't mention the time frame for your (hypothetical?) question but it may be relevant.

The subject line of this post does say "late 1800s" 

Whilst looking for a particular soldier's records, I found several with a similar name, so had to check them to find the right one.  One of the ones that wasn't the chap I was after had some interesting papers which showed that he was discharged in 1880 in India due to a heart condition.  As his wife and two children were with him in India, I just got to musing as to how they all got back home.  The papers show an intended address in Ireland, but he seems to have died in South Wales in 1886. 

I was just curious and wondered if anyone knew who would have paid for the passages?

STG

[Andy J2022]

The subject line of this post does say "late 1800s" 

Whoops, apologies.

Under those circumstances I don't think the 'system' would have been so hardhearted not to bring the solider and his family back to the UK at public expense which after all would have had no actual cost beyond a few rations during the voyage since the troop ship would have been coming home anyway. 
From about 1870 as the Cardwell Reforms came into effect, the Army became more family friendly, relaxing the rules on allowing older soldiers to marry. This attitude also led to the building of married quarters within the new barracks which were springing up in the UK and in India, where previously wives and children had had to live in a corner of the barrack room along with the single soldiers. This change was based on the premise that married soldiers tended to be more stable, were less likely to get into trouble and would serve for longer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_during_the_Victorian_Era#Conditions