The Names List and Ireland’s Memorial Records of the first World War

A small wooden bookcase in a Belgian museum in a Belgian museum contains a list of the Irish who died in the first World War. The list was published 100 years ago in 1923 on the instruction of Sir John French, one of the last Lord Lieutenants of Ireland (the English monarch’s representative in Ireland).

Ireland’s Memorial Records, 1914-1918 is a list of over 49,000 names of Irish-born men who served in regiments of the British army or foreign-born men (usually British conscripts) who served in Irish regiments of the British army during the war.

It is contained in eight leather-bound volumes and is kept in a specially made bookcase at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper (Ypres) in West Flanders. It is one of 100 editions that were made by the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial, which was headed by French.

John French was the commander of the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of the war and lead the British forces in the First Battle of Ypres that took place between October 19th and November 22nd, 1914. He was later given the title of Earl of Ypres.

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Illustrations by Harry Clarke in his imitable style decorate the margins of each page. Scenes of war including trench warfare and ruined buildings and villages, as well as silhouettes of soldiers throwing grenades, firing pistols and machine guns, or simply at ease, add variety to the sad litany of the dead.

Some of the entries lack basic information such as date of birth, place of birth or even, in some cases, place of death. Also, Irish-born men who fought in other armies during the war, such as the Australian or American army for example, are not listed in the list of Irish war dead.

There is a project, run by the museum and supported by the Irish Embassy in Brussels, to fill in the gaps. It fits into a larger project run by the museum entitled the Names List (de Namelijst). This is a list of all the people who lost their lives in Belgium because of the first World War, irrespective of their nationality.

Launched in 2003, the Names List includes civilians as well as military personnel and comes to over 500,000 names. It includes people who were mortally wounded on Belgian soil but who could have died away from the battlefield in Belgium as it was common for injured people to be evacuated to hospital clearing stations in the rear or even as far as the French coast.

Using a variety of sources and databases including parish records, civil records, British army records, records of wills, the census, newspapers and other sources, it is hoped that a fuller picture of the men who lost their lives will emerge.

Let us take the example of Charles Bell, a private in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. There was little information about him until searching through the databases, myself and another Irish student researching the records as part of the project could determine that he was born around 1885. He was married to Mary and had a son named Arthur Andrew aged around four or five years old and an adopted son named Robert Fullerton.

Charles was a member of the Church of Ireland and lived in Ballymurphy in West Belfast. When the census was taken in 1911, he and his wife were both 26 years old and his son Andrew was nine months old. He worked as a carter at the time. His wife and family lived at Upton Cottages on Glen Road in Belfast when they were informed of his death in Ieper in April 1915, exactly eight months after he entered the theatre of war on to August 22nd, 1914.

Charles was a little more fortunate than some of his comrades. The average life expectancy of men in the trenches at the Western Front was just six weeks with junior officers and stretcher bearers being most at risk from enemy attack or stray bullets.

One of the men who served alongside Charles suffered the same fate. Dublin-born John Byrne joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers and entered the theatre of war on the same day. John died in Ieper a few days after Charles on April 25th, 1915. John’s widow, Bridget was paid £6 4s 10d, which was money that was owed to John at the time of his death.

Neither of these two men has a grave and both men’s names are inscribed in panel 42 on the Menin Gate war memorial in Ieper.

The Names List can be searched online https://database.namenlijst.be/publicsearch/#/. The museum contains a variety of objects and stories donated by the descendants of the men who fought and died during the war. For anyone with information of family members or who want to donate an object (documents, letters, photographs, etc) the museum can be contacted at namenlijst@ieper.be