Military records relate to ‘the 90% of people not known at all’

Women and children feature alongside household names in the files of more than 1,500 people whose War of Independence and Civil War roles are disclosed in historic records published today.

The files are online from this morning in the latest release from the Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC), a joint initiative of the Defence Forces and Department of Defence.

The 4,700 files published on the Miltiary Archives website today related to 1,576 people, many of whom had multiple files if they claimed under more than one of the several military service pensions law was passed from 1924 onward. Most are previously unknown people who were the foot soldiers of the Irish battle for independence, and in the Civil War that followed.