FUNCTION AND CONTENT

This series consists of letters, minutes, memoranda and telegrams and copies of the same, to and from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Secretary of the Department of Defence and private citizens in connection with messages of condolence transmitted by the Official Secretary on behalf of the King and Queen and the Governor General to the next of kin resident in Australia of officers of the armed services killed or having died during the war. Also included are working papers of the Official Secretary used in the preparation and despatch of the letters to the next of kin. 
 
In a cablegram dated the 21st of January 1915 the Secretrary of State for the Colonies informed the Governor General that it was the practice in the United Kingdom for a message of condolence from the King and Queen to be sent to the next of kin of all members of the Naval and Military forces who were killed or had died during the war, the message being sent by the Kings Private Secretary in the case of officers and by the Secretary of State for War in the case of the rank and file. As the King desired that similar arrangements should be adopted in the case of the Dominion and Colonial forces, the Secretary of State proposed that, subject to the approval of the Governor General and his Ministers, the Intermediate Record Office in Britain should forward to the Kings Private Secretary the names of deceased officers with the names and addresses of their next of kin if the latter resided in the United Kingdom, and that in cases where the next of kin resided elsewhere the message should be sent to the Private Secretary to the Governor General in the form used by the Kings Private Secretary. With minor variations those proposals were adopted, the Secretary of the Department of Defence being made responsible for the letters of condolence in the case of the rank and file and the Official Secretary to the Governor General for the letters to the next of kin of officers.

The inwards correspondence was not registered but merely stamped by the office of the Governor General and marked with the date of receipt and filed with copies of outward correspondence on a file that was split for ease of handling. Within these files the order of the papers is roughly chronological although letters etc on a specific subject were often placed together.

As well as the files mentioned above there are several smaller files containing miscellaneous correspondence relating to the policy and procedure to be adopted with the letters and annual lists of notifications of death to be sent to the next of kin which were compiled from lists regularly forwarded by the Department of Defence for action. These list contain; the name of the deceased, the name and relationship of the next of kin (eg - father, mother, sister) and the dates of notification. Some of the correspondence on these files is concerned with clarifying what the relationship of the next of kin was.

FINDING AIDS

All items in this series in the custody of Australian Archives as at December 1996 have been entered onto the item level database, ANGAM II.