| Corps History - General Information back to 'Corps History'
The principal sources of Corps History at the Heritage Centre are:
CORPS REPORTS in THE WAR CRY (1879-1986) and other Salvation Army periodicals. These are being indexed, but this is a slow process. Some corps did not send in many reports, so may not be mentioned very often. Local newspaper reports (available in many local history libraries) can be a useful alternative source.
OFFICERS' APPOINTMENTS. We have one list of corps officers and their appointments up to the beginning of 1884, and we are indexing lists of field officers’ appointments from THE OFFICER magazine, 1893-1913. We have a British Territory DISPOSITION OF OFFICERS from 1921, and a complete set from 1949 onwards. Some lists of corps officers’ appointments were published in THE WAR CRY around 1915-17, and annual field changes have been listed in THE WAR CRY most years since 1930, apart from a few gaps during the Second World War. Announcements of officers’ promotions usually appear in THE WAR CRY, but it takes a long time to search for individual names. Many records were lost when the National and International Headquarters in London (101 Queen Victoria Street) were destroyed during the Second World War.
CORPS ADDRESSES. We have some lists of buildings used by each corps up to 1885, but otherwise we have very few corps addresses until 1959 onwards, when they were included in annual DISPOS. Street directories (available in many local libraries) are a useful alternative source, and the Property Department’s records at UK Territorial Headquarters can be helpful. We have compiled a working list of corps OPENING DATES and CORPS NUMBERS, which were allocated to corps, usually in chronological order, from the time of the 1878 War Congress onwards. We have lists of corps in each division in two surviving volumes of the CORPS INDEX, February and November 1905, as well as in the annual Salvation Army Year Books, 1906-1916, though unfortunately these lists do not include corps addresses.
CORPS HISTORY BOOKS, which were introduced in 1907, should be held by the local corps with their Soldiers' Rolls and other records and registers, though they are not always preserved when they are no longer in current use. A few Corps History Books and other records from corps that have now closed have been deposited in the archives.
We are open to researchers by appointment: Tues, Weds &Thurs / 9.30-3.30 (Telephone: 020 7737 3327). Except for Salvation Army officers engaged in official work, approved corps history researchers, or full-time undergraduate students who provide a letter from their college or university, we charge visiting researchers £5 for ½ day (up to 3 hours) or £10 for a full day (up to 6 hours). For research undertaken by our staff, we charge an initial fee of £5 (whether we find any information or not) and £5 for each additional hour’s research (up to a maximum of 5 hours). Photocopies cost 20p a page (or 25p a page by post).
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