NSW Government employees granted military leave

The index includes entries from records and resources within the NSW State archives only and will be added to over time. The records are listed in the Citation Key below and are available to view in the reading room.

There are approximately 10,000 individual names and 13,735 entries taken from a variety of records including:

• Joint Volumes of Papers Presented to the Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly, and Ordered to be Printed (NSW Parliamentary Papers)
• Police salary registers (NRS-10946)
• Photographed honour rolls from glass negatives, Government Printing Office (NRS-4481)
• Railways & Tramways ‘Employees Serving with the Australian Imperial Forces and Naval Forces’ (transcribed from pp. 3063-3087 of the 1918 NSW Government Gazette by Bill Phippen)

Additional details include position, department, branch, employment status, military unit (Railways & Tramways employees only), and the status terms of died, illness, killed, or wounded. In some cases whether the person received military decoration is provided.

Multiple and duplicate entries

The index includes instances of multiple entries for the same name, which are likely in most cases to be the same person. This is due to a number of factors, including:

• Multiple lists: some departments created separate lists for specific purposes, e.g. employees decorated, employees who were killed, employees who enlisted.
• Amended lists: some departments created amended lists each year of the war (and after peace was declared) containing persons appearing in previous years, along with new names. Unless there were clearly new additions the entire list was entered for each year to include all persons at least once.
• Name variations: in some instances only initials have been provided one year, but a full name another year; in other cases the swapping of the order of initials or names might have occurred.

In these cases it is not always clear if similar entries relate to the same person or not, so all entries have been included in the index.

Public Servants, Government Employees

In NSW in the early part of the 20th Century, the term ‘public servant’ referred to only those people employed under the provisions of the Public Service Act, 1895. While this included most government departments, it did not apply to all government employees. Parliamentarians, judges of the Supreme Court or district courts, police and employees of Railways and Tramways were all excluded as public servants under the Act. Railways and Tramways workers made up the bulk of those employed by the NSW Government and by 1919 a staggering 45,000[1] men and women worked to provide train and tram services for the people of the state. There were also nearly 18,700 public servants [2] and over 2,500 police [3] bringing the total to more than 66,000 people.

Official figures published in annual reports of NSW government departments after the war show that there were at least 11,033 government employees who were granted military leave from 1914-1918. This number comprises 8,477 Railways and Tramways employees [4] 2,336 public servants [5] and 217 from the Police Department.[6] The figures include both permanent and temporary employees but exclude casual and contract staff of which there are no known official figures for the period. It is important to note that not all of those who were granted leave were accepted into the military and not all those who were accepted were sent abroad.

Of the 11,033 government employees listed, 1,659 of them were killed in action, with the highest number predictably coming from Railway and Tramway employees (1,210) [7] followed by public servants (400) [8] and policemen (49) [9].

Official versus reported figures

Newspaper reports including statements by Premier William Holman [10] and the Secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA) [11] gave a total enlistment figure of around 13,000 by the end of the war out of 70,000 government employees. According to departmental annual reports, the total number of government employees including public servants, police, and railways/tramways employees up to 30 June 1919 was 66,362. If the newspaper figures are accurate, the gap may be accounted for by a combination of those not employed under the Public Service Act, casual labour and contract employment.

As the final figures for those granted military leave/enlisted were published in the first annual reports after peace was declared (i.e. from 1919 on), the total employee figures for each group are taken from 1919 annual reports. The number of government employees for these groups did not change greatly over the course of the war, there being 64,671 government employees before hostilities commenced.[12]

The figures below show total official figures provided in annual reports:

References

[1] Parliamentary Papers, 1919, Vol. 4, NSWGR&T, Report of the Commissioners for the Year Ended 30th June, 1919, p. 22

[2] Parliamentary Papers, 1921, Vol. 3, Public Service Board, Annual Report for the Year Ended 30th June, 1920, p. 11

[3] Parliamentary Papers, Second Session 1920, Vol. 3, Police Department, Annual Report for the Year Ended 31stDecember, 1919, p. 5

[4] Parliamentary Papers, 1919, Vol. 4, NSWGR&T, Report of the Commissioners for the Year Ended 30th June, 1919, p. 22

[5] Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Vol. 4, Public Service Board, Annual Report for the Year Ended 30th June, 1919, p. 18

[6] Parliamentary Papers, Second Session 1920, Vol. 3, Police Department, Annual Report for the Year Ended 31stDecember, 1919, p. 5

[7] Parliamentary Papers, 1921, Vol. 3, NSWGR&T, Report of the Commissioners for the Year Ended 30th June, 1921, p. 18

[8] Parliamentary Papers, Second Session 1920, Vol. 4, Public Service Board, Annual Report for the Year Ended 30th June, 1919, p. 18

[9] Parliamentary Papers, Second Session 1920, Vol. 3, Police Department, Annual Report for the Year Ended 31stDecember, 1919, p. 5

[10] Daily Telegraph, 13 August 1918 (page number unknown; clipping sourced from NRS 9853 [4/10621] p.116)

[11] Leader, 22 October 1919, p. 2

[12] Parliamentary Papers, 1914-15, Vol. 4, Public Service List, 1914, p. xii; Parliamentary Papers, 1914-15, Vol. 4, Report of the Public Service Board, 1913, p. 14; Parliamentary Papers, 1914-15, Vol. 5, NSWGR&T, Report of the Commissioners for the Year Ended 30th June, 1914, p. 22; Parliamentary Papers, 1914-15, Vol. 4, Police Department, Annual Report for the Year 1913, p. 1

During World War I and in years following the declaration of peace, NSW government departments published lists in their annual reports of staff who had served as nurses and military or navy personnel during the conflict. There were variations in the form and context of these lists - some listed those who had enlisted, some only those who were killed or wounded. In annual reports, the Public Service Board published lists of those who had been 'recommended for leave of absence with a view to active Military or Naval Service'. That is, those listed may not have been accepted into service, nor may they have embarked for active service abroad. Most often these lists were called ‘Honour Rolls’, and they were commonly included in plaques that were displayed on the walls of departmental offices, many of which survive to this day.

The easiest place to find annual reports is in the printed volumes of the NSW Parliamentary Papers, available in the Reading Room library at the Western Sydney Records Centre and in other major institutions including the State Library of NSW.

The likely source of most of these lists would have been departmental employee records, such as employee history cards/registers and pay registers. The NSW Government agreed to pay any difference between military pay and employee salary during the war (where military pay was less), therefore pay registers were the primary documentation of an employee’s status (enlisted, killed or returned) and rank (which affected military pay and therefore the gap the department might have to contribute).

This index was compiled by our staff and volunteers, as well as Bill Phippen of the Australian Railway Historical Society, NSW Division. We wish to acknowledge Bill Phippen's contribution to this index

• Register of War Memorials in NSW (for the location and contemporary photographs of department honour rolls)
• National Archives of Australia Discovering Anzacs (for service records and other service-related records)