New on Digital Collections: Queen Mary’s Roll of Honour
This year to mark Remembrance Day we have digitised and made available both Queen Mary’s Roll of Honours online for the first time. These two volumes record the names and stories of students and graduates of Queen Mary who died or were killed in World War I and World War II.
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War Record 1939-1945 in the digitisation studio.
The Roll of Honour’s, or War Records as they were originally titled, were drawn up by the administrators of the university after each world war in order to record their stories for future generations. The information received during the war by the university about members of our community on the front lines was patchy, so the records also functioned as a way to provide closure for the friends and teachers they left behind.
They created the War Records by writing to relatives, military comrades and former teachers or by consulting their own records. As you can see from the volumes in some cases this produced a huge amount of poignant detail about the lives of the deceased.
The records which are incorporated in this book, were compiled from Authentic sources during the years following the War, completed in the year 1929 and placed beside the War Memorial.
War Record 1914-1918
The War Records were originally kept in the Octagon on Queen Mary’s Mile End Campus, then the College Library, by the War Memorial. Reproduction copies can still be found on display by the south entrance to the Octagon.
Later they were transferred to the University Archives for safe keeping where we have been looking after them ever since. They are used in the annual Remembrance Day Service held at Queen Mary.
This year we are pleased to make all their stories available all year round via our Digital Collections platform. We hope this will help people from Queen Mary and beyond to remember victims of wars past and reflect on the human cost of wars that continue today.
Read the War Record 1914-1918, World War I Roll of Honour
Read the War Record 1939-1945, World War II Roll of Honour
If you are interested in finding out more about people listed in the Roll of Honours or the impact of war on Queen Mary historically there is even more to discover in our undigitized records. So feel free to get in touch archives@qmul.ac.uk.