Family Historian User Group

When early 19th Century armed forces were posted abroad - vis: Napoleonic wars in Europe, events in the Americas and in India; postings would usually be for many years. How did the families at home receive their husband's pay? I understand that only very few wives were permitted to travel with their men. If the money transfer from soldier to wife at home was a private arrangement, then it probably never happened - if it were through the Regiment, I have been unable to trace it. I can trace pensions but not overseas payments. Any hints?

I would suggest that the soldier received locally the "spending money" he had elected to receive and the balance was held in London and they could give their wives a right to draw on that money. That would minimise cash in war zones.

No doubt the situation evolved - by WW1 I think it was pretty formalised - search "army paybooks"?

See https://banking-history.org.uk/record/cox-co-london/ Certainly by WW1 Cox & Co were handling a lot of "valuables logistics". After my Grandfather was killed at Ypres, his effects were returned to my Grandmother "via Cox & Co".

I'm afraid I'm going to sidestep the exact question and respond as if you'd asked about the Royal Navy. It might be of interest anyway, but the terminology and framework might help searching for similar Army concepts.

The Royal Navy had an Allotment Scheme (ran from 1795 to 1852) The documents are Allotment Registers, a small series in Kew's ADM 27 - and I have a distinct feeling that I've seen some of these on FindMyPast. The rating (or petty officer) could nominate up to half of their pay to go to their dependents. While initially only a fraction of the eligible seamen signed up, by the 1810s something like a third and by the 1850s about a half of the sailors had signed up.

Apparently most of the documentation has been lost, but some allotment registers and allotment declaration lists made their way to Kew. The above comes from Simon Fowler's Tracing Your Naval Ancestors.

Quite how the money made its way to the nominees, I don't know but if it's anything like Army pensions, there were pay offices dotted about the country and one had to go to them once or twice(?) a year to pick the cash up.

Fowler's book does say that at that time the Army had nothing comparable.

Having said that, I know that the Canadian "Army" of WW1 had a scheme similar to the above because I've seen mention of it in the Canadian Expeditionary Force "Army" papers for my relatives. The phrase then seems to be Assigned Pay (although there's also something called Separation Allowance / Pay.

While I've never seen anything comparable in British Army records, this is probably because of the weeding of "unwanted" pages in files by Army clerks.

So I suspect something similar to the RN's scheme was eventually used for the Army but it seem like it was much later and until then, wives had to rely on the soldiers sending cash home. Maybe....

The above might give you some phrases to search on.

Have a look at https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/bl ... itish-army which gives details about life in the army including bits about pay and families.

Some good stuff there, Tim - I note that it says

... army wives left at home had a small advantage in that they could claim assistance on their parish ...

I did wonder about that.

More discussion of Cox & Co / Cox & Kings - described as "Army Agents"