Prisoners of War Information Bureau 1914-1919

This was established by Westminster to act as a liaison office to exchange information between the British Government and the enemy powers concerning all prisoners of war both military and civilian - it also acted as a liaison both between the various internment camps both within the British Isles, of which Knockaloe grew to be the largest, and the many colonial camps. It was also a central point for all inquiries about specific prisoners and also transmitted regular (usually weekly) lists of PoWs to the International Red Cross [ICRC from its French name] in Geneva.

It maintained a card index of all POWs numbered sequentially in order of the receipt of information from those holding the internees, in one of two lists - the usual one encountered is that of prisoners held within the British Isles (and also Egypt) which by the end of the war numbered well over 300,000 names. In the initial few months the PoWIB appeared to be working from lists of names sent in by the many, often small camps and seemed to organise names into some alphabetic grouping e.g. all the As then all the Ds followed by all the Cs thus making it near impossible to derive any camp number from the PoWIB number.

Each card contained details of the PoW such as full name, date and place of birth, home address and/or that of next of kin together with the current place of internment and the PoW's number within that camp - the PoWIB also maintained information of the health of each PoW and also noted any death together with place of internment. The second, or Colonial list, included those held under British Government control outside of the British Isles - again kept in sequential order but indicated by postfixing a 'C' to the number - some of these PoWs, e,g. those interned in Sierra Leone, were brought back to the UK and many landed up in Knockaloe where known to other internees as 'Africans' - another common Colonial number is seen in those captured on board ships approaching Gibralter and were briefly held there before removal to a British Camp. There was a third index number distinguished by a number prefixed by * - in the IRC lists such numbers were used to indicate a duplicate number of the same individual, in the Anglo-German transcriptions it indicates that the number was indistinct. From 27 July 1918 an 'A' was added to indicate an Austro-Hungarian but these internees were still numbered in the same sequence as Germans.

The original card index was destroyed by enemy action during WW2 and it would appear a duplicate list was destroyed in the 1970s, possibly by error. Individual PoWs and possibly the actual camps, would not be aware nor make use of this centrally held number - all responses etc would be in terms of the local camp number. The surviving Knockaloe camp letter books contain many requests by PoWIB to confirm or correct various details concerning name, date of arrest etc - these and any noted reply would be couched in terms of the local camp number.

The International Red Cross in Geneva received much information from all the combatant powers concerning PoWs and it too maintained a large card index giving the basic data about each individual, usually just the name, the address of any next of kin and reference to the official list sent to them. This card index and many of the lists from which it was built were digitised for the anniversary of the outbreak of WW1 and made freely available on a web site - https://grandeguerre.icrc.org - maintained by the ICRC. The lists sent by the British Government were also anotated by the ICRC with additional information sometimes derived from now destroyed letters from family enquiries about relatives held as PoWs.

Much of the information sent to Germany concerning German PoWs would appear to have survived being held now in a German archive at Koblenz - many of these documents were transcribed by the Anglo-German Family History Society and collated into alphabetic lists of names however they only gave the PoWIB index number against each name - the Manx Museum having a copy of this Anglo-German FHSoc list and with no surviving list for Knockaloe wrongly assumed that the Koblenz number was the Knockaloe camp number and stated as such in their database on www.imusem.im (this has now been corrected).

However the availabilty of the ICRC images now allows a much better reconstruction of the Knockaloe Camp register and the information that would be held within it. The German lists are the most extensive - the weekly civilian lists through to D277 (1 Mar 1920) have survived though with the important loss of lists 1 to 6 so that little information is available for those German internees with a PoWIB index number lower than 14500 - unfortuneately this covers most of those interned at the beginning of the war. These lists can, with some difficulty, be found on the website and generally follow the same format - a list of newly interned PoWs (which can include those returned from civilian hospitals or prisons), a list of re-internees, a list of those released, a list of those who have died since the last list and a list of those in hospital . For Knockaloe this hospital would appear to be the special hospital adjacent to Camp 3 - transfers to Noble's Hospital, the Asylum at Union Mills as well as off Island hospitals and asylums are noted. From list D106 onwards (23 Sept 1916) the Knockaloe Camp number is also included as well as the PoWIB central number.

I had thought that maybe the I.C.R.C. had somehow lost or mislaid lists 1 to 6, but then realised that the information collated by the Anglo-German Family History Society from the records held at Koblenz contained only the same names I could find in the I.C.R.C. records - yet these lists assume the recipients had access to lists 1-6 - it turns out they were hidden in plain sight as being merged with the list of combatants though not immediately identifiable as such.

On transfer back from a civil institution - hospital, asylum or prison - the internee was given a new camp number but kept the same PoWIB number. Internees who were moved from Colonial to British charge kept their Colonial list nmber unless they were transferred to a civil institution when they were given a number in the British list. Those few who gave a false name on initial internment but who later confessed to their 'proper' name were given a new PoWIB with a note as to the reason..

The final list D277 was dated 21 Mar 1920. Most lists from D267 onwards list those repatriated for whom the PoWIB had information about property still held, together with the final two camps which held the internee. All such property was confiscated by the British government and sold, the proceeds of which sales were offset against the reparations due from Germany - the lists were nominally produced to allow internees to claim back such money from the postwar German government.

The following table includes the URLs that gave me access to the lists - a more general list and easy access mechanism is still being worked upon - usually you land up with the default D267 but there is a small pop-up menu at the end of the page indicated " potentially relevant lists " which will give access to the desired film. One gets the impression that the web designer had not thought that access to the lists per se might be more relevant for some research.

German Lists

Austrian Lists

The films of the Austrian lists are somewhat unusual in that the order of the pages on the film are all the first pages of each list (fortunately in date order), followed by all second pages etc. - quite why defeats me as it makes looking through the film somewhat of a pain and exceedingly slow!

More TBA - a list of names and Knockaloe Camp numbers is under preparation though there will always be a significant number of internees for whom I have a name and departure date from Knockaloe but no Camp number. Currently I have some 13500 for which I have a name and a camp number - I estimate these are about 40% of those who passed through the camp - and also about another 5000 or so who are known to have spent some time in Knockaloe, for many of these I have an estimate of these arrival date in the camp.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor © F.Coakley , 2019