Movember Mondays

I was going to do separate posts on these gentlemen of the 18^th (County) Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry, but a seed of doubt was cast in my mind as to who was who.  I tried putting it to other staff in the Record Office with a view to getting a consensus.  Unfortunately, nearly everyone had a different answer. 

I don’t have any names, I only know that the top two are different people, as they are cropped from the same photograph.  The bottom two men may be one of each of the top ones, both one of the tops ones, or completely different people altogether.  With the 18th being a Pals battalion, there is also the possibility that they are related.

In the archives world, we can’t make assumptions.  In some cases we can have circumstantial evidence so we could describe a record as possibly being something.  It also means that we are used to the fact that we don’t always have the answers and that we may never have them.