Certificates of birth, baptism, marriage and death, with wills, administrations, statements of services and personal papers of officers and their families, in cases where the officer died on service or on half pay and his widow applied for a pension, or application was made for a child's compassionate allowance.
Most of these were formerly among papers now in WO 43. Eight bundles of similar certificates, 1755 to 1908, have been added from other series.
This series originally comprised 73 bundles. In June 2013, two pieces were added at the end to link to some digitised indexes: WO 42/74 contains the index for the volumes in WO 42/1 -51; WO 42/75 contains the index for 42/52-65.
Records within this series are available to download as digital microfilm.