Kitchener Camp Review – now complete

All issues of the Kitchener Camp Review are now online and, like Phineas May’s diaries, these are a wonderful read for the detail of what was going on in the camp over these months in 1939.

There are some great sketches in the reviews – including some identifiable camp characters.

Kitchener Camp Review, April 1939, page 11, base
Kitchener Camp Review, April 1939, page 11, base

The next image is referred to as the ‘expert agriculturalist’ – and we’d be very happy to hear about it if anyone knows who this is (below).

The Kitchener Camp Review, August 1939, Drawing detail, page 5
The Kitchener Camp Review, August 1939, Drawing detail, page 5

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I have finally had the time today to sit down with someone who is rather better than I am with MS Excel, and we have got quite a long way with resolving one of the ‘legacy’ issues on the website that has been causing a bit of confusion for newer users to the site.

When we began the project, we had no idea of who had been in Kitchener camp beyond our own families, and I started to construct a list (the ‘List of Names’/Kitchener Refugees) from whatever information was being sent in or could otherwise be found. Then we were incredibly fortunate in the timing of the British National Archives’ release of the 1939 Register this year, so we gained 3,500 Kitchener names from that, but it is an incomplete list, as a census often is.

Gradually, we are sifting out the names that are in both lists, which will leave the ‘List of Names’ with only those who are not in the 1939 Register – thus giving us a more complete list across the two documents of who was in the camp.

We hope to finish this task next week.