by AdrianB38 » Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:42 pm
Assuming it really is him and not another George Hoddle (have you tried used the back and forward arrows?) then (a) it's not unknown and (b) rather odd.
The odd bit is that, before WW1, personnel records for soldiers who died in service were scrapped off. I believe that this began to alter about the time of the 2nd Boer War when widows' pensions were started but the default position was "scrap unless needed...". I've often thought that the only reason the situation changed for WW1 was that records had to be kept until the Campaign Medals were issued and then no-one could face the workload necessary to scrap the unwanted papers.
As for not being unknown, Paul Nixon, a major military genealogy blogger and researcher has said that this happens every so often. Surviving pre-WW1 stuff should have been taken out of the regimental admin offices at some point. Well, of course, inevitably stuff got missed and remained with the then-current papers (there was no physical difference after all, you simply had to sit there and read the things. Or not). Later, when the time came to dispatch the WW1 papers for soldiers who were no longer serving, these Victorian or Edwardian papers were just bundled up with the surrounding stuff and sent off. There'd have been no attempt to take them to the right document store, I'm sure. Too much like hard work!
So it looks like you have 2 oddities here - a very odd survival and a pre-WW1 set of papers in the WW1 stuff. And assuming he's the chap whose father is Charles, from the Back St, Olney, then I've just seen the papers - they mention Singapore and an inquest, and are book-ended by "New Soldier" sheets so do seem to be him and no-one else.
PS - the capacity for errors suggests that the Ministry of Defence still has papers for soldiers for served in WW1 but left before 1920-ish. And of course, there will be WW1 soldiers who served after 1920-ish and their papers are "definitely" still with the MoD. (Apart from those that aren't!)
Adrian