It is estimated at least 700,000 Brits were killed in the conflict
As the world gathers to commemorate the end of World War I on Armistice Day, a new online app means you can see how the war that killed an estimated 16 million affected people in you local area.
The website A Street Near You has compiled data on those who died in the Great War, and can graphically represent those who died by the area they came from. If you enter the name of your hometown you can quickly get details on people from your own locality who died fighting
The show is seeing so much traffic today that it’s struggling to handle it all.
According to the site-runner, these are the sources used to gather the data:
- Lives of the First World War – IWM’s unique project enabling everyone to share their information, stories and images to compile Life Stories “on nearly 8 million men and women who served in uniform and worked on the home front”.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission – a unique online collection of the details of every serviceman or woman. Many of the locations here are extracted from what they call the ‘Additional information’ field, which typically contains text such as “Son of Samuel and Sarah Morley, of Derby; husband of F. M. Morley, of 113, Peel St., Ashbourne Rd., Derby.”. Note that this information was collected sevral years after the end of the war and it does not necessarily represent an address that the person had lived at.
- Imperial War Museums Collections – one of the richest collections of First World War objects and images, most notably in this context the Bond of Sacrifice Collection and the Women’s War Work Collection, together comprising images of nearly 20,000 individuals who served.
- War Memorial Register – another unique record from the Imperial War Museum, comprising records of over 78,000 memorials in the British Isles, together with listings of over one million names that appear on them.
