Explore Your Archive: National University of Ireland Archives

28.11.2024

To mark Explore Your Archive Week, a letter from the NUI Archives written by Captain Arthur Beveridge written in 1918.

Letter from Arthur Beveridge, 135 Field Ambulance, British Expeditionary Forces, to the Registrar of NUI, requesting that his name be submitted for the Honorary BSc War Degree. He provides details of qualifications, his military cross for gallantry, and that he was mentioned in dispatches. 21 December 1918

Captain Arthur O'Shaughnessy Beveridge, Royal Army Medical Corps, and his identical twin brother James, from Rathgar in Dublin, served as doctors in the First World War. Born in March 1893, they were the sons of Dublin's town clerk John Beveridge. They attended Belvedere College and qualified as doctors from UCD in 1915; a year after being commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps special reserve in 1914. Prior to that they had both been in the College of Surgeons Officers' Training Corps.

James Beveridge was twenty-four when he died on 22 November 1917 having succumbed to wounds during the Battle of Cambrai; the first great tank battle of the war. In 1918, The Belvederian, Belvedere College's annual, reported that James had:

met his death while bravely doing his duty in one of the biggest battles of the war. He worked unceasingly until he was stricken down with many wounds; in that state he was found by the Catholic chaplain who administered the last rites of the Church to him and he died shortly afterwards. He lived as he died, a fervent and devout Catholic.

Arthur was so aggrieved by James's death that he was given three months' compassionate leave from the front. Arthur (1893-1959) remained in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in the Second World War. He was awarded the Norwegian War Cross for his conduct during the Nazi invasion in 1940. He retired from the British Army in 1953 at the rank of Major General and died in 1959.

Based on Ronan McGreevy, 'Select Biographies', in Ronan McGreevy and Emer Purcell (eds), National University of Ireland First World War Centenary Roll of Honour and Essays (NUI, 2024) available in all good bookshops or buy online from www.fourcourtspress.ie

The Irish Great War Dead Archive compiled and maintained by Tom Burnell
https://irelandsgreatwardead.ie/ and hosted by Tipperary County Council Library Services.

NUI houses the archive of the University and the archive of the Royal University of Ireland.

Explore Your Archive is a joint campaign delivered by The National Archives and the Archives and Records Association across the UK and Ireland. It aims to showcase the unique potential of archives to excite people, bring communities together, and tell amazing stories (www. exploreyourarchive.org).

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