An analysis of the Agius bequest on World War Two death casualties, held at the National Archives of Malta

Abstract

The Agius bequest, recently presented to the National Archives of Malta, is composed of several hundred individual, brief records of the death casualties of Maltese military service personnel and Maltese civilians, and includes the records of the death casualties of those British military service personnel and civilians, which occurred in the Maltese theatre of operations; all of which occurred throughout the Second World War. The individual records are contained on small sized ‘index cards’ (and similarly sized roughly cut cards), generally involving data on the number, rank and name of the individual, place and date of demise, and the locality of grave. However, the data is generally erratic in content, and very often incomplete. Other general information regarding the contents, arrangement, date of completion, etc. of the bequest is otherwise absent. The cards are contained in a metal cabinet of four metal drawers, specifically designed for the storage of index cards. During the analysis of the bequest an attempt was made to identify the provenance and original order of the bequest. It investigated archival ‘finding aids’ for easy access by future researchers, and the possible re-arrangement of the bequest, if advisable; the analysis also studied the correctness and veracity of the data through random reference to primary and secondary sources. The analysis further investigated the fullness and completeness of the bequest, at the same time attempted to identify relevant original primary sources in local and overseas archival repositories, which would assist future researchers into the deeper research of this subject.