Was there a Red Cross Volunteer in Your Family ?

The Red Cross have now made their World War I collection of records partly available with an index of World War I volunteers.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, the Red Cross formed a Joint War Committee with the Order of St John, raised funds, organised volunteers and paid staff to provide equipment and services in the UK and the theatres of war. Everyone was trained in first aid, some trained in nursing, cookery, hygiene and sanitation.

Most of the women became nurses, initially in hospitals in Britain, but as the casualties mounted, more were sent overseas to casualty stations on or near the battlefield or to hospitals. Many people offered their houses as convalescent homes for the wounded or as auxiliary hospitals; some town halls and primary schools were used too.

There were over 3,000 auxiliary hospitals across the UK. They were staffed by a commandant, a quartermaster, a matron, a cook and nurses. Local GPs often volunteered for work in the hospitals in addition to their ordinary work. The nurses were all volunteers, often they were too young or old or had family commitments to serve full-time. Male volunteers usually drove or accompanied the ill or wounded to and from hospitals, many acted as stretcher-bearers, a lot were sent to France as ambulance drivers, some being wounded in enemy action.

Volunteers also collected clothing and books for soldiers in hospitals, raised funds, made bandages and splints, acted as cooks, store-keepers, worked in the offices and just as importantly, provided food and cigarettes to soldiers arriving by ambulance train. One of my great-aunts married a soldier she met on such duty.

A lot of people were displaced by the war, in 1915, volunteers started visiting hospitals looking for people who had been recorded as missing; work that the Red Cross is still involved in. By the end of the war in 1918, 90,000 volunteers had worked in the UK or abroad. There were lots of famous volunteers including Agatha Christie and Vera Brittain, perhaps some of your family were volunteers.

To find out, use the index of World War I Red Cross volunteers..

You can search by forename, surname, location or hospital or role. The initial search takes you to a search results page that shows name, county, date of engagement, age when engaged. Clicking on the name takes you to a detailed page about that person.

The information provided comes from record cards and may include name, address, age, character, service dates, hospital, rank, pay, duties, commission, honours awarded. Pictures of the cards are also included. Annoyingly, first names weren’t always recorded, some just gave initials.

World War I British Nursing Service Records

The (English) National Archives at Kew have released over 15,000 First World War service records for nurses who served in the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (Reserve) and the Territorial Force Nursing Service.

The majority of the records cover the World War I period only, with some records before 1914 and some after 1918, till 1938.

The records show where a nurse trained, references relating to their suitability as military nurses, which hospitals, field ambulances, casualty clearing stations or other medical units they served in, what their superiors thought of them and when they left the services.

I ordered the records for 10 people, then found I couldn't download from the online page. However, the record of my order email contained download buttons to download each link separately and that was easy. However, if you're searching for a common name be careful that the download doesn't overwrite a set of files downloaded earlier.

The records appear to be free at the moment, but how long will that last ?

More information on the nursing service records
and the records for Marjorie Turton or search the nursing service records.

Disability Pension Files contain records relating to nurses.

See also their guide to British Army nurses and nursing services.

London Lives 1690-1820

There's a fascinating new site, London Lives 1690-1820 online. There seems to be another name, too, Plebeian Lives.

It's a searchable database of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to over 3 million names; and it appears to be free.

So if your ancestors came from or went to London, or were just passing through but were involved with Local Government, the Criminal Justice systems, Poor Relief, Guilds and Hospitals; you may well find them here.

There are some other records too, but not for the whole of London, parish registers, taxation records, and the index to wills at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

As well as the names there's useful introductions to the records themselves, a number of biographies (that they call Completed Lives) constructed using London Lives, and there'll be 'Lives in Progress' on a wiki yet to be implemented.

For example, there's Mary Nichols, also known as Trolly Lolly, born around 1685 in Deptford, Kent. She came to London, married a butcher, and started stealing at the age of 28. At her first trial in December 1714, she was found guilty of stealing goods worth more than 5 shillings (25p) from a house and sentenced to be branded on the hand. That didn't deter her, for on 22 July 1715 she broke into the house of Christopher Hurt and stole a pair of flaxen sheets worth 10 shillings and other goods. Mary was found guilty of burglary and sentenced to death. She claimed falsely that she was pregnant and was conveyed to Newgate Prison to await her execution and was hanged on Wednesday 21 September 1715 at Tyburn.

You can search by surname, or forename, or a combination of both as well as by month and year from 1680 to 1820, and restrict it to a document type. Additionally, I've discovered that once you find an interesting record, you can browse through subsequent records in the same dataset. Many (but not all) of the search results give you the capability to view a digitised image of the original document.

Registering as a user provides additional benefits, your own workspace to store names, ages and occupations of people, and link them together in sets, and download the info. The download is as an XML file which seems a very odd choice, as few people will know how to use it.

Thanks to Chris Paton at Scottish Genealogy News and Events for making me aware of it.

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