The following blog gives a brief introduction on how to research a woman who was known to be a VAD. It is also worth a quick check even if it is not known whether a woman who is being researched was a VAD – if she was an adult during the Great War she may have either volunteered, or was paid employee. I have found dozens of women simply on a hunch!
On 16 August 1909 the War Office issued the ‘Scheme for the Organisation of Voluntary Aid in England And Wales’, followed by a similar scheme in Scotland in December, to provide clearing hospitals, stationary hospitals and ambulance trains for the Territorial Force. By early 1914 1,757 female and 519 male detachments had been registered with the War Office. Members of the Unit were quickly referred to as “VADs”.
There is a popular misconception that all VADs were nurses or nursing assistants on wards in hospitals. This ignores the dozens of other roles that VADs took during the War, which included organising working parties, transport duties, canteen workers in auxiliary hospitals.clerks, drivers, dispensers of medicines, commandants, cooks, storekeepers and more. I have even seen the roles of “egg collector” and “sphagnum moss” collector noted on record cards! The moss was used in the making of bandages. Some VADs took specialist classes to become a masseuse or use an x-ray machine. One famous example is Agatha Christie, who worked as a dispenser of medicines during the war (and possibly made use of her knowledge of poisons in her novels!)
A dramatic expansion in the size of the force followed and by 1916 there were about 80,000 VAD members with 12,000 nurses working in military hospitals at home and overseas, with a further 60,000 unpaid volunteers working as nurses.
There are many resources to help in researching the life story of a VAD, a good starting point are the British Red Cross records. https://vad.redcross.org.uk/volunteering-during-the-first-world-war
These records were recently updated and I am sad to say, it was not an improvement! In fact, searching them is now far more difficult (principally because each search throws up 100 items of ever irrelevant names!). Therefore, the more unusual the name the better- it will be first name on the list! However, once the woman’s record card has been found, it can give a lot of details – including their address on joining, the years they worked, salary (if applicable – many were middle class women who did not take a salary), awards etc. There are often other details for example if a member had married, her change of name noted, or if she had died while on duty. From this information the member can be traced both back in time- through census records etc and forward – for example many women did go on to have careers in nursing, or continued their career and could be found in nursing registers on Ancestry. The 1921 census and the 1939 register can also be looked at to map out how their future might have gone. Find my Past has copies of 1000s of newspapers over many decades and a quick search of a name can give even more information – I have found marriages, photographs, obituaries and other really interesting information to help build up a picture of women’s lives. Lives of the First World War- a joint project with Find My Past and the Imperial War Museum is free to view and women who were VADs can very often be found on a search - -with added information.
Another resource that is particularly useful for professional nurses is the Royal College of Nursing's journal which has been digitised for the years 1888 - 1956. It is free and searchable Very useful, especially if you have a nurse who might have received an award or who died on duty. Or you could search for a named hospital, place or other phrase. I sometimes just browse it! (Sad that I am!)
I hope that this brief blog can help researchers to identify and remember many of the “forgotten women” of the War years; it is only in the recent past that women’s contributions, courage and lives have begun to be valued. They should be remembered every Armistice Day along with servicemen.
“Lest We Forget”!
(All of the subscription accounts mentioned can be consulted for free in many large or local libraries.)
https://vad.redcross.org.uk/volunteering-during-the-first-world-war
https://www.militaria-history.co.uk/articles/the-voluntary-aid-detachment/
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/
My Facebook Page Remembering Women in the UK in WW1 has a LOT of information, stories, photos and biographies- mostly of “ordinary” women!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699
Ancestry.co.uk
Find My Past
British Newspaper Archives (these can also be found on Find my Past)
Lives of the First World War
