British Red Cross Volunteers

Over 90,000 people volunteered for the British Red Cross in Britain and overseas during the war.   Search for your family’s personnel records, and discover what Red Cross volunteers were doing in your local area 100 years ago.

Red Cross volunteers did a wide range of jobs, from the Voluntary Aid Detachments, pictured above, to nursing,  cooking, cleaning, searchers trying to discover the fate of missing men and so on, so the database includes men as well as women.

I find that if you pop 'Australia' into the location search box, it will bring up volunteers who gave an Australian bank as their address, or sometimes Australia in their address.  You can try other local names.  For instance, I found the following British Red Cross volunteer by putting 'Moonee Ponds' in the location:

Mrs Ivy Wilson Jenkins, nee Graham, is in the database, giving 2 Normanby St, Moonee Ponds, Australia as her address.  Ivy served from 01/09/1916  to  01/06/1918 as a VAD, engaged in Ward work, medical Surgical work, for twenty pounds per annum. She served at the following locations: Exeter War Hospitals Sept 1- 1916 - Aug 30; 1917 1st Southern General Hs Nov.5.1917 - June 7. 1918 Birmingham.

There are no Jenkins' at the Normanby St address in the Empire Called database, but further research may reveal more about Ivy Jenkins at a later date.

British Red Cross volunteers records to be digitised

The charity will recruit 100 volunteers to create an online archive of Voluntary Aid Detachment index cards of civilians who contributed to the war effort.



The British Red Cross has been awarded an £80,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to conserve and digitise historic documents detailing the work of volunteers during the First World War.


As part of the project to commemorate the centenary of the war, the BRC will recruit 100 volunteers to create a free and publicly available online archive of 244,000 Voluntary Aid Detachment index cards.


These paper cards include details of nurses, ambulance drivers and seamstresses who contributed to the war effort. They were organised on a county basis and allocated to carry out a variety of roles between 1914 and 1918.

See the full story at Third Sector

First seen at GeneaNet 

The Captain and his war bride

Reg Jones of Shaftesbury St, Essendon left Australia with the AIF as a Corporal with the 14 Inf Bn, and returned home as a Captain with a pretty bride he met while convalescing in England.  Kathleen Norah Kenney was a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) worker during the war.    The photo below shows Kitty in her uniform and engagement ring.

The couple married in England on New Year's Eve, 1917.

These photos and other photos and letters can be found on the Empire Called website,  courtesy of Brenda Noonan, granddaughter of Reginald Jones.    You can see more letters and photos here.