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.

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First seen at GeneaNet 

The Khaki Girls

 

This interesting photo shows a group of women from the Commonwealth Clothing Factory who had formed a patriotic organisation known as the Khaki Girls.  Presumably they sewed their own uniforms at the Factory.  The sign indicates that the photo was taken on the occasion of the "Our Boys' Day" in March 1918.  This Day was held annually from 1916 to raise funds to provide comforts to the men in the trenches and in hospital.  

The Khaki Girls performed both in displays and in ceremonial duties - the latter being Welcome Homes at the docks and forming guards of honour.  They did displays of marching, physical culture, and they had a bugle band.

The photo belonged to Pte Julius Rudolph (Ru) Jacobsohn of Moonee Ponds, who is standing in the centre row at the right. Jacobsohn was an original Anzac, invalided home and discharged in 1916.  

Identifying the other men in the group is a challenge, but the man seated on the left of the front row with the cane is probably Thomas Trumble, the Secretary for the Defence Department.  The man to his left is Senator George Foster Pearce, the Minister for Defence.  The man in the centre is unknown, but the next two men appear in an AWM photo of the manager and office staff from the Commonwealth Government Clothing Factory.

The sergeant seated second from the right in the front row may be Sergeant E C Perkins, whose name is mentioned in an Argus report as being in charge on the occasion of a fete at the Exhibition Building in September 1918.    This same man is in a SLV photograph of the Commonwealth Clothing Factory Personnel in 1918.

The biggest challenge is to identify the women of the Commonwealth Clothing Factory.  If you had a nanna or great aunt who worked at the Factory in World War 1, have a look and see if you can identify her.