The British Red Cross has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £80,000 towards the digitisation of some 244,000 personnel records for volunteers from the First World War. The resulting database will be free to access online, though no time scale for its completion has been noted in an article about the project in the London Evening Standard at http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/agatha-christies-war-record-gives-clue-to--her-plots-with-drugs-and-poison-9034235.html. The article does give some information on what to expect:
The documents detail the tasks performed by the volunteers — two-thirds of them women and girls — on the Home Front. Duties included work as nurses, ambulance drivers, and seamstresses mending military uniforms.
And a comment from Phil Talbot, director of communications for the British Red Cross:
“The database and website created by this project will be the first freely available resource for research into the civilian contribution to the Great War. We believe this is a fitting way to commemorate and pay tribute to those who gave their time in non-military service.”
Should be an exciting resource when it becomes available!
(With thanks to @BritishRedCross and @DavidUnderdown9 on Twitter)
Chris
My latest book, Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, is now available from http://www.gould.com.au (print) and http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html (ebook), whilst Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet is available at http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/.
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