WW1 nurses’ scrapbooks go online
Scrapbooks, diaries and photo albums kept by nurses during the First World War have now been published online by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project ‘Service Scrapbooks: Nursing and Storytelling in the First World War’ involved digitising, transcribing and researching nearly 2,000 pages of photographs, poems, diary entries and illustrations.
A team of volunteers selected the best content, ranging from 1909 to 1919, from this huge collection and compiled it into a free web resource.
Dianne Yarwood, deputy chair of the History of Nursing Society, said: “It is clear that these women embraced nursing during the First World War with professionalism, humour and humility, and we are pleased to be sharing their wartime stories.”
The website tells the stories of nine nurses and one Voluntary Aid Detachment. One of the nurses, Mabel Pearce, served in hospitals in Lincoln, Salonica in Greece and Bordighera in Italy. Her scrapbooks contain poems from soldiers expressing their admiration for her and their experiences of the war.
To view the scrapbooks, go to rcn.org.uk/servicescrapbooks.