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TRACING YOUR SERVICE WOMEN ANCESTORS will help you research individual women who worked with the British armed forces in the 19th and early 20th century, including the Crimean War, the Boer War, WW1 and the interwar period. The book details where records of individual service have survived, offering many catalogue references and including neglected groups, like women doctors and army schoolmistresses.
Drawing on original sources to describe the history of many different organisations and the working lives of women who served in them, this book also offers a unique overview of the women who pioneered a formal role with the armed services, particularly during the First World War, with many real-life examples.
Early Nursing Services
Including records of naval nurses in the 1700s, the book covers army and naval nursing in the Crimean war, and the gradual introduction of nursing sisters to the Army, Navy and Indian Army during the latter part of the 19th century, consolidated in early 20th century re-organisation of these nursing services.
WW1 Medical services
This section explains the organisation of hospitals in the UK and abroad, with chapters on nursing services, red cross workers, masseuses and women doctors officially involved in the care of the wounded. Postwar armed forces nursing services are also covered.
WW1 Auxiliary services
The Army’s increasing dependence on women clerks and Women’s Legion catering workers and drivers led to the setting up in 1917 of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Later that year, the Royal Navy, already employing women clerks, fishergirls and female technical workers, set up the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The Women’s Royal Air Force came into being at the same time as the RAF, in April 1918.
Most women in the auxiliary forces worked in domestic, catering and clerical jobs. The book also explains their work as motorcyclists, drivers and motor mechanics, as well as in semi-skilled technical trades.
Help is offered in interpreting abbreviations found on service records and, in the case of the WAACs, alternative sources where individual service records have not survived.
Women Land Workers in WW1
This section describes how, from 1915, women helped supply hay for the thousands of horses requisitioned by the Army in WW1. This led to the organisation of the Women’s Forage Corps, substituting for ASC (Army Service Corps) men. The final chapter covers the Women’s Land Army, from its origins in the work of the Women’s Farm and Garden Union and the Women’s National Land Service Corps, training milkers and ploughwomen. The vital, often back-breaking work of Women’s Land Army members did much to overturn widespread prejudice among farmers against women working on the land.
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