British Red Cross WW1 Volunteers

A digitisation and transcription project to make thousands of nursing records available on the web has reached completion. Family historians can now search through over 244,000 British Red Cross personnel index cards, providing details of men and women who served as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) workers during the First World War. First launched in 2014, the project was undertaken by the British Red Cross in partnership with Kingston University, with help from more than 800 volunteers around the world. You can search the collection for free here.

Over 90,000 people volunteered for the Red Cross in World War 1 both at home and overseas.  Volunteers were not just from Britain - they came from all over the Commonwealth, including a number of Australians.  Below are the cards for Victorian volunteer Jessie Traill, who spent much of the war nursing in France.

Victorian Asylum Records online

Did your ancestor spend time in an asylum in Victoria?  You may be able to access some of their records through Find My Past.
This record set includes eleven institutions, covering admission years from 1811-1919, and discharge dates from 1838-1914. While the information included varies, each transcript will include:

• Full name – note that some names may be truncated in the records (e.g. Elzbth for Elizabeth).
• Age
• Date of admission
• Date of discharge/transfer
• Method of discharge
• Hospital

My great great grandfather John Clark was admitted to Kew in May 1894 at the age of 59 suffering from dementia.  He was admitted on the authority of his son James after assessment by 2 doctors, and his admission record (below) notes him to be in feeble bodily health.  James died in Kew barely a month after his admission.

Kew Lunatic Asylum admission register for John Clark

London's Pulse

The Wellcome Library has unveiled London's Pulse, a free website which allows you to search more than 5500 Medical Officer of Health (MOH) reports from the Greater London area.  The era of the Medical Officer Health saw the emergence of new ways of thinking about the connections between poverty, health and government.  The reports provided statistical data about births, deaths and diseases, but they also allowed the authors to express the diversity of their local communities and their own personal interests.  Many of the daily concerns and shifting preoccupations of Londoners can be seen through the eyes of their Medical Officers of Health.

Archaic Medical Terms

Rudy's List of Archaic Medical Terms is a collection of archaic medical terms and their old and modern definitions.  The primary focus of this web site is to help decipher the Causes of Death found on Mortality Lists, Certificates of Death and Church Death Records from the 19th century and earlier. The web site is updated often and as new information is received, with the intention of collecting and recording old medical terms in all European languages. The English and German lists are the most extensive to date. If you are having trouble decoding the medical language used to describe causes of death then the Archaic Medical Terms website may help you.