British Red Cross Society Research Articles

Lord Woolton: A Life of 'Social Work' and Humanitarianism

ABSTRACT Between 1943 and 1963, Frederick James Marquis, Lord Woolton, was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) and held key roles in the International Red Cross Movement in the aftermath of war. This article examines how the director of a department store chain, Lewis’s, who became a member of the Conservative Party’s Cabinet in 1951, was the chair of the BRCS at such a key time in its history – the reframing of the charity after the Second World War and the launch of the National Health Service. Woolton not only had experience in retail but also in social work in Manchester and Liverpool, in roles supporting the governments in both wars, famously as Minister of Food during the Second World War, and latterly in party politics. This research takes a biographical approach, utilising Woolton’s memoir and his personal papers at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, together with Red Cross archives, to explore how Woolton contextualised his career through his background in social work, constructing a humanitarian narrative in his memoir.

"Willing to Do Anything and to Do It Cheerfully": The Emotional Labor of Wartime Nursing

Abstract: In this essay I situate First World War nursing narratives by Enid Bagnold, Mary Borden, and Lesley Smith within the framework of emotional labor developed by Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983). Although Hochschild's study does not focus on wartime nursing, her model of emotional labor can effectively illuminate the ways in which nurses encountered their peers, supervisors, and patients; managed the emotions that attended those encounters; and documented those experiences in fiction and memoir. I focus on three aspects of Hochschild's framework that directly connect to the affective lives of wartime nurses: establishment of "feeling rules," strategies for emotion management, and the impact of those strategies. I explore expectations and impacts of emotional labor as revealed in a variety of sources, including recruiting and training materials from the British Red Cross Society, nursing textbooks, and literary accounts. Reading these texts through the lens of emotional labor reveals an apparent mismatch between the idealized feeling rules and the actual experiences of the role, allowing us to understand scenes of emotional estrangement in new ways.

The Red Cross and the Establishment of Maternal and Infant Welfare in the 1930s Gold Coast

ABSTRACT In 1932 the Gold Coast Branch of the British Red Cross Society was inaugurated in Accra. Its central, stated purpose was to maintain and expand health and welfare services for women and children. This article examines closely the work of the Red Cross as it set up and ran clinics, fundraising campaigns and building programmes in the Gold Coast. It asks how a humanitarian organisation became so integrated into services for mothers and infants in the course of the 1930s. In so doing, it contributes to a burgeoning area of historiography that looks at humanitarianism as a key component of Empire. During the 1930s, as the British Empire became subject to oversight by new international networks that the League of Nations sat at the heart of. In this context, the colonial government was under pressure to provide welfare for African subjects, particularly mothers and babies. This article argues that state, mission and eventually humanitarian organisation – the Red Cross – were interdependent in providing these services. The Red Cross became politicised as it shored up the colonial state’s health infrastructure, intervening as a solution to dilemmas over who was responsible for maternal and infant health.

Mobilising the Red Cross Journal: A Charity’s Periodical in Wartime

The first issue of the Red Cross Journal was published in January 1914, only eight months before the outbreak of the First World War. This article explores the impact of the war on this publication, as the work of the charity it represented dramatically expanded over the course of the conflict. How did the Journal survive the war, at a time when the Red Cross was deeply involved in supporting soldiers? This article examines the genesis of this publication and its evolving role during the war. This periodical, we argue, not only helped raise awareness of the work carried out by the Red Cross, but it also served practical purposes in the areas of training and funding. This publication reveals an increasingly critical stance towards the British Empire’s enemies in the war, as well as the need for the British Red Cross Society to foster a sense of unity amongst members posted around the world.

“There is no trace of him”: the Australian Red Cross, its Wounded and Missing Bureaux and the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign

One of the lesser known stories of the Gallipoli campaign was the significant support provided to the Australian Imperial Force by the array of voluntary patriotic funds. Mobilized from the beginning of the war and operating both on the Home Front and in Egypt, the large support network of individuals and organizations varied from sandbag funds, the provision of recreational equipment and hostel accommodation, to foodstuffs and medical supplies. This article focuses on the Australian Red Cross, formed on the outbreak of war in August 1914 as a branch of the British Red Cross Society. Its considerable contribution as a humanitarian organization concentrating on sick and wounded soldiers in war included Wounded and Missing Bureaux. Using the records of the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau, this article explores the beginning of this programme and its efforts to trace missing soldiers from the Gallipoli campaign for family members and friends. Through this case study analysis, we find another lens with which to examine the effects of the Gallipoli campaign on the Home Front and explore the broader social and familial effects of the war more generally.

Neutral Caregivers or Military Support? The British Red Cross, the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, and the Problems of Voluntary Medical Aid in Wartime

During the First World War the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) served as the coordinating body for voluntary medical aid giving in Britain. Among the many units which came within its purview was the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU), formed by a group of young men whose desire to serve their nation in wartime conflicted with their pacifist principles. Both the BRCS and the FAU were wracked by ideological conflicts in the years which preceded and throughout the war. These struggles over voluntarist identity highlight the contested meanings of service and conscience in wartime. Through a critical examination of the language of official histories and biographies, this article will argue that the war formed a key moment in the relationship between the British state and voluntary medical aid, with the state’s increasing role in the work of such organizations raising questions about the voluntarist principles to which aid organizations laid claim. The struggles that both organizations and individuals within them faced in reconciling the competing pressures that this new relationship created form a legacy of the war which continues to have important implications for the place of medical voluntarism in wartime today.

The origins of the British Red Cross Society and the politics and practices of relief in war, 1870-1906

This article traces the history of the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (NAS), and its interventions in Continental and colonial wars of the late-nineteenth century. The NAS was founded on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in August 1870. It went on to become one of the most important founding members of the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) when it was established in 1905. The aim of the article is to uncover the particular anxieties and aspirations that contributed to the foundation of the NAS. It demonstrates how these concerns –many of them related to the relative state of the British military– informed its subsequent practices and its relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross. In tracing its emergence as a paramilitary corps adept at rapid-response emergency medicine, this article uncovers the rivalry that characterized attempts within the NAS and BRCS to lay claim to the “true spirit” of voluntary aid in war –a rivalry which eventually informed British insistence on a revision to the Geneva Convention in 1906.

Networks of Concern, Boundaries of Compassion: British Relief in the South African War

In the South African War and its aftermath, wounded combatants and interned Boer civilians were the subjects of extensive transnational relief efforts. Focusing on the aid proffered by the British Red Cross Society, the pro-imperialist Victoria League and the rival Boer Home Industries scheme, this paper explores how gifts of time and material were invested with competing hopes and aspirations for Britain's role in South Africa. In this context food and hand-made textiles represented more than mere commodities. It also meant that, though expressing genuine sympathy and concern, benefactors did not share a ‘humanitarian’ ideal. These gifts brought undoubted comfort and saved life. They also provided new imaginative vistas on empire and war, and galvanised domestic political networks. But the implication of these numerous benevolent impositions was a lack of co-ordination and the privileging of relief workers’ ethical commitments with little thought as to how these gifts would be received.

The diary of Alice Maud Batt (1889–1969)

Alice Batt while working as a VAD nurse in 1918 during World War I was awarded the Albert Medal. She was also awarded the British Red Cross Society Special Service Cross in 1919 for 'exceptionally meritorious service' and earlier, in 1915, had been awarded the Royal Humane Society Medal for saving a girl from drowning in the sea. This account is based on her own wartime diary, published privately by a family member, Arthur Batt.

The British Red Cross Society

The British Red Cross Society

Operational cooperation between the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Nigerian Red Cross Society

The Nigerian Red Cross Society has its roots in the year 1917, when the country was still under British rule. In that year the British Red Cross for the first time organized a fund-raising event in Lagos. There followed the formation of what was then known as the Nigeria Central Branch of the British Red Cross Society, with headquarters in Lagos. The branch had divisions in the then three regions of the country — Eastern, Northern and Western — with headquarters respectively in Enugu, Kaduna and Ibadan. Once Nigeria achieved independence, on 1 October 1960, the Nigerian Red Cross Society was born through an act of parliament (“The Nigerian Red Cross Society Act of 1960”). Today, the Society has a branch in each of the country's 36 states as well as in Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory.

The Oxford medical companion

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Acute renal failure, acute rhabdomyolysis and falciparum malaria

Journal Article Acute renal failure, acute rhabdomyolysis and falciparum malaria Get access W.R.J. Taylor, W.R.J. Taylor ∗ Renal Unit, Kent and Canterbury Hospital, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 3NG, UK ∗Address for correspondence: Dr W. R. J. Taylor, c/o The British Red Cross Society, P.O. Box 117, Sai Kung Post Office, Hong Kong. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar D.I. Prosser D.I. Prosser Renal Unit, Kent and Canterbury Hospital, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 3NG, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Volume 86, Issue 4, July-August 1992, Page 361, https://doi.org/10.1016/0035-9203(92)90218-2 Published: 01 July 1992 Article history Received: 19 September 1991 Revision received: 04 November 1991 Accepted: 06 November 1991 Published: 01 July 1992

Oliver Memorial Lecture 1989. The evolution and future of haemophilia therapy.

Lane (1840) first noted the beneficial effect of blood transfusion in controlling haemophilic bleeding following ophthalmic surgery. The appreciation that haemophilia is due to a plasma defect, at first thought to be prothrombin, coincided with the discovery of blood groups. This led in due course to the discovery of citrate anti-coagulant and the ability to store blood. The beneficial effect of citrated plasma in haemophilia led to the exploitation of stored blood, fresh frozen plasma, and the subsequent development of cryoprecipitate and factor concentrates. All this would not have been possible, however, without the selfless contribution of blood donors and the development of an organized blood transfusion service. In the United Kingdom, P. L. Oliver pioneered the development of blood donor panels, the London Blood Transfusion Service and the British Red Cross Society Blood Transfusion Service leading directly to the National Blood Transfusion Service; recognized as the World's senior service. The development of haemophilia therapy owes much, therefore, to Oliver's energetic and pioneering work and it is entirely appropriate that the first Oliver Memorial Lecture be directed to the evolution and future of haemophilia therapy. It is indeed an honour to be invited to deliver this Oliver Memorial Lecture at the combined meeting of the British Blood Transfusion Society and the British Society for Haematology here in Wembley.

Protecting the emblems in peacetime: The experiences of the British Red Cross Society

The special significance of the red cross and red crescent emblems as internationally agreed symbols of protection and neutrality in armed conflict will be diluted if these emblems, or signs closely resembling them, are used randomly or for diffuse purposes in time of peace. In countries like the United Kingdom which for the most part have been spared armed conflict for the past 40 years, the red cross emblem has frequently become closely identified with first aid and with general health or medical care, its primary and unique meaning during armed conflict often being forgotten or unknown. For this reason it is perhaps particularly important for National Societies in such countries to help the authorities monitor unauthorised uses or misuses of the emblems, and the role of National Societies in this respect has been recognised under the 1986 International Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (Article 3 [2] thereof). In addition, dissemination activities can help to enhance understanding of the purpose of the emblems. This short article will discuss practical aspects of the monitoring role of the British Red Cross Society.

An experience of war surgery and wounds presenting after 3 days on the border of Afghanistan

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has run hospitals for the wounded of the conflict in Afghanistan since 1981. For political and geographical reasons the hospitals are situated in Pakistan, some distance from the fighting, and so the wounded may take many days to arrive. This has enabled a surgical team provided by the British Red Cross Society to observe wounds of varying age and degrees of putrefaction or healing. Twenty-nine (29) patients with wounds of 3 or more days are detailed. The old wounds showed a tendency either to putrefaction or healing and the surgical management had to be revised accordingly. Wounds sutured in the field tended to putrefy. Among the various problems, the most taxing and difficult were the cultural and religious objections to amputation. The ICRC is committed to providing surgical hospitals for the Afghan war wounded for as long as the conflict lasts. It has adapted the local facilities and staff to the particular political, geographical and cultural situation.

Medical planning for a major event: the Pope's visit to Coventry Airport, 30 May 1982.

The five-hour day visit by the Pope to Coventry Airport on 30 May 1982 required a major exercise in medical planning. First- and second-line first-aid facilities were provided by the British Red Cross Society and the St John Ambulance Association. Hospital facilities were provided in a 30-bed Territorial Army field hospital. The visit attracted a crowd of 350,000; 1424 casualties were seen at first-aid stations and 152 at the field hospital. Twenty patients required transfer to NHS hospitals for further treatment, and one woman died. Most ailments experienced were headaches and effects of heat, blisters, and abdominal symptoms. The field hospital treated a wide range of conditions including cardiac conditions, fractures, premature labour, and acute abdominal emergencies.

Death of Lady Limerick

The International Committee learned with great sorrow of the passing away on 25 April, at the age of eighty-three, of Lady Angela, Dowager Countess of Limerick, Vice-President of the British Red Cross Society and former Chairman of the Standing Commission of the International Red Cross from 1965 to 1973.

Basic skin care and cosmesis for the chronically ill, the mentally disturbed, and the aged infirm. A services of the British Red Cross Society.

The following account is derived from information furnished by Mrs. Doreen St. John Cooper of the London Branch of the British Red Cross Society. It is supplemented by a brief note on principles of reasonable cosmetic practice and some illustrations of what can be done by individuals themselves or with the aid of professional beauticians.

Sopley: medical services for refugees.

The Home Office delegated overall administrative responsibility for the camp to the British Council for Aid to Refugees (BCAR), and asked the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) to co-ordinate medical and nursing input. The National Health Service was expected to provide support at the expense of locally agreed priorities, and without any formal management control. Attempts to plan medical services were frustrated by lack of information. The numbers of refugees, dates of arrival, and ports of entry were not confirmed until a few hours before the event, and the figures were invariably incorrect. As the refugees had been guaranteed entry to Britain, we did not know whether the usual port health clearance procedures would apply. From the television news we learnt that the refugees had had a medical screening in Hong Kong, but no details of these health checks were available. In view of these uncertainties a medical examination for all the refugees was considered necessary soon after their arrival at Sopley. As tuberculosis was likely to present the major personal and public health hazard, the mobile mass radiography unit was booked to attend the camp each day after a group of refugees had arrived. All staff working at the camp were offered a Heaf test and polio vaccination, and all consultants and general practitioners in the area received a letter drawing to their attention the major diseases endemic in South-east Asia.