Discovering those who cared for the sick and wounded in Chorlton during the Great War

I have moved just a little closer to some of the men and women who served during the Great War.

And it comes from a database by the Red Cross which has put  on line its records from the Great War.

Even before the war started the Red Cross had made preparations for coping with the large numbers of wounded who would be returning from the battlefields.

So when the conflict did begin voluntary hospitals were established across the country.
Some were in school halls, and others in private houses and relied on the voluntary support of the local community.

Here in Chorlton we had two, one on Edge Lane in the Sunday School of the McLaren Baptist Church and the other in the Methodist Sunday School on Manchester Road and across south Manchester there were more.

Until recently I knew little of the men and women who served in the hospitals.

I had one list for the first year of the war of those who worked at the Baptist Church a few names from newspaper correspondence and the odd record of some of the administrators.

But the Red Cross records will bring them out of the shadows, for along with their names and addresses there are brief details of what they did.

Some are more detailed than others so those for Eltham in south east London describe particular duties. So I know that Miss Ada Fanny Boultbee, assisted the “sick & wounded, did  convoy duty. Well Hall Station any time day and night at 1. 1/2 hours notice. tea. Coffee, milk, ready.”

And provided a wealth of detail
“August 5th 1914. Struck Divisional Camp at Chichester. 7. 1914. Organizing Hos: cores: Soldiers & Sailors Institute Woolwich. 30th. 1914- Accepted responsibility of sick & wounded Convoy Duty Well Hall. Col: Stephenson with request for same from Col. Simpson. Herbert Hos:- Sept. 7th. 1914 First Convoy. 3/4 hour notice. All ready. 16 -1914 Mobilized by Col. Stephenson at "Cathay" Eltham. S.E. B.R.X.S. Brassard No.7. A.M.S. July - 1917 Demolized. Col: Simpson' of opinion that that Sick & Wounded Convoy Duty at Well Hall Station was no longer rec. under altered conditions of transport. Ada St.John. Boultbee. Hon. Comdt L /26.”

Sadly those for Chorlton are less detailed but there is still a suprising amount of information.
Some worked at the Baptist Church and another at Manchester Road while the rest were spread out across Whalley Range and Didsbury with one at the  2nd Western General Hospital in town.

So far the Red Cross has only published surnames from A to B but that has still revealed twelve Chorlton people and tow of those I have tracked on the census for 1911.

In time it will be possible to find out much more about their backgrounds and what happened to them after the war which in turn will throw light on the degree to which Chorlton did its bit.

But I do know that Frank Burrows of 71 Reynard Road was engaged in   March 1917.

He was 25 years old  was paid 35 shillings a week and was an orderley at Didsbury  College Hospital.

Before the war he had worked as an insurance clerk.

And Miss Mabel Coatman also 25 of the Lyndale on Barlow Moor Road worked at Lancaster House Hospital in Whalley Range as a support assistant.

So it is all there to be found.


Pictures; doctors and nurses and men from the Red Cross Hospital of Wood Lawn in Didsbury circa 195, courtesy of Rob Mellor, and the Edge Lane Red Cross Hospital circa 1924,  from the Lloyd collection

*British Red Cross,  http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War