Red Cross Blogs

The role of aristocratic volunteers during the First World War

By Katrina Crew
October 16, 2011 at 9:30 pm

One of the most interesting aspects of ITV’s Downton Abbey is the way class issues play out among the Grantham family and their servants, especially as wounded and recuperating soldiers have arrived in their home and begun mingling with the family members.

Our archivist Jenny Shaw explains more about the role the aristocracy played among British Red Cross volunteers during the war.

From our origins, the British Red Cross received a huge amount of support from the upper echelons of society. Members of the royal family had accepted positions on the governing council (roughly the equivalent of today’s board of trustees) and when county branches started to be set up from 1907 the wife of the local lord lieutenant usually served as the branch president.

One of the main ways wealthy families supported the war effort was by volunteering their houses to be used by the rapidly expanding Red Cross. The Duke of Devonshire, for example, generously gave over the whole ground floor of Devonshire House in London to act as our headquarters during the war. Others, like the fictitious Grantham family in Downton Abbey, loaned us their stately homes to be used as convalescent centres for recuperating soldiers.

Women in particular got involved in volunteering with the Red Cross in ways that were considered suitable for ladies. Two of the Duke of Devonshire’s daughters – Lady Rachel Cavendish and Lady Dorothy Cavendish (who married prime minister Harold Macmillan) – worked at the county clearing house in Derbyshire, allocating wounded servicemen to the appropriate hospitals or nursing homes in the county. The duke’s daughter-in-law, Lady Edward Cavendish, volunteered over 1,000 hours making garments for the wounded.

From our records, it’s hard to tell about volunteers’ class (other than people with titles). Volunteers tended to be women who could afford to volunteer their time without pay, but the outbreak of the First World War saw thousands of new volunteers from all backgrounds assisting the Red Cross.

Read more about our history

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Tags: Downton Abbey, First World War, history, WW1

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 9:30 pm and is filed under UK, Volunteering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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