Great War Fashion: Tales from the History Wardrobe by Lucy Adlington

Author:Lucy Adlington [Adlington, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

This uniform was worn by civilian nurse Winifred Ingram, from about 1916. Starched cuffs were replaced with cotton ‘sleeve protectors’ for work.

VAD girls were only too keen to identify with professional nurses, not in any sense of fraud, but to share in their credibility. New recruit Mabel Bone confessed to bleaching the bold, new red crosses on her aprons so that they faded to pink like those of long-serving staff. She and the other VADs wore their uniforms while collecting money from the crowd at a Saturday football match. In her interview with historian Lyn Macdonald, she recalled, ‘we were so proud of being real nurses we wanted everyone to know it!’

VADs caught the popular imagination, but arguably one of the smartest nursing uniforms was that designed by Dr Elsie Inglis. Dr Inglis was a prominent Scottish suffragist who offered to provide a hospital staffed by female doctors and nurses. The now infamous response from the Royal Army Medical Corps was, ‘My good lady, go home and sit still.’ Undaunted, Inglis looked elsewhere among the Allies, and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH) were welcomed gratefully by the French, Serbians and Russians. One version of the formal SWH uniform had a smart felt hat with tartan ribbon, an unstarched shirt collar and plain knotted tie. Good tailoring on the jacket set off very stylish square buttons.

One affectionate term for a SWH nurse was ‘little grey partridge’. Ishobel Ross, having left home on the Isle of Skye to join up, was very glad to be in uniform during her final days before embarkation. In July 1916 she wrote home, ‘Am finding my way about London wonderfully, went round the shops by myself and felt thankful that I am in uniform and am not allowed “Dainties”, or I should have gone home with a very light pocket.’ Her group of nurses travelled to Serbia in a more relaxed form of uniform, with a lovely tilt to their hats. Their smart but comfortable jackets had very roomy pockets and a neat, flat bow at the neckline.

The nurses themselves weren’t always so taken with their uniforms, even though it gave a positive sense of group identity. For many VADs it was their first time out of fashionable clothes and into outfits that were fully functional. York girl Kit Dodsworth lamented in an interview, now in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, ‘We were arrayed in the most unbecoming uniform it was ever the misfortune of any poor woman to wear.’ Lady Diana Manners thought her mauve-and-white pin-stripe uniform was horrible, with an apron ‘cut to deform the figure’. On excursions out of the hospital, the narrow nursing capes cocooned the women like caterpillars. The capes at least had the advantage of being long enough to hide the detested thick, black stockings, if not the flat, black shoes. As soon as Diana finished work at 8 p.m. she was ready to shed her uniform for an evening in brighter company and fancier clothes – ‘Five

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