Lady Worsley inspects the new ‘Stop Me’ snack convenience in Hastings, July 1944

RVS raise nearly £30k for wartime diaries

The Royal Voluntary Service has smashed its fundraising target on Kickstarter to support its project of digitising never-before-seen wartime diaries written by female volunteers, including many from Hastings, writes Sinead Paton. Public support has been so overwhelming that the charity reports that it hasn’t just met its target, but superseded it, having raised £27,724 thanks to the 705 backers who kindly donated. This means that the diaries can be preserved online to inspire the digital generation. 

Awarded UNESCO UK Memory of the World status, the documents are some of the most important in 20th century British history. Heart-felt wartime stories paint an insightful picture of life as a volunteer, from organising young evacuees to salvaging dog hair for knitting.

The Hidden Histories of A Million Wartime Women – known as as ‘the army that Hitler forgot’ – was live on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter throughout May, with the target of £25,000 to digitise the first 28,000 pages of diaries from 1938 to 1941. Royal Voluntary Service is the first charity in the UK to launch an archive project through Kickstarter.

For the past six years, the RVS archivist and a team of volunteers have been sorting and protecting the diaries, but thanks to public donations, a specially trained staff member will now begin digitising them ready for publication on our website in July 2017.

These ordinary women who volunteered for the charity, previously known as the Women’s Voluntary Services, played a vital role on the Home Front and worked tirelessly to contribute towards the war effort. As well as sewing, cooking and helping the community recover after raids, they learnt new skills such as extinguishing bombs, driving in the black-out and making clothes from dog hair.

WVS mobile canteen after the December 1940 blitz in Sheffield

One example out of the thousands of diaries describes a major blitz in Bath between 28 and 29 April 1941. This saw volunteers fit 80 children with masks and issue 205 helmets for babies. The centre also served 3,350 meals and helped coordinate housing for more than 9,000 people made homeless following the raids. One volunteer from the centre had lost her home and all of her belongings during the blitz but turned up to volunteer the following morning. She also sent a brave telegram to her soldier sons reading “bombed out, but still smiling,” so as not to worry them.

Another more unusual entry comes from Portsmouth in November 1943, and details how the centre’s ‘dog hair expert’ attended a demonstration day at Harrods. The training session taught volunteers how to salvage fur from dog grooming and spin it into a warm and hardwearing alternative to wool. The entry remarks how Portsmouth’s contributions were highly praised at the event.

Matthew McMurray, RVService archivist said: “We’re so grateful for the support and donations from the public. Those women were pivotal in the victory of the Second World War and are a fundamental part of our heritage, but their efforts have almost been forgotten. Now, thanks to our supporters, we can share these diaries with everyone, helping to preserve them for generations to come; keeping these once hidden histories alive forever. Having smashed our target we are now going to be able to digitise over 2,000 more pages of these diaries than we had hoped, bringing more stories to light for the first time.”

RVS now helps over 100,000 older people each month to stay independent in their own homes for longer with tailor-made solutions. Through its army of volunteers, the charity runs services such as Good Neighbours (companionship), Meals-on-Wheels and Books-on-Wheels that alleviate loneliness and help older people. It also provides practical support for older people who have been in hospital through its On Ward Befriending and Home from Hospital services and via its network of retail shops and cafes.

To find out more about the project please visit The Royal Voluntary Service ‘A Million Women’ website.

Being fitted for clothes in Hastings

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