PRESS RELEASE 3.11.09

2009 marks the 100 year anniversary of the forming of the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses.

Famous VAD nurses included novelists Agatha Christie, Mary Borden and writers Vera Brittain and Kathleen Haddon and war poet May Wedderburn Cannon. As part of the festivities to commemorate these remarkable women and their valuable contribution, the New Cavendish Club, formally opened as the VAD ladies club in 1920 is holding a drinks reception to mark the opening of an exhibition to celebrate the VAD Centenary, on Tuesday 10^th November from 6.00-7.30pm. New Cavendish Club, 44 Great Cumberland Place, London, W1H 7BS  

Club Manager, Victoria Hyam comments ‘This is an exciting historical event for the Club and we are honoured to welcome the last few remaining veterans of the VAD to ensure their remarkable history and work is remembered and not forgotten”

Notes to the Editor
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary organisation providing auxiliary nursing services, mainly in hospitals, in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The organisation’s most important period of operation was during World War I and World War II.   The organisation was founded in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and Order of St John. By the summer of 1914 there were over 2,500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain.   Each individual volunteer was called a detachment, or simply a VAD. Of the 74,000 VAD in 1914, two thirds were women and girls   At the outbreak of the First World War, nurses were in short supply, and the VAD supplemented the work of registered nurses Although generally looked down upon by more highly trained nursing staff, they nonetheless provided an invaluable source of aid as war nurses to the war effort.
Katherine Furse took two VADs to France soon after the outbreak of the first world war.  She established a hospital at Boulogne and returned to London where she became Commander-in-Chief of the organisation. During the next four years 38,000 VADs worked as assistant nurses, ambulance drivers and cooks. VAD hospitals were also opened in most large towns in Britain.   Before 1915 the military authorities would not accept VADs at the front-line. This restriction was later removed and women volunteers over the age of twenty-three and with more than three months' experience, were allowed to go to the Western Front, Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. Later VADs were also sent to the Eastern Front.    Some women acted as letter writers for soldiers who were either too ill or too illiterate to write their own letters.
         
- 2 -   New Cavendish Club Today the club still exists but trades under the name The New Cavendish Club. At the end of world war I, Lady Ampthill, who had been Chairman of the joint women’s VAD Detachment of the Order of St John and the British Red Cross Society, felt there should be a “first class Ladies Club” in London for all VAD’s part and present.   The Club now has a much broader membership and has accepted men as full members since 1985. We have a beautiful central London home and still offer the same “home from home” to our members as was offered in 1920, although with much improved facilities.      

CONTACT: Deborah Roberts, 0207 723 039, events@newcavendishclub.co.uk 
Release date: 3 November 2009

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