An interesting WWI scrapbook relating to Madeline Baxter of ...

Hammer

£1,100

An interesting WWI scrapbook relating to Madeline Baxter of The British Committee Of The French Red Cross, who was based in Vitry-le-Francois. To include a Foreigner’s notebook, identity residence permit dated February 1918, a collection of French postcards, various newspaper cuttings, several photographs of an air raid damage on the 23.3.18, various pencil drawings, various photographs of British Red Cross nurses, postcards, pencil drawing of soldiers and nurses, Cessation of fighting on 11.11.11 note, American Air Force photographs possibly of Edward Willoughby Middleton, Senegalese troops photographs, African American troops, aerial map of Vitry-le-Francois, large collection of unpublished photographs. Contained in an album with attached fabric armband "Goutte de cafe, Comite Britannique, Cantines des Dames Anglaises" ("A drop of coffee, British Committee, English Women's Canteens". Over 20 Pages.

Extra information: Scrapbook of Madeline Riva Baxter: born 21 July 1890 in Rainhill, Lancashire, died 6 March 1975 in Stretton, Shropshire.The scrapbook primarily covers the years 1918 to 1919 while Madeline was volunteering with the British Committee of the French Red Cross at an ‘English Ladies Canteen’ in Vitry-le-François. Red Cross canteens are a poorly understood function of the First World War’s female-dominated civilian voluntary services. Madeline had been a member of a Voluntary Aid Detachment before she sailed for France, like famous VAD members, Agatha Christie and Vera Britten, meaning she likely had some volunteer nursing experience. Madeline joined the canteen in Vitry-le-François shortly before it opened on 26 March 1918. Her scrapbook charts her journey via Le Havre, her work in the canteen and her social life among her fellow volunteers and the French, British and American soldiers moving through the region.

The Vitry Red Cross canteen was documented by painter Isabel Codrington and official war artist Olive Edis, who was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to photograph women’s activities on the Western Front. Towards the back, Madeline has pasted in original photographs a female Red Cross member receiving the Croix de Guerre, possibly Aethelflaed Benson. Vitry-le-François is located in the Marne department of France, South-East of Reims. Madeline saw the destruction wrought on Vitry which was at the centre of fighting during the First Battle of the Marne. She would have been in close proximity to the frontline on the last major German offensive on the Western Front: The Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918. 5’9 tall Madeline may feature in a 1919 dated IWM photo by Olive Edis as the central female figure (ref: Q 8066).