Portaferry Library is the next venue to host an exhibition focussing on the role of women in the First World War.
The display, which uses locally and internationally significant women to illustrate the massive changes in women’s roles and rights in the period 1914-1918, was created by the Somme Museum in partnership with Ards Borough Council, and forms part of the Council’s programme to commemorate the beginning of the First World War.
Among the stories to be told are those of Dorothy Lawrence who posed as a man to serve as a sapper with the Royal Engineers and was subsequently placed under military arrest, and British nurse, Edith Cavell, who helped over 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium, was court-martialled and executed by a German firing squad in October 1915.
The contribution of another nurse, Jessie Getty from Newtownards, also features, recounting how she joined the Ulster Volunteer Nursing Corps in 1913 and went on to enlist in the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a fully qualified nurse, seeing service at a military hospital in France and going on to marry a soldier she nursed back to health.
The ‘Women & War’ exhibition will be in Portaferry Library, from 1-26 September and admission is free.
For further information contact the Library on 028 4272 8194.
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