Some female students at the University of Liverpool joined Voluntary Aid Detachments soon after the outbreak of war. As part of their training members of this detachment spent time at local hospitals and visited with district nurses. According to Sphinx, the magazine of the University’s Guild of Undergraduates, they also had to undergo ‘mysterious drill in the murky gloom of the old gymnasium, in Ashton Street’, which is likely where this photograph [D587/1/5] was taken.

Over by Christmas. December 7. See the 2014 Advent calendar on the SC&A website.