WWI Cloth Ditty Bag

Date / Period
1916
Place
Ottawa, Ontario
Object Type
Textiles and Uniforms
Credit
Canadian Red Cross
Topics
International Humanitarianism and Presence Women of the Canadian Red Cross

This drawstring pouch – known as a “personal property bag” or, more commonly, as a “ditty bag” – was designed to contain basic comfort, hygiene, and personal items. This unusually elaborate version was created during the First World War (1914-18), but could just as easily have come from the Second World War (1939-45) or Korean War (1950-53). Made and filled by the hundreds of thousands, ditty bags like this one represent the special role of women in the wartime work of the Canadian Red Cross.

When sick and wounded military personnel were hospitalized overseas, or torpedoed merchant seamen reached safety in Atlantic ports, they frequently lacked even the most basic hygiene items and comforts, having lost them in whatever ordeal brought them to hospital or port. Alternately, a man’s uniform might be cut off of him to accommodate medical treatment, leaving his few small personal possessions in need of a new home. An empty ditty bag would hold these treasures; a filled one supplied items such as a razor, soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a handkerchief, a pair of warm hand-knit socks, writing paper and envelopes, and perhaps gum and/or tobacco.

"Red Cross ditty bags offered comfort in a practical manner, by replacing the small items that helped the vulnerable regain their dignity."

Ditty bags represent women’s contributions to wartime work in two ways. First, they were made by hand by local volunteer sewing circles across Canada – just one of many kinds of hospital supplies and comforts sewn or knitted by women for the Red Cross. This example represents a special sacrifice by its creator: she used a treasured family heirloom to make it (a high-quality linen tablecloth woven for a bride’s trousseau in 1837), then decorated it with embroidery.

Second, ditty bags were distributed at Atlantic ports and in overseas military hospitals by women Red Cross volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of women in Britain and Canada gave millions of hours of their time as Canadian Red Cross hospital visitors, hostesses, administrative assistants, cooks, seamstresses, fundraisers, drivers, nurses’ aides, branch executives, and volunteer searchers for the missing, during the wars of the 20th century.

Red Cross ditty bags offered comfort in a practical manner, by replacing the small items that helped the vulnerable regain their dignity. Just as importantly, they showed sick and wounded personnel that Canadians remembered them and wanted to assist them in their distress – an intangible but no less vital form of comfort and care.

WWI Cloth Ditty Bag

 First World War “ditty bag” (front)
First World War “ditty bag” (front)
First World War “ditty bag” (back)
First World War “ditty bag” (back)

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