CAP - RED CROSS

This Red Cross cap was worn by Joan Devereux when she was a member of the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment during World War II.
Ella Joan Devereux was born in Portsmouth, England in January 1920. At the age of five months Joan joined her parents aboard the S.S.Zealandic and travelled to their new home in Armadale Western Australia. After briefly living on Prospect Road, then Green Street (today Railway Avenue) the family, which now included her younger brother Eric, purchased land on the corner of Church Avenue and Third Road where they built the family home.
Joan and Eric attended the Armadale State School which was located directly opposite their house. Joan also loved to perform and was a student at a local dance school and either performed or competed in a number of concerts and competitions. Joan would go on to complete high school at Perth Girl School in Perth as the Armadale State School only taught students up to the age of 15.
After school Joan got her first job in the Kitchenware Department at the Foy & Gibson's Department Store on Hay Street in Perth. Joan worked at Foy & Gibson's up to 1941 then in the typing pool at the Welshpool Munitions Factory until 1945 when she married Ronald Gwynne at the Armadale Congregational Church. When World War II broke out in 1939 Joan joined the Department stores Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (No 522). The unit was commanded by Mrs E.O. Darcy and included 47 women from the store and one trained nurse. In 1941 Joan attended a four day training camp at the Swanbourne Military Camp where she and 500 other volunteers received instruction in military hospital work, military routine, camp hygiene, mass cooking, squad drills, treatment for gas attacks, how to fit and wear gas masks, stretcher exercises, first aid, resuscitation, how to do blood grouping and how to do blood and plasma transfers.
V.A.D. volunteers were often given time of by their employers to help out at local hospitals and in 1944 at a first aid centre established at the Perth Town Hall. V.A.D volunteers staffed the centre 24 hours a day and provided medical attention for minor injuries under the supervision of a qualified nurse.
When Joan was working or helping with the V.A.D she was performing and raising money for various war effort funds. In 1941 she participated in a fund-raising dace for radio equipment for patients at the military hospitals at Hollywood and Northam. In 1941 she and three other women from the Welshpool Munitions Factory formed a singing and dancing group called the 'Cheerie Concert Party' who performed at army camps as well as at fund-raising dances around Perth. Joan also was a member of the local 'Armadale Revellers who held a number of variety shows in the local area to raise money. Joan received a lot of help from her mother Ellie, who made many of the costumes Joan wore when performing. Ellie even helped Joan to make her wedding dress in 1945. Many clothing ration coupons were saved to ensure there was enough material to make her dress.
After the war Joan and Ronald moved to Boddington where Ronald worked as the Road Board Secretary for a number of years. By 1968 there were living in Belmont on a small farm. They had three daughters, Darryl, Jan and Wendy. Despite living in Boddington, Joan came back to Armadale and had all three daughters at the Armadale Kelmscott District Memorial Hospital. Joan died in 1972 aged 52.