Past Lives: Finding Private Johan
It used to be said a good woman was only in the public eye twice - once when she married and once when she died. The Glasgow Women's Library aims to put an end to that sort of notion. Recently with their partners Women's History Scotland and the Girl Guides they've been running a project - Putting Scotland's Women on the Map to locate and record memorials to women throughout Scotland. It's a rather nifty Google Maps which shows you the monuments in your area and tells you about them, but they're looking for help and information from the general public.
Johan Macinnes ATS
One of the interesting things they've noticed is that sometimes isolated women crop up on war memorials - so you get one female name among many men, and these women can be quite hard to find out about. Helen Macdonald, the Systems Administrator of the Library, mentioned three women to us who turned up in this way.
Helen Milne, Stonehaven: Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service - on memorials in Fetteresso and India.
Annie Wilson: Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing on the Monymusk memorial.
Private Joan MacInnes: Sleat, Skye whose name is on the war memorial at Kilmore
Joan served in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) and the memorial records her as living at No.4 Calligarry.
Sister Annie Wilson's death certificate showed that she died of pneumonia at the Naval base hospital in Leith in WW1. Helen Milne's medal card points to her having served on the hospital ship Assaye - in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in WW1. But Joan Macinnes (Johan to her family) lived closer to our time - having served in World War 2. Could we find out anything about her?
We contacted Dr Neil MacGillivray of Comunn Eachdraidh Shlèite (Sleat Local History Society) who'll be telling us about Johan Macinnes in Monday's programme Aug 20th 1405. Thanks to Neil and Johan's niece, Grace Shone, we now have two photographs of her. The first as a little girl standing next to Neil's mother at Ardvasar School in the 1920s, the second posing proudly in her ATS uniform as a young woman.
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