The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.2 | Sept 2023

Local Group Programmes

Basingstoke Meetings normally commence at 7. 30 p.m. and are held on the fourth Wednesday every month (except August and December) at St Michael’s Church Cottage Hall, Church Street. Contact: Email:

basingstoke@hgs-online.org.uk

(January) Family History Resolutions for 2023 This was a Members’ Evening and gave everyone the opportunity to share ideas for moving forward with their research during 2023. It also provided the chance to learn something from each other on how to organise the mass of paper that is inevitably accumulated doing family history. There was some discussion on the value of putting family trees on the various genealogy websites and FamilySearch was recommended as a way to do this for free. DNA was also discussed with several members querying the potential benefit of getting siblings to test. (February) My Favourite Ancestor Again, this was a Members’ Evening and a number of our Group told us about their favourite ancestor and why this was the case. The talks highlighted a number of sources that could be used to put flesh on the bones of our ancestors (March) Parish Chest – hands on with a range of examples This was a practical evening when we worked with examples of the various classes of documents found in the Parish Chest. We covered rates, settlement and removal, bastardy and apprenticeships, parish officers, applications for assistance and the right to vote, bills for work done, purchases for the church and much more. Seeing actual examples of the various documents and the wealth of information that could be gleaned from them got everyone talking – as did the short quiz that was involved - and hopefully the attendees were inspired by the sheer amount of information that was potentially available. (April) Women, The Home & Spanish Flu in the Great War – Ian Porter Ian’s talk focused on the experiences of women during WW1. Around 400,000 women left domestic service and went into other work, many into munitions factories. Trade Unions were unhappy about unskilled women working in factories but did agree with the Government that they would receive equal wages with men – this was never actually implemented though. For safety reasons the factories were sited away from residential areas which meant a long walk to work. Some shifts were 24 hours long and included Sundays which made child care problematic as there was no official childcare provision and nurseries were only opened in 1918. The Women’s Institute was set up to increase food production as attempts to import food were being thwarted by German U-boat attacks on convoys. The Women’s Land Army was set up in 1917 and there was an allotment campaign to convert pasture land to food production. Rationing was finally introduced in 1918 with the issue of 40 million ration cards. Following the lead of Sylvia Pankhurst, the Government introduced national kitchens which provided food for people to take home. ‘Spanish ‘Flu’ arrived in 1918 brought over by the American soldiers. It attacked the immune system and affected both sick & healthy

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