Mystery Photo: Girl Scouts and the Red Cross

This is an intriguing photograph. It shows two women in a group of what are most likely high school girls. One of the women is in a nurse’s uniform and the other a scout leader’s uniform. The girls are also in uniform, half Girl Scout and the other half in a type of uniform that we can’t identify. Kenneth Loyal Smith, our trustee whose background is textile conservation, has worked with Girl Scout uniforms in the past and thinks that the ones pictured here date from about 1955.

The presence of the nurse and the Red Cross flag suggested at first that the photograph might represent the Junior Red Cross, a group that was sponsored by the Hastings branch of the Red Cross and met in the school. But the fact that every girl appears to be in uniform makes this unlikely.

Only one person in the photograph has been identified. Her name is Dorothea “Kamm” Gould. Do you recognize anyone else? Do you have any idea what this other uniform could be, what the occasion was, or why this photograph was taken? We’d love to know!

4 Comments

Leave a Reply

We are glad you have chosen to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated and may take a little while to show up on the page.