Red Cross fundraising 'Plaitoy' doll with handmade Australian Army Nursing uniform: Mrs Catherine Lawrence

Doll with composition head painted in oil. A loop is incorporated into the moulded hair, and the head includes a shoulder plate, to which the body is glued. The body is made from pale orange cotton lisle stuffed with straw or kapok. The doll has been dressed in a long, floor length white cotton dress with a pair of metal snap fasteners at the neck and waist, white cotton shoes and a double-fold nurse's veil, attached at the rear of the neck with a hook and loop. A small patriotic silk ribbon in red, white and blue is pinned to the doll's upper left shoulder. This doll's arms are significantly shorter than those of the male dolls. The materials used in the head appear to be a sawdust composition base, overlaid with whiting and finished in wax, possibly dental wax, before being painted.

One of a set of four patriotic dolls wearing uniforms made by Mrs Catherine Lawrence (nee Forbes) of Gooroolba, Queensland, during the early part of the Second World War. Mrs Lawrence, a dress maker, initially made these with the intention of selling them for the Red Cross, but a combination of factors saw the dolls remain with the Lawrence family. Foremost among these was the capture and imprisonment of Catherine's brother QX13366, Private William Erle Forbes, 2/15 Battalion (enlisted 26 June 1940), who was captured by German forces in the Middle East in April 1941. He spent time as a prisoner in Italy before being moved to Germany. Working as a labourer, he was accused of sabotaging equipment and was sentenced to execution. The intervention of the camp commandant as the execution was in progress ('Don't shoot him, he's my best worker!') saved his life.

In addition, Catherine's husband, 43785 Leading Aircraftman Thomas William Lawrence (enlisted 29 September 1941 and a baker by trade) was also serving, although he remained in Australia. The potential for loss of both her husband and brother led Catherine Lawrence to the decision to retain the four dolls as a memorial to the two men while they were on service. She was active in the Red Cross and her daughter Ailsa recalls her own discomfort at having to sing a song on stage at Red Cross fundraising events, clutching one of the dolls in front of her.

While Catherine Lawrence made the four uniforms which adorn the dolls, the dolls themselves were made by sound engineer Ronald E.W. Blong, a Victorian who saw an opportunity to supply dolls to a market bereft of product, a situation exacerbated by the very high duty placed on imported dolls in 1939 and the steady removal of essential materials from the Australian market from 1940. Demand was such that by 1941, city shops were cleaned out of the few dolls being made locally as soon as they landed on the shelves, by parents desperate for presents. Blong was a newcomer to the business but he smelled an opportunity and experimented with both materials and colouring until, after much frustration, he settled on a winning formula for making doll's heads. The heads, bearing a shoulder plate design inherited from the European tradition which enabled the head to be attached to a variety of body styles, were moulded in a composition material (usually sawdust, glue and a stiffener) and coloured in oils. Bodies were made from stuffed cotton. Buyers were enthusiastic and Blong applied for a patent on 17 August 1940, marketing the dolls under the name 'Plaitoy'.