Disabled Veterans in History

Work-Therapy and the Disabled British Soldier in Great Britain in the First World War: The Case of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, London

Jeffrey S. Reznick Work-Therapy and the Disabled British Soldier in Great Britain in the First World War:The Case of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, London In May 1918, the French and Belgian ministries of war hosted the second annual international conference on the aftercare of soldiers disabled in the Great War. In London, leading medical authorities, voluntary-aid representatives , labor leaders, and politicians met to exchange views on two vital questions: How could the war’s disabled be healed effectively and, following this healing, how could they be successfully reintegrated into civilian society? Of‹cials at the previous conference had examined these questions in detail, but questions remained about the best approaches to rehabilitating the wounded serviceman, for the welfare of the man himself as well as for the bene‹t of his family and his nation. In his introduction to the of‹cial conference proceedings, John Galsworthy, the British novelist and dramatist, offered a hopeful description of Britain’s rehabilitation scheme for disabled servicemen. “In special hospitals ,” he wrote, orthopaedic, paraplegic, neurasthenic, we shall give [the crippled soldier ] back functional ability, solidity of nerve or lung. The ›esh torn away, the lost sight, the broken ear-drum, the destroyed nerve, it is true we cannot give back; but we shall so re-create and fortify the rest of him that he shall leave hospital ready for a new career. Then we shall teach him how to treat the road of it, so that he ‹ts again into the national life, becomes once more a workman with pride in his work, a stake in the country, and the consciousness that, handicapped though he be, he runs the race level with his fellows, and is by that so much the better man than they.1 185 Galsworthy’s sketch is revealing for the way in which it suggests how rehabilitating disabled soldiers involved not only conventional rest but also two distinct yet interconnected kinds of work. Through supervised, postoperative manipulations of maimed limbs, using water, weights, and electricity , medical authorities sought to repair both the body and the mind. At the same time, administrators of this program promoted another form of rehabilitative work as a way to prepare disabled soldiers for reentry into civilian life. Vocational labor, they held, helped to make them workmen once again. As Galsworthy therefore suggested, providing disabled soldiers with these kinds of work thus meant reconstituting them in three respects: as healthy individuals, able-bodied male breadwinners, and productive citizens . In the past decade, historians have devoted considerable attention to the ways in which the mental and physical wounds of the Great War helped to shape the identity of the British soldier and his perception by government of‹cials, care providers, and the public. Focusing on the curative program at Chailey Heritage Hospital in Sussex, Seth Koven has demonstrated that crippled boys, who were traditionally objects of rescue in orthopedic healing programs, became agents of healing during the Great War. By pairing a disabled soldier with a crippled boy, medical authorities at Chailey intended to help the soldier remember the value and hope of youth and his own future promise as a productive member of civilian society.2 Building on Koven’s work, Joanna Bourke has shown that crippled soldiers themselves drew on traditional forms of masculinity, like male bonding, as means of coping with their injuries and reconstituting their sense of kinship and their lives after the war.3 This essay extends this literature by exploring the development of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, Britain’s premier orthopedic center, established in 1916 at London’s Hammersmith Workhouse In‹rmary.4 Based on existing therapies for the physically disabled and the mentally ill, as well as on occupational programs for convict prisoners, unemployed sectors of the working classes, and the urban poor, the rehabilitation scheme at Shepherd’s Bush re›ected the persistence of Victorian modes of medical care and social welfare into the twentieth century. At the same time, wartime concerns among authorities about ef‹ciency, economy, and postwar society helped to shape the development of this program. Analyzing Shepherd’s Bush in this way demonstrates that this institution was a site where healing time overlapped with productive work time, creating arenas of teaching and industry where medical authorities conceived disabled soldiers as able-bodied workers who could continue to “do their bit” for their 186 Disabled Veterans in History own...