'Not Septimus Now': Wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

Women's History Review

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 117-138

  Meyer, Jessica ^a  

^a PEMBROKE COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247663815     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612020400200386     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. J.L. Campbell-White, Letter to the Ministry of Pensions, 20 February 1921, PIN 26/19930, NA, London
2. The literature on women's war work in the First World War is extensive. Some key works include Gail Braybon (1989) Women Workers in the First World War (London: Routledge)
3. Angela Woollacott (1994) On Her their Lives Depend: munitions workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press)
4. Deborah Thom (1998) Nice Girls and Rude Girls: women workers in World War I (London: I.B. Tauris)
5. Susan Grayzel (1999) Women's Identities at War: gender, motherhood and politics in Britain and France during the First World War, chapter 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press)
6. See, for instance, Eric Leed (1979) No Man's Land: combat and identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). By comparison, Joanna Bourke has argued that men's understandings of their own masculinity were remarkably resilient when faced with the experience of total war. Joanna Bourke (1996) Dismembering the Male: men's bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books)
7. Susan Kingsley Kent (1988) The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the demise of British feminism, Journal of British Studies, 27, July, p. 247
8. Margaret Randolph Higonnet & Patrice L-R. Higonnet (1987) The Double Helix, in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel & Margaret Collins Weitz (Eds) Behind the Lines: gender and the two World Wars, p. 35 (New Haven: Yale University Press)
9. Sandra Gilbert, Soldier's Heart: literary men, literary women, and the Great War, in Higonnet et al, Behind the Lines, pp. 198-223. See also note 4, above
10. Adrian Gregory (1994) The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919-1946, p. 51 and throughout (Oxford: Berg)
11. Deborah Cohen (2001) The War Come Home: disabled veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939, chapter 3 and conclusion (Berkeley: University of California Press)
12. see Joanna Bourke (2000) Effeminacy, ethnicity and the end of trauma: the sufferings of 'shell-shocked' men in Great Britain and Ireland, 1914-1939, Journal of Contemporary History, 35(1), pp. 57-69 and Cohen, The War Come Home, pp. 19-27
13. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War, chapter 1
14. Ross McKibben discusses the difficulty of defining the middle class in Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951, pp. 44-49 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). He argues that the middle classes in this period cannot be defined by income but, rather, by 'occupation and the social aspirations and manners which occupation demanded' (p. 45)
15. J.F. Marshall, Letter to Director General of Medical Services, Appliances
16. Branch, Ministry of Pensions, 25 October 1924, PIN 26/19947, NA, London
17. Cannon Nisbit C. Marris, Letter to Regional Director, Ministry of Pensions, Nottingham, 6 January 1921, PIN 26/19945, NA, London
18. Letter from Area DCMS, Newcastle to Area DGMS, 10 August 1936, PIN 26/19935
19. Report of Work Sub-Committee (since formation), Bedford and District Employment Committee, Employment Sub-Committee for Disabled Sailors and Soldiers, 9 January 1920, PIN 15/35, NA, London
20. Report of Special Enquiry Officer, 16 April 1930, PIN 26/1997, NA, London
21. Report of Dr Manchester, Investigation Section, Shaughnessy Hospital, 6 May 1922, PIN 26/21230, NA, London
22. Mrs W.H. Botterill, Application for treatment assistance, 5 March 1924, PIN 26/21239
23. William Howard Botterill, Letter to his Wife, 9 April 1924, PIN 26/21239
24. Mrs W.H. Botterill, Letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Pensions, 21 October 1948
25. Charles E. Evans, Letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Pensions, 27 April 1925, PIN 26/21580, NA, London
26. Fred. J. Burton, Letter to Director General of Awards, 11 May 1920, PIN 26/21323, NA, London
27. J.L. Campbell-White, Letter to Ministry of Pensions, 17 December 1920, PIN 26/19930
28. The Secretary, Commissioner of Pensions, Pretoria, Letter to the Governor-General's Fund, Cape Town, 13 August 1929, PIN 26/19984, NA, London
29. E.C. Booker, Letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Pensions, Officers' Branch, 25 August 1930, PIN 26/21230
30. C.E.G. Harrison, Letter to Ministry of Pensions, 28 October 1930, PIN 26/19938, NA, London
31. C.S. Baines, Letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Pensions, 22 March 1931, PIN 26/19926, NA, London
32. A.J. Brock (1918) The War Neurasthenic: a note on methods of reintegrating him with his environment, The Lancet, 23 March 1918, p. 436. The Weir-Mitchell treatment referred to by Brock was pioneered by the American physician, Silas Weir-Mitchell. It involved complete rest and isolation for the patient, whose every action was prescribed and monitored by the doctor
33. Sir John Collie, Report on the Special Medical Board, p. 6, PIN 15/54, NA, London
34. Report on the Special Medical Board, p. 2
35. Arthur Harman, Letter to the Ministry of Pensions 1931 [?], PIN 26/21728, NA, London
36. Proceedings of a Resurvey Board, 17 October 1922, PIN 26/21506, NA, London
37. Proceedings of a Resurvey Board, 27 April 1921, PIN 26/21506
38. Neurological Report, Shaughnessy Hospital, 17 April 1924, PIN 26/21230
39. Medical Re-examination Form, 21 May 1924, PIN 26/21230
40. Medical Case Sheet, Latchmere Hospital, 22 August 1924, PIN 26/21636, NA, London
41. Report from Director of Medical Services II, n.d., PIN 26/19943, NA, London
42. Report to Director General of Medical Services, 26 May 1936, PIN 26/19943
43. [Samuel Hynes (1990) A War Imagined: the First World War and English culture, p. 214 (London: Bodley Head)
44. Bernard Bergonzi (1996) Heroes' Twilight: a study of the literature of the Great War, p. 171 (Manchester: Carcanet Press.; first published 1965)
45. [Ford Madox Ford (1992) Parade's find (London: Everyman Library, Random House 1992; first published 1924, London: Duckworth) and Siegfried Sassoon (1972) The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (London: Faber & Faber; first published 1937, London: Faber & Faber)
46. Gilbert, 'Soldier's Heart', p. 200
47. Rebecca West (1982) The Return of the Soldier (Glasgow: Fontana Paperbacks, Virago; first published 1918)
48. There are difficulties with Woolfs depiction of Septimus's state of mind. Some of his symptoms, in particular his delusions of grandeur, are not typical of symptoms of shell shock victims. The comment, 'The European War - that little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He really forgot' (Virginia Woolf [1993] Mrs Dalloway, p. 107 [London: Everyman's Library; first published 1925, London: Hogarth Press]) is particularly problematic. For the vast majority of shell shock victims, the War, which was the cause of their condition, was central to both their traumas and symptoms. It has been suggested by Elaine Showalter that the depiction of Septimus is a reflection of Woolfs own battles with mental illness. Elaine Showalter (1987) The Female Malady: women, madness and English culture, 1830-1980, pp. 192-193 (London: Virago)
49. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, p. 15. [61] Ibid., pp. 23-24. [62] Ibid., p. 24. [63] Ibid., pp. 71-72
50. Dorothy L, Sayers (1985) The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, p. 2 (Sevenoaks: New English Library; first published 1928, London: Victor Gollancz). George Fentiman's symptoms are almost identical to those of Oswald Atherton 'Mac' Fleming, Sayers's husband. In his biography of Sayers, James Brabazon notes how closely the relationship between George and Shelia mirrors that of Sayers and Mac in later years. James Brabazon (1981) Dorothy L. Sayers: The life of a courageous woman, p. 147 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1981)
51. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, p. 4