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Abstract
This article explores changing attitudes towards types of aids for blind people in the interwar period. The authors focus particularly on the dispute over the relative value of the guide dog, as an aid to blind ex-servicemen and civilians. Historians of disability have neglected the history of assistive technologies and the ways in which ‘norms’ and divisions can be enacted or undone through these aids. The controversy over the choice of aids is positioned as a dispute over what constituted normality and difference in the interwar period.
résumé: Cet article se penche sur les attitudes envers les différentes sortes d'assistance aux aveugles durant l'entre deux guerres, et en particulier les débats sur le chien d'aveugle pour les vétérans et les civils. L'historiographie du handicap tend à négliger les techniques palliatives et comment ces technologies peuvent rendre réelles des normes et des différences et cet article cherche à placer cette controverse dans ce contexte
Notes
[1] CitationLiakhoff, ‘The Way to Freedom for Those who Cannot See’, 10.
[2] CitationKoven, “Remembering and dismemberment: Crippled children, wounded Soldiers and the Great War in Great Britain”; CitationGregory and Winter, eds, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946; CitationReznick, Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Care Giving in Britain During the Great War; CitationMeyer, “Not septimus now”; CitationWinter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning.
[3] CitationCohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939.
[4] By 1938, 2000 pensions were being paid to British ex-servicemen who were totally blind; 8000 to the partially blind. CitationMacDonald, The Roses of No Man's Land, 340.
[5] Tear gas caused blindness, while chlorine gas suffocated the soldiers. Mustard gas was an oily, sticky substance that left its victims blinded, blistered and fighting for breath. For a discussion of gas see CitationHolmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914–1918, 418–26.
[6] These scenes became apart of the public memory of the war owing to paintings like John Singer Sergant's 1918 painting Gassed. Such paintings vividly encapsulated the nature of modern warfare.
[7] Wilfred Owen, “The Sentry”, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” in CitationRoberts, Minds at War: Essential Poetry of the First World War in Context, 257–61.
[8] “Babies' Sores Eyes”, The Times, 31 March 1914,
[9] CitationPhillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity. State and Community, 1780 to 1930, 325.
[10] For an in-depth discussion of the Blind Person's Act of 1920 see Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity. State and Community, 1780 to 1930, 381–400.
[11] Heather CitationPerry, “Re-arming the Disabled Veteran: Artificially Rebuilding State and Society in World War One Germany”, in Ott et al., Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics.
[12] Eustis, “Captain Fraser's Views on Dogs”, 53.
[13] CitationPearson, The Conquest of Blindness,46.
[14] Pearson, The Conquest of Blindness, 11.
[15] Pearson, The Conquest of Blindness, 11.
[16] Pearson, Conquest of Blindness, 45.
[17] Pearson, The Conquest of Blindness, 45.
[18] CitationPearson, Victory Over Blindness, 90.
[19] CitationFraser, Whereas I was Blind, 11.
[20] Pearson, Victory over Blindness, 50.
[21] Pearson, Victory Over Blindness, 40.
[22] Pearson, Victory Over Blindness, 41.
[23] Pearson, Conquest of Blindness, 39.
[24] Pearson, Victory Over Blindness, 123.
[25] Administrators and doctors took pains to distinguish between offices and the lower ranks. Officers lived separately and had their own mess, as was the case in the Army and in military hospitals, although they did undergo exactly the same training and re-education as the “ordinary” rank-and-file. Soldiers' blindness was scrutinised—if it was suspected that a soldier had acquired his blindness through syphilis, the soldier would lose his pension, although St Dunstan's would often support such men. Those both physically maimed in the war and blinded found themselves literally segregated from other blind ex-servicemen at a special home in Cheltenham where they were not expected to work.
[26] Pearson, p. 91.
[27] “Blind Soldier's Friend”, The Times, 30 July 1923.
[28] CitationStuart, “The Dogs of War”, 404.
[29] The guide dog was such a part of postwar Germany that a set of six Notgeld or “emergency money” was designed with the guide dog in action on them. See CitationUnderwood, “Guide Dogs and German Notgeld”, 305.
[30] CitationRobson, The Complete Guide Dog for the Blind, 17.
[31] CitationGuide Dogs for the Blind Association, Fifty Years Forward: The Story of Guide Dogs in Britain, 2.
[32] CitationChevigny, My Eyes Have A Cold Nose, 201.
[33] CitationRichardson, Watch-Dogs, Their Training and Management, 269.
[34] CitationFraser, “The Quest of Independence”, 6.
[35] CitationIreson, Another Pair of Eyes, 33.
[36] For a detailed discussion of importation restrictions and rabies see Pemberton, N., and M. Worboys. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2007.
[37] The CitationGuide Dogs for the Blind Association, Fifty Years Forward: The Story of Guide Dogs in Britain, 3.
[38] Ireson, Another Pair of Eyes, 38.
[39] No author, “CitationDog Guides”, 12.
[40] No author, “Dog Guides”, 13.
[41] No author, “Dog Guides”, 13.
[42] No author, “CitationDark Glasses and White Sticks”, 6.
[43] No author, “Dark Glasses and White Sticks”, 6.
[44] CitationO'Connell, The Car and British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring 1896–1939.
[45] No author, “Dark Glasses and White Sticks”, 6.
[46] Alan Nichols, who worked for St Dunstan's in ‘propaganda’ from 1915, had a fox terrier called Raffles which he took with him to many places. Raffles's presence was so usual; he was even involved in a punting accident on the Thames with his owner. However, the dog did not lead his master around in the way of a guide dog; instead he was more of the companion dog that many British people owned—a pet and a ‘Good Companion’, and not a working animal. Instead of a dog, Nichols relied on sighted male guides who would assist him in dressing in the morning and lead him to work, collect him for lunch and then lead him home.
[47] Fraser, Whereas I was Blind, 14
[48] Fraser, “The Quest of Independence”, 6.
[49] CitationCarter, White Harness: The Story of Guide Dogs for the Blind, 21.
[50] The Association, Guide Dogs for the blind, 1.
[51] Hartwell, Dogs Against Darkness: The Story of the Seeing Eye, 160.
[52] CitationRobson, Phyllis, “Gypsy”, 193.
[53] CitationEustis, “Guide Dogs for the Blind”, 52.
[54] “CitationCandidates for Guide Dogs”, 18.
[55] “Candidates for Guide Dogs”, 17.
[56] “The CitationRoad to Freedom”, 3.
[57] Carter, White Harness: The Story of Guide Dogs for the Blind, 23.
[58] “Citation Cruelty ”, 18.
[59] CitationFrank and Clarke, First Lady of the Seeing Eye, 40.
[60] “Citation Overheard ”, 21.
[61] Ireson, Another Pair of Eyes, 88.
[62] “Guide Dogs for the Blind”, The Times, 12 July 1937.
[63] The Tail-Wagger Magazine X, no. 124 (November 1938): 391.
