‘Do you not think I'm entitled?’ Visibility, Agency and Care Amongst Facially and Psychologically Wounded Veterans in Interwar Britain

This thesis examines the reconfiguration of disability, gender and power in spaces of care in interwar Britain. It examines mental and physical wounds comparatively for the first time in the context of interwar care, revealing important points of commonality and departure in disabled veterans’ experiences, and engendering new ways of thinking about disability and care. Comparing facial and mental wounds, the thesis interrogates how disabled veterans managed their (in)visibility, autonomy, agency and authority in systems predicated upon ideals which they struggled to conform to and at times actively sought to resist.
Veterans’ experiences are examined within three key sites of care: state welfare, medico-military institutions, and the home. Departing from the existing literature in its theoretical frameworks, temporal focus, and spatial approach to analysing care, this thesis foregrounds the agency and voices of veterans and their relatives. It shows that the values, judgements and norms which defined the identities of disabled veterans and their families, and determined their access to diverse forms of care, were socio-spatially produced. This is shown through qualitative analyses of institutional and state-produced records - notably disability pension files - alongside the testimonies and correspondence of veterans and their relatives. Post-war care was an important site of composition as well as the reflection of gender norms and normativity. Drawing together theoretical frameworks from gender and disability studies, the thesis shows that systems of care were a powerful means of fortifying the gendered order and the hegemony of normalcy in interwar Britain. Veterans and their relatives were important actors in resisting, reworking and reifying social norms and top-down rationalities of care. Centring the voices of veterans and their families shows that care in interwar Britain must be understood as relational in ways which are insufficiently accounted for in the existing literature.