Veteran impairment and health
Image IWM Q108161
Some 2,289,860 British service personnel are recorded as casualties of the First World War, some with permanent disability – over 40,000 were amputees; some had facial disfigurement or had been blinded. The ratio of wounds to disease was 1:4 – respiratory diseases, heart conditions, rheumatism/arthritis, and infections such as nephritis or malaria arose as new or were aggravated by the conditions of service life. Neurasthenia and 'shell shock' affected a number.
1.6 million pensions were granted.
Pension Ledgers
The pension ledgers and cards are a source of valuable information on those who served in the Great War, and were saved for posterity by the Western Front Association. They are available free to members or via Ancestry Fold 3.
Peter has analysed the data collected by the volunteers - to read the research, click on the button below
He has a previous interest , not only in soldiers' coping, but in their post-war health, as can be found in the following two articles ...
The Downgate 21 - the story behind a
grave ......
In the graveyard of St John the Baptist, Tidebrook, East Sussex is a unique memorial bearing 17 small brass plaques, each giving a name, a regiment, a date of death and an age.
They commemorate the burials of 21 ex-soldiers from nearby Downgate House, a residential establishment run by the Embankment Fellowship Centre, for homeless unemployed ex-servicemen.
Peter tells their story in 'Veteran Unemployment, the Embankment Fellowship Centre, and the Downgate 21'
published in
Stand To!
(2016).
The Cane Hill Hospital memorial at Croydon Cemetery
Happening on the Cane Hill Hospital (formerly the 3rd Surrey County Lunatic Asylum) memorial to First World War servicemen exhumed from the hospital graveyard and re-interred at Croydon, a search online for further information revealed quotes from those attending the memorial's unveiling suggesting that they were all 'shell-shock' victims. As Peter's article on the WFA website reveals, these men were sad cases of tertiary syphilis and serious mental illness, victims of diseases of the time that had no effective treatments.
The Psychological Legacy of Service In Veterans of the First World War
Identify your goals & achieve them
Peter has written a set of thoughts, published in Stand To! (2022) about various aspects of the psychological legacy of service in returning veterans, partly based on the WFA's pension ledger research.
