First World War In Britain Research Articles

’Not Septimus Now‘: wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

’Not Septimus Now‘: wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

’Not Septimus Now‘: wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

Much of the writing on gender and the First World War has looked at the ways in which pre-war gender norms were reasserted in British society after the War. The article looks at the experiences of one group of women, the wives of men psychologically disabled by the experience of war, to show how disability could prevent the reassertion of pre-war gender roles. The experiences of these women, as expressed in the disability files created by the Ministry of Pensions, is then compared with the dramatisations of wives of disabled veterans in two post-war novels. This comparison highlights the ways in which such dramatisations turned the figure of the wife of the disabled veteran into a symbol of suffering that may be compared to the similarly symbolic figures of the neurasthenic veteran.

Women Students and the London Medical Schools, 1914–39: The Anatomy of a Masculine Culture

During the First World War in Britain, women were exhorted to rally to the nation's need and to train as doctors. A number of the London medical schools opened their doors to female students for the first time. After the war, several of these schools reverted to their former status as exclusively male institutions. This article looks at these events in some detail, focusing on the controversies over co‐education in medicine and attempting to unravel some of the issues and politics involved. It is suggested that the gender politics which characterise these debates illuminate our understanding of the social history of work cultures and masculinity in the period.

Some aspects of the demographic consequences of the first world war in Britain

Summary The demographic consequences of the First World War in Britain have never been fully assessed partly on account of the lack of reliable mortality data on soldiers and civilians in the years 1914–18. In this paper, the extent of British military losses is determined and estimates of their age structure are given on the basis of the mortality experience in 1913–17 of the approximately five million men whose lives were insured by the Prudential Assurance Company. An examination of male mortality at ages 16–49 of this primarily working-class population shows both the age-incidence of war-related deaths and an improvement in life expectation for men too old for active service or combat. This latter phenomenon is related to a rising standard of living for the working class during the 1914–18 war.

Some Aspects of the Demographic Consequences of the First World War in Britain

Summary The demographic consequences of the First World War in Britain have never been fully assessed partly on account of the lack of reliable mortality data on soldiers and civilians in the years 1914–18. In this paper, the extent of British military losses is determined and estimates of their age structure are given on the basis of the mortality experience in 1913–17 of the approximately five million men whose lives were insured by the Prudential Assurance Company. An examination of male mortality at ages 16–49 of this primarily working-class population shows both the age-incidence of war-related deaths and an improvement in life expectation for men too old for active service or combat. This latter phenomenon is related to a rising standard of living for the working class during the 1914–18 war.

T. S. Ashton Prize Essay for 1974. Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the First World War

O NE of the central economic problems which confront a nation at war is that of diverting factors of production from civilian to military ends. Since civilian living standards have rarely been reduced rapidly enough to release the whole of the necessary factor resources, there has often ensued, at least in the short run, an acute degree of factor shortage. This was the case during the First World War in Britain, when the demands made upon the economy were not only unparalleled in size but largely uncontrolled by the government until late in the day. The civilian labour market was subject to acute shortage, chiefly due to the demands of the Army for manpower. Some 4 7 million men joined the armed forces, out of a prewar labour force of i 2 * 9 million, and this outflow was controlled only in a laggard and ineffectual fashion.2 The impact on individual industries of this sudden loss of labour has so far remained largely unanalysed. Both contemporaries and historians have usually been content to state that there was an acute shortage of labour, without attempting to quantify this shortage. This lack of interest is particularly apparent in the case of agriculture. The conventional view here is that the industry had lost some quarter of a million men by the end of i 9i6. This figure represents somewhere around 28-33 per cent of the number of male employees in the prewar labour force, depending on which estimate of the size of this labour force one adopts.3