ABSTRACT
In May 1918, the ‘Inter-Allied Exhibition on the After-Care of Disabled Men’ opened in Westminster Central Hall, London. This event, which ran concurrent to the second annual ‘Inter-Allied Conference on the After-Care of Disabled Men’, aimed to publicise national rehabilitation programmes for soldiers who had lost a limb or had been maimed in some other way. To this end, the British display included a variety of prostheses alongside photographs and films of disabled men undergoing treatment and retraining in one of Britain’s flagship orthopaedic institutions, Queen Mary’s Convalescent Auxiliary Hospital at Roehampton, and its associated facility in Brighton, Queen Mary’s Workshops. According to the catalogue of the exhibition, here were ‘the best artificial substitutes known to science’, technology that worked in conjunction with the hospital’s workshops and employment bureau to ‘afford the veteran healthy occupation while in hospital’ and to help him gain a ‘definite future in civilian life’ (Hodge 1918: 101–2).
