History Seminars

Impotence, whether as a result of physical or psychological trauma, has become a symbolic wound of the First World War. Similarly, incontinence has generated discussion amongst historians when considering the effects of the war on the male body – a war that was, in the words of Joanna Bourke, responsible for ‘dismembering the male’. However, scholarly analysis of the emasculating and infantilising effects of penis wounds has tended to emphasise the representation of these men and their impairments in popular culture, rather than the lived experiences of those who returned from the war. 
  
Individual case files from the Ministry of Pensions records, held by the UK National Archives, offer glimpses into the private lives of ex-servicemen and their families. These letters of petition and advocacy from ex-servicemen and their supporters, as well as medical case notes and administrative records, provide detailed information about the quotidian experience of disability for ex-servicemen. Using the war pension files of men with penis wounds (TNA: PIN 26), this paper questions the emasculating and infantilising effects of these wounds, analyses the care provided by medical professionals and the British Ministry of Pensions, and assesses the extent to which these men reintegrated into civilian society. 
 
Dr Alexia Moncrieff is Lecturer in Modern Global History at the University of Leeds. After a PhD at the University of Adelaide, she joined the University of Leeds in 2016 as Postdoctoral Research Fellow on ‘Men, Women and Care’, an ERC-funded project examining post-war disability. She is the author of Expertise, Authority and Control: The Australian Army Medical Corps in the First World War (CUP, 2020) and, most recently, a ‘state of the field’ review article on disability history for History. She is the Book Reviews Editor for Medical History and is currently working on ‘Epistolary Lives and the Making and Re-Making of First World War Archives’, a collaborative project with Dr Bart Ziino (Deakin University) funded by the British Academy.