Keeping Blinded Veterans in View

During the First World War thousands of charities were established in Britain to support servicemen. These organisations needed to be ‘seen’ by the public in order to secure donations. Thanks to the creative methods it used to raise awareness and funds, the most visible of these charities was St Dunstan’s, a home for blinded soldiers and sailors in Regent’s Park, London. 

A particular success was The Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Gift Book, published in 1916 and sold in aid of St Dunstan’s. ‘The warmest thanks are due to the contributors who have so generously given of their art and their time in the interest of this cause. All the more is this so when one remembers the innumerable calls which have already been made upon the artistic professions by charitable causes’, wrote author, screenwriter and film director George Goodchild in its foreword.

This anthology is representative of the longstanding relationship between creativity and the First World War. From paint to print, artists, writers and poets documented the unprecedented and devastating conflict, and the terrible price the nation paid in physical and emotional loss. The end of the war did not sever this link: creative work endeavoured to make sense of the conflict, and materially to contribute towards funding charities that supported the physically and emotionally damaged individuals coming to terms with the effects of war. 

The collection of poetry, illustrations, commentary and fiction is an eclectic mix of material specifically created for the book, combined with reprints from previous works. It included popular authors such as H.G. Wells, who contributed a short story that had been published in 1903 in the Strand Magazine called ‘The Land Ironclads’, G.K. Chesterton and John Galsworthy, who trained as a masseur and treated patients in a French hospital during the conflict and became well known for his support for wounded and disabled soldiers’ and sailors’ charities after the war. Verse was contributed by E. Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, and there were colour illustrations throughout, including a painting of David Lloyd George by Sir Luke Fildes, RA.

Anthologies were popular in the early 20th century and often contained a wide range of stories, poetry and illustrations. Similarly to other anthologies, there is no common theme in the book; there is a story about a young man who helps a family evacuated to England search for their granddaughter who was left behind and lost in Belgium, and another about a man who rekindles his relationship with his wife after a fight with the man for whom she has left him. There are, still, some stories and illustrations on blindness and the anthology ends with two sonnets by John Milton, both of which reflect on blindness. This charity gift book was not the only one produced in 1916; in that year the Queen’s Gift Book, in aid of Queen Mary’s convalescent auxiliary hospitals which supported soldiers who suffered limb loss during the war, was also published. 

Profits from The Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Gift Book went to the charity to support their work. As is clear from the august contributors to the gift anthology, St Dunstan’s garnered widespread support and was one of the most high-profile charities in the interwar period; it counted donations from the takings of society balls to children’s pocket money in its yearly takings. This was partly due to the social reach of its president, Arthur Pearson, a newspaper magnate and publisher who founded the Daily Express as well as popular magazines such as Pearson’s Weekly (1890-1939). After losing his sight through glaucoma Pearson became president of the National Institute for the Blind in 1914. 

Pearson established St Dunstan’s in January 1915. It quickly outgrew its small house in Bayswater Hill as the numbers of servicemen blinded in the war rapidly increased. Its new location was not a small venture, occupying a large villa and 15 acres of prime real estate in Regent’s Park, donated by American businessman Otto Kahn. 

St Dunstan’s presented itself as a symbol of heroism, triumph over adversity and the embodiment of restored masculinity after the devastating impact of the war. It rejected pity, preferring a stoic acceptance of blindness, or even finding benefits in the loss of sight, arguing that sighted people were distracted by sight: ‘They have the freedom of a whole world that we, distracted by the pride of the eye, know nothing about.’ Metaphors of courage displayed in battle were reinforced in the anthology by 19th-century satirist and novelist Robert Hichens, who wrote in the first chapter that ‘the courage of the battlefield is succeeded by the courage of the workshop’.

It was important to maintain the stream of donations and the anthology reminded readers of the benefits of their purchase to the blind men. The final chapter in the book, ‘The Kingdom of the Blind’ by Charles Marriott, art critic for The Times, features the work done at St Dunstan’s. Photographs show blind men learning new trades in different industries: carpentry, boot repair, poultry farming and basket making. While many disabled ex-servicemen were forced onto the streets to ask for money owing to inadequate pensions, St Dunstan’s placed an emphasis on self-help in the face of adversity and did not allow the men to beg.

Anthologies were only one means of support, and new streams of revenue were sought after the war. These included a portion of the takings of the sale of poppies from Poppy Day after its inauguration in 1921. Later efforts focused less on the sale of reading material; instead, the charity looked to profit from popular practices such as smoking. St Dunstan’s had its own brand of cigarettes, which were often sold to the public through street tobacco kiosks managed by blind ex-servicemen. 

As the men at St Dunstan’s ‘learned to be blind’, St Dunstan’s kept them in the public’s sight. 

Julie Anderson is Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent. Her book Modern Eyes: A Cultural History of Seeing will be published by Manchester University Press in 2025.