MMU Disability Reading Group - Meeting 2: 24 Oct
Manchester Metropolitan University Disability Reading Group - Meeting 2: 24 October 2025
Advertising the regular meetings of the Disability Reading Group, a collaborative, inclusive group that meets monthly to discuss texts considering disability. The group was established by Arlene Jackson, a PhD student with the School of History, Politics and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Everyone welcome.
Meeting 2: Friday 24 October at 1:30pm via Teams.
Chapters 1, 3, 25, 27, 38 (Read as much or as little as you wish) from The Disability Studies Reader by Lennard J. Davis (5th edn) Routledge
The selected text is The Disability Studies Reader by Lennard J. Davis. If you have any difficulty accessing the book, please contact Arlene Jackson to arrange access. You can do so by going to this page, and clicking on Arlene's profile picture (bottom left), which will open an email.
Please register by contacting Arlene or leaving a comment below, and we will send through a Teams link in advance of the meeting.
Imperial Pensioners: Exploring the care of Disabled Great War Veterans across the British Empire
Imperial Pensioners: Exploring the care of Disabled Great War Veterans across the British Empire
In this blog post, Dr Michael Robinson introduces an underexplored archival source that reveals much about the care of disabled veterans of the Great War
Seven years after the Armistice at the end of the First World War, the British state sanctioned a worldwide audit of British disabled Great War veterans residing across the British Empire. An estimated 23,000 veterans of the British Armed Forces, referred to as ‘Imperial Pensioners’, received a disability pension and remained eligible for medical/rehabilitative care funded by the British state. Imperial Pensioners were often migrants who left Britain after their war service. Crucially, overseas medico-welfare officials distributed disability pensions and provided medical care as agents on behalf of the British state. This blog post will examine the experiences of one of those agents acting as emissary, a Mr G. F. Gilbert.
As a seasoned civil servant with extensive experience working for the Treasury and the Ministry of Pensions, Gilbert was the ideal choice as auditor on behalf of the British state. Between 1925 and 1926, Gilbert visited Australia, South Africa, India, Malta, the British West Indies, Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Kenya, Zanzibar, Uganda, Tanganyika, New Zealand, Seychelles, Fiji, Egypt, Palestine, and Sudan. During this epic global tour, Gilbert met with overseas agents to discuss Imperial Pensioners. He also visited medical sites such as artificial limb factories, ‘lunatic asylums’, and out-patient clinics, which sometimes included interactions with Imperial Pensioners receiving care.
Though undertaking an audit for the British government, Gilbert appeared keen to reduce interaction with British veterans. Instead, his lengthy reports contained intensely detailed reports and statistics detailing how imperial countries treated their own disabled veterans. This surveillance enabled Gilbert and his colleagues in London to assess and compare how other countries addressed the complex issue of compensating, rehabilitating, and reintegrating veterans into society.
Gilbert’s observations reveal the complex and subjective nature of disability care and compensation on offer across British imperial territories. Subjective individual variations shaped the treatment of disabled veterans. Rather than a ‘one size fits all’ picture, where all veterans were treated alike, the specific disability diagnosis, race, nationality and location of a veteran dictated their experience. Indeed, the reports even offer compelling insights into the comparative treatment of colonial veterans in overseas territories. This unique insight appears perfectly positioned to contribute to the recent attention dedicated to uncovering the stories of colonial veterancy. This includes, for example, Professor Dónal Hassett’s COLVET project which examines veterancy in the French, British, Italian and American Empires, and a special journal edition published by First World War Studies in 2019.
Gilbert’s reports also reveal the immense transnational exchange of ideas and veterans amongst imperial territories. Indeed, regarding the latter, British veterans with life-altering war-related disabilities were clearly willing to migrate thousands of miles in search of a better life. Their proactive agency reinforces how disabled veterans in past societies were active and mobile, which can help counter the stereotype of them being inactive and stationary recipients of government welfare and charitable assistance. As the study of disabled veterans enters its second generation, historians are now better placed to dig deeper into these vital subjective variables, which dictated post-war experiences of veteranhood. Gilbert’s lengthy reports, alongside the hundreds of individual pensioner files of ‘Imperial Pensioners’, currently held in the National Archives of England and Wales, provide a treasure trove for historians of disability, veterans, and the British Empire to explore.
Dr Michael Robinson is a National Army Museum Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He enjoys travelling, watching football and complaining about politics. His research on Gilbert’s world tour has been published in the Social History of Medicine and the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.