During the course of the First World War, combatants who
suffered debilitating physical injury were frequently left unable to return to
active service. In Sheffield, the Wadsley Asylum became the Wharncliffe War
Hospital, providing long-term care for many returning soldiers.
In 1915, a hospital volunteer named Annie Bindon Carter
established afternoon painting classes for wounded soldiers. An alumna of
Sheffield School of Art, Bindon perceived the potentially therapeutic function
of the classes, and hoped to assist in the recovery of men whose injuries left
them both physically and emotionally debilitated.
The project’s initial success led Carter to conceive of a
business plan involving her friends and patients. The men began to use their
new-found painting and stencilling skills in the creation of household goods
such as tablecloths, doilies and curtains, continuing to work together after
the war at new premises in West Bar. As severe injury threatened many of the
war wounded with unemployment and destitution, Carter’s enterprising scheme was
a remarkable achievement.
By 1923, the organisation had its name: Painted Fabrics Ltd.
New premises at Norton Woodseats were substantial enough that many of the men
and their families were able to live on-site, ensuring that the physical
restrictions caused by their injuries inhibited life and work as little as
possible.
Housed in the Sheffield Archives are a multitude of papers
and images relating to Painted Fabrics, spanning the years 1915-1959, and
including a large collection of press clippings relating to the company. While looking through these documents, an album of
photographs drew my attention. Featured within are photos and postcards depicting
a variety of activities and events undertaken by the men at Painted Fabrics. I
was intrigued specifically by the original captions, which exhibit a strange
combination of national pride and human vulnerability.
One image features five men in the Painted Fabrics workshop,
standing side-on to the camera to emphasize the absence of some of their limbs.
The caption reads, ‘each man has lost an arm and a leg and is still smiling!’
Looking at the photo, I felt humbled by the simple humanness
of these men, whose untold experiences seemed so violently evident in the
missing parts of their bodies. I found myself peering at their shoes, trying to
decipher which ones were concealing invisible prostheses. My reaction to this
photo was shared, it seems, with contemporary readers; suggested by the
publicity approach taken on by Carter and her team. One promotional leaflet
declares boldly, ‘47 men
with only 56 undamaged arms and 50 undamaged legs between them.’ This abjection
of bodies is designed to shock and to intrigue, reactions that are no less
instinctual close to a century later.
It
strikes me as astonishingly bold and positive that these men, so at risk of
dispossession and social alienation, were given an opportunity to take pride in
the same injuries that might have rendered them unfit to work. I wondered if
these images, with their strange captions, so evocative of a stiff-upper-lipped
attitude, might not be perceived as exploitative, using the horrors of war as
form of uncomfortable gimmick.
It is
not horror, though, but pride, which emerges in these photographs, pride made
all the more valuable in the context of human vulnerability. It’s the same pride
visible in photographs of present-day veterans like Noah Galloway, who last
year graced the cover of Men’s Health Magazine.
Bearing
witness to the success of these men in overcoming the unimaginable obstacles
they faced was an experience I am grateful to have had. The album shows the
many sides of Painted Fabrics, including individual stories and state visits. Family
snapshots show the men in repose, at home or even, in one case, in a wedding
photo (p. 46). The album is about much more than a textiles company or a
recovery program - something more like a family.
Sophie Maxwell
Photographs: King George V visiting Wharncliffe War Hospital (Wadsley Asylum, later Middlewood Hospital), 1915 (Picture Sheffield: s03504); employees of Painted Fabrics (Sheffield Archives: PF/4/2/4)
