Medicine, Masculinity and the First World War in Britain

Start date: 1 February 2011
End date: 30 April 2015
Funder: Wellcome Trust
Primary investigator: Professor Jessica Meyer

Description

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, Jessica Meyer conducted research into the roles and experiences of men who served in the British medical services during the First World War, focusing on the wartime service of those who served in the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps, primarily stretcher bearers and orderlies. The primary goal of the project was to gain a better understanding of the unique experiences of these men as non-combatants serving in caregiving roles in order to provide a fuller picture of the history of Britain and British medical care during the First World War. Meyer used gender history as an analytic framework to explore the ways in which these men’s experiences of war were shaped by cultural constructions of gender and the implications this had for the ways in which medical caregiving was understood as gendered in the context of war.

The project produced an open-access monograph published by Oxford University Press, several journal articles, a workshop, a learning tool for GCSE students and a number of blog posts. Meyer continues to give regular public talks on the history of the British military medical services in the First World War.

Project outputs

Publications

Jessica Meyer, ‘Neutral caregivers or military support?: The British Red Cross, the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and the Problems of Voluntary Medical Aid in Wartime’, War and Society 34.2 (2015), 105-120. Read this article open access.

Alison Fell and Jessica Meyer, ‘Introduction: Untold Legacies of the First World War in Britain’, War and Society 34.2 (2015), 85-90. Read this article open access.

Jessica Meyer, ‘“A Blind Man’s Home-Coming”: Masculinity, Disability and Male Care-giving in First World War Britain’ in Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity, ed. Kathleen M. Brian and James W. Trent, Jr. (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 153-170.

Jessica Meyer, ‘The Long Carry: Landscapes and the Shaping of British Medical Masculinities in the First World War’ in Landscapes of the First World War, ed. Martina Salvante, Selena Daly and Vanda Wilcox (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 121-138.

Jessica Meyer, ‘Medicos, Poultice Wallahs and Comrades in Service: Masculinity and Military Medicine in Britain during the First World War’, Critical Military Studies, 6.2 (2019), 160-175. Read this article open access.

Jessica Meyer, An Equal Burden: The Men of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War (Oxford University Press, 2019). This book is available to read open access.

Jessica Meyer, ‘Hospital Journals’ in The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals, ed. by Marysa Demoor, Cedric van Dijck, and Birgit Van Puymbroeck (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

Blog posts and podcasts

‘The Touch of a Man’: Gender and Male Caregiving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in WW1, Remedia, 25 February 2015.

‘Professional Women and Unmanly Men? Care careers in the First World War’, Beyond the Trenches: Researching the First World War, 14 October 2014.

‘Carrying, caring, comforting: the people behind medical evacuation from the front’, Beyond the Trenches: Researching the First World War, 28 August 2014.

‘The long trip home: medical evacuations from the front’, Beyond the Trenches: Researching the First World War, 2 June 2014.

‘Disability and masculinity in the First World War’, The History Press Blog: The Real First World War, 5 June 2014.

‘Don’t forget the hospital orderlies of World War I, on or off the screen’, The Conversation, 15 May 2014.

‘East Leeds Military Hospital’, The Medical Mile, Episode 8, The Thackray Museum

Exhibitions

Contributor, Headingly LitFest 2014

Historical Advisor, ‘Ambulance Trains’, National Railway Museum, 2014

Launch contributor, ‘Wounded: Conflict, Casualties and Care’ The Science Museum, 2016

Contributor, ‘From Front Line to Base Hospital: British Medical Evacuations in the First World War’, Somme 100, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Heaton Park, Manchester, July 2016

Contributor, Be Curious Festival, University of Leeds, 2016

Workshop contributor, ‘Masculinity Late’, The National Army Museum, 2017

Learning resources

Medicine Through Time – The British Sector of the Western Front, 1914-1918, Massolit

World War 1: Changing Faces of Heroism, Future Learn

Stories from the Home Front at Birley School, Sheffield, Whitworks Adventures in Theatre

Local history talks

During this project, Meyer gave talks on medical military evacuations to:

Bradford Local History Society
Herts@War
The Folly Museum in Settle
Northallerton Local History Society
Hull Medical Society
Leeds Central Library