Episode 1 The Disabled Century

DISCORDANT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

RUMBLING EXPLOSION

# Oh, we don't want to lose you

# But we think you should go... #

The Disabled Century came into dramatic focus with the First World War.

Where previously, disabled people were the isolated "deserving poor",

the war now created a disabled army -

one and a half million war-wounded losing limb or mind, or both.

We were getting ready to go over the top again when a shell burst overhead.

One fellow jumped out of the trench and went screaming down the line.

Screaming. We called it shell shock.

You get a shell-shocked man crying.

Crying for home.

His mind's gone... Completely gone.

I was the first ambulance driver at the local workhouse.

I had the job of taking a shell-shocked man to a mental hospital,

because he was past...past curing.

You always had an attendant

because a shell-shocked man was classed as mental.

He could get better, and on the other hand, if he was too bad, he'd be sent to a proper mental home.

But you could always tell. They can't walk straight.

And they get pains in the head.

And the face swells.

And they get all the symptoms.

All the symptoms...we'll call it, "as a drunk man", again.

Dick Trafford was war-disabled -

wounded in the Somme, Looes, Passchendaele, Verdun...

You felt you didn't want to get hit. You didn't want to be badly wounded.

You'd sooner get a bullet that would finish you off altogether.

I think that was the attitude.

There was this dark room, and there were soldiers - ex-soldiers - laying there.

No arms at all, no legs... and in total darkness.

They might as well have been dead,

like... There was no life at all.

They were what you'd call just "living".

Terrible.

The men were dropping round you like flies,

getting killed by the thousand - not by hundreds, by the thousand.

Horace Blackburn, himself disabled from childhood, recalls fitting the limbs to disabled ex-soldiers.

I got the job in the Cripple Aid and I remember one day this man was helped into the back shop.

He'd lost both legs in the war.

He pushed himself around on a little platform...

And had to have special things on his hands. He propelled himself along the pavement with his hands.

We would patch this contrivance

with a bit of waste material, anything we had left over...

One gun exploded as we were passing.

And it caused my left ear to burst... and bleed.

When a German shell overhead exploded, one piece...

severed the end of my thumb.

..I remember I went home and told my mother, and said I'd seen these men like that,

and was told, "Well, that's what happens, son, with war."

They're just... Nobody wants them.

They've done their bit,

and they're just fobbed off with perhaps a little bit of pension, and that's it.

An arm, I think, were four shilling. An arm.

And...

I think a leg was about five or six.

My leg... My leg was on the Somme.

I was hit in the throat

by a sniper's bullet.

They said if it's mustard gas, going over to the Germans the wind could blow the wrong way,

and blow the gas back on us. Didn't do you any good. I got a piece of shrapnel in my ankle.

Apart from that, they kept me in the army, in and out the trenches.

"We can't afford to sign you to Blighty. We want you back up the line."

FEMALE VIBRATO VOICE

# I'm going to be a lad I'm going to be a lad I will be a lad some day... #

The war brought disablement into the open at a time

when the Government was locking away learning-disabled people under the 1913 Mental Defectives Act.

Bill Surrey was locked away when he was seven years old.

He spent his life locked away.

I must've been like the others, the "low grade", if see you what I mean,

when I was younger.

"Helpless person". Helpless. Evil ain't it, something like that?

It's not THEIR fault, is it? I might have been one a little bit...

wanting help.

Bill Surrey's family tried to stop Bill being taken from them.

I did see a man named Mr Curtis. Someone said he was in charge of County Hall.

My mother asked, can she take me home. They said, "Very sorry, Mrs Surrey."

I said to my mum, "Don't worry about that. It's not your fault.

"I'm OK there for the time being."

Must be 70 years, if I went in in 1919.

I think it's 70, I'm not sure.

When I went there, the early days, they'd have silent pictures.

A film was called Pancho, Masked Rider.

I got put there when I was nine.

And they kept on saying in 13 years time I wouldn't be here. I was supposed to have left in 13 years.

Know what I mean?

Didn't hear no more.

I didn't talk to anybody for a week. I didn't know nobody, you see.

They give it a name. A lot of us didn't want to be "MD".

They had it in their mind to get away from the hospital.

Couldn't get out the lodge gate. They'd lock it up, see what I mean,

in case a patient escaped from their place, tried to get away.

They'd maybe run off. I climbed over the wall. Nobody see me.

I put my jacket on the wall, of course, in case I cut my hands.

They sent the staff after me, take me back.

In the end, the nurse who saw me said,

"I'm sorry, you have to go to ward nine." To see the doctor, you see.

In ward nine, if you'd run away...

you'd have a haircut like a convict, see, as a punishment.

If you'd kick up rough, they had a doctor who would give you a needle,

calm you down, put you to sleep.

In the night, four or five staff would hold you down.

Learning-disabled children were not the only ones sent away.

Many disabled children were segregated in the name of improvement and schooling,

like Bill and Peggy Dixon - sent away in the 1920s.

FEMALE INTERPRETER OF SIGN LANGUAGE: My mother said, "We're going off to the seaside."

We had to catch this train from Victoria Station - and there were all these other children there.

My mother met the headmaster to talk about me. The children were getting on the train, and the door closed!

I'm waving out the window, "Get on the train!" She said, "No."

The train started. I was banging on the window, and crying and crying.

-MALE INTERPRETER:

-I got in and they closed the door. "I want my mum! I want my mum to put me on the train!"

They wouldn't let her. I was crying, and the train was pulling out. She was crying. I banged on the window,

wanting to get out. This woman said, "Don't worry. Here's your case. We're going to the seaside."

I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." We ended up at this huge school. I was really upset.

People were signing. I didn't know what was going on. They thought I was stupid because I couldn't sign.

Don't lip read, don't speak, you have to sign.

"We don't know what you're talking about." I didn't know what THEY were saying. It was so frightening.

I was really upset. I was crying. This woman said, "Oh, don't cry..."

We got there, and I didn't get any tea or anything. I had to go straight to bed, on the first day.

I got into bed, and I missed my mum. She was gone! I was crying.

I'd always had my brother to talk to before bed,

and these people were poking and signing at me in the night. I was frightened.

I know some of the children in this class.

I wasn't there, because these are the kids that were sort of hard of hearing. They had hearing aids,

and I didn't. Yes, this is our class. I know some of them.

I'm just on the side, here. I'm the fair-haired one on the side

Segregation was considered caring in a society which did not care for disabled people,

and it made strangers of these children when they returned home.

My mother said to me and my friends, "No, don't sign! It looks mad. Terrible." I didn't know what to do.

I could lip read, but not sign. At school I could, but I had to speak at home.

I'd get a piece of paper and blow it off to practise P and S.

She said, "I'm really proud of you. You speak really well."

Those were just exercises to learn to speak!

Gladys Brooks was one of many who had their childhood dominated by crude medical mistreatment.

Caught up in the idea of correcting disability, the doctors humiliated her and her body.

I was, as a baby, strapped onto a frame,

which was canvas on a steel frame.

And I was on that more or less permanently for about 2½ years,

hoping that the curvature of the spine, the "hump", as they called it then,

would go down...which it did.

But when the hump goes down, your bottom comes up.

At the hospital, the doctor said, "Yes, we can give him an operation, but it'll cost about £200,

"and it will ruin his face. It'll be distorted from the operation." My mother was upset.

There was a 50-50 chance whether I'd hear anything. My mother WAS upset. "No! Just LEAVE his ears."

You know. "He's deaf - let's just leave it at that."

Another thing they used was... I don't quite know what to call it.

It was a box affair, and it had...

From the roof part it had leather straps with a circle of leather

which was strapped around my neck with the two thongs going up.

And there, I had to lift my bottom off the floor...

They had, again... I could relieve myself with... There was two handles on the side.

But it was pretty gruesome.

They used to get me to climb up the bars,

and I hung.

And the idea of that was that they might stretch my spine.

The weight of my body would bring me up straighter

and so make me slightly taller.

But in fact it didn't.

When I was about four or five, we went up to Great Ormond Street.

We'd been going up there every year since they found I had some sort of muscular dystrophy.

The doctor said, "Well, Mrs Harding, we can do no more for your children.

"We doubt if they'll live to their teens."

Mum said, "Well, if that's the case, we'll go home and start living."

And the teens come,

and the 20s come, and the 30s come and the 40s come,

and the 50s come and the 60s come!

And I'm still here. And even my sister lived till she was 65.

My father encouraged me to go to the clinic twice a week

and try these exercises out. But it was extremely painful.

And psychologically, one of the most painful things

was to be told very often when I walked in the clinic room

that my bottom protruded so much that if they put a cup of tea on it, it wouldn't spill over.

That, for almost a teenager...

I mean, it is mental torture, really, to think that you are never going to straighten up...

Nevertheless, my bottom still protrudes, but I've never been able to carry a cup of tea on it!

As soon as I left school at 14, my mother had a letter to say,

"Sorry, no more can be done for your daughter. No more trips to the clinic."

# Happy days are here again... #

If an able-bodied man with two arms and legs, two eyes and ears,

could not find work in the unemployed 1930s,

a disabled man whom society already considered useless had even less chance.

I tried many different kinds of jobs.

One of the jobs I thought would just suit me down to the ground

was the...bellboy, "Buttons" as they called them.

These young boys in hotels.

And they wore a nice uniform with a little pillbox hat on.

And I thought, "Well, I'll apply for that."

And they said, "I'm sorry, you're too small.

"The uniforms we have are four or five or six inches longer.

"Inches too long for you. I'm afraid it's no good."

Then... There used to be one or two "pillboxes"

at the posh picture houses. I went there.

I applied there for the job. Again it was the same thing.

"Sorry. The uniform we have is far too big."

There was an advertisement in the news.

My mother said, "This is for you. Surely they can't refuse you this time." It was a working jeweller.

He looked over the counter.

"No, I'm afraid not, son. You're too small."

My mother almost rolled up her sleeves and says, "I'm going to have a talk with this man.

"It doesn't require the physique of a Hercules to be a watchmaker."

# ..Your cares and troubles are gone... #

In the 1930s, one of the few places disabled men and women got work

was in the institution or charity workshops -

albeit for little or no pay.

Inside, there was a printer's. On the other side, a bookbinder's.

A carpenter's shop, they had... And I'll tell you what they used to make.

Coffins.

I worked downstairs. I was in charge of the dayroom and the lobby.

I had to scrub the kitchen out.

Under our staircase there were all, like, rats' holes round the sides.

I used to scrub it. No light under there.

I might've been 12.

I went to a couple of children's aid societies.

Oh, I got a job all right.

And I was fair with myself.

And at the end of the week, when I saw the ridiculously small pay...

I was supposed to get a small rise every six months.

And when I DIDN'T get that rise, my mother complained about it.

I remember a lawyer came and showed my mother a form,

which was from the Board of Trade,

saying that as the employees were crippled,

they couldn't be possibly expected to earn...the same amount of work.

I hated it, I loathed it, it was dirty,

it was long hours, it was low pay -

but I stuck to it. I stuck to it for five years.

# When things go funny And there isn't any money Have a seaside holiday at home! #

Many people were poor in the pre-Welfare State 1930s,

but disabled people and their families were among the poorest.

I had no wheelchair - we couldn't afford one - so I crawled everywhere on my hands and knees.

I could run... Well, I couldn't "run", but I could keep up with every other kid in the block.

We lived on the fourth floor of a four storey block of flats. Don't ask me how come,

cos my mum had two bloody children, and we were both disabled.

And there was 53 stairs down,

which I could get down in two minutes. And it took me five minutes to get back again.

But I used to get down all them stairs, crawl out to the front.

Every Saturday morning was the cinema, with all the kids.

I used to crawl, oh, I dunno...

a mile and a half,

all over the pavements with all the other kids.

And...

Well, I could crawl as they could run or walk.

And we used to go to the cinema, sing our little songs,

then come out and play cowboys and Indians all the way back again.

And on Sunday afternoon, if we had the money, I'd crawl to another one,

which must've been at least 2½ miles, with the kids.

We went there on a Sunday cos it only cost us a penny.

I was just one of the kids and that was that. They never queried why I couldn't walk.

The build-up to war meant the evacuation of thousands of children.

Snowy Harding remembers how the able-bodied children left first.

When all the children started to be evacuated from all the area,

I remember one day sitting upstairs looking out of the window -

cos we had the main railway station in the street.

There was all these kids, hundreds of 'em, coming along three deep.

All had their little gas masks and little brown parcels.

All the mothers running alongside crying their eyes out. It was a scene I'll never forget.

After a few days the streets were SO quiet.

It was absolutely frightening, it was.

I used to crawl around the streets, and there wasn't anybody in sight.

It seemed as if the Pied Piper had been down the street and all the kids had gone.

And it was, well, "the war without children".

His able-bodied friends were evacuated to families,

Snowy - to an institution.

In the following April, the authorities come round and said,

"If you don't let your children go, we'll take 'em away." So we went.

Dad saw this place in Essex called Fairfield.

And there they were, waiting for us.

It was bloody AWFUL, it was. Two wheelchairs all ready for us.

And they were all SMILING as if, I dunno, "We've got you two at last!"

And it was a total shock, I tell ya, cos the children I'd left behind...

I was just a normal kid, although I crawled on my hands and knees.

And there was I, stuck in a wheelchair

with 40-odd disabled boys.

And it was a culture-shock, I think.

-And the next bit, I realised that

-I

-wasn't like everybody else.

I was disabled.

So I knuckled down to being disabled for the next two years

before I left.

# And a nightingale sang In Berkeley Square... #

Do I remember what I was doing at the outbreak of war? At the actual time of 11 o'clock,

I was sorting Braille books in the school library where I'd been evacuated.

I was just barely 15, and all at sea in a different school I hadn't been to.

But I became friendly with one of the masters, a very nice old chap.

He said, "Pye, you're interested in Braille. Come and help me sort out the library."

Then he said, "We'd better listen to this announcement by the Prime Minister, hadn't we?"

We heard these momentous words...

"I have to inform you that no such undertaking has been received,

"and so, from now, Great Britain is at war with Germany."

-PRIME MINISTER:

-..Britain is at war with Germany.

You could feel it sort of... "Oh, God. What's going to happen?"

When I was evacuated,

all the boys used to wake up about 12 o'clock, when you heard the planes coming over.

One of the boys used to kneel down, and I'd get on his back

and we'd creep out, up the stairs, into the loo,

and used to stand on the loo where there was a little, tiny window...

Grilles over the windows, there was, as if we was going to escape.

And you could see all of the East End of London...just blazing away.

And I used to think, "Bloody hell, my PARENTS are out there."

But you never forget the sort of views we used to see,

when the sky was bright red everywhere you looked.

# Pom, pom, Get in your shelter. #

It was a very lonely time.

I was in this huge ward with roughly 40 other children.

On hearing the sirens,

I just knew that everybody would come rushing,

that there was a routine of taking the children...

I guess each child had been allocated to a particular person.

On the first occasion they took me with them.

That was the only time I went. They didn't take me after that.

I was the only child left in the ward.

It was a kind of punishment, really, because I was seen to be in the ward a long time,

and it was...almost that they were tired of me.

-CHURCHILL:

-..Nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

The first year it started, I had a breakdown, see what I mean.

I worked in the workshop,

and Mr Prew said, "Bill, I better take you back to the ward.

"You've not had no sleep for two or three nights."

I saw the doctor - named Dr Barnes - who put me on a tonic.

Had it every night at 8 o'clock before going to bed.

The bottom floor, I slept. Didn't hear nothing at all!

I slept by a person, a sensible patient, he said,

"Now you have that, Bill, you won't hear nothing." I didn't hear nothing.

I had a nice sleep. The first year, I couldn't sleep - guns and that.

You had to carry your own mattress down the stairs.

I slept in the day.

# Moonlight becomes you

# It goes with your hair... #

I won't forget that night in 1944.

My sister and I were standing in the front door of my parents' home,

looking out towards London.

Air raid on - always exciting.

Searchlights criss-crossing in the sky, the drone of German bombers...

They went woom, woom, woom, woom. A most peculiar noise. Quite ominous.

..and the flash of anti-aircraft shells bursting.

Suddenly there was a brilliant blue flash.

A high-explosive bomb went off, a surface blast 15 feet from me.

Blew in the house front, killed my sister.

The front door had gone upstairs, taking part of my arm with it,

and left me on the floor, spitting ceiling plaster when I came round,

and looked down at my left leg, and saw it was in a peculiar position. Didn't like the look of that.

When I came to and saw this cage under the blankets,

I said, "What's that?"

It was a hell of a shock when someone said, "Well, I'm afraid your left leg's been taken off."

DOODLEBUG DRONE

It sounded like motorbikes.

You know - it was the noise of a motorbike, only it was non-stop.

It just didn't stop. It went on and on continuously.

And we thought, what on earth could this BE?

It wasn't until the morning, with the national papers, that we then understood they were doodlebugs.

# Just collect your family And quickly lead the way... #

They'd say, "You know so-and-so's street? Four houses were absolutely destroyed," etc, etc.

You got, filtered-through, what WAS happening, but...

I don't think I wanted to SEE it.

Glad I hadn't.

There ARE advantages.

In one of the major disability initiatives of the 20th century,

the wartime Government employed a third of a million disabled people for the war effort.

NEWSREADER: A remarkable triumph over infirmity is that of John Irwin.

a 34-year-old Northumberland farmer who has been blind from birth.

He does most of the principle jobs on the farm without help. Milking is one of many.

If there's a man who ever deserved a smoke, that man is blind John.

Babs Yule was called up for war work, firstly working on the land.

It WAS like a Land Girl. The first bit I did was singling a small field of sugar beet -

all by myself - and it was a very hot summer, then. That was 1940.

The Government brought many of the new disabled workers into the munitions factories.

BABS: I was in Marconi's from May '43. They decided I should go in the instrument part.

As soon as I got there, they had to find me something to stand on

so's I could reach the bench and the machines.

I found it an interesting little job. Later on, I heard that they regarded me as the best riveter they'd had.

Our firm was particularly good at taking disabled people.

They were particularly un-good at the pay! But they were very good to work with otherwise.

It was difficult for a blind physiotherapist. There was a prejudice then.

But, you see, I was trained BEFORE the war with that intent, that that was going to be my life's work.

We had LOTS of casualties from London. Bad casualties.

Mrs Clark was a young mother, had four children. Going shopping, she got the children ready.

The baby was in the pram. She heard a doodlebug, gathered her children,

bent across the pram, and the house was hit.

She had a broken back.

Paralysed from the waist downwards. I went to give her massage to keep the circulation going in her legs.

She told me what a good husband she had. One day, in the grounds, he stopped me and said,

"Will my wife ever walk again? Will she sit in a chair?" So that she could do her vegetables by the sink.

Then one day, one of the children came in and said,

"Daddy slept with Rita last night."

Rita...was a lady friend.

And I heard later that Mrs Clark had died,

and, they thought, of a broken heart.

Ah, here we are.

This is me walking when I'd just got my leg. Very tentative.

Bit faster, there.

A few weeks later.

A bit later again, getting quite quick. This is all in the house we were evacuated to. My bombed house.

I didn't get depressed because, primarily, I thought of Douglas Bader.

He became my shining light for the future. "Well, hell, here's a bloke with TWO artificial legs,

"and he flies. He's fighting the Germans in the RAF. If he can do that, I'll certainly be OK. Great!"

The story I've always like about Bader - I think I've got it right -

was that he was shot down and became a prisoner-of-war in Germany.

They got so worried he'd be trying to escape, they took his legs away.

At some stage, a new pair of legs were dropped to him by parachute with the agreement of the Germans.

But they put springs in the ankles, so if he had to parachute again,

he'd get a cushioned landing. Rather nice!

Though disabled before the war in a flying accident, Douglas Bader was a disabled war hero,

a fighter ace who flew with artificial legs.

I then had a lovely picture of artificial legs as sort of shiny suits of armour, a Bionic Man touch.

I thought, "Get one of those - cor, you won't be able to catch me up!"

It psychologically boosts you and keeps you going. Till I GOT one and it was a bit slower than that!

HE LAUGHS

-CHURCHILL:

-Never, in the field of human conflict,

was so much owed by so many to so few...

Many were disabled on active service -

people like Bill Simpson and Jack Toper, who were, as they put it,

"mashed, boiled or fried" in action.

Boiled was quite good. Mashed - all chewed up by bits of metal and so on.

Fried, certainly, yes. Flame was always involved in it. It was very, very quick flash flame.

It was over Germany, Monchengladbach, on August 31, 1943.

We were over the target. Usual thing - bombs had gone, then were we attacked by fighters.

One engine was shot out immediately. We held a sort of confab on the intercom, whether to bail out -

cos the plane was in a bad state -

or whether to press on and try to get back to England. Naturally, the majority wanted to get back.

On May 10, 1940, the Germans started to move.

I was stationed in a single-engine bomber squadron.

We had to attack a vast column of advancing German armour going into Luxembourg.

We had to make two approaches to attack it, and while this was happening, we were being hit.

When the plane did come to a halt,

one of the crew I pushed through the hatch.

I then got the blast from the oxygen bottles which were lying up along the side of the fuselage.

They hit me, and I suppose that's the reason I got so badly singed.

I then got out onto the wing. I'd read that the thing to do if you're on fire is roll over, which I did.

And then a lovely Cockney voice running towards me, one of a few soldiers on anti-aircraft duty,

his first words were, "Don't worry, mate, you're back home now." And mate was very glad to be back home!

The engine caught fire, and so I had to try and find somewhere to land.

We made a forced landing, but by then the aircraft was virtually out of control. I just had to thump down.

The moment we stopped, the whole thing went right up.

The observer and the air-gunner pulled me onto the wing, or I wouldn't be here.

World War II proved a turning-point for disabled people. The "useless" disabled were now useful.

They worked in the factories, they served in the war. Many were created BY the war.

A fundamental shift in attitudes towards disabled people occurred...

for now.