Military Massage

We're providing information about the myriad professions and industries that evolved during the Great War period, especially where new techniques emerged, or previously excluded groups were able to attain employment or qualifications.

Kay Nias, whose PhD (University of Exeter) researches the history of physiotherapy as a medical discipline, has provided us with an overview of the Almeric Paget Massage Corps:

Women in Uniform: Almeric Paget Massage Corps

Within a few weeks of the outbreak of the First World War, the Almeric Paget Massage Corps (APMC) was founded by American philanthropists Mr and Mrs Almeric Paget, to provide physical treatments to wounded soldiers. From the outset the APMC was a prestigious organisation consisting of only fifty women volunteers, all highly trained members of the Incorporated Society of Trained Masseuses. Members of the APMC worked hard; each masseuse regularly attended 30-40 patients per day providing a range of physical therapies including massage, remedial gymnastics, electrotherapy and hydrotherapy in a concerted effort to get men back to the front.

In November 1914 the APMC set up a massage and electrical out-patient clinic at 55 Portland Place, London, for the treatment of wounded men and throughout the war an average of 200 patients per day benefited from the services of the clinic. Director- General of the Army Medical Service, Sir Alfred Keogh inspected the clinic in March 1915 and the service became a model for the development of massage and electrical departments in major convalescent hospitals and command depots across the UK.

In total 3,388 women and men served in the APMC and a total of 56 masseuses served abroad between January 1917 and May 1919. The work of the APMC was highly regarded; having been recognised by the War Office in early 1915 as the official body to which all masseurs and masseuses engaged in military service should belong, the organisation changed its name to the Almeric Paget Military Massage Corps in 1916. 

The Long Goodbye, a Conversation across a Century

Description of The Long Good-bye: a Great War Centenary Project
 sponsored by the Exeter Annual Award

Beginning: March 2014 (Get involved!)
Rollout date: 4 August 2014

Exeter, Devon, UK.

Welcome to The Long Goodbye, another eXegesis production. eXegesis is the international collective of artists that include, Dr. Jaime Robles (Creative Writing, The Dark Lyric, Hoard (Shearsman 2013)), Mike Rose-Steel (PhD Researcher, Creative Writing, The Ineffable), and SMSteele (PhD Researcher, The Art of Witness: Truth, Process and Form in the Great War Narrative, Canadian war artist 2008-2010). eXegesis is the collective who have brought you the internationally recognized Wall of Miracles, 51 Shades of Black and Blue, a poetry cabaret, and most recently, The Wittgenstein Vector. We invite you to join The Long Good-bye. Please contact us through this website and we'll tell you how you or your group can get involved!

The 4^th August 2014 marks the centenary of the Great War. While there will be many memorials and appropriately sombre remembrances of the significant loss and tragedy of the war, eXegesis proposes to “re-voice” the war narrative through a large-scale installation of love letters to those who left their homes to serve. Those who left, includes army, navy, air force and support trades, as well as munitions workers (many women), land army, Volunteer Aid Detachment Workers VADs, professional nurses, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANYs), Ambulance Corps workers (many of them Quakers), chaplains, medics, and many, many others. For this project we shall also include those who contributed in other ways. These could be the children who collected blackberries for soldiers' jam, and eggs for the war effort, or the sphagnum moss gatherers from up in the moors whose moss was used for bandages., or wheelwrights, veterinarians, football teams -  there were sports battalions  who all gave, or left. But this was not a European engagement only, people from all around the world coped and contributed - a million soldiers from India, tens of thousands from Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Morocco, China… We invite participants from the "other" side too, your words are worthy and welcome to us... the voices of Germany, Hungary, Austria… and we welcome words to those who felt they could not for moral or religious reasons participate.

Titled The Long Goodbye (TLG), this installation proposes to present for the public, love letters to those who left for the Great War. TLG will combine reproduced archival material such as postcards, diary pages, medical reports, or photographs, with a handwritten, contemporary response—poetic or prose—on the other side of the letter, as a “conversation” across the century. The physical objects, small and quietly unobtrusive—echoing leaving and absence—will emulate the formats available during the war years, will be interactive (with a digital signature co-located to an audio reading of the work done by the university’s drama students), and will be designed to be bio-degradable—drawing on eXegesis’ experience with the earlier Wall of Miracles (2012), and the Wittgenstein Vector installations. Local historian Richard Batten, PhD (History) whose research focuses on Devon and the Great War, will advise the project and assure its historical integrity.

The installation will begin to be hung on 4 August 2014, in the former stables of the university—representing the “everyman” who enlisted—and will slowly roll-out from this site, enacting a journey to war, with an end-point exhibit at, or near, the rail station, the point of departure for the Front and other sites of war work. The route of this installation will encourage the reader to imagine taking the same route and will potentially bring a physical and more immediate perspective to the centenary. Ideally, other community sites would participate in the roll-out, including smaller villages throughout Devon, whose sons and daughters said “Goodbye” a century ago.

In partnership with the University of Exeter, the City of Exeter, the schools, and community groups throughout, eXegesis will co-ordinate a series of workshops on writing and the crafting of a set template (for uniformity of aesthetic outcome) of letters, and will curate and install the exhibit. There are plans for a publication and formal exhibit as well, with the potential to engage the drama department in readings and possible dramatic staging of the letters.

The Long Goodbye aims to re-embody the farewells of so long ago and we recognize the importance of memory and recognition to those who leave the safety and comfort of home. This holds true especially for those who return and cannot begin to describe to their loved ones where they have been and what they have seen and done.

The Long Goodbye then, is an opportunity for the university community and the community at large to engage in historical research and imagination, and make a significant, heartfelt and knowledgeable contribution to Exeter’s Great War Centenary.

The Scope of War Work

By Dr. Richard Batten, PhD History, University of Exeter

The 4 August 2014 marks the centenary of when Great Britain declared war against Germany. In Britain, this event will usher in four years of commemoration of the conflict from 2014 to 2018. The First World War is commonly associated with the experiences of the British Army on the Western Front and the images of trenches, barbed wire and machine guns. However, this is not the full story of the British experience of the conflict. 

From August 1914 to November 1918, the British population who remained at home contributed to the war effort through a variety of activities which constituted to the war work. Across the width and breadth of the British Isles, both the scale and scope of these various initiatives was impressive. In fact, the sheer scope of the various forms of war work provided individuals who could not volunteer into the British Armed forces with valuable opportunities to not only participate with the war effort but also present their patriotism. Forms of wartime participation included collecting eggs to feed the troops, harvesting of sphagnum moss to use as a temporary medical dressing, knitting scarves and socks for the troops and picking blackberries to turn into jam which was sold in aid of the war effort.

These activities were all part of a great flowering of imaginative charitable and philanthropic activities to support the war effort. In addition, men who were unable to fight in the Army or the Navy could claim citizenship in the wartime community by forming committees and societies to help those affected by the war or to organise resources in order to benefit for the war effort.  In many instances, women took an active role to work for the war effort. They enlisted into women wartime organisations which ranged from agricultural entities such as the Women’s Land Army to medical organisations including the Voluntary Aid Detachment. 

Simultaneously, women became involved with the production of shells, munitions, gas masks and other products that were essential for Britain’s military forces of and the British Empire during the Great War. At the same time, children were encouraged to support the war effort not only through fundraising for different wartime charities but also within their educational activities in school. The great range of different forms of war work reveals the level of support for the war that was invested by civilians. This meant that instances of war work were a distinctive and important part of life on the British Home Front from 1914 to 1918. With the centenary of the declaration of the First World War, now is the time for the stories to be told of the men, women and children who contributed to the war effort in various forms of war work on the British Home Front.