Existing comment:
Claude Shepperson
Tending the Wounded: Convalescence in England (from The Great War: Britain's Efforts and Ideals), 1917
Before becoming an official War Artist, Shepperson illustrated fashionable society at play for the satirical magazine Punch. Here, he illustrates a different kind of leisure: soldiers resting at a verdant English estate under the care of nurses.
To help cope with the influx of casualties, thousands of British schools, town halls, and private homes were converted into auxiliary hospitals during the war. Upperclass women who lived at country houses -- like this Tudor mansion -- often tended to convalescents after training with the Red Cross. The British television series Downton Abbey portrayed such service through the character Lady Sybil Crawley. |