Sensing the past: reimagining life in a now empty building
At last our researchers get to see inside the building they have been learning about in the archives for eight months – and respond to it creatively.
Restless sleepers
An epidemic of ‘sleepy sickness’ swept through the US and Europe between 1916 – 27, immortalised by Oliver Sacks’ ‘Awakenings’. Some survivors attended the Guild in Bristol, with a variety of post-encephalitic symptoms. Grace Morgan-Tait investigates.
Institutional propaganda and ‘educative convalescence’
How ‘sleepy sickness’ – the illness described by Oliver Sacks came to Bristol, and how disabled children helped soldiers returning from WW1 adapt to the loss of limbs.
Guild of the Brave Poor Things
The Guild of the Brave Poor Things opened a branch in 1894 in Bristol as a social club for people with disabilities. Guild members received a bright red membership card emblazoned with the logo – a crutch crossed with a sword – and the motto “Laetus Sorte Mea”, which translated from Latin as “happy in… Read more »