”Turned into Taxpayers”: Paraplegia, Rehabilitation and Sport at Stoke Mandeville 1944-1956

This article explores the links between rehabilitation practices and the aims of successive postwar British governments between 1944 and 1956. It focuses on the work at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury where rehabilitation centred around sporting activity. While games and sport were important at the hospital, they were seen more as a means to an end outside the gates of the institution. The focus for the state was labour and the article argues that the process of rehabilitation through sport was informed by the demands of central government and the desire to reduce the economic burden of numbers of permanently disabled people.