Paying the Debts of the ‘Economy of Sacrifice’: Military Charities as Brokers in Veteran Care, 1919–1929

Abstract

This article examines the hitherto overlooked contribution of military charities to veteran welfare and reintegration after the First World War. I use the records of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Association War Memorial Fund (KOSB WMF), which operated similarly to other regimental charities, to argue that the scale of this apparatus – its social reach and its funding capacity – may be comparable to the better-known and nationally recognised British Legion. It thus represents an important arena to examine processes that informed veteran reintegration, especially for the wider, non-disabled veteran population whose experiences have been largely omitted from histories of veteran welfare. These archives not only demonstrate the interventions of military associational life in veteran welfare. They also provide an entry point to examine how the system worked holistically. Military charities, like the KOSB WMF, represented one of a range of agencies that cooperated to support veterans in the ‘mixed economy of welfare’. Their bureaucratic archival traces provide a productive route to illuminate the relationships behind fund allocation and delivery and to assess what politics animated these processes.