612
CHAPTER 37
against his fate and the world and at first refusing treatment, as he wanted to die. Gradu
ally, he became interested in sport, and it was that which restored his will to live and his
self-confidence. He became an outstanding archer by continuous concentration in this
sport, and very soon he captained a team to compete in Berlin in an international contest
for the disabled.
His professional ambition was then to become a secretary in a racing stable, but he
had first to improve his very scanty education by correspondence courses in elementary
arithmetic and reading. In addition, he received clerical training in the administrative
office of the hospital, and from there he won his diploma as a clerk. A chartered accountant
in Aylesbury accepted him on probation without salary. There, he became interested in
accountancy, and in due course by hard work and concentration he passed his examina
tions as an accountant and was employed. His ambition grew commensurate with his
experience, and in 1961 he set up his own practice in Aylesbury, with phenomenal
success. With the increasing practice, he took a partner and employed in his staff two
accountants, two assistant accountants, two typists, one computer operator and one
articled junior accountant. His final ambition was to set up a training establishment for
paraplegics in accountancy, but—alas—this life of tremendous accomplishment, from
an almost illiterate jockey to a chartered accountant in spite of his high paraplegia, was
cut short by a road accident in 1969, in which he was killed.
As early as 1944, an experiment was carried out in Aylesbury by arrangement with
a local factory with the first six rehabilitated paraplegic soldiers, still inpatients at Stoke
Mandeville, to find out whether paraplegics would be able to work side by side and in
competition with able-bodied workers in a factory. They had to be at the factory by
9 o'clock in the morning, to work until 12.30, when they returned to the hospital for
lunch, and to continue work from 2 to 6 p.m. Although this work was rather mono
tonous, it proved to our satisfaction that paraplegics could be successfully placed in
factories side by side with able-bodied people. This experiment proved invaluable as an
incentive to the Ministry of Labour and employers in changing their attitude regarding
the employability of disabled people in wheelchairs. In due course, the Ministry of
Labour set up Industrial Rehabilitation Centres in various parts of the country, where
disabled people, including paraplegics, could receive further training and placement in
industry. Such industrial rehabilitation centres have also been set up in other countries,
the most well known being the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking in New York,
under its Director Mr Ben Lipton, the Johannes Straubinger-Haus, in Wildbad, Ger
many, under its Director, W.Weiss, set up the Caritas Association, and the Berufs-
forderungswork in Heidelberg under its Director, W.Boll, which was very instrumental
for the success of the XXI International Stoke Mandeville Games in Heidelberg.
Domestic resettlement
(i)
In the paraplegic's own home
The great majority of paraplegics and tetraplegics have returned to their own homes
to live with their family within the greater community. Table 41 and 43 (page 630-1) gives
details about the domestic resettlement of the writer's statistic of his first 3,000 patients.
