Description

This wooden artificial arm was worn by Mrs Elsie William Connolly. It has a leather shoulder strap which attached the arm to her body. Her daughter, Mrs Patricia Webb, kindly donated it to the Museum in 1982. Mrs Connolly lost her arm in a laundry accident in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, at the age of 18 in 1913.

The accident occurred when other members of staff at the laundry had gone on an outing. As Mrs Connolly hadn’t worked there for very long, she decided not to go. A young boy failed to put down a grill on a starching machine, and the suction from the machine pulled her in, resulting in her losing her arm. According to her daughter, she was put on a laundry basket until a horse ambulance could take her to hospital. Heavy wooden artificial arms like this were eventually replaced by more lightweight materials like metal in the 1920s. This arm was made just before the First World War, after which there were significant new developments in prosthetics. Mrs Connolly later married a man from Ireland, moved to Liverpool, and had four daughters. She wore the artificial arm until her death in 1971. Mrs Webb also donated another prosthetic arm to the Museum, which belonged to her husband.

Interpretation:
This arm had never been on display before, and in its history file, I read that Mrs Webb had visited what was then the Museum of Liverpool Life to see whether it had ever been displayed. That was in 2001. It had not. I was really determined to make sure it made its way out there, and, in truth, started to plan one of my Curating for Change displays in part around this arm and the other arm, which had belonged to her husband. It was called ‘Assistive Technology: What it Means to Us’ and explored different local people’s relationships to their assistive technology. I wanted to include lots of different, real perspectives from local people, from those who loved their assistive technology, to stories where it was more difficult to define the person's relationship to it - Iris Sirendi, Curating for Change Fellow at Museum of Liverpool

The interpretation for his label included the following:
By the end of Elsie's life, huge advancements in prosthetic technology had been brought about by two world wars. Nevertheless, Elsie wore this arm until she died in 1971. She may have chosen to keep it because of familiarity. Or she may not have been considered for a newer arm, because it was decided that her current one already met her needs. Elsie may have been able to make her own choice, or she might, like many disabled people, have had important decisions about her body made for her by other.

ID:
A brown wooden prosthetic arm bent at the elbow with a brown leather strap on the shoulder. It has no hand attached at the bottom and ends just before the wrist.