Description
Members of The Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe was as interested in psychological rehabilitation as he was in physical repair. Keen that his patients should not suffer too badly from the fear of being seen in public on account of their disfigurements, he encouraged the local people to invite them to social events and welcome them to pubs, the cinema and private houses. This earned East Grinstead the sobriquet ‘The town that did not stare’.
The sculpture was commissioned by the Blond McIndoe Research Foundation, with considerable support from McIndoe’s family, for a site in the town. Though initially the idea was to represent McIndoe alone, it soon became clear that he needed to be accompanied by a patient. The sculpture represents the surgeon as a fatherly figure placing his hands on the shoulders of a young disfigured airman soon to enter the operating theatre.
The sculptor’s father Michael Jennings, though not in the RAF, was treated at the hospital by McIndoe’s colleague Percy Jayes. Jennings had been wounded in a tank battle in Holland in 1944 and the injuries he received to his hands are represented in the figure of the airman as a tribute from his son.
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