Dear Sir, - I read with great interest the letters from "Helen Fivetoes" and "Roy the Second" in your fine magazine - which I have been reading regularly since 1929 - and have a fine album of stories, etc., about and from maimed girls, and have at last plucked up sufficient courage to write to you about myself.
I am 29 years old, have been married eight years, and have been crippled for twenty-four years, so that I can claim to know what crippledom is.
I was barely five when a railway smash deprived me of my right leg below the knee, and my right eye, so you will see that I cannot remember what it is like to be formed in the normal way.
I have at various periods used all the substitutes far a leg crutches, peg-legs, and the various artificial limbs - and I assure you that the forerunner of the present splendid limb had to be worn and suffered to be realised.
I wore a peg-leg until I was 17 - first the usual "broom-handle," and then rather an unsightly but very useful circular peg made of leather with a wide round base about three inches across - and then artificial limbs of various makes, until the present light metal limb was brought out.
Perhaps because my knee-joint is left to me I have been luckier than many of the one-legged people, as I mast certainly can do almost anything except get chilblains on my right foot. I can even run a little, play games, dance, and get about without fatigue or pain, swim fairly well, and show very little sign of my missing limb.
I met my husband in very unusual circumstances. I was at a party, and the games began to get a little hectic, and my corset string - the stump corset, of course - snapped, and my leg became detached and was only kept from falling on the floor by my stocking and suspenders, and I looked very silly, as I had taken great pains to conceal my infirmity; and a gentleman who had been seated throughout the whole of the time came to my assistance, and it was quite obvious that he had only one leg - his right and he was wearing one of the old-pattern limbs. It must have been a case of like calling to like, as within a very short time we were married.
Since then we have vied with each other in being as nimble as possible, and he is almost as active as I, although his stump is only a few inches long.
I am able to wear quite high heeled shoes, and I firmly believe that a girl on two crutches is able to wear a heel, that a two-legged girl could hardly stand on, simply because her whole weight can be born by the armpits, as my ultra-modern sister wears shoes with 5 « inch heels for dancing and with the aid of my trusty old crutches - kept for use on both nights, as one must discard a false leg in a bath - I can get about with her high heel on my left foot much quicker and easier than she can on her two size 5 feet.
My glass eye is a different proposition, as I cannot and never shall be able to conceal that; but I go a long way towards doing so with the aid of a smart pair of eyeglasses.
Yours truly,
Crippled Wife.