National Institute for the Blind advertisement for St Dunstan's hostel

This colour postcard was issued by the National Institute for the Blind, either during World War I or shortly afterwards, to solicit donations for the St Dunstan's hostel in Regent's Park, London.

St Dunstan's cared for soldiers and sailors blinded during the war and helped them to acquire skills enabling them to earn a living in peacetime Britain - a revolutionary idea at the time. The reverse recommends massage as a suitable profession, for instance. St Dunstan's had been recently founded in 1915 by Arthur Pearson, president of the National Institute for the Blind who owned the 'Evening Standard' and founded the 'Daily Express'. He had lost his own sight to glaucoma. The postcard shows 'When night sets in the sun is down', the painting by R Caton Woodville (1856-1927) depicting a British soldier leading another whose eyes are heavily bandaged. They are surrounded by the carnage of a World War I battlefield, barbed wire in the foreground, corpses lying behind them and wounded soldiers being carried away on stretchers in the background. A white cloth with splashes of blood is symbolically caught on the barbed wire and blood red clouds stain the blue sky above.