Amputee fetish site Overground.be has a collection of amputee fetish and letters published in London Life magazine, running from 1924 to 1941 and most signed “Wallace Stort”. Some of the letters also concerned prosthetic limbs, orthopedic boots, crutches and other devices. These were published alongside other types of fetish letters and stories.
The letters almost always involved testimonies from usualy young and nice looking women who are amputees, or otherwise “crippled”, in general quite happy with their condition of being “limbless”, or from men who have been involved with such women. Many letters are recommendations and advises from fellow amputee women, about the wear of prosthesis or fashion for the disabled woman. Whether those testimonies are real or fake is left to the appreciation of the reader, but are nevertheless always pleasantly old-fashioned to read.
An accompanying essay provides some historical context:
Sampled over 50 years later, quite the most intriguing and now irrecoverable flavour of London Life was the regular reference to the attractions of limbless and lame women. At intervals over several years from 1927, a writer named Wallace Stort contributed lengthy, sometimes serialised stories whose heroines were always young beautiful spirited creatures who moved in an implausible theatrical world of limbless girls and their admirers.
A probably less than enthusiastic lady artist provided most of the the rather vapid illustrations of a demi-monde where young women rest contentedly on chaise-longues, their delicately chaste gowns revealing fewer limbs than even the heroine possesses. She is in every scene, in and out of the boudoir, resting or sweetly poised on her one dainty leg. Even when she is obliged to toy with an equally dainty crutch, it leaves her hand invitingly free for dalliance with a clean-cut (and unimpaired) hero.
Though there were definitely amuptee fetishists in the Edwardian and Victorian eras, I wonder if this had anything to do with living in England in the years after the first World War, when there were visibly injured people everywhere (obviously most of them would have been men). Also consider that this period would have been with first time in centuries when women’s legs were regular sights, thanks to rising hemlines and even the occasional trouser.
The rest of the Overground site has many interesting articles, essays and testimonials on amputee devotees and wannabees.
