Chapter Four : The Army Hospital in the Crimean War and Queen Victoria's three visits

In 1854 the peace in Europe was broken by the outbreak of the Crimean War.(link) It started when a clash between Tsarist Russia and the declining Ottoman Empire led Britain and France to support the Sultan and fight Russia in order to protect their interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

It was on the Russian Crimean Peninsula where Britain was got its foretaste of the horrors of modern war and the siege of the Russian naval base at Sebastopol cost the country in excess of 20,000 dead and wounded alone. This was the first war to be brought home to the British public via photographs and the dispatches of William Howard Russell in 'The Times' newspaper. (link)

As the War progressed, casualties from the Battles of the River Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman and the Redan began to arrive at Fort Pitt Military Hospital. (link) Many of the men were severely wounded, barely surviving the travails of the journey home. Others had lost limbs or were suffering from mental conditions brought on by the strains and horrors of war. In 1855, when the first batch of wounded men returned from the Crimean War, Queen Victoria invited a small group of veterans to Buckingham Palace. (link) The sight of these 'mutilated' men so affected her that she recorded that the speech of welcome she had prepared 'all stuck in my throat' and she had to excuse herself from it for fear of breaking down. Though such encounters were distressing, the Queen met as many of the wounded as possible and showed a personal interest in their recovery. On the morning of March 3rd 1855, both staff and patients must have been keen with excitement for Queen Victoria and the Royal Party were to visit the Hospital.  

The visitors arrived at Strood South Eastern Railway Station and were taken by carriage to the colonnaded front entrance of the Hospital, a scene which was perfectly captured by Sir John Tenniel’s splendid painting. The presence of the Royal Party must have been an awesome assembly for blue-coated convalescents who were housed in the old casemates of the Fort and not bed-bound like the other patients and now stood to attention and waited to be inspected by the Queen who was conducted around with Dr Dartnell, the Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals, on her right hand. 

In addition to Dr Dartnell, the Queen, who incidentally was 36 years old, was met by the Commandant and the Staff Surgeons. She was accompanied by Prince Albert and two sons, Edward, the Prince of Wales, who was 14 and Prince Alfred, who was 11. Dr Dartnell recorded details of the visit in ‘A few brief anecdotes connected with Her Majesty’s visits to the Hospitals at Chatham. 1855-56’ which forms a valuable and detailed source of information. 

When the Royal Party entered the Hospital, they visited the patients in the lower wards and the scene was recorded in an oil painting by the artist Jerry Barrett in which 21 figures were portrayed. In addition to Dr Dartnell, these included : a sombre Duke of Cambridge, Lord Hardinge, Former Governor General of India, who had been invalided out of Crimea; the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting, Viscountess Charlotte Canning, the wife of the Prime Minister and active in nursing organizations; the Staff Surgeon, Henry Cooper Reade, shown explaining the nature of the injuries; and among the soldiers, the heroic Sergeant John Breese, ‘who left his arm among the Muscovites, but took from them a dozen lives to balance the account’ at the Battle of Inkerman and standing to attention on the far right of the painting. Victoria, incidentally, saw to it that Private Breese, on discharge from the Army, was appointed to the Yeoman of the Guard with a pension for life. (link)

1. Queen Victoria  2. Prince Albert  3. Edward, Prince of Wales  4. Prince Alfred  5.Duke of Cambridge  6. Major General Grey  7. Mrs Edew   8. Dr Dartnell   10. Col. Sir C.B.Phipps 11. Viscountess Canning  12. Lord Hardinge   13. Staff Surgeon Reade 14. Colonel  Edew  15. Sergeant  Breese  16. Sergeant  Leucy  17. Sergeant McCabe 

 

Each patient, for the purpose of the visit, had a card at the bottom of his bed on which was written his name, regiment, age, service, nature of wound and place of action where he was wounded, as seen on the blanket stamped with a chevron and ‘B.O.’ (Board of Ordnance) of the bed next to the Sergeant Leucy in conversation with Prince Alfred. 

In her progress around the Hospital, some cases, which had involved skilful surgery, particularly interested the Queen, like the case a young soldier called Barrett who had been struck in the face by a thirteen inch canister shot which had been removed a few days before by Staff Surgeon Paroy. Dr Dartnell, possibly thinking to steer the Queen’s conversation onto a lighter vein, suggested that they should visit the upper wards and, in particular, Private George Hayward, the Hospital’s longest staying patient.  

As the Royal party approached ‘Old George’ he propped himself up in bed and without waiting for an introduction said : “God Bless Your Majesty for deigning to come and see a poor old helpless creature like me who has been suffering for so many years with the asthmatics and the rheumatics and the pleuritics and the paralytics.  I well remember your Majesty’s father, the late Duke of Kent and I ken well the time that I often saw your Majesty yourself, when you were a wee thing of eight years old, running about the Kensington Gardens”.       

George must have been a little ‘creative’ on this last point, The Queen was eight years old in 1827 and according to Dr Dartnell, George had been a patient at the Hospital since before 1821 and a little later George himself admitted that he had been hospitalised in 1819, the year in which the Queen was born. But this is beside the point. George continued : “And this is Prince Albert and these are Your Majesty’s royal children, God Bless them and  may I make so bold to ask Your Majesty, which is His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales ? The eldest I suppose ? Well, God Bless him too and grant that he may be as good a man as everybody says his father is”. 

Here was one old soldier, not in the least overawed by royalty. On learning that George was ninety years old and had been in the Hospital for so many years, the Queen remarked : “Dear me, how wonderfully well he looks, even now” to which Dr Dartnell replied : “I hope Your Majesty will look upon the fact as proof of the care we take of Your Majesty’s soldiers in this establishment”.   

Before leaving his bed the Queen bowed ‘graciously’ to Old George, which must have added greatly to the old man’s enjoyment. However, when Victoria made the second of her three visits to Fort Pitt, she omitted to see George, a fact which Dr Dartnell records, was a ‘cause of great distress and vexation to him’. It is, perhaps, possible that, on hearing the reasons why George had become an army invalid in the first place, she may have deliberately avoided him and devoted herself to ‘worthier’ patients. The reader may remember that George was the young private who had cut the hamstrings in one leg in order to avoid going into battle in Wellington’s Peninsula War and, as punishment, the Duke had ordered the same to be done to his good leg and as a result he became an army invalid for the rest of his long life. 

On this first visit, as the royal party were leaving Prince Albert said : “May I ask Mr Dartnell. If the Hospital is always as clean and nice as it is today?” To which the Doctor replied that it wore “it’s real and everyday garb” which he was sure they would more appreciate. “And you were quite right” the Queen replied, before they drove away. Despite this, the Queen was not entirely satisfied with her visit and recorded in her journal for that day ‘many sad’ words and her concern about ‘cramped wards’ and ended : ‘I cannot say how interested I was, and how well I understood the ladies devoting themselves to the nursing of these brave fellows’. Later, she took things further when she wrote to Lord Panmure, Secretary for War, criticising the Hospital buildings at Fort Pitt, with their high windows, small wards and lack of a dining room ‘So that the poor men must have their dinners in the same room in which they sleep. Or in which they may be dying’. 

The Queen made her second visit to Fort Pitt three months later on June 19th. The weather was bright and fine and 200 patients were drawn up in a double line in front of one of the old defensive mounds, a ‘cavalier’ at the rear of the Fort and behind a thatch shelter, as captured by one of the attending photographers. The Queen remarked to Dr Dartnell on the beauty of the grounds, which he informed her had been laid out by the Purveyor, Mr Bult, some thirty years before. He also told the Queen that the men had unrestricted liberty and that “in fine weather you would see them sitting under the shade of the trees, reclining on the grassy slopes, reading, conversing, smoking and amusing themselves as they please”. 

As the Queen inspected the men, she moved up and down the ranks asking questions as she went. Dr Dartnell recorded : ‘The mounds and slopes were covered with spectators and the whole scene, the Royal Party, the staff and other officers in their uniforms, the maimed and weather beaten warriors in their blue hospital dresses with their wooden legs and crutches was particularly imposing and interesting’. 

On her June visit to Chatham the Queen had visited a new civilian prison before going to Fort Pitt and was heard to say : "It seems extraordinary that there can be no difficulty in obtaining money to erect a magnificent building for convicts and that it should be impossible to find a means of building a commonly comfortable barrack for our convalescent soldiers".

The Queen visited Fort Pitt for the third and last time on November 28th 1855. She saw the men in upper and lower wards and remarked on their ‘contented countenances’. She visited Chatham again in 1856, but by that time there were only five or six Crimean invalids left in the wards and she occupied herself at the Brompton Hospital, which she had also seen on the two previous occasions.  

What kind of impression did Victoria make on these visits? Certainly her obvious interest in the condition of the men and her ability to remember names and faces clearly impressed Dr Dartnell. In some cases she helped in a practical way by giving artificial limbs and spring crutches which were superior to those supplied by the Board of Ordnance.  

Her visits were immediately followed up by detailed reports from the medical staff on the health of the men she had seen and the distinguished photographer, Robert Howlett, was commissioned to take portraits of individuals or groups that had been of particular interest. One such portrait was of Private Clemence Brophy, of the 34th Foot, seated with his pipe in hand, against a wall at Fort Pitt. Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, he had joined the British Army, aged 21 in 1847. He lost his arm while fighting at Sevastopol on 31 August 1855 and as a consequence of his injuries, was discharged from military service on 29 May 1856.

 

Royal Photographer, Robert Howlett, photographed Private Jesse Lockhurst (seated)  and Private Thomas O'Brien, both holding Russian round shot which had been lodged in and surgically removed from their bodies in the Crimea. (link) Victoria recorded in her journal that she had held the two shots in her hands.

The wood engraving depicts the convalescents drawn up outside to meet the Queen.                  

Dr Dartnell ended his account of the Queen’s visits by writing that ‘the sympathy evinced by Her Majesty for the wounded and her repeated visits to them and their sick comrades in those hospitals made a lasting impression on the whole Army.’ One of the patients composed this poem in appreciation which was published in the local newspaper in the 1930s.    

The Crimean War Memorial in the Fort Pitt Military Cemetery, Grade II listed in 1991, surmounted by cannon, rifles, hammers and pick axes with a central inscription for the men buried there. (link) When I visited the Cemetery in the 1970s, the Superintendent showed me the ledger relating to those soldiers who had died in the in the 19th century. It listed their names, rank and cause of death as indicated below. He said the ledger relating to those who had served in the Crimea had been 'removed'. 

                                           

In the years that followed the Crimean War the Hospital still treated patients with battle wounds, but also tropical diseases like yellow fever. The Cemetery Register revealed that, for example, laid to rest were Samuel Noble, Staff Sergeant, School of Musketry in 1870 age 30, Corporal Henry Keyton, Rifle Brigade in 1872, age 31 and Drummer Elkington who died at the age of 16. In total there were 68 burials between 1870 and 1874.  

Dr Dartnell’s son who, as a boy, lived in the Officer’s Quarters built in the grounds next to Hospital building and who himself became a doctor, told the antiquarian, Edwin Harris, that he and other boys : ‘Used in the afternoons to gather on the banks of the trench which looked towards Ordnance Place and the field immediately in front across which the military funerals went to the aforesaid burying ground. The afternoon funerals were many and frequent. If it was an officer’s with brass bands and all the military pomp which was usual, they were pleased. But if it was a private’s with drum and fife band, they were very disappointed’.    

The eastern defensive bank of the fort on which Dr Dartnell’s son and his friends stood to watch the military funerals progress along Boundary Road to the Military Cemetery. 

Not long after the end of that period in the 1850s when the Hospital handled a large number of casualties from the Crimean War and then in 1857, the Indian Mutiny, Fort Pitt would take on the role as the first home of the new Army Medical School, which I shall deal with in Chapter Five : 'Florence Nightingale and the Army Medical School’. 

John Cooper

Linked later or earlier chapters :                                                                                                 

Chapter One : Construction and function as a Napoleonic Fort

Chapter Two : The Army Hospital

Chapter Three : The Army Hospital and Medical Research  

Chapter Four : The Army Hospital in the Crimean War and Queen Victoria's three visits

Chapter Five : Florence Nightingale and the Army Medical School

Chapter Six : The New Hospital Wing and the First World War and the visit of the King and Queen

Chapter Seven : Conversion of the Fort into the Medway Technical High School for Girls

Chapter Eight : The School in the Second World War and the second half of the Twentieth Century

Chapter Nine : The Site of Fort Pitt in the 21st century.