Chapter Two : The Army Hospital

Hospital buildings went up on the site of Fort Pitt as early as 1803, the year in which the construction of the Fort started, but although hospital staff were employed in September of that year, no patients were recorded, which raises the question as to whether it was used as a hospital at this time. Certainly, by 1805 these buildings had been converted into barracks.  

In 1814 with the threat of invasion from France and an attack on the Dockyard effectively removed by Napoleon’s exile to Elba, the garrison which had manned the Fort for four years was transferred. On and March 14th, a Major Minto, who had just returned from the Holland Expedition, applied for leave for the Royal Marine Artillery to occupy the Fort. In his letter of application he pointed out that his marines had, on several occasions, been forced to vacate their accommodation in the Royal Marine Barracks, located immediately south of the Dockyard, which happened when detachments of infantry marines had returned from ship service. When this happened his Artillery had to be billeted in Rochester and Chatham and the temptations of women and drink on the doorstep, not unsurprisingly resulted in, as he said : ‘Sickness and irregularities prejudicial to discipline’. Permission was granted for him to move his men and so satisfactory was the accommodation that Minto applied for permanent quarters, but this was refused and in September 1814, they were moved back to their billets in the Towns.  

The marines were probably moved to make way for sick and wounded soldiers, who were now housed in the Fort’s blockhouse. A French engineer, Charles Dupin, composing his ‘A View of the History and Actual State of the military Forces of Great Britain’ in 1822, he commented that : ‘The casemates are fine and perfectly well-constructed. No moisture penetrates into them and they are at present inhabited by invalids who compose the only garrison of this fortress'. 

Despite the fact that the Hospital was set up on a purely temporary basis, its first Director, Dr.D.Macloughlin , who qualified at the University of Edinburg and took over in December 1814, was the first of a succession of Scots physicians who played a vital role in the history of Army Medicine at Fort Pitt. He was determined to set high medical standards and insisted, for example, that a mortuary be built and a full autopsy be carried out on all deceased patients.                          

William Miller’s 1833 engraving, based on Turner’s oil painting, viewing Fort Pitt from Fort Amherst, it shows the new Hospital east wing. But reveals his errors in the shape of the central tower and blockhouse and somewhat oversized infantry, drilling on the field below Fort Pitt and in front of that other Napoleonic defence, Gibraltar Tower. 

The conversion of Fort Pitt into a permanent military hospital officially took place in 1824, but physical alterations had already been taking place before that. In 1820, for example, a Mr Bult began planting trees and shrubs which began to transform the stark features of the Fort into an attractive area for convalescents. The first major additions with purpose built wards and medical facilities were completed in 1832 and consisted of two handsome, connected, Georgian wings, facing east and west and configured in the shape of an ‘H’. In addition, two houses had been built to the north and south of the new ‘H’ blocks, for the accommodation of the Medical Officers and their families.

      

The east wing was later demolished before the First World War, but the other, which became to be known, by the later Technical High School, as ‘The Old Crimea’ still survives. It was given listed status in 1950 and is still used by the Girls Grammar School which now occupies the site. Its semi-circular entrance, is now bricked-up and the colonnade, which allowed the invalids to exercise and get fresh air in all seasons, has gone, but the plinths of its columns remain and the horizontal line on the middle of the wall indicates where it was joined to the roof with its entablature. 

In these early days of the Hospital, most of the patients were the sick and wounded from the Napoleonic Wars. In 1819, those who were suffering from mental illness were transferred to Fort Clarence which was taken over to house the country’s first ‘Military Lunatic Asylum’. 

One of the soldiers, who first entered the Hospital in 1821 and was one of the 172 patients there in 1828, was a Scotsman, Private George Hayward. It appears that he had received his injuries in Wellington’s Spanish Peninsula Campaign when, in order to escape being sent into battle, he cut the hamstring tendons in one of his legs. He became a complete paraplegic and after the matter was reported to the Duke, he ordered that, as punishment and as an example to the men, the tendons in his other leg be cut. As a result, Hayward spent 40 years as an invalid at Fort Pitt where he died at the age of 95 and must have surely been its longest staying patient.  

           

1. Casemates    2. Lunatic asylum    3. Wards    4. Laundry    5. Library*    6. Tower

7. Guard room   8. Pay office   9. Laboratory*   10. Main hospital building   11. Officers' Mess 12. Wards   13. Officers'  quarters   14. Museum*   15. Purveyor' s store 

                 

* Connected to medical research 

In the 1960s a Lieutenant Colonel Thynne painted a very unprepossessing picture of the Hospital at this time when he wrote 'a brief history of the early days of Fort Pitt, Chatham'. (link) 

He said :

 'It consisted of two brick buildings on parallel ranges with paltry colonnade. Nothing in its appearance suggested it was a Royal Hospital. Indeed, without its wooden colonnade it would probably be surmised to be a merchant's house. In fact it was used as a barracks and not appropriated for the purpose which it was raised till the commencement if 1814'. 

He continued : 'This hospital accommodated 252 patients when all the beds were occupied. The bedsteads and bedding were similar to those issued to soldiers in barracks. Men in health may find no inconvenience  from lying on straw, but a sick man would hardly be comfortable. No water-closets were attached to any wards. Patients had to cross an area of some yards distance and use open lavatories. The stores of clothing not in actual use which was in charge of the Purveyor, consisted of tarpaulin over the roofs. Such of the clothing stores as could not be heaped into the small room allotted in the hospital, were kept in an underground cell. To reach this cell it was necessary to travel along a subterranean passage  for about one hundred yards. Owing to damp and lack of ventilation, many of the articles 

were eventually found to be useless'.

The 1841 Census still referred to Fort Pitt as ‘Military Hospital and Barracks’ with 172 servicemen and officers housed with their families in the blockhouse. In addition, the Hospital contained 227 patients as well as medical and administrative staff and their families, giving the site a population of 500. By 1849 the Hospital had, in addition to the Principal Medical Officer, a Deputy Purveyor and 10 officers and 447 patients, half of whom were now housed in the blockhouse which was no longer serving as a barracks. The officers' quarters, indicated at 13 on the plan and shown here, stood to the south of the main hospital block.  

                                                

One of the buildings used for the residence of the Principal Officers and their families was Fort Pitt House, outside the perimeter of the hospital, which stands on what is today the New Road and houses the City Way Health Clinic. Originally built at the time of the Fort's construction in the period from 1805 -13, on the levelled ground in front of the Fort, it provided the residence of the Clerk of Works. When the local Council bought the site of Fort Pitt and its buildings in 1928 it started to house and continued to house for many years the Office of the Education Department and the Chief Education Officer.

Dr James Forbes, another Edinburgh physician, who had served as ‘Physician to the Forces in the Peninsular War’ had followed Dr MacLoughlin and founded the first Medical Staff Mess at Fort Pitt In 1829. By this time Fort Pitt was acting as a depot where medical officers joined on first commissioning and received instruction in officer’s duties including table manners. According to a certain Dr Fyffe, his fellow officers were : ‘Pretty rough specimens from Scottish and Irish Schools who badly required a course of mess instruction on how to use a silver fork and finger bowl at dinner’ and added ‘the time spent on meals was not the least part of their education’.  

A memento from the early 19th century part of the Hospital’s history, came in the shape of the ‘Fort Pitt Table’, representing the outline of the Fort in wooden marquetry and said to have been made by a French prisoner of war who was imprisoned in the blockhouse during the Napoleonic War. Another was a centre piece of the mess table in the shape of an epergne, cast in silver with a tree and a riderless steed at its base, along with a fallen cavalryman, who was tended by an infantryman and an officer and bearing the inscription which stated that it was purchased with the residue of money left over from the commissioning of Dr MacLoughlin’s portrait. Apparently, the epergne, a Victorian table ornament used to hold any food or dessert which may also be used as a designer object to hold candles,

is still used in ceremonial occasions by the Royal Army Medical Corps today.         

How and why Fort Pitt became an important centre for medical research will be dealt with deal with in Chapter Three : 'The Army Hospital and Medical Research’                                 

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.