Kevin Bacon, Royal Pavilion & Museums

Medicine, Media and Myth in the

Pavilion Indian Hospital

Brighton’s Indian Hospitals

• Dec 1914 – Jan 1916: over 12,000 Indian soldiers hospitalised in Brighton

• About 3,500 treated at any one time

• Three hospitals in total

Kitchener Hospital

York Place School

Royal Pavilion

Media Spectacle

1. A Practical Solution‘I suggested to Lord Kitchener that… I should be allowed to take up two large hotels in Brighton. He gave me permission and on the 21st [November 1914] I went down to Brighton. I saw the local authorities there, and instead of taking up hotels, which are unsuitable and costly, I secured from the Corporation of Brighton the buildings of the Pavilion and the Dome.’

Sir Walter Lawrence, Commissioner for Indian

Hospitals, in letter to Viceroy Lord Hardinge, 18 March 1915

1. A Practical Solution?‘ We are pushing along at

highest pressure with the difficult problem of making a hospital out of this most unsuitable building.’

Col. J McLeod, Commanding officer of Royal Pavilion hospital, in letter to Sir

Walter Lawrence, 3 Dec 1914

2. Political Impact

‘I never lose an opportunity of impressing on all who are working in these hospitals that great political issues are involved in making the stay of these Indians as agreeable as possible.’

Sir Walter Lawrence, Commissioner of India

Hospitals, report to Lord Kitchener, early 1915

2. Political Impact

2. Political Impact

2. Political Impact‘ Practically we regard them

as spoilt children just now…to whom all sorts and conditions of men bring congratulations and greetings, and little gifts… One man got quite confidential. “Sahib, tell the mems [nurses] to learn Hindustani” – just like a child who expects to be amused and resents a conversation he can’t understand’.

The Times, 2 January 1915

3. Royal Associations‘Our hospital is in the place

where the king used to have his throne … Men in hospital are tended like flowers, and the King and Queen sometimes come to visit them.’

Isar Singh, 59th Rifles, to a friend in the 50th Punjabis, India, 1st

May 1915

3. Royal Associations

3. Royal Associations‘ I tried to bring out that

the Pavilion was a Royal Palace and that the initiation of all that was done came from the King. To bring the Corporation… more prominently into it I thought would confuse things in the eyes of India.’

Col. J McLeod, Commanding Officer

of Royal Pavilion hospital, in letter to

Sir Walter Lawrence, 30 March 1915

4. Civic Pride

Charles Phelp, ‘Brighton Gives of her best for our Wounded Indian Soldiers - Bravo Otter’, Brighton and Hove Society, 3 Dec 1914

4. Civic Pride

‘There can be few stranger chapters in the history of England than that which is being written in Brighton now.’

Brighton Herald, 19 December 1914

5. Medicine

5. Medicine

‘Three or four were extremely interesting cases [trench backs] owing to the nervous phenomena developed… Perhaps they should be returned as lesions of the spinal cord, but their histories viz. of being buried under a falling trench were the same as those of the great majority whose lesions were muscular or fibrous only and the implication of nerve roots or tracts in the cord is merely a further effect of a similar cause. The proportion permanently disabled evidenced the serious nature of the accident as a cause of disability.’

Descriptive Report of the Pavilion & York Place Hospitals, December 1915

6. Monuments‘It is befitting that we should remember, and that future generations should not forget, that our Indian comrades came when our need was highest, free men – volunteering soldiers – who were true to their salt – and gave their lives in a quarrel of which it was enough for them to know that the enemy were the foes of their Sahibs, their Empire, and their King.’

Speech by the Prince of Wales at the unveiling of the Chattri, 1 February 1921

6. Monuments‘From many of [the wounded] who returned I have heard expressions of fervent gratitude for the attention and care lavished upon them by 'Doctor ' Brighton, whose fame and skill as a healer and health restorer is talked of in many hundreds of remote Indian villages... I would add that a spirit of helpfulness as between India and this country can find ample avenues in peace no less than in war.’

Maharajah of Patiala, 26 October 1921

6. Civic Dream‘the tone of the photographs is made warm…

[and] will be most congenial

when viewed under the Indian

sun, because they breathe an

atmosphere of sunshine and

summer heat.’ Brighton

Graphic, 1916

6. Civic Dream

‘I have walked down a ward, with its lotus lamps, its decoration like Indian embroidery, and seen what I have taken to be a row of young women, black but comely, sitting in a bed combing out their hair. With their ceremonially long hair, their smooth cheeks, their soft harmonious features, their full bodily development, the younger of these Indian soldiers produced the illusion of femininity. Verily, the Royal Pavilion in those days was Maya, the house of Illusion.’

Pathan Paradise in Unknown Brighton by George Aitchison, 1926

kevin.bacon@brighton-hove.gov.uk@fauxtoegrafikbrightonmuseums.org.uk

Thank you