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guardian.co.uk
Sunday 18 April 2010
Royal Treatment
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n
the last week of November 1914, a gang of surveyors, builders and boy
scouts descended on the Royal Pavilion in Brighton – that monument to royal seaside
frivolity with its domes, spires and writhing Chinese dragons. Just six
days later, the strangest hospital in the history of the first world war
was ready for business.
Carpets
had been taken up and sumptuous curtains and pelmets taken down, linoleum
laid over acres of ballroom and stone-flagged kitchens, protective covers
erected over the painted peacocks, and the dreamy lifesize Chinese figures
strolling in silken robes across the walls. From somewhere, 700 beds were
found and installed.
Water
from the well in the gardens was plumbed into separate neatly labelled
Hindu and Muslim taps in every room. Similarly labelled milk churns and
jugs were lined up in nine newly built field kitchens (the cooks,
orderlies from the Indian army, had to be trained how to cook standing up
at a bizarre western stove, instead of squatting comfortably on the
ground), ready to take milk from the pedigree herd in the grounds. The
great high-ceilinged Georgian kitchen, supplier of food by the tonne for
30-course banquets, had been transformed into an operating theatre. A
large tent became a Sikh temple and, in the town, a canny butcher had set
up a halāl slaughterhouse, with the first wagon-load of goats on
its way. New bathrooms – also segregated – were in place, with squat
lavatories instead of western-style ones.
At
the start of December, the first of more than 2,000 patients who would be
treated in the pavillion over the next year arrived. As an excited Sussex
Daily News put it: "Valiant soldiers of our great Indian dependency,
after fighting so nobly for their King-Emperor, are now to be cared for in
a
In
fact, generations of Brightonians yet unborn completely forgot the story.
But some will learn of it now, thanks to a new, permanent
exhibition which has just opened at the Pavilion – that surreal
conversion of a modest
The
pavilion's curator, David Beevers, says the priceless wartime propaganda
value of the newly opened "royal" hospital, and the meticulous
provision for Hindu, Sikh and Muslim patients, was recognised from the
start. The scrupulous preparations had, of course, been made in shuddering
memory of the colonial insensitivity which triggered the Indian mutiny of
1857 (also known there as the first war of Indian independence). Now, the
western allies were facing the prospect of
In
an effort to paint the allies in the most sympathetic possible light,
official photographers were brought into the pavilion within weeks to
record immaculately dressed patients sitting up happily in spotless beds,
under the gilded ceilings and dragon chandeliers. Sets of postcards of the
images were then sold in the town, in the hope they would be posted home
to
A makeshift Sikh temple in the
The
paternal care of King George V for his wounded Indian subjects was, of
course, a crucial part of the image. "[The government] didn't quite
lie, but they certainly came very, very close to the line in implying the
closest involvement of the royal family in the creation of the hospital,
and that the family had virtually been turned out of their own home to
make way for it." Beevers says. "The myth has proved so enduring
that you will still read, in many apparently authoritative sources, that
the original idea for converting the palace into a hospital came from the
king."
As
an example of the potent myth-making, Beevers points to the beautifully
produced souvenir book, a copy of which is included in the exhibition. On
page after lavishly illustrated page, with text printed in English,
Gurmukhi and Urdu, the book given to former patients on their return to
India set up the idyllic image of the hospital and the care they had
received: "In many an Indian village in the years to come, these
soldiers, their fighting days long over, will talk to their children's
children of the great war. Their faces will then glow with pride as they
tell of the day when they were lying wounded in a
The
villagers would be forgiven for imagining George and Mary stealing back
into their old home, drifting like 20th-century Florence Nightingales
between the rows of beds, cooling the brows of the feverish and consoling
the anxious. Which must have been slightly galling to
In
1850 she sold it to
Nevertheless,
the myth that a royal home became the hospital proved ineradicable. Many
more buildings in Brighton were pressed into service, including a
workhouse whose occupants were summarily decanted, and where such harsh
discipline was maintained in its hospital days that a young Indian student
working as an orderly attempted to murder the commanding officer. Yet none
of the other hospitals featured in the official propaganda.
The
hospitals were, though, desperately needed: at one point on the western
front, it is estimated that one in 10 of the soldiers was Indian. Some of
the Daily News's "valiant soldiers of the great dependency" came
from the "martial races" of the
It
is estimated that during the first world war, 827,000 Indians enlisted,
and there were more than 64,000 casualties. The Brighton hospitals closed
when the Indian divisions were withdrawn from
The
wartime role of the pavilion was almost forgotten in
"We
couldn't sustain that policy any longer," Beevers says. "A lot
of interesting things happened here, of which the Indian hospital is one
of the most striking and poignant. It is a story that deserves to be
told."
Davinder
Dhillon is a local historian and secondary school teacher in Brighton, but
most of his spare time goes into organising an annual ceremony at the
Chattri, a monument built on the
"Undoubtedly,
the first world war would have been lost on the western front without the
contribution of the Indian soldiers, and we might not be speaking in
freedom now without their sacrifice," Dhillon says. "They fought
for a cause and gave their lives, and they should be celebrated, not
forgotten."
It
turns out that the king and queen did visit the Indian hospital – on a
strictly formal occasion that was, surprise, surprise, exploited for every
ounce of propaganda value, to present the Victoria Cross to Mir Dost,
along with awards to other soldiers. A record of the event survives in 11
minutes of crackly black-and-white film – originally intended, Dhillon
points out, to be shown in
Mir
Dost had been gassed at
And
then another twist in this extraordinary tale emerges. His family’s
entanglement in the great war so far away was not, it seems, a simple tale
of unswerving loyalty to king and empire. For his brother, Mir Dost,
deserted from the army at the front. And there is a story – which
Beevers has been unable to confirm because so many of the original records
have been destroyed, that the brother too was honoured with a medal before
returning home: an Iron Cross from the Germans.
The
Royal Pavilion as an Indian hospital, a new permanent exhibition including
archive photographs, paintings and newsreel footage, opens at the pavilion
this month. Entry is included in the general admission price.
[Courtesy:
The Guardian]
