Absent Minded Beggars by William Bennett

Author:William Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473811614
Publisher: Pen and Sword

CHAPTER SIX

THE MEDICAL VOLUNTEERS

The resources of the infant Royal Army Medical Corps were soon overwhelmed by the scale of the conflict in South Africa. The Corps had only been set up in 1898 after years of criticism of the Army’s medical arrangements and was an amalgamation of the officers of the Medical Staff and the rank and file of the Medical Staff Corps. When the South African war broke out less than 18 months after Lansdowne announced the formation of the RAMC, the Corps had an establishment of 540 officers and 2,792 other ranks to tend the Army’s sick and wounded throughout the Empire. The strength of the RAMC in South Africa quickly swelled from thirty-four officers and 263 men at the outbreak of war in October to 379 officers and 2,235 rank and file by the New Year. Reservists and retired officers were soon back in uniform, but, despite their recall, the Army Medical Department admitted that after the first two Army Corps had been sent to South Africa “the home establishment of the Royal Army Medical Corps was practically exhausted”.1 Volunteers were desperately needed to serve both in South Africa and in Britain, where military hospitals had to be maintained and where many of the sick and wounded from the war were sent.

Unlike the manpower crisis which resulted in the raising of volunteer forces such as the Imperial Yeomanry, the Army had anticipated that it would need to use and co-ordinate civilian medical help in a major conflict. After the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War had shocked British public opinion, the National Society for Aid to Sick and Wounded in War was set up in 1870. But there was still no central organization to coordinate civilian assistance and to try to avoid the chaos which unorganized and unrealistic offers of help could cause. In 1898 a conference was held at the War Office which resulted in the formation of the Central British Red Cross Committee. The Deputy Director General of the Army Medical Department became a member of the committee, along with representatives from the main civilian organizations. It was decided that in wartime two hospital trains and a hospital ship should be fitted out by civilian groups and and an agreement on who should deal with offers of help from doctors, nursing sisters and male nursing orderlies was reached. But the committee’s formation was only announced in April 1899 and, like the RAMC itself, it was still in its early days when it was put to the severest of tests by the war in South Africa.

Public donations for voluntary medical assistance poured in as soon as war was declared, the National Society for Aid receiving £65,000 within two months and just under £179,000 by May 1901. The Borough of Windsor gave £6,100 which enabled the Central British Red Cross Committee to authorize the building of a hospital train a week after the conflict began. The train was named after Princess Christian, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters who gave £650 towards it, and was completed in just ten weeks.

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