Hospital Staffing

Lt. Colonel J.N. MacLeod of the Indian Medical Service who already had experience fitting out hospital ships for Indian soldiers was immediately recalled from France and appointed the Commanding Officer of the Royal Pavilion hospitals. Colonel MacLeod had also been the late Civil Surgeon of Quetta, Baluchistan prior to his retirement. Under Colonel MacLeod, the Royal Pavilion and York Place Hospitals were run by the Senior Medical Officer, Colonel Sir R. Neil Campbell, who had been the late Inspector General Civil Hospitals, Assam prior to his retirement. [1]

Under Colonel Sir R. Neil Campbell the Pavilion hospital complex was divided into eight administrative sections with each section headed by a senior officer of the Indian Medical Service. All of these officers were retired officers who had previously served in India and the surrounding region. Although they understood Indian patients and could communicate with them in native dialects, many of them were unfortunately out of date with the latest medical practices and some were considered by the patients to be more patronizing and stricter than their England based British officers.

As England had always traditionally been a destination for a small minority of well-to-do Indians to send their sons overseas for education, there were a number of Indian students already in England at the outbreak of the war. A number of Indian doctors and medical students volunteered to help the British war effort and were granted temporary commissions in the Indian Medical Service and assigned to the Brighton hospitals. [2] A staff of these medical students worked as dressers and ward orderlies under the supervision of British doctors at the Pavilion hospital.

Other Indian students who did not have a medical background were organized under Lt. Colonel R.J. Barker as the Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps [3] and served in transporting the wounded to the Brighton hospitals as well as providing service as interpreters when needed.

One of the more interesting aspects of staffing at the Brighton hospitals was the issue of white female nurses. The British felt that having European female nurses taking care of Indian patients would lead for a diminishing of izzat, or respect for the British Raj and ‘white’ women by the Indian natives. [4] Although the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service had been expected to provide nursing staff, Indian Viceroy, Lord Hardinge made it clear that white women were never employed at any hospital for Indian soldiers in India and he expected the same practice to be followed in the Indian hospitals in Brighton. This was also the view of General Sir James Willcocks, the Commander of the Indian Corps in France.

During the initial setup of the Brighton hospitals and their operation in late 1914 up to June 1915 some women nurses were employed at the Pavilion and York Place hospitals, but only in a supervisory and administrative role, it was made clear that they were not to provide any actual nursing to the Indian patients. [5] In May 1915 following the publication of a photo in the Daily Mail of a white nurse having herself photographed standing beside the hospital bed of wounded Victoria Cross winner Mir Dast [6] the War Office issued a directive and all female nurses of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service were finally withdrawn in June 1915 and replaced by male orderlies.

Footnotes

1. A Short History In English, Gurmukhi & Urdu of the Royal Pavilion Brighton and a Description of it as A Hospital for Indian Soldiers (Corporation of Brighton, 1915)  7, 11

2. Ibid. 12

3. Ibid. 12

4. Mark Harrison, Disease, Discipline and Dissent: The Indian Army in France and England, 1914-1915. in: Roger Cooter, Harrison Mark, Sturdy Steve, eds Medicine and Modern Warfare (Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, 1999) 195

5. Joyce Collins, Dr Brightons Indian Patients December 1914 - January 1916 (Brighton Books, 1997) 21

6. Hamayun Ansari, The Infidel Within: Muslims in Britain Since 1800 (C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2004) 75