Visits by Dignitaries

The Royal Pavilion Hospital experienced a number of prominent and high-profile visitors. The visits were not only important for satisfying the curious public but were also very important propaganda vehicles in the fight to counter anti-British propaganda both in India and being promoted by the Germans and their allies and directed towards the fighting Indian soldiers in France. Such visits were crucial propaganda missions in helping to maintain the British Indian Empire.

The most prominent visitor to the Brighton hospitals was King George V and Queen Mary who first visited the Pavilion on January 9th, 1915 and then again on August 25, 1915. [1] Few of the Indian soldiers ever imagined that they would ever see the King in person in their lifetime.

To many of the Indian soldiers there was a personal connection and direct loyalty to the King as a father figure. The following letter from a wounded Sikh soldier illustrates this relationship.

For further details on the importance of the King see Analysis - Role and Image of King George

The August 25th visit of the King and Queen accompanied by Princess Mary was an elaborate propaganda and media affair, duly photographed and filmed, the King had come to personally decorate ten of the wounded Indian officers and one Indian non-commissioned officer. Over a thousand of the Indian patients gathered on the western lawn of the Pavilion for the investiture ceremony. [3] Here on the western lawn on a stage surrounded by his personal staff and the staff of the Hospital behind him and surrounded in a large semi-circle of patients wearing their pale blue hospital uniforms, the recipients were honoured one-by-one bought forward by Colonel MacLeod the Commanding Officer of the Royal Pavilion Hospital and presented to the King by Colonel Sir Walter Lawrence.

After the official ceremony the King and Queen toured the hospital wards to speak to the patients who were not well enough to attend the ceremony on the lawns as well as toured the kitchens and facilities of the hospital. It is interesting to note that the King spoke to the patients in Hindustani rather than English. [4] Following a time-honoured Indian tradition of presenting personal petitions to the Emperor, the King also listed to a number of personal petitions presented to him by Indian patients.

The highlight of the royal visit for the Sikh patients occurred in the evening while they were performing their evening prayers and kirtan (the singing of religious hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib). Upon hearing the Sikh kirtan the King made his way to the Gurdwara that the Sikhs had set up in a tent on the lawn. [5] The Sikhs were so overjoyed at the King attending their Gurdwara that they offered a special petition for the victory of King George in their prayers. [6]

On June 25, 1915 Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII and mother of King George V accompanied by the aged veteran General Sir Dighton Probyn visited the Royal Pavilion Hospital. [7] Probyn was well respected by the Indian soldiers having been a captain in the 2nd Punjab Cavalry, Bengal Army during the 1858 Indian Mutiny where he won the Victoria Cross. [8] The Queen subsequently sent a colored photograph of herself and King Edward to every patient in the hospital. [9] The gifting of such portraits was a common practice and the value that many of the soldiers placed on these photographs were indicative to the personal relationship in fighting the war for the British royal family that many Indians felt.

Other royal visitors to the Brighton hospitals included Princess Maud, young sister of King George V, H.R.H. Princess Henry of Battenberg who visited the hospital twice, H.R.H. Princess Louise, King Manoel of Portugal and Lady Minto, wife of the Viceroy Lord Minto. [11]

Next to King George V the most prominent visitor to the Pavilion hospital was the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshall Lord Kitchener who was in charge of the British Empires war efforts in WWI. The Kitchener Indian Hospital in Brighton was named in his honour. Having previously served as Commander-in-Chief, India from 1902 to 1909, he was well known to the Indian soldiers and affectionately called ‘Jung-iLat Sahib’, meaning War Lord. Every able bodies Indian solder at the hospital gathered on the Pavilion grounds for an enthusiastic reception for Lord Kitchener accompanied by Colonel Sir Walter Lawrence and Colonel Fitzgerald, Personal Military Secretary. Lord Kitchener toured the hospital wards and then on the grounds the Indian officers were individually presented to him and he shook hands with each. Lord Kitchener then addressed the officers and congratulated them and all the Indian soldiers on their gallant services to the Empire. [12]

The Pavilion hospital not only had to cater to scheduled visits, but also received unscheduled surprise visits as well. On March 29, 1915, The Secretary of State of India, Lord Crewe made a surprise inspection visit to the Brighton hospitals visiting the Royal Pavilion, Kitchener Hospital and York Place Hospital and expressed his satisfaction at the level of care being offered the Indian soldiers. [13] Lord Crew’s successor as Secretary of State for India, Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain visited the Pavilion hospital on July 3 to July 4, 1915. Sir Chamberlain was greatly interested in seeing the Muslims at prayers and visiting the Sikh Gurdwara that had been set up in a tent on the Pavilion grounds. He told the Sikhs that it gave him much satisfaction to have a Sikh as a member of his own Council and that he had arranged for them to have a copy of the Indian newspaper Akhbar-i-Jang printed in London translated into Gurmukhi for them. [14]

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) 13

2. David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-1918 (St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1999)

3. 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) 13

4. Home Hospitals and the War, (The British Medical Journal, January 23, 1915) 179

5. Film, The Indian Hospital, Royal Visit to Royal Pavilion Hospital, Brighton (British Film Institute, 1915)

6. 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) 16

7. Ibid. 16

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dighton_Probyn

9. 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) 16

10. David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-1918 (St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1999)

11. 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) 16

12. Ibid. 18

13. The Kitchener Indian Hospital, (The British Medical Journal, April 3, 1915) 614

14. 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) 17