The Kitchener Indian Hospital

India's fighting men in the grounds of the Royal Pavilion. During the First World War the Royal Pavilion Estate was used as a military hospital for wounded Indian soldiers. 4306 patients were admitted between 1 December 1914 and 15 February 1916. From 20 April 1916 to 21 July 1919 the estate became the Pavilion General Hospital which catered for limbless men.

Brighton & Hove in Pictures

Indian patients queue to receive rations in the grounds of Kitchener Hospital 1915.

Brighton and Hove in Pictures

Royal Pavilion South Gate , c. 1930. Royal Pavilion South Gate, built in 1921. Designed by Thomas Tyrwhitt in Gujerati style, with a simple dome resting on 4 stone pillars. It is inscribed "This gateway is the gift of India in commemoration of her sons who, stricken in the Great War, were tended in the Pavilion in 1914 and 1915." Dedicated for the people of Brighton by the Maharajah of Patiala on 26 October 1921.

Brighton and Hove in Pictures

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914 there were only some 7,000 hospital beds available in the United Kingdom, insufficient for nursing the casualties expected from the Western Front.

Many Poor Law institutions were taken over for use as military hospitals and the Brighton Workhouse (now BrightonGeneralHospital) was rapidly transformed into the KitchenerHospital.

More unexpectedly, when the jewel in Brighton's crown, the Royal Pavilion, was offered by the Corporation to the King, this too was designated by him as a military hospital, specifically for Indian soldiers wounded in France.

He felt, it is said, that they would appreciate the Indian surroundings, although in fact the interior of the Pavilion reflected Chinese rather than Indian styles of decoration. There are stories of men, recovering consciousness amid these unexpected splendours, who believed that they had awoken in paradise.

The first Indian expeditionary force (there were to be three others, sent to different theatres of war) began landing at Marseilles in September 1914, and eventually numbered 70,000 in France.

Some five and a half thousand of these would be killed, and well over sixteen thousand wounded. On arrival the men were rapidly moved up to the Front, and immediately deployed in the generally water-logged trenches, hastily dug across the British sector, which was defending part of northern France and Flanders.

The incessant rain and bitter cold of an early winter resulted in many cases of frostbite, trench foot and gangrene, to add to the many more injuries resulting from machine gun fire and high explosive. By November 1914 the Indians had already suffered over 1800 casualties.

The Indian wounded evacuated to England were nursed in special military hospitals, mainly in Brockenhurst and Brighton. The Pavilion, together with the Dome and Corn Exchange, provided 724 beds, and the Kitchener, initially intended for 1,500 Indian patients, later could accommodate 2,000. A third Indian hospital was established in York Place.

Very careful preparations were made to ensure that the ritual requirements of the different religions, practised by the various communities among the Indian soldiers, could be met.

The largest single group within the Indian Army was composed of Sikhs, who were mainly from the Punjab. The Gurkhas from Nepal, and the Dogras and Garhwalis from neighbouring areas in the Western Himalayas were all Hindus, as were the Jats who came, like the Sikhs, from the Punjab. There were also Punjabi Mohammedans, as well as Mohammedans from Madras and the Deccan, while the Pathans and the Afridis from the North West Frontier region and the neighbouring Baluchis were also adherents of the Muslim faith.

Separate arrangements were made for the different caste, religious and linguistic groups. The Sikhs at the Pavilion worshipped in their Gurdwara on the lawns, and the Mohammedans prayed, five times a day, as enjoined by their religion, and facing Mecca, on the grass plot in front of the Dome. All notices were printed in Urdu, Hindi and Gurmukhi. Two water taps were provided in each ward, one for Hindus and the other for Muslims.

There were separate bathing houses and latrines, and separate mortuaries. Hindus and Sikhs who died were cremated on the Downs near Patcham, on the site now occupied by the Chattri, an Indian memorial to the dead; their ashes were scattered on the sea.

In fact there were only 32 deaths in the Pavilion hospital, but it has to be remembered that many of the more seriously wounded did not survive the agonising journey to England.
Blighty Brighton