All would be staffed by officers of the Army Medical Department, assisted by the other ranks of the Medical Staff Corps (who would later combine to form the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1898). In some stations separate Family Hospitals were provided in addition, for the wives and children of soldiers. Thenceforward the British Army had three main classes of hospital: General Hospitals ('for the reception of invalids, local sick of corps, and all others entitles or specially authorized to be admitted into military hospitals'), Station Hospitals ('for the reception and treatment of sick from all corps in garrison, including those of the Auxiliary Forces') and Field Hospitals. In 1873 the regiment-based provision of medical services was abolished and regimental hospitals ceased to exist. Barrack hospitals were also rebuilt at this time according to the same principles (as happened at Hilsea, Hounslow and elsewhere). The Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich (1865) was celebrated as an exemplary 'pavilion plan' hospital. The thousand-bed Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley (1863) was one of the most prominent new military hospitals of this time (albeit its design, finalised before the recommendations were published, was heavily criticised by members of the Commission). Pavilion layout of the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich.Īfter Crimea, the recommendations of Florence Nightingale, Douglas Galton, Sidney Herbert, John Sutherland and others led to the formation of a Barracks and Hospitals Commission (1858) and the building of new Army General Hospitals in accordance with the latest design principles for improving health and hygiene. From then until after the Crimean War, the Depôt Hospital at Fort Pitt, Chatham was the only General Military Hospital in England Ireland (which had a separate Medical Department until 1833) had two: one in Dublin and one in Cork. When the Invalid Depôt moved back to Chatham in 1819 a Military Hospital was re-established in Fort Pitt (whereupon the General Hospital at Chelsea was discontinued). By the end of the war the only remaining General Hospitals were York Hospital in Chelsea and the Depôt Hospital in Parkhurst. (The latter was intended to serve as the national Army Depôt Hospital for invalids but when the Invalid Depôt moved away from Chatham to the Isle of Wight, in 1801, the hospital moved with it to Parkhurst.) Other General Hospitals were planned or opened during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, but all were short-lived and the concept as a whole was criticised both for high running costs and for high rates of infection and mortality. A more permanent establishment of General (as opposed to regimental) Hospitals was envisaged by the Army Medical Board (formed in 1793), which opened new purpose-built General Hospitals in Plymouth (1795), Gosport (1796) and Walmer (1797), as well as establishing York Hospital in London (based around the Infirmary of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea) and a new hospital in Chatham. The first example of more integrated facilities being set up in Britain was during the War of American Independence, when (by 1781) three hospitals had been put in place to receive returning wounded servicemen (one in Portsmouth, on in Chatham and one in Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight) but these were only temporary provisions.
ġ8th-century wards blocks of the former Stoke Military Hospital, Plymouth, linked by a colonnade. In addition, the Board of Ordnance (whose military branch included the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers) maintained its own independent medical facilities until 1853. Some larger garrisons, with several different corps and regiments based on the same site, had garrison hospitals in which patients would be accommodated together but individuals would still be treated by the medical staff of their own regiment or unit.
The hospital moved with the regiment: when the regiment was in barracks, the barrack hospital block would be used otherwise another suitable location would have to be found and prepared. Each regiment had its own regimental surgeon, whose duties (from 1796) included provision of suitable equipment, staff and premises for the regimental hospital. Prior to 1873, medical services in the British Army were for the most part provided on a regimental basis.
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