First World War
During the First World War, the Pavilion, along with other sites in Brighton, was transformed into a military hospital. From November 1914 to early 1916, recovering soldiers from the Imperial Indian Army were stationed there - the adjacent Dome (now a theatre) was equipped with an operating room and more beds. The Pavilion was partly used in imperial efforts to convince potential Indian recruits that their wounded countrymen were being well treated: a series of photographs was produced, with the official sanction of the state, showing the resplendent rooms converted into hospital wards (few pictures were taken of the local workhouse, renamed the Kitchener Indian Hospital, now Brighton General Hospital, which housed the majority of wounded troops). The soldiers also received visits from Lord Kitchener in July 1915,and King George V in August of the same year who presented several soldiers with military honours. In 1916, the Indian Soldiers were moved on from Brighton after their redeployment in the Middle East. By that stage, roughly 14,000 wounded Indian servicemen had passed through the town's hospitals. After that point, the Pavilion continued to be used as a hospital for wounded British soldiers until the end of the war in 1918.
Read more about this topic: Royal Pavilion
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (17721801)
“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
—Emma Goldman (18691940)