The Royal Hospital Chelsea at War E-Book

Martin Cawthorne

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 551

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'Underpinned by rigorous academic research, (Martin Cawthorne) has crafted a highly readable narrative which brings to life the characters, events, the dilemmas facing the authorities and the enduring resilience of the Royal Hospital's Pensioners.' – General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, KCB, OBE, DL, Governor, Royal Hospital Chelsea In May 1938 a confidential meeting was held between Officers of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and government departments responsible for civil defence planning. All participants agreed that, should war come, the 500 Chelsea In-Pensioners residing at the Royal Hospital should be evacuated to a place of safety outside London. However, toxic politics and complex logistics meant that, on the outbreak of war in September 1939, only fifty were evacuated, to a country house in Herefordshire. The remainder, many carrying physical and psychological scars from the First World War, sought sanctuary in hastily constructed air-raid shelters and awaited their fate. Using recently uncovered archive material, some stored for decades in an attic at the Royal Hospital, Martin Cawthorne chronicles the story of Chelsea's old soldiers, once more in the line of fire as they faced the horrors of the London Blitz.

Leseprobe

The East Wing Long Ward accommodation block of the Royal Hospital Chelsea suffered bomb damage after an air raid during the First World War. The North-East Wing was severely damaged in the same raid. (RHC Archives)

Dedicated toPrivate Arthur Walter Cattell, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, killed in action on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme – my great-grandfather.

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, gl50 3qb

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Martin Cawthorne, 2024

The right of Martin Cawthorne to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 80399 745 2

Paperback ISBN 978 1 80399 599 1

ISBN 978 1 80399 600 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

1     Pre-War Civil Defence Planning

2     The Royal Hospital Prepares for War

3     The Munich Crisis

4     War Clouds Over Europe

5     The Outbreak of War

6     The Phoney War

7     Dunkirk and the Threat of Invasion

8     The Battle of Britain

9     The Blitz

10   A Winter of Bombs

11   The Bombing of the Royal Hospital’s Infirmary

12   The Bombing of Chelsea Old Church

13   Aftermath

14   Out-Stations

15   Dispersal and Demolition

16   Post-War Planning

17   Peace Returns to Chelsea

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Foreword

We owe Martin a debt of gratitude for the story you are about to read, The Royal Hospital Chelsea at War. The story has not been previously told. Martin has searched through our archives, delved into unopened boxes lying in the back of long forgotten cupboards, painstakingly sifted official documents, uncovered remarkable pictures and first-hand diary accounts. He has assembled and presented them in a way that shows his deep love of this subject, respect for accuracy and authenticity, and passion in telling a story waiting to be told. Underpinned by rigorous academic research, he has crafted a highly readable narrative which brings to life the characters, the events and the dilemmas facing the authorities, and the enduring resilience of the Royal Hospital’s Pensioners. I am immensely grateful to Martin and to The History Press for bringing this story to a wider audience.

It tells the tale of a nation, city and community under fire, of sadness and loss, hope and rebirth, ingenuity and courage. It will take you to those critical moments, guide you through complex official decisions and dilemmas, the preparations for war and aerial bombardment, the construction of air-raid shelters (some of which exist to this day) and share with you a minute-by-minute account of the fateful night of 16–17 April 1941, when the infirmary sustained a direct hit and was destroyed, and the remarkable rescue operation that followed.

You will also discover another remarkable rescue operation that took place at the Hospital at the end of the war, when the Commissioners found themselves once again on the front line. This time against officialdom who eyed up the Hospital, itself wounded by war, and wondered if it was time for it to be pensioned off.

The Royal Hospital Chelsea at War, told so faithfully and with so much affection by Martin Cawthorne, demonstrates the values and proud heritage of the British Army: service, discipline, bravery, courage under fire, endurance in privation and resilience. We continue to draw on those same values today, discovering new ways that we can share community, comradeship and care with the wider veteran community, and opening our doors to welcome more visitors to share this wonderful heritage that I and my colleagues here are privileged to serve.

There will be future stories to be told. Enjoy reading this one.

General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, KCB, OBE, DL Governor, Royal Hospital Chelsea

Preface

The archives of the Royal Hospital Chelsea have an interesting history. Over the centuries of the Hospital’s existence, literally tons of internally generated paperwork were routinely destroyed as there was simply not the space to store the physical documents. That is, until the overwhelming bulk of the surviving archives (estimated as still consisting of around 1 million documents) was sent to the Army Records Office at Hayes in 1974. From here, they were transferred to the Public Record Office and are now held by The National Archives in Kew. There remained, however, an overlooked, small and eclectic collection of material stored in boxes in an attic at the Royal Hospital.

In 2013, the Hospital authorities decided to investigate these documents and digitise their contents to preserve the material for future generations. There was also the hope that the Hospital might find out a little more about itself and its history from the contents of these boxes. Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John Rochester was given the task of organising this project and chose to recruit some volunteers to assist him. So it was that, in 2014, I officially joined the ranks of the Royal Hospital Chelsea volunteer militia attached to the Quartermaster’s Department.

During this project, I happily worked with John and his other volunteers as we opened archive boxes and investigated their contents. The documents were subsequently digitised, with complex material sent off-site to specialist facilities and simple documents scanned using equipment brought in-house. As a result of our detective work during this preservation project, we uncovered a myriad of different stories about the Hospital and I enjoyed writing a couple of articles for the in-house magazine, The Tricorne. One of these covered the loss of much of the Hospital’s original endowment fund during the South Sea Bubble, which appealed to my finance background. We also uncovered some fascinating but contradictory material about the Second World War history of the institution.

As a home for retired soldiers, the Royal Hospital Chelsea has always been associated with warfare. The Second World War, however, represents a unique chapter in its history when the institution itself was in the line of fire for a sustained period in a way hitherto unknown. Its wartime experience is remarkably under-researched, with very little of any substance written about this period.

Captain C.G.T. Dean, in his 300-page definitive work, The Royal Hospital Chelsea, devotes little more than a page and a half to the war years. To some extent, this can be attributed to the fact that for Dean, writing in 1949, the war represented recent news rather than a unique historical era. It was also a time that he himself had lived through and many of his experiences were unquestionably traumatic, such that he may not have wished to revisit them while the scars were still fresh. But this does not explain the lack of substantive coverage of the war years in the work of the Hospital’s subsequent historians. However, the previous lack of readily available source material about the Royal Hospital during the Second World War may explain why this period has to date attracted so little attention.

The clues we uncovered during our digitisation work suggested a fascinating and previously untold wartime story which deserved further investigation. Rather than simply writing another short magazine article, I determined that I wished to attempt something more substantial and embarked upon a two-year Master’s degree course in Historical Studies at the University of Oxford which enabled me to conduct my research under the guidance of some exceptional academic supervision. My intimate familiarity with the archives held in Chelsea ensured that when I visited the National Archives I knew immediately where to start looking among the wealth of material held in Kew and had a reasonable idea of what I was hoping to find. In the event, I found much more than I expected.

I completed two dissertations during my studies. My first-year dissertation covered the question of how the Royal Hospital prepared for war, and in my second year I covered the war years themselves. I investigated the role and nature of evacuation strategies, which represent an ever-present but constantly evolving theme in the Hospital’s wartime story. The overwhelming majority of wartime evacuation historiography focuses on the experiences of young children and their guardians. The elderly and infirm, although in principle eligible for publicly funded assistance, were, in practice, more usually overlooked and hence have been largely ignored in the historiography of war on the Home Front. The Royal Hospital’s archives, by contrast, provide a uniquely detailed archive record of the challenges and experiences of a specific cohort of elderly and infirm: Chelsea Pensioners, recording their lives and lived experience during an exceptional period in our collective history.

The completed dissertations were considered to be of publishable quality given the depth of research and the weight of original source material used. One of the biggest challenges I faced was trying to squeeze the story I wanted to tell into available word count limits.

The wartime story of the Royal Hospital is more than simply a historiographical investigation into an overlooked chapter in the history of a nationally significant institution. It is also about the personal stories of individuals whose ordinary lives were impacted by extraordinary events during exceptional times; the people who lived, worked, and in some cases died, at the Royal Hospital during the Second World War. This is as much their story as it is the wartime history of a national institution and the neighbouring district of Chelsea. This book is my attempt at telling the wartime story of the Royal Hospital and its residents and I hope that its publication adds a little to our collective understanding of a unique chapter in the history of such a remarkable and worthy institution.

Martin Cawthorne

On the outbreak of war, a requisition order was served on the Royal Hospital for the use of part of the grounds for the installation of this searchlight unit. Two barrage balloons were also operated from the Royal Hospital grounds. (IWM Collections)

Introduction

The Royal Hospital Chelsea (RHC) opened its doors in 1692 as a retirement home for British Army veterans, one of a number of such institutions founded in the seventeenth century.1 Others included L’Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, founded in 1670 by Louis XIV as a home for French Army veterans; the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin, established in 1675; and the Royal Hospital Greenwich, opened as a retirement home for Royal Navy veterans at around the same time as RHC.2

The impetus for the establishment of these retirement institutions for ex-military personnel can be traced to the increasing prevalence of standing armies as a feature of the military landscape in Europe during the seventeenth century. In the United Kingdom, the success of the Parliamentarian New Model Army and the decisive role it played in the English Civil Wars demonstrated the advantages of a professional force of full-time soldiers trained in the skills necessary for the successful prosecution of military campaigns.

The Declaration of Breda in 1660, eleven years after the execution of Charles I, is notable for setting in train the restoration of the monarchy, with the subsequent coronation of Charles II ending the period most often referred to as the Interregnum. The Declaration, however, also contained provisions, which in effect formalised the continuation of a standing army, as Charles II proclaimed:

We do further declare, that we will be ready to consent to any Act or Acts of Parliament […] for the full satisfaction of all arrears due to the officers and soldiers of the army under the command of General Monk; and they shall be received into our service upon as good pay and conditions as they now enjoy.3

This opened the way for soldiers of the New Model Army to join the remnants of the Royalist Army, which had escaped into exile with the king. However, in the spirit of the Declaration of Breda, the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Claim of Right Act of 1689 enshrined in law the requirement for parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain these regular armed forces. By the second half of the seventeenth century, a professional standing army, swearing allegiance to the Crown but answerable to Parliament, had become a permanent feature of the United Kingdom’s military landscape.

This new British Army was soon in action. In 1661, Charles II married Catherine of Braganza and the accompanying marriage treaty provided an alliance with the kingdom of Portugal. The treaty also resulted in the Portuguese ceding control of the important port and fortress of Tangier.

This strategically located anchorage on the coast of North Africa afforded the Royal Navy the opportunity to extend its reach into the Mediterranean and provided a base for disrupting the activities of Barbary pirates. These marauding corsairs had terrorised coastal communities throughout the reign of Charles I, carrying off men, women and children to be sold into slavery. In 1625, the year of Charles I’s coronation, Salé corsairs had occupied the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel and used it as a base to conduct raiding expeditions throughout the West Country and coastal regions of the Irish Sea.4

Tangier offered Charles II the opportunity to take the fight to the Barbary pirates and in the summer of 1661 the army dispatched a newly formed Tangier Regiment to garrison the fortress and protect the anchorage for the navy’s warships. On their departure, the troops were assured by the king, ‘lett those honest men knowe, who are along with you, yet they shall allwayes be in my particular care and protection, as persons yet venture themselves in my service’.5

Putting boots on the ground, however, inevitably provoked a response and the garrison at Tangier was in continuous action throughout the period of occupation until the fortress and anchorage were finally abandoned in 1684. Tangier was subsequently recognised as the first Battle Honour of the newly constituted British Army.6

Casualties were incurred throughout the course of the campaign and the twenty-three-year occupation of Tangier resulted in a steady stream of wounded soldiers returning to the British Isles. Soldiers’ discharge papers increasingly reported ‘worn out’ as the principal reason given for a veteran leaving the regimental colours. Soldiering was hard and took its toll on the health of those in the service, and regardless of some modest financial provision provided under statutes for maimed soldiers, aged and disabled veterans became a regular sight throughout the country.

Discontent soon grew among both the military and wider population at the inadequate provision afforded to those who had served in uniform. It was increasingly clear that a regular standing army, while affording opportunities to the monarch and Parliament, also created obligations. Something needed to be done to support old soldiers who were ‘broken by age or war’.

Inspiration for how best to accommodate the needs of the increasing numbers of aged and infirm veterans came from the Continent. In 1670, Louis XIV of France founded L’Hôtel des Invalides in Paris as a home for 5,000 so-called ‘ineffectives’ of the French Army, and in 1672 the site was inspected by the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son.7 Les Invalides is subsequently cited as the institution from which ‘the notion of building the like […] was happily entertained’.8

With the king’s approval, in the summer of 1679 funds were obtained via deductions from the pay of serving soldiers and thus was founded the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, on the outskirts of Dublin. Its immediate success in providing succour to the growing ranks of previously destitute former soldiers, who had become a common sight throughout Ireland, soon prompted calls in London for similar treatment to be afforded to other military veterans.

The growing clamour for action resulted in Charles purchasing the buildings and grounds of an abandoned theology college on the banks of the River Thames in the district of Chelsea. The eminent architect Christopher Wren was appointed by the king’s agent, Sir Stephen Fox, to design a suitable home for retired soldiers, and construction started soon after the purchase of the site. After Charles’ death, work continued under James II and his successors until, in 1692, the first veterans entered the doors of the newly opened Royal Hospital Chelsea.

A similar institution to the east of London was founded as a home for ex-sailors – the Royal Hospital Greenwich opened at about the same time. The most notable difference between these two royal Hospitals was one of scale, with Chelsea designed to accommodate around 500 residents, whereas Greenwich was built to house multiple times this number. Although the difference in scale reflected the relative size of the army compared to the navy in 1692, it was also a gross underestimate of precisely how many former soldiers were eligible for entry into the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The result of this miscalculation led to Chelsea reaching its full occupancy almost as soon as it opened, which in turn raised the question of what should happen to those who were eligible for entry, but for whom no berth was immediately available.

Charles II did not live long enough to witness the opening of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, but even during its construction it became apparent that it would be sub-scale relative to the role envisaged for it. Consequently, when James II inherited the project he issued a Royal Warrant in 1686, addressing the issue of how to alleviate the condition of old soldiers who were congregating in the inns, taverns and boarding houses in the village of Chelsea in anticipation of being offered a berth in the Hospital on its completion. The warrant decreed soldiers ‘that are or shall be disabled by wounds in fight or other accidents in the service of the Crown, are to be provided for in the Royal Hospital […] in such manner as his Majesty shall hereafter direct; and in the meantime are to receive […] allowances’ to be paid from Hospital funds.9

The amount of each allowance was determined by rank and length of service, together with an assessment for any disabilities incurred while in the army. The recipients of these pension payments were restricted to the rank and file and did not extend to the officer class, because from its foundation, the Royal Hospital was always intended to provide succour and relief for the enlisted ranks only.

Thus, a system of pension payments was established, administered from Chelsea and paid either in person at the Royal Hospital or via agents acting as intermediaries. Army pensions consequently became known colloquially as ‘Chelsea pensions’ and old soldiers referred to as ‘Chelsea Pensioners’.

On becoming eligible for a Chelsea pension, ex-soldiers not residing at RHC were recorded as ‘Out-Pensioners’. However, when a berth became vacant, on condition an Out-Pensioner had no immediate dependents and was deemed to be ‘unencumbered by spouse’, they could move into the Royal Hospital. On doing so, Out-Pensioners surrendered or ‘commuted’ their pension on entry into the Hospital, whereupon they became known as ‘In-Pensioners’. Their army pension was henceforth paid to the Hospital authorities and used to provide three meals a day and a berth in one of the Long Ward accommodation blocks. This remains the modus operandi of the institution to this day, with the exception that army pensions are no longer administered from the Royal Hospital but are instead the direct responsibility of the Ministry of Defence.

However, by the late-nineteenth century, these symbols of benevolence towards retired military personnel had fallen from favour. The Royal Hospital Greenwich closed for financial reasons in 1869 after a series of parliamentary inquires into its cost-effectiveness, with some of the buildings later used by the National Maritime Museum.10 Les Invalides ceased to perform its original function before the outbreak of the First World War as the French moved to a conscript army and fewer soldiers attained the twenty years of service necessary for entry.11 Some of the buildings are now home to the Musée de l’Armée.

In Dublin, Kilmainham closed after Irish Independence in 1922, with the last residents moving out in 1927, and part of the estate was converted into an art gallery and exhibition centre.12 By the 1930s, therefore, on the eve of the Second World War, only the Royal Hospital Chelsea remained.

1

Pre-War Civil Defence Planning

‘The Bomber will always get through.’1

The First World War resulted in over 10 million deaths and was widely believed to have been a war to end all wars.2 However, not everybody accepted the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and in 1922 a demobilised German soldier called Adolf Hitler railed against his country’s defeat, ‘It cannot be that two million Germans should have fallen in vain […] No, we do not pardon, we demand – vengeance!’3 With Hitler and the Nazi Party’s subsequent rise to power, war clouds were once again forming over Europe and as calls for rearmament grew louder, attention in Britain turned to preparations on the Home Front.

Several towns and cities, particularly London, had faced aerial bombing in the First World War.4 The Royal Hospital Chelsea sustained damage and casualties during a raid in 1918 when a 1,000kg bomb dropped by a Staaken ‘Giant’ bomber destroyed the North-East Wing, killing Captain of Invalids Ernest Ludlow MC and his family.5 This was the largest bomb dropped on London during the First World War.6

Conventional thinking in the interwar years strongly favoured the view that the ‘bomber would always get through’ as articulated by Stanley Baldwin in a debate in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932, ‘I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through.’7

This widely held view led to a debate around how best to protect the civilian population from the anticipated aerial Armageddon. From 1923, Air Raid Precautions (ARP) in Britain were the responsibility of the Committee of Imperial Defence, an advisory body founded by the government in 1904.8 Initially, the ‘committee worked on the development of wartime measures, such as Auxiliary Fire brigades, barrage balloons and inner-city trenches’.9 However, cost considerations were a major factor in determining the level of pre-war Civil Defence expenditure, particularly given the crippling impact of the Great Depression following the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

In the mid-1930s, central government sought to include local government in the Civil Defence debate and the Home Office published a circular in 1935 ‘inviting suggestions from local authorities for their wartime measures’.10 It is from this point that evacuation strategies can be traced as an integral part of defence planning on the Home Front. The debate moved from a focus on protecting civilians in situ to instead considering the merits of moving vulnerable groups from areas of potential danger to places of relative safety.

In 1938, a government committee set up under the chairmanship of Sir John Anderson to consider Civil Defence options reported its findings.11 Detailed consideration was given to events surrounding the Japanese invasion of Chinese Manchuria and attacks against civilian targets in the Spanish Civil War. The well-publicised bombing of the city of Guernica was well known among both military and civilian society. The Anderson Report presented a compelling argument in favour of evacuation:

Apart from the danger to life and limb, there are obviously strong objections on humanitarian grounds to the retention, in areas which are likely to be the object of deliberate attack of persons whose presence is not absolutely essential. It is impossible fully to envisage the horrors of intensive air attack by the forces of a major European power on a densely populated city; but events in Spain and China have at least given some indication of what might befall. No one would willingly expose children, the aged or infirm, or anyone whose presence could be dispensed with to the nervous strain entailed.12

The Anderson Report divided the country into three zones – evacuation, neutral and reception – with the intention that local authorities in evacuation zones would liaise with those in reception areas to facilitate and co-ordinate the movement of vulnerable groups to a place of comparative safety. Leadership at the national level was to come from the Home Office, with Anderson identifying ‘the Home Secretary responsible for giving general directions regarding schemes for the evacuation of the civilian population’.13 At the detailed operational level, the task of administering the evacuation proposals was delegated to the Ministry of Health. However, it quickly became apparent that evacuation planning would be fraught with difficulties. At the outset of the scheme there was little agreement as to which areas of the country should fall into each zone:

Over 200 local authorities in England and Wales graded as reception asked to be ranked as neutral, and another sixty wanted to be scheduled for evacuation. It is significant of the temper of the country at that time that no authority zoned as evacuable disputed the Ministry of Health’s decision, and no authority asked to be a reception area.14

Although it was envisaged that evacuation would be voluntary, the report nevertheless established officially designated ‘priority groups’ eligible for publicly funded support. These were identified, in the sometimes inelegant language of the day, as including:

1. Schoolchildren, removed as school units under the charge of their teachers.

2. Younger children, accompanied by their mothers or by some other responsible person.

3. Expectant mothers.

4. Adult blind persons and cripples where removal was feasible.15

Local authorities would co-ordinate their plans to best meet the specific requirements of each of these priority groups, with problems that were identified in advance by the Anderson Committee to be solved through local co-operation, co-ordinated at a national level.

It was recognised at the outset that the scale of potential evacuation envisaged was inevitably going to create significant logistical challenges which would need to be overcome. Nevertheless, government departments would rise to the challenges encountered and so it was expected that, for example, the Ministry of Transport would ensure ‘transport facilities can be provided to meet the needs of any orderly scheme of evacuation’.16

Finding suitable accommodation for all the anticipated evacuees was, however, considered to be an altogether more difficult problem. It was felt that there was a ‘definite limit on the extent to which billets can be found’.17 Consequently, it was agreed that it would ‘be necessary to give the authorities the power in time of war to requisition accommodation for the billeting of evacuees’.18 The task of drawing up lists of suitable accommodation which could be requisitioned if necessary fell to the Office of Works.

Originally established in 1378, under the leadership of a Surveyor of the King’s Works, the Office of Works was responsible for the construction and maintenance of royal castles and palaces. In 1682, it was the Office of Works, under the guidance of Christopher Wren, which had built the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and in the 1930s it still retained responsibility for the maintenance of the Hospital’s buildings and grounds.

Although a quasi-independent entity within Whitehall, the Office of Works reported to the Home Secretary and as such was notionally under the control of the Home Office.19 With extensive in-house expertise in property management, it was to play an important role in Civil Defence and as evacuation planning progressed, the role of the Office of Works was quickly formalised:

At a meeting of the Imperial Defence Committee on the 15th April 1937, it was decided that secret surveys should be undertaken of buildings that could be utilised, and the information fed into a central requisitioning register. This was made the responsibility of the Office of Works.20

Officials subsequently toured the country compiling lists of properties which could be requisitioned should the need arise. Internal discussions were regularly held about which buildings could be used for meeting the various requirements the Office of Works had been asked to consider.

An important factor which significantly influenced evacuation planning was the widely held view about the likelihood of enemy bombers inevitably ‘getting through’. It was anticipated that the unavoidable consequence of these attacks on heavily populated civilian centres, regardless of the prior evacuation of vulnerable groups, would undoubtedly result in considerable casualties among the remaining inhabitants of targeted areas. The Imperial Defence Committee estimated that should the United Kingdom face a sixty-day bombing campaign, this would most likely result in as many as 600,000 dead and 1.2 million wounded.21 These considerations inevitably played a major part in the deliberations among officials at the Office of Works as they compiled the requisition register, and resulted in numerous buildings being identified as potential candidates for emergency casualty clearing hospitals for the anticipated flood of air-raid victims. This focus on air-raid casualties would have important implications for the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Although in theory there was to be no distinction between the priority groups officially identified in the Anderson Report, in practice, this was not the case. The committee ‘devoted special attention to the manner in which children in vulnerable areas should be dealt with’.22 This was in part simply due to the scale of the potential numbers involved. A short working paper submitted to the committee, ‘Evacuation of the Child Population of London – An Appreciation’, suggested that ‘up to a million children’ would require evacuation from the capital alone.23

Schoolchildren, while collectively the largest of the priority groups, were also easy to identify and categorise, given that every schoolchild was individually registered at a particular school. School registers meant that, as a group, schoolchildren were relatively easy to deal with from an administrative perspective. So, it was perhaps inevitable that this priority group would attract a significant allocation of the available administrative and logistical resources devoted to evacuation planning.

The Anderson Report recognised that dealing with the other priority groups would be infinitely more complex. This was in part because unlike the evacuation of schoolchildren, which could be organised through the administrative unit of individual schools, these other groups ‘have not this common focus, and the arrangements for the transport and accommodation of some of these groups will need special consideration’.24

In the case of the disabled, a further issue was also quickly identified in so far as in these pre-war, pre-National Health Service days there were no centralised records of the disabled. Nor indeed was there any definition as to who qualified as such. Despite attempts by the Anderson Report to clarify the issues around the expected treatment of the disabled, there was much confusion among local authorities as to what was expected of them. Eventually, the Ministry of Health issued a memorandum titled ‘Government Evacuation Scheme’, which tried to offer guidance in this area. Using the inelegant language of the day, the memorandum, under the heading ‘Cripples’, addresses the specific issues relating to the proposed evacuation of the disabled:

9. Different considerations apply in the case of cripples, since the degree of disablement of cripples varies greatly and there are no register or other records on which an estimate of the number of cripples in an evacuating area can be formed.

10. It appears, however, that facilities should be afforded for the evacuation of adult cripples who satisfy the two conditions of being capable on the one hand of locomotion without the aid of an invalid chair and on the other hand of being at a serious disadvantage owing to slowness of movement or limitation of powers of locomotion in seeking shelter in air-raids.

11. It will therefore be competent to local authorities to make arrangements for the evacuation of such cripples who notify them of their desire to be evacuated, and it is suggested that these arrangements should be linked with the arrangements for the evacuation of blind persons.

12. In order that an estimate can be formed of the numbers to be dealt with, it will be necessary for the local authorities of evacuating areas to make public their proposals and such facilities as they will be able to afford for cripples in this category, and to notify those who wish to take advantage of those facilities to register.25

In short, therefore, the disabled were identified as anybody who, because of frailty or infirmity, was likely to be at a serious disadvantage when seeking sanctuary in air-raid shelters during bombing alerts.

Despite these clarifications, further issues quickly emerged to create uncertainty as to how the disabled would be treated in practice. The Anderson Report had recommended that participation in government-funded evacuation schemes should be voluntary and many citizens subsequently chose to make their own arrangements. When war was declared in 1939, it was estimated that at least as many people evacuated under private arrangements as chose to use government-sponsored schemes.26 In practice, many of those using the government schemes did so because they were unable to make their own arrangements, usually because they lacked the financial resources to do so.

As local authorities followed government advice and compiled registers of the disabled in their districts who wished to be considered for the government-sponsored evacuation schemes, it quickly became apparent that a significant number of those registering lived in Public Assistance Institutions.27 In most cases, these institutions were workhouses, which had come under the control of local authorities as a result of the Local Government Act 1929. This realisation quickly created its own issues.

Unfortunately, although the official classification of workhouses had changed, the same cannot be said of attitudes and prejudices towards them. On the whole, Public Assistance Institutions were still the same organisations, housed in the same overcrowded and substandard buildings, staffed by the same unreconstructed individuals, as had been the case when they were part of the local welfare relief system administered under the much-maligned Poor Law legislation. Consequently, they tended to attract the same correspondingly unenlightened degree of stigma that had almost always been associated with the workhouse. Chronic overcrowding and institutionalised prejudice undoubtedly affected efforts to accommodate eligible inmates within the agreed evacuation planning protocols.

Officials responsible for the safety of blind and disabled inmates of Public Assistance Institutions in areas designated as evacuation zones tried diligently to put in place arrangements for the transfer of these inmates to corresponding facilities in the receiving areas. It soon became apparent, however, that due to chronic overcrowding and indifference among officialdom to the plight of workhouse inmates, there was simply not the appetite in the evacuation-receiving areas to offer accommodation for these potential evacuees. This sad situation is evidenced by a report from the Chief Officer of Public Assistance at the London County Council who, after making exhaustive enquiries, was forced to conclude ‘that the results of the survey of accommodation make it clear that it will not be possible […] to make arrangements for the evacuation of the aged and infirm inmates of […] Public Assistance Institutions’.28

It is undoubtedly the case that most of the In-Pensioners of the Royal Hospital met the requirements for evacuation of the disabled laid out by the Ministry of Health, as their age and infirmities put them at ‘serious disadvantage […] in seeking shelter in air-raids’. Unfortunately, the challenges and prejudices which undermined attempts to accommodate the priority group described in official memorandum as ‘cripples’, and which in practice included the aged and infirm inmates of Public Assistance Institutions, created an unhelpful backdrop for the Royal Hospital’s wartime preparations. The treatment of the inmates of Public Assistance Institutions would result in unfortunate consequences for the Royal Hospital as it prepared for war.

The evacuation plans envisaged in the Anderson Report required an unprecedented displacement of individuals and communities across Britain. Unfortunately, however, it soon became clear that the ad hoc organisational structure recommended by the report was unsuitable for the task in hand.

The Home Office increasingly struggled to provide effective leadership, with problems most obviously apparent in the capital, which the Anderson Committee anticipated ‘presents special features’.29 It was recognised at the outset that London was going to present its own unique challenges if for no other reason than the sheer scale of the potential numbers involved: between the 1890s and the outbreak of the Second World War, the population of the capital had grown from around 5.6 million to 8.7 million people.30

Quite apart from the daunting numbers of potential evacuees, the Anderson Report also cites the complexities associated with trying to co-ordinate on an ad hoc basis the planning activities of ‘28 Borough Councils’.31 However, although the complex nature of local government administration in the capital undoubtedly represented a challenge, the real issue was a political one. A London County Council that was ‘ruled by Herbert Morrison’s Labour administration’ had to work with ‘a Conservative central government for which Morrison had only contempt’.32 In dealing with this political rivalry, the committee’s approach to ‘suggest […] that as far as the evacuation problem is concerned an ad hoc organisation should be set up’ was simply unrealistic.33

As the scale of the organisational and logistical challenges became increasingly apparent and these competing political ideologies were unable to compromise, evacuation planning very quickly descended into a ‘political squabble in Whitehall’.34 The only common ground between the warring factions was a shared conviction as to the importance of establishing credible and workable evacuation provision for London’s children. As such, the outcome of this political infighting eventually ‘established the Education Officer’s office as the most suitable government branch to oversee London’s evacuation’.35

Planning now focused even more closely on meeting the needs of London’s schoolchildren with the result that the other priority groups became more marginalised. It was against this bureaucratically dysfunctional, institutionally indifferent and politically charged background that the Commissioners and Officers of the Royal Hospital set about preparing wartime plans for the protection and well-being of the aged and infirm In-Pensioners who were resident in Chelsea.

While Civil Defence preparations continued on the Home Front in Britain, tensions were building in Europe. In Germany, Hitler, having consolidated his position at home, now looked towards the near abroad as he sought to extend his Nazi Party’s influence into the domestic politics of his neighbours. In March 1938, Austria was annexed in the Anschluss unification into a single ‘Greater Germany’ political union, before Hitler turned his attention to the German-speaking minority in neighbouring Czechoslovakia.

The Sudetenland bordering Germany in north-western Czechoslovakia, a heavily industrialised region hit particularly hard by the Great Depression, suffered endemic unemployment among its German-speaking population. By 1936, this minority accounted for over 60 per cent of the unemployed.36 Growing discontent fuelled the rise of the Sudeten German Party (SdP) and in March 1938, shortly after the announcement of the Anschluss, party leader Konrad Henlein met with Hitler in Berlin. On his return, emboldened by Hitler’s support, Henlein began making demands of the Czech government for greater autonomy for the Sudetenland, demands that were given greater force when the SdP won almost 90 per cent of the popular vote among the German-speaking minority in elections in May 1938. The Sudetenland Germans and the Czech government appeared to be on a collision course destined to end in a potentially violent separation.

2

The Royal Hospital Prepares for War

‘… to evacuate nearly 600 useless mouths from London …’1

The first substantive preparations for war at the Royal Hospital Chelsea appeared in a confidential internal paper of 17 May 1938.2 Presented at the Hospital’s regular weekly board meeting, the paper summarised the conclusions of a meeting held at the Hospital the previous day with representatives of the Home Office and Office of Works responsible for evacuation planning. This meeting on 16 May was an opportunity for the parties present to discuss the merits of evacuating the Royal Hospital in the event of war and had been convened in light of the recommendations made in the recently published Anderson Report. Events unfolding on the Continent added a sense of urgency to the discussions.

The paper, presented by the Lieutenant Governor Major General Delano-Osborne, describes the meeting as a ‘conference with the representatives of the ARP Department of the Home Office and H.M. Office of Works’. It had been called to discuss whether, on the outbreak of war, evacuation ‘was the best solution with regard to the Royal Hospital’, and outlines reasons why it would be desirable ‘to evacuate the pensioners altogether from London on a Declaration of War’.

The first reason highlighted was the unsuitability of the Royal Hospital’s ‘buildings to be adapted to resist an attack’, with the roof identified as ‘easily penetrable by any type of projectile’. Furthermore, ‘the floors of the main wards are so fragile from their age and lack of supporting cross walls, that, if the upper part of the building collapsed, the whole would go right to the bottom floor’. It was pointed out that ‘even the vaulting of the crypts could not be counted on to support the debris falling from the roofs and walls of the chapel and Great Hall’, the implication being that air-raid shelters located beneath the principal Hospital buildings would offer little protection should the buildings suffer a direct hit. On the other hand, ‘the alternative solution of providing slit trenches outside’ in the Hospital grounds would be of little use given that most In-Pensioners were either ‘incapable of rapid movement or unable to stand the exposure involved’ in sheltering outdoors, potentially during winter, in the event of air raids.3

This was, of course, the very reason this meeting was taking place, as most In-Pensioners were at ‘serious disadvantage owing to slowness of movement or limitation of power of locomotion in seeking shelter in air-raids’, and as such, met the Ministry of Health’s definition of disability. Furthermore, the Anderson Report recommended evacuation from areas of danger of anybody ‘whose presence is not absolutely essential’.4

Although this recommendation was based on humanitarian grounds, there were also logistical issues to be considered and it was thought ‘advisable, on lines of general policy, to evacuate nearly 600 useless mouths from London thus relieving food problems, etc’.5 The expectation was that in the event of London suffering air-raid attacks, debris from damaged buildings would make it difficult to supply and distribute food. It therefore made sense to evacuate those who did not need to be in the capital, including the 500 In-Pensioners at the Royal Hospital and their 100 support staff, collectively referred to as ‘600 useless mouths’.

The meeting also took broader considerations into account, however. It was recognised that once the Hospital had been evacuated, ‘the vacated accommodation in the Infirmary would be of immediate utility for the military or civil authorities for use as a Hospital and, further, that the Wards themselves could be readily utilised for some other purpose connected with the emergency’.6

The Office of Works was conscious of the Committee of Imperial Defence estimates of the likely scale of air-raid casualties and the need to requisition buildings with the potential to be converted into casualty clearing hospitals. The Royal Hospital buildings afforded little protection to In-Pensioners in the event of air raids but once vacated, they provided a purpose-built infirmary and associated Long Wards, which could be used for treating air-raid casualties or providing temporary accommodation for displaced civilians.

Furthermore, a requisitioned Royal Hospital site did not have to be used in an entirely passive nature; it could also be utilised in a more overtly military manner. The Hospital is situated on the north bank of the River Thames, directly opposite what at the time was London’s major source of electric power, Battersea Power Station. It is less than a mile downstream from London Underground’s Lots Road Power Station, ‘built solely for the purpose of powering underground railways’.7 Located on the Embankment thoroughfare, it is adjacent to major crossing points over the river – Chelsea and Albert bridges. These were all strategically significant targets and consequently of prime interest to the Luftwaffe. The risk of collateral damage, given its geographic location was therefore very high, but once evacuated the Hospital’s grounds offered useful potential for the deployment of defensive countermeasures such as barrage balloons, searchlights and even anti-aircraft guns. By all accounts, therefore, a compelling case was made for the complete evacuation of the Royal Hospital in the event of war, in part for the protection of the In-Pensioners, but also because a vacated and requisitioned site offered the Office of Works versatile and flexible possibilities for meeting its broader requisitioning objectives.

Finally, the paper addressed the possible implications on public morale of what could potentially be interpreted as an example of the army evacuating a military site on the outbreak of hostilities. It concluded, however:

It was not considered by the officers of the Departments present that the moral factor of moving the Hospital would be of any importance because they considered that other Institutions of like nature were considering schemes for complete removal in the event of an emergency on humanitarian grounds.8

This was almost certainly a reference to the fact that at this early stage of implementation of the recommendations in the Anderson Report, it was envisaged that disabled residents of Public Assistance Institutions would also be evacuated. However, this meeting took place before it became apparent that there was simply not the appetite among the receiving areas to offer accommodation to workhouse evacuees; an issue which would become increasingly apparent over the ensuing weeks and months.

Nevertheless, as war clouds formed in early 1938, a comprehensive case was made by Officers of the Royal Hospital in consultation with government departments responsible for Civil Defence planning for the complete evacuation of In-Pensioners to an unidentified place of safety outside London in the event of war. The recommendations presented to the board were accepted and, having agreed on an evacuation strategy, the Commissioners of the Royal Hospital in a letter on 1 June 1938 sought authorisation from the War Office to sanction such a move. Officials from the Office of Works, meanwhile, consulted their register of requisition properties, seeking to identify potential candidates to meet the accommodation needs of the Royal Hospital once detailed requirements had been established.

In anticipation of the War Office endorsing the evacuation proposals, a short note dated 16 June was circulated within the Office of Works alerting staff to the probability that ‘we are likely before very long to receive an official letter from the hospital authorities that they are in favour of evacuating the hospital in the event of an emergency’.9

In Czechoslovakia, on 19 May 1938, President Beneš ordered a partial military mobilisation in response to a build-up of German troops on the border. As tensions in Europe continued to rise, the Royal Hospital had wasted no time in digesting the contents of the Anderson Report and following its recommendations. Engaging in ad hoc consultation with the relevant government departments, Officers and Commissioners had acted quickly and proactively to determine an appropriate evacuation strategy for the Royal Hospital in the event of an emergency being declared. A response to the Commissioners’ letter is noted in the Board Meeting Minutes of 7 July 1938, where the War Office is reported as:

… approving Commissioners proposals contained in R. Hospital letter […] dated 1st June 1938 that in the event of an emergency the In-Pensioners of the Hospital should be evacuated to accommodation outside London + that the co-operation of the Office of Works and the Home Office is sought in the preparation of the requisite scheme.10

Having been granted the necessary approvals, attention turned to formulating an appropriate evacuation plan. For the Office of Works to identify a suitable property to meet the needs of the Royal Hospital a detailed schedule of what those specific requirements entailed was required, including how many In-Pensioners and staff were to be evacuated.

Evacuation of the Royal Hospital would only include In-Pensioners and those staff directly responsible for their care and well-being. The Pensions Secretariat, which oversaw the administration of army pensions, would not be included in the evacuation plans. These staff, although employed at the Royal Hospital, were not directly caring for the In-Pensioner community, with most living off-site and travelling into Chelsea daily to undertake clerical and administrative jobs. Some members of the Pensions Secretariat qualified for evacuation under the government’s general evacuation scheme, but the Royal Hospital would not be involved in these cases.

Subsequently, at a board meeting held on 18 August 1938, draft letters were approved ‘to be sent to the Home Office and Office of Works […] in regard to the evacuation of the In-Pensioners and Staff in the event of an emergency’.11 These letters explain the decision of the Commissioners, detailing the reasons as discussed at the 16 May conference. They confirm that ‘in this decision the War Office has concurred and has authorised the Commissioners to seek the co-operation of your Department in the preparation of a scheme for the evacuation of the personnel concerned’.12 The Hospital’s requirements are duly outlined, namely, ‘that arrangements will be made jointly by the Home Office and H.M. Office of Works to earmark in advance suitable alternative accommodation for the personnel concerned, and also arrange transport of the personnel and necessary stores to their new quarters if, and when, the time comes’.13 A detailed schedule of requirements, giving numbers of In-Pensioners and staff to be included in the scheme, was enclosed.

This approach to evacuation planning diligently followed the Anderson recommendations of ‘ad hoc organisation […] set up with direct responsibility to the appropriate Department of State’.14 The Home Office had overall responsibility for evacuation planning and liaised with relevant departments such as the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Health, while the Office of Works was responsible for finding suitable evacuation sites.

The conference held at the Royal Hospital on 16 May had prepared the ground and ensured that the letters sent by the Royal Hospital were anticipated. Furthermore, the War Office had endorsed the Commissioners’ plans. It was reasonable to presume, therefore, that initial thoughts about potential options were already under consideration by the evacuation authorities, and thus, having duly delegated the organisational responsibilities to the relevant government departments, the Officers and Commissioners of the Hospital returned to the day-to-day management of the institution, while awaiting a response.

The schedule of requirements included with the letters sent to the Home Office and Office of Works is a remarkable document.15 Extending to several pages and containing a wealth of detail, it is written in the style of a regimental movement order. It was in many respects exactly what was required in terms of outlining the specific evacuation needs of a unique institution providing succour and relief to old soldiers.

In light of the difficulties emerging in Whitehall, however, as civil servants struggled unsuccessfully to accommodate the evacuation requirements of Public Assistance Institutions, the militarily myopic tone of the Royal Hospital’s submission was not universally appreciated by civilian authorities grappling with the realities of evacuation planning and implementation. The Royal Hospital’s officers can of course be excused for their ignorance of the difficulties being faced by civil servants who were increasingly overwhelmed by the challenges they faced daily as they sought to balance a multitude of competing Civil Defence demands. Nevertheless, the seemingly tone-deaf nature of the Hospital’s submission to the Home Office and the Office of Works was not entirely welcomed by those to whom it was addressed.

The document outlined the evacuation requirements of some 500 aged and infirm old soldiers who collectively, and for the most part individually, met the definition of ‘disabled’ as determined by the Ministry of Health. It also detailed the needs of the staff who would accompany this priority group of evacuees to their allocated place of safety in a designated reception area.

However, in typical military style, the list of evacuees is presented in a hierarchical descending order, with the most senior officer listed at the top of the first page. Consequently, the Governor, who at this point was General Sir Walter Braithwaite, is listed as the first evacuee, along with his ‘dependents’ – identified as his wife and their three domestic maids. Second on the list of evacuees is the Lieutenant Governor, Major General Huddleston, who had recently replaced Major General Delano-Osborne as the second-most senior officer at the Hospital. The recipients of this schedule would no doubt recall that it was the Lieutenant Governor who had represented the Royal Hospital at the evacuation conference held in May 1938, where it was agreed that evacuation was the most appropriate course of action for the Hospital in the event of an emergency. The Lieutenant Governor’s dependants included his wife, one child and two maids. Next on the list was the Adjutant, his wife and one maid; followed by the Chaplain, his wife and their maid. Listed next are six Captains of Invalids, their wives, a total of nine children and each family’s individual maid. The Organist, Sergeant Major, eight Hospital constables and fourteen Long Ward nurses complete the list of staff evacuees on page one of the evacuation schedule. Finally, represented by a single line at the foot of the page is an entry for ‘420 In-Pensioners, no dependents’.

The second page of the schedule focuses on the Hospital’s infirmary and continues in a similar vein to the first. The Physician & Surgeon, as the most senior officer, is listed at the top of the page, with his dependents identified as his wife, two children and the family’s maid. The Physician & Surgeon’s deputy, his wife, three children and their maid come next, before the list continues with: one Matron, one Hospital Sergeant – with wife and child – four nursing sisters, two superannuated Long Ward nurses, one housekeeper, nineteen nurses, seventeen domestics, one ward-master and eight infirmary orderlies. The rank and file of some eighty predominantly bedbound In-Pensioner infirmary patients, who by any definition of disability would be at ‘serious disadvantage in seeking shelter in air-raids’, again feature as a single-line entry towards the bottom of the page.

Pages three and four cover the remainder of the staff who, it was assumed, should accompany the 500 In-Pensioners on their evacuation odyssey. This includes seventeen members of the Quartermaster’s Department along with five wives, eight children and the quartermaster’s live-in maid. Four cooks, three wives and three children make up the Catering Department’s contingent, and finally the administration team are represented by the staff clerk and his wife, three additional clerks, two typists, one of whom was a shorthand specialist, and finally an assistant office-keeper with his wife and two children.

Having detailed the particulars of the staff members and dependents who were to accompany the 500 In-Pensioners, the schedule goes into much detail as to the Hospital’s real-estate requirements. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Adjutant would all need substantial individual offices in addition to their private living quarters. Also required would be guardrooms, storerooms, bath houses, kitchens, ablutions, lavatory facilities, waiting and medical reception rooms, a ward-master’s office, Sister’s night-duty room, medical store and dispensary, a linen store and additional stores for clothing, utensils, bedding, bread and groceries, meat, beer, vegetables, a scullery and a food preparation room. The In-Pensioners would need a recreation room with two additional billiard rooms, one for the non-commissioned pensioners and the other for the remainder. In addition, it was pointed out that the ‘provision of a lift necessary if accommodation above first floor’. A further schedule listed the baggage weight allowance and requirements, anticipated as amounting to almost 80 tons in total. Transport requirements were obviously going to amount to a small convoy of vehicles.

Despite the presentational shortcomings of the evacuation schedule, it did nevertheless contain all the information required for organising the transfer of the Royal Hospital. The staff at the Office of Works focused on the substance rather than the style of the document, and a handwritten internal memo dated 20 August, two days after the letter was posted, outlines the issues which the department identified as needing to be addressed.16

Three principal points are highlighted: the first was the practical issue of simply identifying a suitable property which could be used to meet the requirements of what was, after all, a unique institution. Other organisations earmarked for evacuation were typically paired with a similar institution in a corresponding reception zone, such that schools in evacuation zones were introduced to a potential host school in a receiving zone and both parties were subsequently assisted by the relevant government departments in organising the practicalities of a move should the need arise. Similar situations pertained to maternity units, and it had been hoped that Public Assistance Institutions would follow the same model, if only these institutions had typically not been so chronically overcrowded to begin with.

In the case of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, however, there were simply no comparable institutions with which to pair off. Greenwich had closed decades earlier, and was in the wrong place anyway, whereas Kilmainham, Dublin, was obviously out of the question.

In addressing this issue, several properties that the Office of Works managed were highlighted as potential candidates for providing an evacuation home for the Royal Hospital. These included the royal family’s former residence, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and the Office of Works’ internal note further mentions that ‘even Hampton Court [Palace] occurs to one’ as a possible host venue. However, in each instance the terrifying estimates of expected air-raid casualties weighed on the decision-making process, and it is consequently assumed in the case of both these potential candidates ‘that if they were at all habitable they would have to be used as hospitals’. This is indicative of the range of competing challenges the Office of Works was grappling with at this time as it sought to tackle the practicalities involved in putting evacuation planning into practice.

The second issue highlighted was the question of what to do if the Office of Works was unable to identify a suitable candidate within its existing portfolio of state-owned ‘surplus buildings’ which could potentially meet the evacuation needs of the Hospital.17 In this instance, the note suggests that the alternatives would be for the Office of Works to either lease or purchase a suitable venue. However, this option was dismissed out of hand as it ‘would be expensive and [the Office of Works] should have more urgent work on hand than hiring and adapting a building for this purpose’.

The justification for not pursuing this option demonstrates the relatively low priority the evacuation authorities accorded to the issue of moving ‘600 useless mouths’ out of danger when considered alongside some of the other demands placed upon the Office of Works. Moving the Royal Hospital’s resident In-Pensioners to a place of relative safety was simply not a high priority.

Having ruled out the options of either leasing or purchasing suitable accommodation, a third option is considered: the possibility of using the Office of Works’ authority to requisition a building for use as an evacuation home for the Royal Hospital. This option is also dismissed, rather intriguingly on the grounds that ‘it would be difficult to justify requisitioning for such a purpose’.18 Once again, the difficulties the evacuation authorities were experiencing in trying to identify and accommodate disabled evacuees, and the realisation that many of these unfortunate individuals were living in Public Assistance Institutions, appeared to overshadow efforts to organise evacuation provision for the Royal Hospital.