insufficient supplies, is intelligible; or that the occupation of a
town of 30,000 inhabitants by an army of 30,000 men, without any
sanitary precaution, suddenly doubling the population to the area, and
thereby halving the proportion of every accommodation, supplies,
water, drainage, sewerage, &c. &c., should engender disease, is
readily understood; but the problem submitted to us is to find the
causes of a mortality more than double that of civil life among 60,000
men, scattered, in numbers seldom exceeding a thousand in one place,
among a population of 28,000,000, in time of profound peace, in a
country which is not only the healthiest, but which possesses the
greatest facility of communication and the greatest abundance of
supply in Europe."
In endeavouring to solve this extraordinary problem, the first question
naturally asked is, Why the foot soldiers suffer a rate of mortality so
much higher than the cavalry? They are recruited pretty much from the
same source, and breathe apparently pretty much the same atmosphere; yet
we find that the Foot Guards perish at nearly double the rate of the Life
Guards. The causes of this difference are mainly, overcrowding and the
want of due exercise and employment. The chief diseases of the soldier are
fever and consumption; the latter, or "the English Death," as it is but
too aptly termed, being the chief destroyer. The deaths by pulmonary
disease amount in the cavalry to 7·3 per thousand, in the infantry of the
line to 10·2, and in the Guards to 13·8; whilst of the entire number of
deaths from all causes in the army, diseases of the lungs constitute in
the cavalry 53·9 per cent., in the infantry of the line 57·277 per cent.,
and in the Foot Guards 67·683 per cent. We are strongly inclined to
believe that some portion of this extraordinary mortality from pulmonary
disease may be owing to the atmosphere of pipeclay in which the Foot
Guards, and indeed the Horse Guards in a minor degree, live. In 1853, the
year in which the mortality tables were made up, the former pipe-clayed
their white trousers and fatigue jackets as well as their belts. Thus the
fine dust must have been for ever entering their lungs, and Mr. Simon, in
his recent Report affecting the health of special occupations, expressly
states that the workers in potteries are among the most unhealthy
artisans, in consequence of the clay-dust they are constantly inhaling in
the course of their daily work affecting their respiratory organs.
It would appear that overcrowding is the chief cause of the disparity of
the death-rate between the two classes of Guards. If we compare the
extremes, we find that, whilst the Foot Guards quartered in Portman-street
barracks have only 331 cubic feet of air allotted to each man, the Horse
Guards at the Hyde Park barracks have 572 cubic feet; and if we take the
whole force of Foot and Horse Guards, we find that in London the latter
have the advantage of between one-fourth and one-fifth more air in their
barracks. But there is another and very important difference in favour of
the Horse Guard: his exercise is on the whole more varied than that of the
Foot Guard. In the infantry, the drill only exercises the lower limbs and
fixes the chest in one position; the grooming of a horse brings nearly
every muscle into play, which tends to open and expand the chest. The
broadsword exercise has the like effect. This diversity in the daily
duties and in the amount of air they have to breathe, explains, we
believe, the great discrepancy between the deaths from consumption of the
two classes of Guards.
The reason for the increased mortality of the Dragoon regiments over that
of the Life Guards is not so easy to discover. As regards the Line
regiments, being quartered mostly in country localities, they breathe on
the whole a better atmosphere and have more exercise than the Foot Guards.
That this is the reason of their lower rate of mortality would appear from
the fact, that while the Guards were campaigning in Canada during the
rebellion, enjoying the same pure air as the Line, and undergoing
precisely the same fatigue and exposure, their relative rate of mortality
was reversed, and the Foot Guards proved the more healthy of the two. The
latter portion of the Crimean campaign showed the same result.
When the high rate of mortality was first made known in the "Times,"
military authorities imputed it chiefly to the destructive nature of the
night duties. The evidence given before the Commissioners, however,
entirely negatives this explanation.
There are three classes of men whose night duties are more severe than
those of the Foot Guards--firemen, the police, and sailors; yet, strange
to say, all three enjoy a high state of health. The London fireman
undergoes, perhaps, more wear and tear than the rest. His duties call him
sometimes to several fires in a night, and when not out he is waiting in
readiness. Whilst on service he is liable to great varieties of
temperature, and to a good deal of wet; one minute he is scorching in the
midst of the fire, the next half-drowned by the water. Nevertheless, he
suffers a mortality of only seven per thousand. The metropolitan police
are on duty ten consecutive hours in all weather, yet their mortality is
less than nine per thousand. The comparison between them and the Foot
Guards is the closest that could be made, as the unmarried men all live in
section-houses (or barracks), are clothed in a uniform, and fed in messes.
Yet the mortality is just half that of the line regiments, and less than
half the mortality of the Foot Guards! The sailor on the home station, who
is worse lodged than either, and is subject to constant nightwork of a
very exposed character, shows a still more favourable result. It is clear
therefore that the nightwork will not account for the frightful inroads
made by disease in the ranks of the soldier. Nor need we go much further
than the barracks to know the main causes of all this suffering and death.
In London, as we have said, no more than 331 cubic feet of air was meted
out to her Majesty's Foot Guards, and in Dover Castle it was reduced to
147 feet per man, or less than the quantity which brought about the jail
fever which Howard discovered to be raging in the Cambridge Town Bridewell
in 1774. The highest average space allotted to each man before 1847 was
447 cubic feet. Even this amount of air is rendered less pure by defective
arrangements. Add to which the beds are placed only one foot apart, in
defiance of the fact that a man may be suffocated in a crowd
notwithstanding that he has all the sky above him. The state of the
morning atmosphere is thus summed up by Serjeant Brown, in answer to the
questions from one of the Commissioners:--
"Have you often gone into the men's rooms in the morning before the
windows were open?--Yes. In what state did you find the
atmosphere?--In a very thick and nasty state, especially if I came in
out of the air. If I went in out of my own room sometimes, I could not
bear it till I had ordered the windows to be opened to make a draught.
I have often retired to the passage and called to the orderly man to
open the windows."
In some cases the troops are lodged in the basement of buildings below the
natural level of the soil, or in places where the storekeepers object to
put their stores, in consequence of the damage that would result to them
from the damp. A notable instance is given in evidence by Dr. T. E.
Balfour:--
"In 1845 the armoury was burnt down in the Tower, and a new barrack
was erected on its site--certainly not before it was wanted, because
the accommodation was very bad. The barrack was finished in the
beginning of 1849; fever was then prevailing among the men, and
cholera threatening. The surgeon applied to have the new barracks
given over for the use of the men, and he got two rooms; he
remonstrated through his commanding officer with the authorities, when
he was informed that he could not have more given over to him, as they
were full of stores--blankets, I believe. On suggesting that the
stores might be put into the old barracks, he was told that they were
a great deal too damp to put stores into, and it was only in
consequence of an energetic remonstrance on the part of the commanding
officer, which I believe reached the Duke of Wellington, that a Board
of officers was ordered to assemble, who recommended that the troops
should be immediately moved into the new barracks."
Now and then the crotchet of a Colonel does a vast deal of mischief. Not
many years since, the cavalry at Knightsbridge were condemned to drink the
water from the Serpentine,--a reservoir of filth, which is now pronounced
to be pestilential to the neighbourhood. The men objected to use this
diluted sewage; but the commanding-officer had perfect faith in filters.
Nevertheless, the water persisted in smelling bad, notwithstanding it
looked clear,--a mystery the Colonel's knowledge of chemistry could not
fathom; nor would he give in until a Board had been called. The veterinary
surgeon now began to complain that the coats of the horses were beginning
to stare, and he wished that they should drink from the improved supply
which was furnished to the men. The Colonel still had faith in his
Serpentine water, and maintained that the horses would prefer it to the
purer stream. A bucket of each was placed side by side in the
barrack-yard, and a horse was brought in, which immediately settled the
question by refusing the dirty water, and plunging its muzzle into the
clean. It is not many years since the troops stationed at the Tower were,
in like manner, forced to drink the Thames water, taken from the most
convenient, which chanced to be the foulest, spot in the whole river. A
coarse filter did not suffice to protect them from the disease such
supplies were sure to engender.
They manage these things better now in civil life. In the year 1848, the
Society for Improving the Condition of the Working Classes opened their
first model lodging-house. Their measure of the quantity of air necessary
for the poor man was much greater than that settled three years later, by
the military authorities, for the soldier. The mechanic and labourer were
allowed 542 cubic feet; the soldier, under the most favourable conditions,
breathed no more than from 400 to 500 cubic feet,--a measure which fines
off, by degrees, to the Black Hole allowance at Dover Castle, where the
soldier was reduced to 131 cubic inches. Nor is this the only point in
favour of the model lodging-house, of which there are several situated in
the foulest portions of the metropolis, and which accommodate sometimes
seven hundred inmates, or the full strength of many a regiment. Besides
containing pure air, which, with a proper system of ventilation, costs
nothing, but is of incalculable value to human life, the lodging-house,
instead of being confined to one room, used for all purposes, is divided
into the ordinary apartments of an inn; every inmate has his own
dormitory, and there is a good coffee-room stored with papers and books,
and supplied with hot water. In the kitchen below, there are facilities
for roasting, boiling, baking, and frying, and each man has his safe for
provisions. Hot and cold baths are provided; and the whole building is
heated by hot-water pipes, and well lighted by gas. If the soldier was
treated like his brother of the chisel and the hammer, the mortality of
the Guards would not be at the rate of 20·4, and that of the ordinary rank
and file at the rate of 17·8 per thousand, whilst that of the mechanic is
only 13·9 per thousand.
If we were to write volumes, we could not deepen the impression these
figures are calculated to convey of the importance to health of sanitary
science. It has been said that soldiers would not appreciate the benefits
of a model lodging-house, and that, as the colonel asserted of the
troop-horse, they prefer the dirty to the clean,--crowding in a common
room, to separate apartments. If this were true, it would be no reason for
not teaching them better. If bad habits are congenial to them, they do not
suffer less when the mischief is done; and if they were callous to the
last, the interest of the nation still requires that lives which cost so
much should not be recklessly thrown away. But experience refutes the
supposition that soldiers have different notions of comfort from
civilians. The Guards, in the old part of the Wellington Barracks, had,
on one occasion, the temporary use, as a day-room, of an apartment fifty
feet by thirty, and, large as it was, it became inconveniently crowded.
The Commissioners, in their report, recommend that a minimum space of 600
feet be allotted to each man in his barrack and guard-room, that an
interval of at least three feet be maintained between each bed, and that a
day-room should be provided. The barrack should at least be on a par with
the workhouse.
The high rate of mortality in the army is not to be attributed to the bad
arrangements of barracks alone; the important elements of exercise and
food have to be considered, and in both the infantry are in an inferior
position to the artisan.
"Perhaps," says Colonel Lindsay, "no living individual suffers more
than the soldier from _ennui_. He has no employment save the drill and
its duties; these are of a most monotonous and uninteresting
description, so much so that you cannot increase their amount without
wearying and disgusting him. All he has to do is under restraint; he
is not like a working man or an artisan; a working man will dig, and
his mind is his own; an artisan is interested in the work on which he
is engaged: but a soldier has to give you all his attention, and he
has nothing to show for the work done. He gets up at six; there is no
drill before breakfast; he makes up his bed and cleans up his things:
he gets his breakfast at seven; he turns out for drill at half-past
seven or eight; his drill may last half an hour. If it be guard-day
there is no drill except for defaulters. The men for duty are paraded
at ten o'clock; that finishes his day-drill altogether. There is
evening parade, which takes half an hour, and then his time is his own
until tattoo, which is at nine in winter and ten in summer. That is
the day of a soldier not on guard or not belonging to a company which
is out for Minié practice."
Unless it be denied that the mind has any influence over the body, it
cannot be doubted that the inaction to which the infantry soldier is
subjected in barracks, by the regulations of the service, is most
detrimental to his mental activity and bodily health. The actuary well
knows that the affluent upper classes, although in every other respect
placed in the best sanitary condition, are shorter lived than the
agricultural labourer, for the simple reason that, having but little
active duty to perform, they suffer from _ennui_, which begets
dissipation. The soldier shares with the wealthy this cause of increased
mortality, without sharing in their other favourable conditions. Idle and
ill-lodged, he naturally resorts to the public-house, and, having but
little money to procure drink, he too often degrades himself by sponging
upon the female admirers of red coats for the means. The annals of the
police-courts are but too rife with the records of crimes and
misdemeanours committed by the Foot-Guards from these causes. Mr.
Jeffreys, a high authority, testifies that in India a large proportion of
the men chafe and drink themselves to death, under modes of life so
opposed to the habits of out-door labour in which they have been reared.
The soldier is not so much in fault as the rule of the service which
precludes him from making himself useful. The best-conducted troops are
the Engineers, who work at their different trades. The evil does not stop
with the mischief which the idle are sure to perpetrate. The active,
self-reliant Englishman is notoriously the most dependant soldier in
Europe. He can neither cook, bake, make his clothes, nor hut himself, like
the Frenchman, the Sardinian, or even the Turk. Contractors follow him
everywhere, excepting into the presence of the enemy; and when he most
needs every necessary of life he finds himself a helpless man. Mr. J. R.
Martin, one of the Commissioners, who has passed a life in high posts as a
military surgeon in India, and who has done more for the sanitary
condition of the soldier than any living person, holds it as a principle,
"that in all climates the soldier should do for himself whatever he can
perform without injury to his health, morals, or discipline; and, further,
that he should be required to do whatever may be essential to his
serviceable condition, in the event of a failure of the appointed
appliances. Before the soldier can be held as fit to undertake his duties
to the State, he must be made capable of maintaining everything which may
be necessary to his personal care and comfort." Does Aldershott or
Shorncliffe fulfil even the majority of the conditions calculated to train
the soldier for active service? Is he taught to build his own hut, to dig
his own well, to make his own roads, to cook his own victuals, or to mend
his own clothes? Aldershott, in fact, is not a camp at all, but a city of
soldiers, built and maintained "by contract;" the sum expended on the
buildings alone, for the years 1854 to 1856, being no less than
486,502_l._ 13s. 6d.; and we have little doubt that up to the present
time, the civil labour has cost more than 600,000_l._[30] Now, as Colonel
Tulloch urged, before these barracks were erected, why should not the men
hut themselves? There are clay, gravel, and sand, on the spot, with
abundance of small wood that no one will buy, not more than eight miles
distant. Soldiers have hutted themselves at Maroon Town, in the West
Indies, at 25_l._ per head. The buildings would not be such permanent
structures as the contractors have put together: we should miss the
architectural façades for the officers' quarters, and the "moulded
cornices" so maliciously described by the _Times'_ correspondent; but we
should have serviceable huts which would last for eight or ten years.
There can be little doubt that the men would be healthier in them than in
vast barracks. The process of building would supply the kind of exercise
which would amuse as well as instruct, and the plan would certainly save
money to the State. Considerably more than one half, or 647·9 per
thousand, of our soldiers have been recruited from the agricultural
population, to whom the erection of earthworks and building of all kinds
would be somewhat familiar. Of the remaining number, 294·7 have been
trained to mechanical trades. Surely, from this force handicraftsmen could
be selected to perform much of the work of the army. Bakers, cooks,
tailors, and bootmakers, could be found to supply the wants of the
regiment, and relieve us from the incubus of government contractors. We
place more confidence in a system in which the artisan-soldier will reap
the fruits of his labour, than in athletic games, which are not to be
neglected, but which become irksome when they are enjoined upon the
soldier by regulation. Serious exertion, too, with a useful result, is
always more invigorating in the long run than exertion which leaves no
result at all. Work, in short, within reasonable limits, is more healthful
than play.
During the disastrous months of the Crimean campaign, Mr. Galton proposed
to give a series of lectures to the reinforcements about to proceed to the
seat of war, on the shifts available in wild countries. He went to the
Museum of the United Service Club at the hour he had advertised, but as
his audience amounted to but one soldier, he discontinued his efforts to
make known those _wrinkles_ he had acquired with so much suffering
himself. The substance of these intended lectures he has since amplified
into a book, which is one of the most interesting little volumes we ever
read, and which should be in the hands of every campaigner, whether
military or otherwise. Had our soldiers been acquainted with its contents
when our commissariat broke down, they would have been able to lighten
their miseries in a considerable degree. The services which he extracts
from a single piece of stick are almost inconceivable; and when there
seems to be no further hope, he shows how the difficulties may often be
overcome by the aid of the very circumstances which appeared to have
caused the breakdown. His makeshifts and expedients are, it is true, at
times rather rough; and Ensign Firebrass, as he looks at his
neatly-polished little boot, would perhaps be startled at being told, that
on a march, "pieces of linen a foot square, smeared with grease, and
nicely folded over the foot cornerwise," form a capital substitute for
socks; or that breaking "a raw egg into a hard boot before putting it on
greatly softens the leather." Such announcements may be horrifying in the
midst of luxury, but in hard circumstances the most nicely got up London
dandy would be grateful for the hint. Many a poor soldier, at any rate,
would be glad to know that even on a plain where there is nothing except
the turf beneath his feet, protection is at hand if he were aware how to
avail himself of it. "He need only turn up a broad sod seven feet long by
two wide, and if he succeeds in propping it up on its edge, it will form a
sufficient shield against the wind," and even against a drifting rain,
provided he plants his turf between the weather and himself.
As regards the in-door amusements of the soldier, we have but little
belief in regimental libraries. The recruit from the agricultural
districts will not read such volumes as generally form the bulk of these
collections. A Scotch sergeant or two will thumb over Rollin's "Ancient
History," or Robertson's "History of Scotland," but the majority of the
soldiers will not look at them. "I have never heard of a reading army,"
said the late Dr. William Fergusson; and we agree with him as far as what
are called standard works are concerned. The soldier can be amused,
however, with a lighter class of literature, and there is a certainty of
pleasing him with a newspaper. This is the reading he selects for himself
in the public-house, and why not condescend to consult his tastes?
Major-General Lawrance stated that the system had been tried in some
garrisons with excellent effect, of providing a room where the men could
procure papers, coffee, and a pipe. "We approach the soldier," says Robert
Jackson, "with the dram-bottle in one hand, and the lash in the other."
Things are not so bad as in his day, but the temptation and the punishment
are still provided; and to reduce both as much as possible, we should
employ pleasant preventives, both of a moral and physical kind.