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The history of relief work is in its infancy. This book draws on new archival research to reveal the priorities of nineteenth-century relief workers, and the legacies of their preoccupations for relief work today. It first explores the inauguration of the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (NAS) at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 under the figurehead of Loyd Lindsay. Then, the book sees the revival of the NAS for work in the Balkans during a period of nationalist violence and Ottoman counter-insurgency which culminated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. It also follows the staff of relief committees as they dispensed aid in British colonial wars. The book examines the critiques of British policy in the Boer War (1899-1902) emanating from intersecting circles of Quakers, New Liberals and ethicists, and considers these groups' offer of aid to Boer civilians. Further, the book concentrates on the methodologies of relief for Boer inmates of British concentration camps in South Africa and on the implications of this relief for its intended recipients during and after the war. It concentrates on aid to British soldiers. The book closes by tracing continuities in vocational practices and dispositions to emerging areas of concern in the post-war period, in particular child welfare, and briefly considers their implication for relief work today.
A memorial watercolour commemorates Lieut Col Robert Loyd Lindsay’s service during the Franco-Prussian War. 1 Straight-backed, golden-haired and imposing, Loyd Lindsay strides away from a gutted house, his soldierly bearing conferred by long and distinguished service in the British army. At first glance, one would assume that he was on campaign. Closer
Chairman, Conservative MP Loyd Lindsay, insinuated that he had transgressed the principle of neutrality in making known his disapproval of the Balkan rebels. The fact was that this plethora of largely self-mandated organisations was able to determine its own sphere of action, conditional upon only the (formal or informal) rights of access established with a belligerent army
chronicler of the Anglo-American ambulance during the Franco-Prussian War, was now one of the leading medical men in Victorian Britain. As surgeon and lecturer at St Thomas’ Hospital he was known as an expert on antiseptic surgery and, at the NAS, for his allegiance to Loyd Lindsay’s vision of voluntary aid to the battlefield – a disposition that did nothing to mollify Kennett
secure access to the battlefield from the respective military authorities. They did so by expressing a careful calibration of concern which betokened a response at once benevolent and proficient. Compassion and spontaneity were crucial, but heart was to be kept firmly in subjection to head. As NAS Chairman Loyd Lindsay confidently announced, ‘it is possible to be as precise in the
working at the time in the home of Robert Loyd-Lindsay, equerry to the Prince of Wales. Loyd-Lindsay had been one of the first men to be awarded the Victoria Cross, for saving his regimental colours at the battle of the Alma. 20 The financing of so large a project as a series of fifty pictures is not clear, but it seems likely that Desanges hoped for patronage either from the state or from the royal family. In view of the
antiquarian and ceremonial preoccupations into useful, practical charitable endeavour in the form of first aid and ambulance work’. 8 The group included British army commanders mostly related to the military health services, such as Colonels Robert Loyd Lindsay and Francis Duncan; Surgeon-Majors William G. N. Manley and Peter Shepherd; Thomas Longmore, professor of military surgery in the Army Medical School at Netley; the Conservative politician Edmund A. H. Lechmere; and the lawyer John Furley, who joined the Order in 1864. The group perceived that ‘practical first aid
little agreement. Sir Anthony Bowlby, having grumbled during the war over the state’s reliance on the Red Cross for vital hospital infrastructure, now ‘deprecated any action that might infringe on the work of the Ministry of Health, in connection with maternity and child welfare’. Queen Alexandra, President of the BRCS Council, repeated Loyd Lindsay’s mantra that the Society
other respects unwittingly accurate once her attempt to imprint her own vision upon the NAS is known). In Britain, few early relief workers made mention of Dunant in their memoirs. 32 More influential was the legacy of medical failings in the Crimean War, of which the first Chair of the NAS, Lt Col Robert Loyd Lindsay V.C., had direct and unhappy experience. It is only in later histories that Dunant was
Russian Soldiers’ Relief Fund. There were those who wanted to remain equidistant (along the standards set by International Commission of the Red Cross) and were thus prepared to assist all victims of the wars. They were headed by Lady Strangford, Vincent Barrington-Kennett and Colonel Robert Loyd Lindsay, and this line was obvious in the activity of the Eastern War Sick and Wounded Fund, the National Aid Society and the Red Cross Society. There was also a smaller group