The Victorian Period...2

Two wars involving Great Britain occurred during the period: the Crimean War (1854-1856) and the Indian Mutiny (1857-1858). In Lighthouse we hear Mr. Ramsay reciting Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”--“Someone had blundered!” That poem refers to one of the battles of the Crimean War. According to an editorial note in the Norton Anthology of Tennyson’s poetry, the charge was a “disastrous engagement, probably the stupidest exploit in British military history.” There was a misinterpretation of orders and the brigade charged into entrenched Russian artillery. Of the 700 men in the charge only 195 returned.

The first “war correspondent” is associated with the Crimean War. William Howard Russell (1820-1907) of the London Times went to the front lines of battle and interviewed the soldiers rather than depending on the traditional headquarter dispatches. He wrote about the suffering. Men died not only in battle, but also from hunger and disease during the Russian winter: 21,000 troops were lost, 16,000 from disease.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) established nursing as a profession based on her work in the Crimean War. Sidney Herbert, Secretary of the War Office, asked her to take over administration of the hospital Scutari in Turkey during the war. After the Treaty of Paris of 1856 formally ended the war, she helped Herbert set up a Royal Commission on Army Medical Organization which founded the Army Medical School. Using money donated by the public to set up the Nightingale Fund, she established a nurses’ training school at St. Thomas Hospital in London.

After the experiences of that war, a War Department was established and in 1872, the purchase system, whereby a man could purchase a commission as an officer in the military without having any training or experience, was abolished. Many felt that the purchase system was one of the causes of the debacle of the charge of the Light Brigade.