10th September, 2024 in Local & Family History, Military

Repository to Resource: Preserving, researching and utilising the WW2 archives of the Royal Hospital Chelsea

By Martin Cawthorne

The Royal Hospital Chelsea as a home for old soldiers has always been associated with warfare. The Second World War however represents a unique chapter in the history of the institution as the Hospital itself was in the line of fire for a sustained period. Casualties amongst the resident Chelsea Pensioners and Royal Hospital staff were incurred throughout the course of the war, whilst the architecturally renowned buildings and grounds suffered grievous harm at the hands of the Luftwaffe.

The single most serious incident during the Blitz occurred on the night of the 16/17th April 1941 when the Hospital’s infirmary received a direct hit. More than 50 bed-bound patients had to be rescued from the blazing building as the raid continued overhead. The BBC later recorded one of its earliest outside broadcasts as reporter Wynford Vaughan-Thomas interviewed survivors, including 27 year-old nurse Hannah Deasy, who displayed supreme courage in saving her patients and was later recognised for her bravery.

Very little has been written about this period in the Hospital’s history despite the existence of a significant amount of remarkable archives from the war years. Until a decade ago however, much of this material was stored in cardboard boxes in an attic at the Royal Hospital and was simply not readily available. In 2013 the Hospital authorities decided to digitise this material in order to preserve the contents for future generations and make these archives more accessible.

The task of organising this project was given to Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant, (RQMS) John Rochester of the Royal Hospital’s Quartermasters Department. A 22-year Army veteran, John had seen service in the Gulf War with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Greys). Taking technical advice from the likes of The National Archives as to how best to proceed, John also recruited some volunteers to help with the workload. Despite my own military connections being limited to four years with the Army Cadet Force during my school years, cap-badged to my local county regiment The Royal Anglian Regiment, John nevertheless accepted me into the ranks of his Royal Hospital Chelsea heritage volunteer militia!

Over the next five years we opened the boxes in the attic, assessing and digitising their contents. The archives contained some remarkable material, including a War Diary compiled by Officers of the Royal Hospital in near real-time, and containing a minute-by-minute account of the Blitz in Chelsea. Some of the material was however contradictory and difficult to interpret, such as for example, apparent evacuation agreements for some, but not all of the Chelsea Pensioner residents. I therefore took the momentous decision to return to university as a very mature student, and spent the next two years at the University of Oxford where I completed a Master’s degree in Historical Studies for which I researched the Royal Hospital’s wartime story.

On completion of my studies my work was recommended for publication given the depth of research and the weight of original archive material used. I expanded my written work to manuscript length and was delighted when The History Press accepted it for publication. The Royal Hospital is now able to use this research in a readily accessible form to tell the wartime story of this much loved and nationally significant institution. In 2024 the annual Founder’s Day parade, in the presence of the Reviewing Officer HRH The Princess Royal, took place on the 6th June, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The Governor, when addressing the massed ranks of assembled Chelsea Pensioners, including Second World War veterans, was able to describe the Hospital’s contribution to this significant turning point in the war, when the Chaplain and Physician & Surgeon quietly left the Royal Hospital in June 1944 to ‘take up positions with Southern Command’, as the invasion force headed for the Normandy beaches.