Abstract
This chapter explores the reasons the army originally overlooked the importance of the nineteenth-century soldier’s reading environment, and imbued it with growing significance from the late 1850s and early 1860s. It demonstrates that the efforts that were made to improve the accommodation of the libraries and reading rooms at this time shed crucial light on mid-Victorian notions of the importance of environment, particularly in relation to the recreational pursuits of the working classes. This chapter also shows that the evolution of the library and recreational system in the British army was crucially informed by recognition of the men’s own preferences and practices, and demonstrates that reading was for many soldiers but one part of their wider social life within barracks.
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Notes
- 1.
Report of a Committee Appointed by the Secretary of State for War to inquire into and report on the present state and on the improvement of Libraries, Reading Rooms, and Day Rooms (London: HMSO, 1862), p. 5. Hereafter Report of a Committee.
- 2.
Thomas Carter, Curiosities of War and Military Studies: Anecdotal, Descriptive, and Statistical, 2ndedn, illustrated (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1871), p. 224.
- 3.
Report of a Committee, pp. 5–6.
- 4.
Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, 1868–1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 140.
- 5.
The Queen’s Regulations and Orders for the Army, 3rd edn (1844; London: HMSO, 1854), pp. 253–55.
- 6.
Queen’s Regulations and Orders, p. 217. These orders were concerned with “Divine Service” rather than Barrack Libraries.
- 7.
Private P.P. Clarke to his mother, 14 September 1896, NAM 1992-08-445.
- 8.
Pall Mall Gazette, 8 August 1868.
- 9.
John Butterworth, letter to Polly, 25 September 1896, Mss Eur D900.
- 10.
Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1993), p. 2. Harries-Jenkins also points out that the other part of the British military was, of course, the East India Company army, which became the Indian Army (after the Indian Rebellion of 1857).
- 11.
See T.A. Bowyer-Bower, “The Development of Educational Ideas and Curricula in the Army during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the Degree of Master of Education, May, 1954, p. 72. Thirty locations are named, but a library and reading room was to be set up at both the Royal Barracks and Richmond Barracks in Dublin.
- 12.
J.H. Lefroy, Brevet Colonel, Royal Artillery, Report on the Regimental and Garrison Schools of the Army, and on Military Libraries and Reading Rooms (London: HMSO, 1859), pp. 52–53. As we saw in Chap. 4, Lefroy also gave details of “[r]egimental” libraries that had been set up for the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers at stations both at home and abroad (pp. 55–56).
- 13.
“From Major Boothby, Local Inspector of Schools at Malta,” 3 April 1861, Appendix II – No. 6 to First Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools (London: HMSO, 1862), p. 54.
- 14.
Henry Clayton, letter to his parents, 12 January [?] 1857, NAM 1996-11-53, 23.
- 15.
“The Command in the Windward and Leeward Islands. By Captain L. Smyth O’Connor, 1st West India Regiment, Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General, West Indies,” in Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal (1843), Part II, pp. 95–96.
- 16.
“Table showing the principal Results contained in the Replies to Questions sent by the Committee to the undermentioned Stations,” Appendix No. 3 to Report of a Committee, pp. 40, 34. Henceforth “Table (1862).”
- 17.
“Summary of Special Reports,” Appendix No. 3 to Report of a Committee, p. 50.
- 18.
“Table (1862),” p. 34.
- 19.
Felix Driver, “Moral Geographies: Social Science and the Urban Environment in Mid-Nineteenth Century England,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1988): pp. 277 and 282.
- 20.
Lefroy, Report, pp. 58–59.
- 21.
Report of a Committee, p. 6.
- 22.
London Standard, 20 May 1864.
- 23.
H.J. Hanham, “Religion and Nationality in the Mid-Victorian Army,” in M.R.D. Foot (ed), War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J.R. Western, 1928–1971 (London: Paul Elek, 1973), p. 169.
- 24.
Kenneth Hendrickson, “Winning the Troops for Vital Religion: Female Evangelical Missionaries to the British Army, 1857–1880,” Armed Forces and Society 23, No. 4 (1997), p. 617.
- 25.
“[Copies of] Captain Pilkington Jackson’s Report to the Secretary of State for War, on the Soldiers’ Institutes at Aldershot and at Portsmouth” in Army (Soldiers’ Institutes), and Army (Soldiers’ Libraries, &c.) (London: HMSO, 1862), p. 2.
- 26.
The Daily News, 3 May 1862.
- 27.
Hanham, “Religion and Nationality in the Mid-Victorian Army,” p. 169.
- 28.
M. Helen Jeffrey, The Trumpet Call Obey: The Story of the Homes for Servicemen founded a Century ago by Elise Sandes (London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1968), pp. 62 and 50.
- 29.
Hanham, “Religion and Nationality in the Mid-Victorian Army,” pp. 170–71.
- 30.
Horace Wyndham, The Queen’s Service: Being the Experiences of a Private Soldier in the British Infantry at Home and Abroad (London: William Heinemann, 1899), p. 85. Spiers and Alan Ramsay Skelley both remark that such homes were popular with soldiers, notwithstanding the proselytizing that they encountered there. See Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, p. 145, and Alan Ramsay Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home: The Recruitment and Terms and Conditions of the British Regular, 1859–1899 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 61–64.
- 31.
Miles Ogborn and Chris Philo, “Soldiers, Sailors, and Moral Locations in Nineteenth-Century Portsmouth,” Area, Vol. 26, Number 3 (September 1994), p. 221.
- 32.
Report of a Committee, pp. 7–8.
- 33.
Quotation from Fraser’s Magazine in “Remarks on Certain Topics of the Day, By a Staff Medical Officer,” in Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal (1849), Part II, p. 80.
- 34.
Michael D. Calabria, “Florence Nightingale and the Libraries of the British Army,” in Libraries and Culture 29: 4 (Fall, 1994), p. 377.
- 35.
“Captain A.C. Gleig, Royal Artillery, Assistant Inspector of Army Schools in South Britain, to the Secretary of the Council of Military Education,” 22 May 1861, Appendix I – No. 1 to First Report by the Council of Military Education, p. 3.
- 36.
Second Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1865), p. xxxiv.
- 37.
Third Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1866), p. xxxii.
- 38.
“Reprint of the Regulations for Garrison Libraries and Regimental Recreation Rooms,” in Appendix XV – No. 1 to Second Report by the Council of Military Education, pp. 216–17.
- 39.
Report of a Committee, pp. 8–9.
- 40.
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London: Routledge, 1987), p. 380.
- 41.
Report of a Committee, p. 8.
- 42.
Private P.P. Clarke, Letter to his mother and siblings, not dated [1896?], NAM 1992-08-445.
- 43.
Corporal John Butterworth, Letter from July 1896, Mss Eur D900, 6.
- 44.
Horace Wyndham, Following the Drum (London: Andrew Melrose, 1912), p. 199.
- 45.
Corporal John Butterworth, Letter to his father, 28 July 1896, Mss Eur D900.
- 46.
Private W. Ware, Letter to his mother and father, 25 May 1895, NAM 2001-09-77.
- 47.
Henry Clayton, Letter to his mother, 3 June 1851, NAM 1996-11-53, 4.
- 48.
Joseph Reid, Letter to his mother, brothers, and sisters, 11 August 1853, NAM 1999-03-130, 13.
- 49.
See page 85.
- 50.
The United Services Journal and Naval and Military Magazine (1842), Part II, p. 169.
- 51.
James Hawker, James Hawker’s Journal: A Victorian Poacher, edited by Garth Christian (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 5–6. Hawker’s military career was as colorful as was his life as a poacher, and included a later spell in the Leicestershire militia and in the Regular Army (from which he deserted). He wrote his memoirs, “seemingly in several versions,” between 1904 and 1905, and these were edited by Christian for publication by Oxford University Press. See Robin P. Jenkins, “Hawker, James (1836–1921),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.remote.library.dcu.ie/view/article/74229, accessed 20 April 2015].
- 52.
Anon. [John Edward Acland-Troyte], Through the Ranks to a Commission (London: Macmillan & Co., 1881), pp. 62–63.
- 53.
Diary of W. Greening, 90th Regiment, Scottish Rifles, NAM 1983-07-121, p. 15a.
- 54.
Private W. Ware, Letter to his father and mother, 25 May 1895, NAM 2001-09-77.
- 55.
Second Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxxvi.
- 56.
“Lieutenant-Colonel W.B. Laurie, Superintendent Amy Schools, Madras Presidency, to the Secretary to the Council of Military Education,” 08 May 1868, Appendix II – No. 13 to Fifth Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1868), p. 69.
- 57.
“Report for Major Grove for 1868,” Appendix II – No. 14 to Sixth Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1870), p. 107.
- 58.
“Report by Major Grove for 1869,” Appendix II - No. 15 to Sixth Report by the Council of Military Education, p. 114.
- 59.
Second Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxxvi.
- 60.
“Annual Report on the Army Schools at Gibraltar, by Col. F.F. Maude, V.C. and C.B.,” Appendix III—No. 4 to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Third Report by the Council of Military Education, p. 18.
- 61.
“Annual Report on the Army Schools at Gibraltar, by Colonel Smith,” Appendix II – No. 8 to Fifth Report by the Council of Military Education, pp. 48–49.
- 62.
John Pindar, Autobiography of a Private Soldier (Cupar-Fife: Printed in the “Fife News” Office, 1878), p. 87.
- 63.
Diary of W. Greening, 90th Regiment, Scottish Rifles, NAM 1983-07-121, pp. 10b–11 and 14b.
- 64.
Aldershot Military Gazette, 17 February 1866.
- 65.
Freeman’s Journal, 2 July 1872.
- 66.
Chelmsford Chronicle, 5 November 1875.
- 67.
Freeman’s Journal, 21 April 1876.
- 68.
Portsmouth Evening News, 8 September 1891.
- 69.
The Graphic, 30 May 1891.
- 70.
Wyndham, Queen’s Service, pp. 103–4.
- 71.
Wyndham, Queen’s Service, pp. 140 and 142.
- 72.
Wyndham, Queen’s Service, pp. 197–98 and 140.
- 73.
Fifth Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxxii.
- 74.
The Council’s sentiments were reported in “W. Paulet, Adjutant-General, Letter of 30 December 1865,” in Appendix X – No. 2, to Fourth Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1866), p. 118.
- 75.
See, for example, Third Report by the Director General of Military Education on Army Schools and Libraries (London: HMSO, 1877), p. xxiv.
- 76.
Sixth Report by the Council of Military Education on Army Schools, Libraries, and Recreation Rooms (London: HMSO, 1870), p. xxvii. This was the final report of this committee, as the Director-General of Military Education produced subsequent reports.
- 77.
Third Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxx. These figures did not include India, as libraries there did not provide returns.
- 78.
Sixth Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxv.
- 79.
Third Report by the Director General, pp. xxiv–xxv.
- 80.
Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home, p. 97.
- 81.
Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home, pp. 128 and 130.
- 82.
The Author of “An Absent-Minded War” [William Elliot Cairnes], The Army from Within (London: Sands & Co., 1901), p. 9. Cairnes died in April of 1902, but is credited with having contributed through his writings to army reform during and after the Boer Wars and, thereby to the “quality” of the 1914 British expeditionary force. See Roger T. Stearn, “Cairnes, William Elliot (1862–1902),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.remote.library.dcu.ie/view/article/32241, accessed 14 July 2015].
- 83.
Jeffrey, The Trumpet Call Obey, p. 71.
- 84.
Sixth Report by the Council of Military Education, p. xxvii.
- 85.
See Introduction, page 21.
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Murphy, S. (2016). The Reading Environment, and Readers, in the Regular Army. In: The British Soldier and his Libraries, c. 1822-1901. War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55083-5_5
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