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Return of the Army Works Corps from the Crimea, 1856. Mechanics and labourers at Waterloo Station in London. 'The Army Works Corps...originated in a suggestion made by Sir Joseph Paxton, M.P...[he] proposed as a preventive of mismanagement of matters of detail, so much complained of in the conduct of the war, that a number of navvies should be sent out to the Crimea, to do the work which they had been accustomed to do, and to keep the troops to fighting. The Government took up the notion, and Sir Joseph, in the spring of last year, [was asked] to organise a party of navvies to make a railway at the seat of war. In October last Sir Joseph had sent out 3000, and in about a month he dispatched another thousand...We have termed the scene of their return a suggestive one from the worn state of their clothing denoting that they had seen rough service in the Crimea'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.