3-017-296 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Old Pensioners leaving Greenwich Hospital, [London], 1865. Naval veterans left the Royal Hospital '...in search of the consolations which only social and domestic affection will bestow...we have learned without surprise that the majority of the late inmates have preferred to accept the offered outdoor pension, with liberty to go and reside wherever they please, and with the opportunity of joining their families or friends...After all, the sailor, who is a tenderhearted old fellow, likes to turn his thoughts towards home; and the hospital at Greenwich, with its shipshape, orderly arrangements, with its exclusion of the female sex, with necessary rules and discipline, is not the place where a man who has worn the livery of the Naval Service a long half century would naturally choose to unbend and relax the habits of his mind. We are informed that nearly a thousand of the pensioners, in the course of the week before last, took their leave of the establishment. They were met at the gates in some cases by their wives, many of whom are washerwomen or charwomen in Greenwich, Deptford, or the adjoining suburbs; while some of the old men had secured a home with their sons or daughters'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.