3-039-023 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

New wars and old warriors: a sketch in Chelsea Hospital, 1871. 'The interesting but old-fashioned, and now, perhaps, no longer convenient arrangements of Chelsea Hospital, are likely soon to come under public notice with a view to large alterations. It appears from the report...that the revenue here applied to the comfort of veteran and invalided British soldiers might be made to do a much greater amount of good, in a much more acceptable way, if the system of out-pensions were extended, and the scale of pensions improved, while discontinuing the costly provision of indoor maintenance for several hundred men who would prefer to live where they might find a private home...There can be no question but this would be a happier and healthier condition for the brave old fellows...We see a party of them, around their table in the long corridor, one side of which is filled by the range of closets, or curtained recesses, containing the old soldiers' separate beds, engaged in perusing a Special Correspondent's graphic description of the last fierce battle upon a lost field of unhappy France...What do these "old warriors" think of the "new wars"?'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.