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3 unusual facts about Beaufort Hospital


Beaufort Hospital

Gilbert Spencer (Stanley Spencer's younger brother who also served as a medical orderly) recalled his first terrifying moments at Beaufort when he was surrounded by a 'ward full of wounded Gallipoli soldiers, their skins sunburnt and their clothes bleached and the soil of Suvla Bay still on their boots.' (1)

The same rough-hewn material had also been used for the construction of the vast orphanages that Stanley had passed with such trepidation in nearby Ashley Down.

In his Annual Report for that year, Alderman George Pearson, chairman of the Asylum Committee of Visitors, recorded that the hospital had urgently been called into military use because the other Bristol hospitals could not cope with the increasing numbers of wounded being sent from the Western Front, and more recently from the Dardanelles.



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