John (later Sir John) Furley, pictured right, experienced the appalling lack of medical treatment while in the army during the Crimean War. In 1868 he and other members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem began to plan the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, as the British Red Cross was originally named.

Emma Pearson was involved with the plan from the start because her relative, the Rev. Edward Walford, was the Order's Deputy Secretary-General. But it was only at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War two years later that Furley secured the support of Colonel Robert Loyd-Lindsay, MP (caricatured below) who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for two acts of valour in the Crimea and was one of England's biggest landowners. He appealed for contributions to a fund which he opened with £1,000 of his own money. The Society was formed on August 4th, 1870, and Loyd-Lindsay was elected chairman.

His administration proved utterly incompetent. While small ambulances near the battlefront received next to no support from the Central Committee during the war, much of the public's donations was wasted: the Society's own report shows that £20,000 which went to Paris was mostly spent on clothing and luxuries; Germany received a similar sum and no account was given as to how it was expended. Emma and Louisa McLaughlin document a multitude of such failings in the last two chapters of their book Under the Red Cross.

In contrast they praise Furley, whose kindnesses to them are recorded in Our Adventures During the War of 1870. The excellent Anglo-American Ambulance in which they worked was conceived and organized by Furley (see his autobiographical sketches In Peace and War p.32).

He started the St John Ambulance Association in 1877, having been unable to persuade Loyd-Lindsay that the substantial reserves of the National Aid Society should be budgeted to provide medical assistance in peacetime civilian emergencies.

The Order of St. John set up a Relief Fund when the Servo-Turkish War began in July 1876. The next month the British Red Cross reluctantly gave £20,000, whereupon Loyd-Lindsay moved rapidly to take over the whole operation, and went to Servia himself. 

A Great Mistake is the title of the relevant chapter of the nurses’ Service in Servia. Immediately upon arrival Loyd-Lindsay denounced the Servian Government. He gave money and stores to the Turks but not to the Servian Red Cross. Though there were hospitals without chloroform or carbolic, and surgeons praying for instruments for their ambulances, he obstinately did nothing but form a hospital at Belgrade.

The nurses’ judgement is supported by historian Peter Morris in First aid to the battlefront (Sutton. 1992. p.11): “The sad history of disputes in Belgrade and criticisms of Loyd-Lindsay there and in Britain suggests his presence was at best unhelpful... His strong pro-Turkish and anti-Russian opinions were reflected in the letters cited in his biography which mention medical relief work only perfunctorily.” Archibald Forbes, the war correspondent whose memorial is in St. Paul's Cathedral, had written “His conduct amounted to espionage.”

Most damning is Sir Sinclair Tollemache’s chapter beginning: “Nothing can be more discreditable, unfair, and even illegal than the conduct of the National Society for the Aid of the Wounded in the present war, but it is only what might have been expected, considering that the management of that Society is in much the same incompetent and one-sided hands as during the Franco-German war.” (A Defence of Russia and the Christians of Turkey London, 1877. vol. 2 p.181-230.)

All this was outweighed by Loyd-Lindsay’s money, connections and former heroism. He was created Baron Wantage in 1885 and remained Red Cross chairman until his death.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
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