Rabbit recovery
Thomas Frederick Scales, A rabbit hutch at Hornchurch Convalescent Camp, World War I, ca 1918, Dry plate glass negative, Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association: New Zealand official negatives, Alexander Turnbull Library, Reference: 1/2-013989-G
Rabbit recovery
For all the talk that ‘our boys’ll be home by Christmas’ it soon became clear that The Great War of 1914 was a long haul. Casualty numbers grew quickly and the Army Council had to set up convalescent hospitals, including one at Grey Towers, a large country mansion, at Hornchurch in England.
Convalescing meant getting well enough to head back to the front. Those who needed more intensive treatment were shipped back to New Zealand – though the sea trip home was sometimes more therapeutic than the hospitalisation.
Those staying at Hornchurch did their bit keeping it running, as much as they were able. From planting cabbages to ploughing to classing wool, the soldiers supplemented their regular physical therapy with productive tasks.
Soldiers didn’t have much else to occupy themselves with at first, Hornchurch being built with their strictly physical recovery in mind. At the start patients had a small reading and writing hut provided by local women, but facilities gradually improved to help the soldiers’ mental wellbeing.
A canteen and Soldiers’ Club was opened and staffed by New Zealanders and ‘ladies from the Old Country’. Over time Grey Towers also got a billiard room, a performance hall, an arts and crafts workshop and (perhaps most importantly) a rabbitry.
The size of the English rabbit was a bit of a shock to the kiwi soldier, who was used to its much smaller antipodean cousins. Still, the men overcame this oddity and looked after the animals, at least to the point when the rabbits became part of their rations.
Hornchurch was also the site of Ettie Rout’s New Zealand Medical Soldiers Club, where Rout sold her prophylactic kits in an effort to curb the venereal disease that was rampant amongst soldiers who sought other forms of recreation.
Activities on the site became more complex and even vocational, as educational classes were established and, at the end of the war, a motor engineering room and a school of massage.
Although the initial goal was to send men back to the front, convalescence turned into education for many of the patients. Hornchurch’s mix of education and occupational instruction proved a great aid to recovery, and to the men’s lives after the war.
See more images of the Hornchurch Camp on Flickr
Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image
