numbering patients?

[Matt Caldwell]

Pulled the picture off of the LOC web site and noticed that some of the patients were numbered on their chest? Anyone know anything about this? Perhaps this is common knowledge, but I havent seen it before.
Thanks,

[RyanBWeddle]

Pulled the picture off of the LOC web site and noticed that some of the patients were numbered on their chest? Anyone know anything about this? Perhaps this is common knowledge, but I havent seen it before.
Thanks,

Can you post the 'caption' for the image so we can take a look?

[Matt Caldwell]

[Washington, D.C. Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital].

CREATED/PUBLISHED
[1865 August]

SUMMARY
Photograph of Washington, 1862-1865, the hospitals.

NOTES
Reference: Civil War photographs, 1861-1865 / compiled by Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0799

Title from Milhollen and Mugridge.

Forms part of Selected Civil War photographs, 1861-1865 (Library of Congress)

[dusty27]

Matt,

Couldn't see any numbers?

[markmason]

I may be looking at a crucifix attache to the wall behind each cot, Y shaped objects? I also like the corps badges painted on the walls. 2d and 4th Corps?

Not seeing any numbers either matt

[dusty27]

One of the largest Civil War hospitals in the area was located on the National Mall, where Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum stands today. Constructed in 1862, the medical facility was named after the Armory of the District of Columbia (building on the right), erected in 1856. This 1,000-bed hospital complex, with twelve pavilions and overflow tents, spread accross the Mall and included quarters for officers, service facilities, and a chapel. The wounded from the battlefields of Virginia were brought to the nearby wharves in southwest Washington and taken to the Armory Square Hospital. After the war, the Armory Building was used as storage facility, and later housed the offices of the United States Fish Commission (after 1903, Bureau of Fisheries). It was demolished in January 1964.

I work across the street from this location. COOL

[ThehosGendar]

Bally great image!

There's three men in the image who are wearing numbers (2, 5, 6). It's hard to tell what the numbers are made of. They look to be quite reflective, so I would like to say that they seem to be oversized regimental number devices.



A very peculiar detail is the numbers in shields along the wall in the distance.


Ward library:


Terrific artwork over the doorway. I wish I could see what the other framed pictures are!


Mark,
This hospital seems to have a very martial nature to it, and it looks like the object on the wall by each of the beds looks to be a eagle and shield.

[RyanBWeddle]

Besides 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th & 11th Corps Badges running down the length of the hall, which is sweet, looks like one for each division.... there is one the right wall...."Excelsior" and something unreadable on the right wall.

Cool!

[KarinTimour]

Gentlemen:

Suggestion on "Excelsior" on the wall -- could this be a reference to the Excelsior Brigade (2, III, Potomac), which according to Boatner was "composed of the 70th, 71st, 72rd, 73d, 74th and 120th New York...and had the fifth highest number of killed and mortally wounded in the war (876)."
Perhaps at the time this picture was taken, there were quite a few of the men from this brigade in that ward's beds?

I suspect that the reflective numbers go with the numbers on the wall, and are a means for the staff to be able to keep track of the patients.

Mary Livermore in "My Story of the War" wrote:

[KT note, this is written after the war about the miserable hospital conditions she found at Young's Point, across the river from Vicksburg in April, 1863]

..."If our men were brave on the field they were still braver in the hospital. I can conceive that it may be easy to face death on the battle-field, when the pulses are maddened by the superhuman desire for victory,-- when the roar of artillery, the cheers of the officers, the call of the bugles, the shout and charge and rush impel to action, and deaden reflection. But to lie suffering in a hosptial bed for months, cared for as a matter of routine and form, one's name dropped, and one only known as "Number Ten," "Number Twenty," or "Number Fifty"; with no companionship, no affection, none of the tender assiduities of home nursing, hearing from home irregularly or at rare intervals, utterly alone in the midst of hundreds; sick, in pain, sore-hearted and depressed,-- I declare this requires more courage to endure, than to face the most tragic death." -- page 325

The ward pictured looks pretty home-like, clean and pleasant -- but again this is the ward that they put on show, and it's in a new building that was built specifically to be a hospital. Earlier in the war they used a lot of existing buildings, some of which from the descriptions were very different indeed.

Sincerely,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting - Socks, Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[markmason]

OK, How do you guys get the pictures zoomed into such fine detail? Download them in TIFF JPG? HELP