The Poor Decayed Seamen of Greenwich Hospital
The Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich was founded in 1694, to house elderly and disabled seamen who had served in the Royal Navy. The first pensioners were admitted in 1705. The Hospital was established on a grand scale, and its buildings, now home to the University of Greenwich, remain one of London’s finest landmarks and centrepiece of the Greenwich World Heritage Site. The history of the institution, at least in its broad outlines, is well known, but until now little research has been conducted into the men who inhabited it.
The Poor Decayed Seamen of Greenwich Hospital was a one-year project funded by the University of Greenwich and conducted by Dr Martin Wilcox, who has constructed a database of admissions to the Hospital up to 1763. The database incorporates information from the Hospital’s Entry Books, which by the 1740s give details of every pensioner’s age, birthplace, place of last abode, time rank in the navy, marital status, number of children, and whether and how he was injured. The Entry Books are complemented by information drawn from the Hospital directors’ minutes and letters, and from petitions of pensioners seeking re-admission after discharge or expulsion. From these it has been possible to draw up a detailed profile of Greenwich pensioners in the first six decades of the institution, and also draw some wider conclusions about the eighteenth-century seafaring labour force.
The database, containing more than 8,000 entries, will shortly be placed online as a resource for family historians and academic researchers alike, and Dr Wilcox is due to present his results at the following talks:
British Maritime History Seminar Series, Senate House, London date tbc
University of Hull Maritime History Seminar Series 3 October 2012