It was only around two centuries ago that the authorities reluctantly started to accept the need to take some responsibility for housing the wives and children of soldiers. Before then, families were required to fend for themselves, which was fine if your husband or father was an officer of independent means, in which case you would take lodgings appropriate to your social status. Near-penniless non-commissioned officers' families who were determined to accompany their serving soldier had little option but to camp out in the open or squeeze into a basic billet when on the move with the army, or else to rent a squalid space near the barracks.
A new phase of barrack-building from 1793 resulted in a chosen few wives and families being allowed to live in a curtained-off corner of a barrack hut or room, which was not a satisfactory situation for anyone, as Lieutenant Colonel A H Trevor, reported: '. . . these wretched creatures [soldiers' wives] are allowed to crowd into Barracks, with their starving children - some with families of 5, 6, 7 & 8 (I have this last number in the depot) taking up the room, bedding, tables, fires of the men - destroying their comfort, and all attempts at cleanliness - making the Soldiers discontented & driving them to the Canteen or Beer Shop and frequently to Desertion' (The Naval and Military Gazette, April 1843). The situation eventually improved during the latter half of the nineteenth century, with the gradual implementation of a programme of construction of separate married quarters within barracks, ranging from a room or two (sometimes shared with other families) through huts and flats to modest houses. Luxurious these married quarters weren't, nor is service family accommodation (SFA) today, but at least they gave families some privacy.
Married quarters at Tidworth Barracks, Wiltshire, in the days when army wives wore long skirts and their sons, flat caps.When a regiment was posted abroad, its dependents were generally accommodated apart from the local populace, on-the-strength families in India before World War II being housed in military cantonments, with those stationed closer to home after the war (in Cyprus or Germany, for example) usually living either 'within the wire' (within the bounds of a military base) or in specially constructed 'patches' (housing estates) of married quarters. The army sometimes rents flats or houses from locals for its families, and there has recently been an increasing trend for army children in Britain to live in homes that their parents have bought, rather than rented from the army at a subsidised rate, be it as an investment or as a home base in which the family can put down roots.
TACA ACCOMMODATION ALBUM: ENGLAND
TACA ACCOMMODATION ALBUM: INDIA
