ABSTRACT
With regard to the admission into barracks of private soldiers’ wives, the present practice is to admit them to live in barracks with their husbands, in the proportion of six to 100 men. No separate accommodation has been ever prepared for their reception, and the evidence is, that they are provided for in different ways in different regiments; in some they are lodged in the rooms with the unmarried men, with no means of separation from them except a curtain suspended round the bed; in other regiments the married people are placed in barrack-rooms apart from the unmarried men, but with several couples in the same room. Both these modes appear to your Committee highly objectionable; they can see no course open except that of either excluding married women from barracks altogether, or providing them, if admitted, with accommodation which would be considered decent, in such circumstances, beyond the walls of a barrack. On the assumption that the first alternative will not be adopted by the authorities of the army, your Committee recommend that, to the number permitted by the regulations, every married couple should be provided with a separate room, that their quarters should be in a part of the barrack distinct and separate from the quarters of the unmarried men, and that no other women beyond the number provided with such quarters should be allowed to live in the barrack on any pretence. It may be observed, that though the recommendation here made will increase the expense of the original building, the Government will thereby save the lodging-money now allowed to married soldiers, which your Committee are informed amounts this year to 8,000l. in the United Kingdom alone.
