page_title: Peter Brown (soldier)
section_title: Proponent of progressive schooling
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Brown (soldier) / Proponent of progressive schooling
caption_attribution_description: Military College, Chelsea
context_page_description: Major General Peter Brown was a senior British Army officer, who served in the Napoleonic Wars and was instrumental in the development of the education of the children of British servicemen in the Victorian era.
context_section_description: During his time as commandant of the British Army's logistics base in Belém, Brown had taken note of the plight of the children of servicemen on campaign and set up a school for these camp followers to bring them closer to the benefits of even a rudimentary education. He clearly thought a lot of his efforts in Portugal as he had the activity recorded alongside his personal campaign history. He had modelled his school in Lisbon on the Royal Military Asylum in Chelsea and its satellite site in Southampton.
  He became Commandant of the Royal Military Asylum on 15 December 1843 as a brevet colonel and retired from that post as a major general on 1 April 1852. By the time Colonel Brown took command of the Royal Military Asylum, the institution had already developed as one of the best free education provisions for the sons and daughters of servicemen, based on the Madras School system. 
  In the case of the Royal Military Asylum children were placed as orphans or as in dire need of stable schooling based on recommendations from the fathers' regiments. During Brown's tenure as commandant the school also became a place of medical study and the institution's staff surgeon became a pioneer in the study of childhood diseases, specifically scarlet fever. Brown also instituted programs that encouraged and rewarded good conduct amongst the school's children and a Good Conduct Medal was introduced during his tenure.
  The Royal Military Asylum would be retitled the Duke of York's Royal Military School in 1892; remaining in Chelsea until 1909 when it moved to Dover. The school's buildings are now the Saatchi Art Gallery complex.
caption: The interior of the Royal Military Asylum
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