Soldiers as Workers: Class, Employment, Conflict and the 19th Century Military 1781382786, 9781781382783

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Soldiers as Workers Class, Employment, Conflict and the Nineteenth-Century Military

s t u d i es i n l a b o u r h i s t o ry 6

Studies in Labour History ‘...a series which will undoubtedly become an important force in re-invigorating the study of Labour History.’ English Historical Review Studies in Labour History provides reassessments of broad themes along with more detailed studies arising from the latest research in the field of labour and working-class history, both in Britain and throughout the world. Most books are single-authored but there are also volumes of essays focussed on key themes and issues, usually emerging from major conferences organized by the British Society for the Study of Labour History. The series includes studies of labour organizations, including international ones, where there is a need for new research or modern reassessment. It is also its objective to extend the breadth of labour history’s gaze beyond conventionally organized workers, sometimes to workplace experiences in general, sometimes to industrial relations, but also to working-class lives beyond the immediate realm of work in households and communities.

Soldiers as Workers Class, Employment, Conflict and the Nineteenth-Century Military

Soldiers as Workers

Nick Mansfield

L I V ER POOL U N I V ER SI T Y PR ESS

First published 2016 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2016 Nick Mansfield The right of Nick Mansfield to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78138-278-3 cased epdf ISBN 978-1-78138384-1 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound in Poland by BooksFactory.co.uk

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

List of Abbreviations

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Notes ix Preface xi 1 Introduction

1

2 Class Structure and the British Army

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3 Soldiers as Workers

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4 Class Conflict in the Army

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5 Conclusion

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Bibliography 214 Index 233

Illustrations AcknowIllustrations

Book jacket Portrait of Private Henry Watts, 4th Foot (By kind permission of King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster) 1 Sandown Garrison, 1855 (By kind permission of Museum of the Mercian Regiment, Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters)

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2 Shoemakers’ shop, Burma, 1906 (By kind permission of King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster)

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3 Regimental tradesmen and workers, 2nd South Lancashire Regiment, 1907 (By kind permission of the Lancashire Infantry Museum) 79 4 First Camp, Bytown, September 1826 (By permission of the McCord Museum, Montreal, Quebec)

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5 Sam Atwood, army tailor and quilter in India, c.1850 (By kind permission of The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles)

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6 ‘Suicide of the Soldier’, c.1840 (From Paul Swanson [Alexander Somerville], The Memoirs of Serjeant Paul Swanston (London: B.D. Cousins, n.d. [c.1840]), 185) (By permission of the John Rylands University of Manchester Library, copyright of the University of Manchester)

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Abbreviations Abbreviations

BAL

British Auxiliary Legion (probably the largest single one of the overseas military adventures, raised to intervene on the Liberal side in the First Carlist War in Spain, 1836–38) CO Commanding Officer CRO Cambridgeshire Record Office EIC Honourable East Indian Company HM service/forces His or Her Majesty’s service/forces (used particularly in India to contrast with EIC service) JSAHR Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research LHR Labour History Review LIM Lancashire Infantry Regiment, museum and archive (located at Fulwood Barracks, Preston) MRC Modern Records Centre (Warwick University) NAM National Army Museum (Chelsea, London) NCO non-commissioned officer (ranging from Lance Corporal up to Regimental Sergeant Major) QM Quartermaster RSM Regimental Sergeant Major (the most senior NCO in a regiment) VC Victoria Cross WCML Working Class Movement Library (Salford)

Notes Notes

In quotes from contemporary letters and journals, all spelling and punctuation have been retained in their original form. All money is given in pounds, shillings and pence (£ s. d.): 12 pence made a shilling and there were 20 shillings to a pound. One guinea was 21 shillings. The French Wars is used as a generic term for the French Revolutionary Wars (1793–1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15). Within these wars the Peninsular War ran between 1808 and 1814, with Britain fighting the French in Spain and Portugal. All dates refer to when Britain was a belligerent. The Indian Mutiny of 1857–59 is referred to in this contemporary way, rather than the more modern First War of Indian Independence. Subaltern is sometimes used generically for a junior officer below Captain’s rank (Ensign/Cornet/Second Lieutenant and Lieutenant). Field Officer is sometimes used generically for a senior regimental officer above Captain’s rank (Major or Lieutenant Colonel). ‘Serjeant’, an older spelling of ‘Sergeant’, is sometime used as per the original quote. ‘Rankers’ is a generic term for the rank and file of a regiment; sometimes this includes the NCOs as well as the privates. Line infantry regiments – which made up the majority of the British army – are referred to by number: e.g., 30th Foot, before 1881, and by title after then (when that regiment, for instance, became the 1st Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment). Where a regiment had a specialism (Fusiliers, Highland, Light Infantry or Rifle), this is used with its number or title. The Household Cavalry, in the nineteenth century, consisted of the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards. The latter regiment was also often referred to as the Horse Guards or Blues, from the colour of their uniforms. To confuse matters, Horse Guards is often also used as a synonym for the offices of the Commander in Chief, from its Whitehall location.

Preface Preface

This book has been shaped by my childhood experiences, growing up in the 1950s. An earlier book on farmworkers in the early twentieth century owed its origin to stories about the Great War told to me by ex-servicemen.1 These suggested that patriotism, in the close-knit community where I grew up, was compatible with class consciousness and political activism. Though at that time the Second World War seemed as far away as the Crimean War, this conflict was the centre of most juvenile popular culture: comics, ‘pictures’, toy soldiers and games of army versus Germans played on the ‘rec’. We all knew what roles our parents had played in the war. My father, Fred Mansfield (1912–2004), had a relatively quiet war. Though a pre-war Territorial in the Engineers, an old footballing injury kept him in the UK, as a gunner, exchanging fire spasmodically with German planes. Army service opened horizons beyond his home town, and furnished him with material for later soldiers’ stories. He was a servant or ‘batman’ to his battery commander. This excused him much ‘bull’ and enabled his cadging skills to thrive. (The CO’s hard-to-obtain Brylcreem, would be diluted with army issue disinfectant.) Later, he was posted to an isolated gun site overlooking Scapa Flow, where he did odd jobs for an elderly widow who ran a croft on South Ronaldsay. Despite Orkney being classed as a war zone, he brought my mother and older brother up to join him. They lived with the widow, and my father paid the rent by working on the farm. His mates covered for him, the officer turned a blind eye to any irregularities, and they were rewarded with off-the-ration eggs. With a background in the building trade, towards the end of the war, he was ‘combed-out’ of his unit. He spent months repairing bomb and shell damage in Dover, Nick Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900–1930 (Aldershot: 1 Ashgate, 2001), xi–xiii.

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where he was billeted in the Napoleonic defences of the Western Heights. (These had been constructed by soldier-tradesmen 140 years before; see the section ‘Artificers and sappers’, in Chapter 3, below.) Fred also continued his promising football career, making guest appearances for a number of League clubs in the scratch wartime programme, and even playing once against the famous Stanley Matthews. Though in uniform, his working life continued in a way that would have been familiar to many soldiers throughout the previous century. This untold narrative forms the substance of this book, as the techniques of labour history are applied to the largest group of unstudied nineteenth-century workers. At the time of writing, Britain is embarking on a massive public history jamboree to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Its overwhelming storyline is emotive, which I suspect that that the citizen soldiers I knew as a boy and who I interviewed in the 1980s, would have found distasteful. The generation-long Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, referred to here as the French Wars, were sometimes termed the ‘Great War’ in nineteenth-century histories. On a worldwide scale, others have noted that, for Britain, the mobilisation and the loss of life in this earlier ‘Great War’ was proportionately greater than in the First World War.2 Relatively little evidence of national mourning or private grief is recorded in the soldiers’ memoirs which followed the conflict. The deaths of senior officers might be recorded in cathedrals and the families of junior officers might erect monuments in parish churches, but the thousands of the rank-and-file fatalities received nothing but an unmarked grave, with families often receiving little word about their fates. Whilst contemporary civilian mortality rates were high, there is no doubt that working-class families grieved in a largely unrecorded story. This is chronicled by a radical hatter, whose father was a soldier and who was a boy during the conflict: ‘The French War was carrying desolation over a large portion of Europe, and there were few of the people even in the lonely, and sequestered valleys who had not occasion to mourn some dear relative who had fallen in the service of his country … and many a loving heart was left with an empty void which might never be filled.’ Even the unmarked graves were not always respected. Communal grave-pits of the big battles were excavated within decades, to be ground up for bone fertiliser and imported to drive the British agricultural revolution. The ‘father of the fertiliser industry’, Justus von Liebig, claimed: ‘Already in her eagerness she [England] has turned up the battlefields of Leipsic and Waterloo, and those of the Crimea.’ Such actions would have Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 2 133 and 169 and Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 1991), chap. 7.

Preface

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been unthinkable both post 1918 and especially in the context of the current centenary.3 However, folk knowledge of momentous conflicts does persist down the years in working-class families. My father told us approvingly that Oliver Cromwell stabled his horses in the chapel of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, a boast which also caused the imprisonment in the town of a radical journeyman baker, John Cook, during the anti-Jacobin ‘White Terror’ of 1793.4 My father’s grandmother, Martha Mansfield, née Wayman (1860–1941), told him that her grandmother, as a little girl, walked from her village of Kingston into Cambridge to view the street bonfires celebrating a great victory. The occasion was recorded more officially: ‘On 7th of November, there was a general illumination on account of the battle of Trafalgar. The bells of Great St. Mary’s rang a dumb peal for Lord Nelson.’5 Family legend also remembers the name of Stephen Mansfield, who was said to have fought at Waterloo. So perhaps the combatants of the French Wars are closer to living memory than one might think, and the continuities with the citizen armies of 1914–18 are more vivid. The relative ease with which British society, and especially the working class, engaged in twentiethcentury wars, may owe much to knowledge of military service in the earlier great conflicts. Many debts to professional and amateur historians of various stripes are gratefully acknowledged here: Bob Amey, Derek Beadles, John Benson, Chris Burgess, Alan Campbell, Eddie Cass, Tim Cockitt, Len Collinson, Joe Cozens, Gavin Daly, Alex Danchev, Mark Dennis, Francis Devine, Peter Donnelly, Billy Frank, Peter Gattrell, Keith Gildart, Trevor Herbert, Craig Horner, Alun Howkins, Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Bonnie Huskins, Kevin Linch, Catriona Kennedy, Matthew McCormack, Malcolm McVicar, Janette Martin, Mairtin O’ Cathain, Bryn Owen, David Pink, Robert Poole, Iori Prothero, Martin Purdy, John Rumsby, Glenn Steppler, David Stewart, David Swift, Melanie Tebbutt, Myna Trustram and John Walton. Thanks too are offered to the staffs of various archives, libraries and museums, including John Rylands University of Manchester Library, UCLan, British James Dawson Burn, The Autobiography of a Beggar Boy (London: Tweedie, 1855 [1978]), 3 64–65. Though long suspected as an ‘urban’ myth, bone grinding is recorded as fact in Neil Oliver, Not Forgotten (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2005), 42–45 and von Leibig, as cited in Edward Russell, The Fertility of the Soil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 58. Nick Mansfield, ‘Grads and Snobs: John Brown, Town and Gown in Early Nineteenth 4 Century Cambridge’, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993), 183. C.H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Metcalfe and Palmer, 1852), 483. 5

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Library, National Army Museum, Library of the Royal United Services Institute, and Cambridgeshire and Shropshire Record Offices. A particular debt is owed to Jane Davies at the Lancashire Infantry Museum in Preston. I also thank Alison Welsby at Liverpool University Press for her great care and patience, and two anonymous readers for their helpful comments. Above all, thanks are due to my family, especially Julia. Though Fred and Ena and most of the older generation are now dead, Bob, Robin, ‘Bob’s yer uncle’ and cousin Joan added more than they realise to my knowledge of the intricacies of the British class system.

1 Introduction Introduction

What this book is about An understanding of working-class people is a key factor in the analysis of the British army in the period of industrialisation and Empire. Yet, despite an immense military literature, we know little about what the huge occupational group of common soldiers did all day. This book provides an account of common soldiers pursuing pre-enlistment employment within the army itself in specialised trades, as servants or as ‘penny capitalists’. It discusses how soldiers exhibited pre-enlistment attitudes and engaged in class conflict at various levels, including asserting a strong contract culture. It shows how class pervaded the structure of the army at every level, with the rank and file being consistently treated less well than officers. Together with a future companion volume on popular politics, it offers new insights into major issues which shaped Victorian society, like class, politics, nationhood, racism and imperialism. This research on the army and its place in British society comes mainly from the long nineteenth century: 1790 to 1914. It is coterminus with the momentous and influential events of industrial development and maturity and with wars of nationhood and imperialism. It concentrates on workingclass professional soldiers, rather than the unpaid and part-time volunteers formed during the Napoleonic period and later from the mid-Victorian period. Professionals are distinguished between regulars, who could be sent anywhere, and the county militia, only mobilised in wartime, whose contracts specified home service only. In addition, during the French Wars, other professional soldiers served in the short-lived ‘fencibles’ (again only for service in the UK), plus garrison, veterans and some colonial regiments. The French Wars also saw the creation of small professional staffs in unpaid volunteer units. The study considers the white soldiers of the private army of the East India Company, who only signed on for Indian service. It also covers overseas military adventurers who contracted to serve in British

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private armies fighting on the nationalist or liberal side in early-nineteenthcentury wars in South America, Greece, Portugal and Spain. The terms and conditions of enlistment of all these soldiers are analysed in relation to formal and informal contract cultures, which had many similarities with civilian employment. Wartime compulsion existed, both officially, in terms of balloting for the militia and reserve units, and unofficially, with crimping, trickery by recruiting sergeants and mistreatment of home service troops refusing to volunteer for the front line. Such a long period needs some justification. Though a soldier of 1900 was better educated, better equipped and healthier than his counterpart 100 years earlier, he was still led by officers from a much higher social class. Indeed, British army officers in 1900 were, on average, more aristocratic than their equivalents of 1800. The innate conservatism of the army meant that the basic structure was maintained and affected all its activities, so that soldiers, both officers and other ranks, would have recognised their regiments of 100 years before and been able to identify with their predecessors’ working lives. This is confirmed by Charles Grey, an infantryman of the 1880s: Indeed but for some changes of small importance in uniforms, the substitution of the rifle for the flintlock musket, the introduction of short service … there had been almost no changes since Georgian days, and in the matters of drill, manoeuvre, battle and all else officers and soldiers of even 100 could have if resuscitated have found no difficulty in resuming their respective places in the ranks.1

This chapter discusses a variety of issues which will familiarise the reader with the military working class. It relates the topic to the discipline of labour history, briefly examines military history literature, where these can also connect with that specialism, and comments critically on soldiers’ memoirs. It details the often bewildering range of types of military service that soldiers undertook, and argues that, at least during the French Wars, a quasi-conscription existed. It then goes on to underpin the growing importance of imperialism for common soldiers. Towards a labour history of soldiers E.P. Thompson, in his seminal labour history account, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), pleaded: ‘We need more studies of the social attitudes of criminals, of soldiers and sailors.’ Though a uniformed British working class had existed for many years, it only began to develop on a large Charles Grey, ‘Soldiering in Victorian Days: A Memoir and Sketches’, British Library 1 MSS Eur F391, unpublished transcript (1941), 1.

Introduction

3

scale from the mid-nineteenth century, both in major capitalised private industries, like the railways, or in the increased role of government or local authorities to provide services through post offices, transport systems or amenities. This uniformed workforce, many of them ex-servicemen, has increasingly been studied by labour historians. Curiously, though, despite the vast literature on military history, little has been written on the largest group of the uniformed working class: soldiers themselves. This anomaly was recognised as long ago as 1974 by Victor Neuburg: Most of all there is an overriding need for some military history to be written ‘from below’, with an emphasis on the rank and file. In this connection I am far from apologetic about mentioning the concept of ‘class’. It has proved most fruitful for labour historians and there is no doubt that it could be equally so in the historical study of armies and war.2

Twenty years later, in her influential account of the formation of the modern British state during the reign of George III, Linda Colley observed: ‘But the hundreds of thousands of Britons who committed themselves, for whatever reason, to fight the French, remain in the shadows.’ Later, Colley again queried the lack of serious research on the soldiers of the peacetime British Empire: Like the slaves some felt themselves to be, however, white imperial soldiers in India are hard to investigate outside of the archives compiled by their masters … We need to … uncover different, more subterranean less dignified stories, stories of renegades and deserters, stories around punishment and resistance, stories of those majority of British soldiers who stayed loyal and outwardly obedient but sometimes with gritted teeth.3

Carolyn Steedman’s in-depth analysis of the memoir of John Pearman, an ex-cavalry sergeant who became a police inspector and was also a political radical, also makes the case for soldiers’ resistance to be studied as part of labour history: To be resentful in small and uninscribed ways is one form of resistance, though the labour movement and socialism have not given such strategies much more recognition than have the official canons of bravery and honour.4 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 2 1968), 63 and Victor E. Neuburg, in his review of M.R.D. Foot, War and Society (see JSAHR, 52 (1974), 49). Colley, Britons, 284 and Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 3 (London: Pimlico, 2002), 316. Carolyn Steedman, The Radical Soldier’s Tale: John Pearman, 1819–1908 (London: 4 Routledge, 1988), 2.

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Medical historian, Jacalyn Duffin, in a Canadian context, also queried why: Military personnel of the early nineteenth century do not have a prominent place in labour history … yet during the period up to and including the 1840s, British soldiers and militiamen were occupied with civilian public works, such as road and canal building – works that by the effect on economic activities contributed to the later emergence of class distinctions and the resulting labour movement.5

Also from a North American perspective, Peter Way asked: While one can excuse military historians for not casting the soldiers as workers, labor historians cannot so easily be let off the hook … virtually no work has been done on the subject of military labor … Yet warfare comprised the most heavily capitalised human enterprise at the time.6

Way’s accounts of common soldiers’ ‘proto class-consciousness’ amongst soldiers in mid-eighteenth-century North America, have been joined by other scholars focusing on the cultural life of the rank and file. These include Buckley’s study of ethnicity and class in the Caribbean garrisons of the Napoleonic Wars and Peter Stanley’s narrative of the ‘White Mutiny’ of 1858–59 – the general strike of the European troops of the East India Company. Jennine Hurl-Eamon’s recent work emphasises that Georgian soldiers often had working lives separate from soldiering. She argues that soldiers’ marriages kept them part of their communities, rather than fostering a separate existence in barracks that many historians suppose. Recent publications around the Soldiers and Soldiering in Britain, 1750–1815 project have raised the importance of the cultural history of soldiering.7 In other areas of employment, labour historians have gradually been extending their analysis to the unorganised, non-political, powerless and often female, nineteenth-century poor. Farmworkers – a particularly vulnerable occupational group, with their homes linked to their work – feature prominently in this, with attention given to their resistance. Examples include Alun Howkins’s notion of ‘structural conflict’ being resolved by Jacalyn Duffin, ‘Soldiers’ Work; Soldiers’ Health: Morbidity, Mortality, and their 5 Causes in an 1840s British Garrison in Canada’, Labour/Le Travail, 37 (1996), 37. Peter Way ‘Memoirs of an Invalid’, in Donna T. Haverty-Stacke and Daniel 6 J. Walkowitz, Rethinking US Labor History (New York and London: Continuum, 2010), 27. Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies: Society and the Military 7 in the Age of Revolution (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998); Peter Stanley, White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825–1875 (London: Hurst, 1998); Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); and Nick Mansfield, ‘Military Radicals and the Making of Class, 1790–1860’, in Catriona Kennedy and Matthew McCormack (eds), Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Introduction

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unofficial organisation and Keith Snell’s proposal of ‘deferential bitterness’ as applying to the rural poor over two centuries an ‘Expression of class hostility … that combined elements of both conservative deference and radical resistance.’ Both may be transferable to class and common soldiers, as also may be my own work on ‘local patriotism’ diffusing class consciousness amongst early twentieth-century farmworkers.8 In a similar way to soldiers, domestic servants have largely been ignored by labour (though not gender) historians, despite their undoubted importance in the nineteenth-century workforce. There have, however, been signs of some interest in this field, with John Benson’s review of the literature and suggestions on how they could be incorporated into the labour historian’s world, and my own work on Cambridge college servants. This methodological approach can also be applied to soldiers.9 This book focuses on class. It does not address race, gender, feminism and masculinities, or the current interest in cultural history, unless it is linked to class. Class is defined broadly as behaviours and attitudes based on social and economic positions, and is influenced by Richard Hoggart, whose conclusions rang true with my own experiences, rather than Karl Marx and his successors. Since Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, there has been much debate about class amongst British historians. The ‘linguistic turn’ of the 1980s, with its emphasis on culture, has been supplemented by historians concerned with its ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects. Readers are referred elsewhere for this discussion, some of which is absorbed into this book.10 The book uses official and published sources, both military and labour histories, as well as the many rank-and-file memoirs that came out of the Peninsular War and continued in the wars of Empire. As a casual visit to any branch of a high street bookshop will reveal, military history literature is Alun Howkins, Poor Labouring Men: Rural Radicalism in Norfolk, 1870–1923 (London: 8 Routledge, 1985), 15–30; K.D.M. Snell, ‘Deferential Bitterness: The Social Outlook of the Rural Proletariat in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England and Wales’, in M.L. Bush (ed.), Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe Since 1500: Studies in Social Stratification (London: Longman, 1992), 165; and Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, chap. 6. For the discussion on the literature on servants from labour historians, see John Benson, 9 ‘One Man and his Women: Domestic Service in Edwardian England’, Labour History Review, 72(3) (2007), 204–14 and Mansfield, ‘Grads and Snobs’, 184–98. 10 Thompson and his critics (especially Gareth Stedman Jones, Patrick Joyce and James Vernon), are summarised in Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), chap. 1. For a recent summary of these debates, see Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007).

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vast. This is one reason why no systematic historiography is attempted here, especially as very little of it narrates stories of proletarians, slackers, deserters or rebels. Most of these books assume that soldiers were loyal, or heroes, a line also pursued by regimental histories and military museums, but some useful material can slip out between the cracks. A few well-researched substantial volumes, which contain material on the social history of soldiers, have been of great use to this study, despite the prevailing conservatism of most military history and its lack of interest in covering rankers who did not live up to the loyalist stereotype. The magisterial thirteen volumes, by J.W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, is the starting point. Other more modern works are listed as they are quoted. The academic journals for learned societies in both labour and military history have added to the mix, despite the total lack of overlap, the tangential treatment of class by military historians and the general hostility of labour historians to the subject. A few soldiers’ memoirs survive from the eighteenth century, but the end of the French Wars saw an ‘avalanche of personal memoirs, diaries and printed correspondence … [with a] concern for realism and their frankly personal style’. Though still outnumbered by officers’ accounts, they also included a large number written by the rank and file. The context is significant. First, they were written for upper- and middle-class audiences and often sponsored by ex-officers, gentry, clergy and journalists, with the last sometimes rewriting or perhaps ghost-writing the narrative. David Vincent, the historian of nineteenth-century working-class autobiographies, argues that the upheavals of industrial change and the political threat of popular radicalism were main drivers of this market, which provided reassurance to polite readers about the loyalism, deference and piety of the working class (which in the early nineteenth century had the potential to be otherwise). Secondly, these accounts concentrate on the successful battles which polite society wanted to celebrate after 1815, so the Peninsular War tends to dominate, with far fewer accounts of the many abject failures of the British military from the 1790s right up to 1814. Long-serving regular career soldiers, likely to have served in many campaigns, predominate, rather than the citizen soldiers swept into the enlarged forces. The conscripted militiamen’s voice in garrisoning a volatile country facing industrial change and political conflict is largely unheard, although some useful accounts from these auxiliaries who volunteered for the line do exist. Despite all this, contemporary accounts can often be interrogated to give clues about working life, with material on enlistment, billeting and discharge, though the soldier’s inner world is nearly always opaque and notably reveals few opinions on the changing society outside the barracks. The appetite for rankers’ memoirs – now by long-service professionals – continued after 1830

Introduction

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with wars of imperial conquest. Indeed, it is claimed that: ‘The military autobiography was the only consistently produced working-class account of the early and mid Victorian years.’11 But the same problems outlined above still exist, and aside from a superficial patriotism these voices are generally silent on the great unmilitary events through which they lived. Types of military service The overall size of the British army varied during the nineteenth century. The mass mobilisations of the French Wars climaxed with 300,000 regulars in 1814, a figure which with the navy, militias and (unpaid) volunteers may have been doubled, involving between 11 per cent to 14 per cent of the adult male population and three times the ‘military participation ratio’ of imperial France. In 1814, the armed forces absorbed 68 per cent of total government expenditure. The peacetime army slimmed down to below 100,000 but the contingencies of the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny raised this to nearly 250,000. Though numbers declined again in the subsequent decades, given the needs of garrisoning a vast Empire (particularly in India after the events of 1857), despite the widespread use of colonial troops and self-defence by ‘white dominions’, this size was substantially the same by the time of Victoria’s jubilee and increased again under the impact of the Boer War. As well as the regular army, as will be discussed shortly, other auxiliary troops were also paid to soldier, especially in wartime. In addition, the East India Company ran its own army recruited from Britons and many served in private expeditionary forces recruited by overseas military adventurers between 1815 and 1840. Though this study excludes part-time (usually unpaid), volunteer soldiers, with the exception of paid instructors, it is clear that common soldiers formed one of the largest occupational groups during this period.12 11 David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 312 and David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London: Methuen, 1981), 26–27. For a recent analysis of memoirs, see Neil Ramsay, ‘“A Real English Soldier”: Suffering, Manliness and Class in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Soldiers’ Tales’, in Kennedy and McCormack, Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850, 136–53. 12 Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 46–48. These figures vary slightly, though with the main trends confirmed in Peter Burroughs, ‘An Unreformed Army? 1815–1868’, in David Chandler and I.F.W. Beckett, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 164; Roger Knight, Britain against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793–1815 (London: Penguin, 2014), 260 and chap. 13; and Philip J. Haythornthwaite, Redcoats: The British Soldier of the Napoleonic Wars (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2012), 6.

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Soldiers as Workers

Regulars The British regular army consisted of units of guards and ‘the line’ (infantry and cavalry), plus the Ordnance troops of the artillery, and engineers. For the duration of the French Wars, the regulars also included ‘fencibles’ (raised for home service only until 1803), six garrison battalions for Army of Reserve conscripts who refused to volunteer for the line, and thirteen veteran regiments for soldiers too old for active service, which could be posted to imperial stations. Some Britons also served in various colonial units, some of which became de facto penal battalions. The regiment was the building block of the British army and generated intense loyalty, often over centuries. This regimental pride and a pronounced ‘pecking order’ of social and political importance – itself sometimes with class connotations – will be explored elsewhere. The nineteenth-century army was a collection of autonomous regiments, still regarded as the Colonel’s property, which often made it dysfunctional on campaign: In contrast [to other aspects of Victorian society], the Queen’s army was a heterogeneous collection of regiments and corps, each of which sought to maintain its own identity. They were not linked by any universally accepted code of military values, but by the civilian interests of their members.13

Infantry regiments at full strength could be over 1,000 strong, though they were frequently much weaker, especially on campaign; cavalry regiments had roughly half this number. Especially in wartime, regiments could be divided into two or more battalions. At the top of the ‘pecking order’ were the tall and better-paid men of the Guards, who were based mainly in London and whose regiments had a more direct relationship with the crown. They were divided into the Household Cavalry, two regiments of Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards, and three regiments of Foot Guards (more after 1900). Each of the last had a number of battalions and formed a wartime strategic reserve. As will be discussed in the section ‘Guards’, in Chapter 3, below, they also had a particular role, not just ceremonial, in the working life of the capital. The Guards also seemed to have fewer offenders in their ranks and flogged very few of their soldiers compared with other regiments, especially after 1815. Guards officers’ commissions were the most expensive, and though paid more than line officers, they all needed private incomes to cover their expenses, attracting the highest concentration of aristocrats.14 13 Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). 14 For a recent account of these complex nuances, see Richard Holmes, Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket (London: HarperCollins, 2001), chap. 4.

Introduction

9

Below the Guards in social status came around 30 mounted cavalry regiments, divided into heavy (Dragoons and Dragoon Guards – separate from the Guards) and light (Light Dragoons, Hussars and Lancers). The Prince Regent took a direct interest in the elaborate uniforms of the Hussars, giving these regiments a greater cachet and ensuring that only the rich could afford the more expensive officers’ commissions. The largest number of soldiers served in regiments of foot of the line. The number, roughly 100, remained remarkably consistent throughout the century, though they sometimes divided into extra battalions, especially in wartime. While each was given a title in 1782, mainly based on counties, regiments had little to do with their localities until at least after the late-Victorian Cardwell reforms. They preferred to be known by their numbers (1st Foot, etc.) and their particular recruits were drawn at random from across the UK, though Irish and Scottish regiments tended to attract these nationalities. Line regiments had the same training, with regiments enjoying names like fusiliers or highlanders merely having distinctive or exotic uniforms. The exceptions to this were the light infantry and green-clad rifle regiments, trained in skirmishing under the influence of Sir John Moore, which assumed an elite status during the French Wars. Infantry regiments had varying social status for officers, with light infantry at the top and Irish units at the bottom of the hierarchy. Soldiers of the artillery and the engineers were employed by the Board of Ordnance. They were generally paid more than infantry or cavalry and attracted a more educated and skilled rank and file. As will be discussed in the section ‘Artificers and sappers’, in Chapter 3, below, they often shared in a civilian trades culture. Their officers did not purchase their commissions and tended to be more middle class. They were educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, when other officers mainly learnt on the job. Excluded from this study are the Royal Marines – soldiers employed by Admiralty to staff the fleet. Their officers did not have to purchase their commissions, and that fact, together with high prize money during the French Wars, were major incentives to join. Their numbers were substantial, reaching 31,000 in the year of Trafalgar and still 9,000 in 1827. Some mention is made of ‘fencibles’, who were regulars contracted for home service only and originally formed in Scotland, as the Militia Act of 1757 did not apply there. During the 1790s, several dozen fencible horse and foot regiments – often raised locally by landed magnates – became part of the huge mobilisation of manpower, as increasing numbers were sucked into the West Indian campaigns. As will be discussed in the section ‘Contract culture’, in Chapter 4, below, fencibles were keen to uphold their distinctive contracts, and resisted drafting abroad. They were given more privileges

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Soldiers as Workers

and flexibility in employment than the line, in the words of one recruiting poster of 1778: every possible indulgence, consistent with their duty will be given to the private men; they will be allowed to work for themselves during hay time and harvest (and at all other times, when they are quartered in places where work is to be had, to a great a degree as circumstances will permit), so that the men who enlist in these regiments do not become soldiers in the common sense of the word.15

The rank and file for all types of regular military service were volunteers, who in theory joined for life, in exchange for a substantial enlistment bounty. In practice, though, hard service and the disbandment of regiments meant that most soldiers were discharged or became unfit before 50, making it a young man’s trade. To try and stimulate recruitment during the pressing needs of the French Wars, more attractive, short-term service, for seven years, was introduced briefly in 1806, together with pensions. The cost of this became a drain to post-1815 governments and both were abandoned with the peace. Short service was revived again in 1847, with ten years in the infantry and twelve in the cavalry, though not the pensions, which were reserved for disabled soldiers. The Cardwell reforms of the 1870s reduced the length of service again, usually to six years, followed by six years in a newly created reserve, part of the strengthened regimental system with a settled depot in its county town.16 The proportions of British nationalities in the army changed through the nineteenth century. Refugees from rebellion and overpopulation in Ireland and Scotland found a home in the forces. In 1830, there was still a high proportion of Irish (42.2 per cent) and Scots (13.6 per cent) even in some nominally ‘English’ regiments. After the 1846 famine, Irish migration focused on the USA and with increasing political aspirations the percentage of Irish soldiers declined to 27.9 per cent in 1870 and 15.6 per cent in 1888 and then 9.1 per cent in 1912, roughly the same as the Irish population in the UK. Scots numbers were more static, with 9.3 per cent in 1868 and 7.7 per cent in 1879, less than its proportion of the population. The many Highland regiments only maintained their numbers with Scottish lowland and urban recruits and even Englishmen. The number of Welshmen in the army was consistently low through time. Overall, the army became increasingly anglicised, up to 80 per cent by 1898. In addition, there was an overall decline 15 Quoted in Kevin Linch and Mathew McCormack, Britain’s Soldiers: Rethinking War and Society, 1715–1815 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 211–12. 16 Richard Holmes, Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors (London: Harper, 2011), 272.

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11

in soldiers from rural areas, with urban and industrial areas now becoming the most fruitful recruiting grounds.17 Militia The county militia were descended from English medieval levies and, as trained bands, had taken part in the Civil War, the Monmouth Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution. They saw themselves as the ‘ancient constitutional force’ in opposition to regal power, with its potentially mercenary standing armies. They were based firmly in their counties under the control of rural elites and were mainly Whig in sympathy. Though reorganised and mobilised in 1757 for the Seven Years War, the county militia was in effect a private army, though formed entirely of infantry. It was controlled by the Home Office rather than the War Office and organised by the Lords Lieutenant. These exercised considerable patronage and appointed its officers, who, with compulsorily property qualifications, were all from the county elites. Regular officers looked down on the home-based militia, who had never fired a shot in anger. Their officers were paid less, and were always junior in status to regulars, and there was a long tradition of antipathy and duels or even fights between them.18 As will be examined in Chapter 2, below, militia rank and file were mainly local to their counties and raised by ballot. They were almost entirely working class since the poor who drew a bad number could not afford to pay for a substitute, which was allowed under the system. This also spared gentlemen serving in its ranks with the non-genteel. The militia were mobilised for full-time service in 1793 and again in 1803 for the duration of the war, with contracts that specified home service only. The system was extended to Scotland in 1797, resulting in widespread protests. Despite this, a host amounting to 129 regiments – some up to 1,000 strong – were in arms by 1810. As men died from disease, deserted or volunteered for regular regiments, numbers were kept up through further ballots, some quite substantial – as when 276 of the Shropshire Militia volunteered for the line in 1809. During the French Wars, militia regiments, as a matter of policy, were stationed away from their home counties in case they had to act against local protesters. In particular, the Luddite revolt in the North Midlands in 17 Holmes, Redcoat, 55–56; Alan Ramsey Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 287–92 and Burroughs, ‘An Unreformed Army? 1815–1868’, 169. For Welsh recruits, see Gervase Phillips, ‘Dai Bach Y Soldiwr: Welsh Soldiers in the British Army 1914–19’, Llafur, 6(2) (1993), 94–95. 18 I.F.W. Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1991), 2–3; Charles M. Clode, The Military Forces of the Crown (London: Murray, 1869), vol. 1, 194; and Matthew McCormack, ‘Stamford Standoff: Honour, Status and Rivalry in the Georgian Military’, in Linch and McCormack, Britain’s Soldiers, 77–92.

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Soldiers as Workers

1811–12 caused the Leicestershire, Rutland, Nottingham, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire militias to be sent to Ireland and regiments from other counties were urgently drafted in.19 A few militia regiments volunteered to serve abroad early in 1814 to garrison Bordeaux, but did not see active service before the fall of Napoleon, and all regiments were stood down later that year. Though the ballot was still retained, the militias went into suspended animation and the proposed annual training was generally abandoned. But widespread post-war popular politics and disturbances caused some counties to renew their training programmes. In the Denbighshire Militia, for instance, all their men trained for 28 days in 1820, 1821, 1825 and 1831. The county towns retained their militia barracks with a small cadre of permanent staff, consisting mainly of sergeants and musicians (see the section ‘Pensioners, instructors and administrators’, in Chapter 3, below). The latter provided music for gentry society and the former trained militiamen and occasionally mustered the 31,201 regular army pensioners – the ‘seven-year men’ – left over in peacetime. The militia cadre was also sporadically used to quell riots or enforce evictions, or act against strikers, potential subversives or political radicals.20 In reaction to perceived renewed French imperial threats, a new Militia Act was passed in 1852, despite political opposition. Recruitment was voluntary, though a bounty was paid, again a valuable earner for working-class men, though the ballot was retained in extremis. The 80,000 recruits obtained did 56 days’ annual training a year and the regiments in each British county were mobilised again during the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny. Some English militia served in Ireland, and some units volunteered for garrison duty in Mediterranean stations. The War Office took over from the Lords Lieutenant in 1871 as part of Cardwell reforms, when the militia became part of the new county depots and in the 1880s provided a third of all recruits to the regular army. The militia were again embodied for the Boer War and sent drafts to the front. As part of Haldane reforms, the militia became the Special Reserve battalions of county regiments, retaining their local and working-class culture until the Great War. One Edwardian MP referred to them as ‘an annexe to the work-house, into which boys of seventeen are to 19 J.E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1793–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 7 and 66; Joseph Cozens, ‘“The Blackest Perjury”: Military Justice and Popular Politics in England, 1803–1805’, Labour History Review, 79(3) (2014), 263; T.H. McGuffie, ‘The Lord Bradford Militia Documents in the Shirehall, Shrewsbury, Salop’, JSAHR, 44 (1966), 136; and Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 260–61 and 411. 20 Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 112 and 129–31; Bryn Owen, History of the Welsh Militia and Volunteer Corps, 1757–1908, Denbighshire and Flintshire (Part 1) (Wrexham: Bridge Books, 1997), 13 and 38; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 172; and Cookson, British Armed Nation, 207.

Introduction

13

be invited “during the winter months”, on the express wish assurance of the Army Council that they may “buy themselves out” as soon as trade mends, and they can scrape together sixty shillings’.21 Honourable East India Company Since its foundation in the seventeenth century, the East India Company (EIC), the government-backed private organisation which ran British India until 1858, also employed its own armed forces. Though most soldiers were black sepoys, white recruits were used from 1669, both as officers to direct sepoys and as specific white infantry, artillery and, later, cavalry regiments in the three Presidencies of British influence. They were dressed and trained just like British regulars but were recruited exclusively for Indian service. They enjoyed higher pay – and a high standard of living in India – along with pensions on discharge. In addition, early-nineteenth-century wars gave opportunities for batta (campaign pay), prize money and plunder, along with more relaxed relationships between men, NCOs and officers. Discipline was much freer and, off parade, dress was more informal: ‘we keep what close [sic] we like’, according to one soldier. The drawbacks were a high mortality rate because of disease, and lack of home leave. If they wished to remain in India, job opportunities existed for soldiers in the EIC’s growing civil and fiscal bureaucracy, which employed 10 per cent of its white troops in 1856. Initially, EIC recruits had roughly the same background as those of the line, but as employment possibilities became better known, better-educated men signed up. The EIC had offices in London and Dublin, so rank and file tended to be ‘cockney’, or men who had drifted to the capital, or Irish. There was a high number of clerks, who had often made career decisions to seek their fortune in India.22 EIC officers had a lower status than other officers, and many were of lowly origin, typically sons of tradesmen or the younger sons of impoverished gentry, with Irish and Scots predominating. They were always outranked by 21 Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 148–53; Owen, History of the Welsh Militia, 13–14; Marquis of Anglesey, A History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3 (London: Leo Cooper, 1982), 42; and Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training and Deploying the British Army, 1902–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 118. 22 T.A. Heathcote, The Military in British India: The Development of British Land Forces in South Asia, 1600–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 23 and Stanley, White Mutiny, 9, 10, 12–13, 18, 21, 23–27, 42, 84, 86 and 87. For the eighteenth-century EIC, see Joel Mokyr and Cormac O Grada, ‘The Height of Irishmen and Englishmen in the 1770s: Some Evidence from the East Indian Company Army Records’, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 4 (1989), 83–92.

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Soldiers as Workers

regular officers but were well paid and had good pensions. They had a long tradition of protest and strikes (which they shared with the rank and file) to preserve their high pay and high allowances. Officers took a cut from the ‘Bazaar’ tax, levied by regiments over Indian traders who wanted to deal with the regiment. Revenue money, the tax revenues of the Presidency, was shared by senior officers as well as by civilian administrators of the EIC. Soldiers could also trade, though for rank and file this was generally on a small scale. But all soldiers shared in the plunder generated by the EIC’s aggressive wars by which they conquered most of India in the early nineteenth century.23 These wars caused a huge growth in the EIC army, which amounted to 250,000 men by 1815. Whilst the majority were Indian, there were 36,400 white soldiers in 1830. They formed the largest group that the colonialised would meet, comprising 90 per cent of white people in India. In these wars the EIC was helped by regular troops of the British army, referred to as ‘HM troops’. They shared in the batta, and loot, making Indian service popular: ‘John Company behaved well to us shared some of the Plunder with us Soldiers I mean in prize money not so the Queens Government and then John Company did not make us work found us plenty of servants plenty of Grog and good living’.24 Overseas military adventurers In the period 1815 to 1861, several thousand Britons were recruited to private armies to participate in overseas military ventures, usually on the nationalist or liberal side in early nineteenth-century wars in South America, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Many were former British army soldiers, though many others were new to soldiering and some enlisted for ideological reasons to support political radicalism, though the lack of rank-and-file memoirs for these overseas military adventurers makes it difficult to gauge. Given the unofficial nature of these movements and their overall lack of records, it is also difficult to estimate the numbers involved. Though many later claimed to have fought for Greek independence against the Turks, fewer than 1,000 men followed Lords Cochrane and Byron. The various South American expeditions numbered over 10,000, though the often made claim that many of Wellington’s veterans participated is contradicted by new research. The 23 Richard Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India (London: Harper, 2005), 191, 249 and 235 and Stanley, White Mutiny, 23–29, 49–50. For officers trading, see Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819–1835 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 10, 64 and 75–76. 24 Colley, Captives, 257 and 316 and Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 48.

Introduction

15

British intervention in the Portuguese Civil War of the early 1830s may have involved 2,000 to 3,000 men, but the best organised was the British Auxiliary Legion (BAL) raised by radical General Sir George De Lacy Evans, MP in 1835. With some British government support, this initially sent an expeditionary force of 10,000 to northern Spain, consisting of infantry, cavalry and artillery. With its own depots in Britain, the BAL may have sent several thousand more over the next two years. As late as 1861, London radicals sent 1,200 ‘Excursionists’ in a British battalion to help Garibaldi liberate Italy.25 As far as can be judged, rank-and-file recruits for these ventures were from working-class backgrounds, similar to other British soldiers. In the words of radical journalist Alexander Somerville, formerly of the Royal Scots Greys and Sergeant in the BAL: ‘I shall shew the Legion to have been as like British soldiers, as one British army has been like another.’ The liberal Spanish government offered pensions to BAL recruits and surviving claim forms show the usual range of artisan and labouring occupations. Corporal Thomas Knight, who fought with the 2/95th Rifles at Antwerp and Waterloo and then served in the British battalion on the liberal side in the ‘War of Two Brothers’ in Portugal, could find little difference: ‘As far as I have seen whether in the British service or in the British battalion at Oporto, the constant look-out among the men was plunder, and to lay their hands on what they could, so long as they thought they should escape shooting or flogging.’ Punishment was certainly as stringent as in the British army, with De Lacy Evans being noted for using the lash to lick his recruits into shape, despite his radical opinions. The structure, organisation, pay and uniforms of the BAL were also adopted wholesale from the British service.26

25 The National Army Museum (NAM) has some patchy BAL records, mainly on pensions, though the British ‘Garibaldini’ have extensive records at the Bishopsgate Institute Library. Only three rank and file memoirs of the overseas military adventurers have been traced, though more survive from participating officers. These and a growing secondary literature will be reviewed in the companion volume. In the meantime, see Mansfield, ‘Military Radicals and the Making of Class, 1790–1860’, 67–69. The recent research is in Matthew Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simon Bolivar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), from whom the term ‘overseas military adventurers’ is borrowed. 26 Alexander Somerville, History of the British Legion in Spain (London: James Pattie, 1839), 469; Thomas Knight, The British Battalion at Oporto (London: Effingham Wilson, 1834), 33. For the BAL, see Edward M. Spiers, Radical General: Sir George de Lacy Evans, 1787–1870 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983) and Edward M. Brett, The British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003).

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Soldiers as Workers

Quasi-conscription That the British army was recruited by voluntary enlistment until 1916 is undoubtedly correct. However, compulsion of various sorts was employed both in the eighteenth century and during the early nineteenth century via impressment, crimping, Highland levies and balloting for the Militia, Supplementary Militia and Army of Reserve. Many troops, particularly those of the militia, were deliberately given a hard time to induce them to volunteer for the regular forces. These stratagems are reviewed below to argue that this amounted to a quasi-conscription during the French Wars. Impressment The eighteenth-century British army used impressment to fill its ranks via local authorities, as late as the American War of Independence. These ‘vestry men’ generally included the feckless of the parish, especially debtors and men deserting families, and may have contributed to the unsavoury reputation of rankers in the nineteenth century.27 Crimps Recruitment reached crisis point in the 1790s, as Britain mass mobilised for the French Wars. As bounty payments increased, London criminals seized the opportunity of supplying recruits to order, especially for new officers raising soldiers for their commissions. These ‘crimps’ obtained, or forged, ‘beating orders’ which gave them legal authority to hold recent unemployed migrants to London at inns, and then trick, intoxicate or force them into the army. Crimps would also instruct the petty criminals in their gangs into the techniques of desertion and ‘bounty jumping’, with the profits being jointly shared: ‘the most depraved and criminal part of the community are at present in possession of beating orders, who being restrained by no rules of moral rectitude, are constantly bringing odium on government’. Popular protests erupted in London in 1794, in which several public houses were burnt and the protests were only put down by troops. In April 1795, one boy servant was targeted: [T]he crimp followed him, and desired he would take a shilling and purchase some tobacco at a shop close by; the unsuspecting youth did it, and when he returned, the fellow immediately seized him, and told him he had taken the King’s money, and he must go for a gentleman soldier. He was in the act of dragging him away, when the boy, by his cries alarmed the neighbourhood, who flew to his assistance and rescued him. They 27 Stuart Reid, British Redcoat (Oxford: Osprey, 1996), 5; H. Moyse-Bartlett, ‘The British Army in 1850’, JSAHR, 52 (1974), 235 and Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 58.

Introduction

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seized the kidnapper, and gave him over to the mob, who calmly heard the story, and then took him to the next pump, and attempted to purify him with water.28

Such actions increased the unpopularity of the wars and added to the difficulties of recruiting. Though the worst excesses were curbed in the Recruiting Bill of 1796, crimps continued their activities in many towns during the French Wars. In 1804, Joseph Pickard of the South Hampshire Militia was convicted in Brighton of having made an agreement with a ‘crimp residing in Guilford’. Andrew Pearson, a Northumbrian weaver’s apprentice, ran away to sea soon after the war broke out again in 1803. Fetching up in Cork, he was treated with ‘cherry whiskey’ by a man in a pub who turned out to be a crimper, and woke up, having been kidnapped ‘between 2 soldiers at Fort Duncannon’. Though he refused to take a bounty, his captors claimed his had taken the King’s shilling and he was sent to the Cape of Good Hope with his regiment, the 61st Foot. He served in the wars and was promoted to Sergeant, until deserting in 1813.29 Highland levies In the period between the battles of Culloden and Waterloo, soldiers in the Scottish Highlands continued to be levied by clan leaders in a traditional fashion, though this was now linked to the processes of modernisation, clearance and depopulation. Though the region only had a population of about 300,000, nearly 50,000 men were recruited between 1756 and 1815, with 23 line regiments and 26 fencible regiments being allocated ‘Highland’ status. Matthew Dziennik emphasises that the contract culture was alive amongst these regiments and that Highlanders were keen to assert their contractual rights. But these same soldiers could not challenge the traditional cultural right of the clan chiefs to levy their regiments through compulsion and bullying, especially in the first mobilisation of the 1790s. Typical were the 78th Foot (Seaforth Highlanders) of whom: ‘some bands of young Highlanders who went to the join the regiment, declared … that they had enlisted merely to save their parents from being turned out of their farms’. The problem was that as the recruiting base of the Highland regiments diminished they could not maintain their numbers as losses mounted during the French Wars. As we shall see in the section ‘Strikes and 28 Arthur N. Gilbert, ‘An Analysis of Some Eighteenth Century Army Recruiting Records’, JSAHR, 54 (1976), 42–44; John Stevenson, ‘The London “Crimp” Riots of 1794’, International Review of Social History, 16 (1971), 40–58, quoted in Victor E. Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier: A History of Life in the British Ranks from 1642 (London: Cassell, 1989), 22. 29 Cozens, ‘“The Blackest Perjury”’, 276 and Arthur H. Haley, The Soldier Who Walked Away (Liverpool: Bullfinch Publications, 1987), 15.

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mutinies’, in Chapter 4, below, these unwilling soldiers were also prepared actively to protest against changes in their contracts, which would allow them to be used more flexibly by governments. As the drastic depopulation was accomplished within two generations, the region could not undertake any more traditional clan levies, so, increasingly, ‘Highland’ regiments of the British army were maintained by lowland Scots, English and Irish recruits.30 Additional balloting Aside from balloting to the already mobilised militia, Supplementary Militia battalions were raised in 1799 in every county, again by ballot. Largely consisting of the poor, the men in these battalions were unprepared for official bullying of dubious legality. The Northumberland battalion was ordered to provide one-quarter of its strength to the regular army and 266 ‘volunteered’ for the line.31 To restore manpower levels after war broke out again, a new legislation enabled Lords Lieutenant to list all men between 17 and 55. The government then introduced an Army of Reserve to supplement the militia, for which 50,000 men were to be conscripted by another ballot organised by magistrates and parish constables. Though service in these Reserve battalions was limited to the UK, they were encouraged to volunteer into the line. While it achieved less than half the number of men intended, and was rapidly abandoned, the Army of Reserve still produced 30,000 men. Two-thirds of these volunteered for the line, with 285 reservists going to the new second battalion of the 30th Foot. These came from the Army of Reserve of Buckinghamshire and the regiment had to send armed parties to bring them back, having been handed over by county authorities. (Joseph Cozens points out the high desertion rate of the Army of Reserve, at 12.2 per cent.) These three waves of conscription caused hardship and resentment amongst the inarticulate poor. One landowner spoke for them: ‘a ballot is a ballot … and when they have bought exemption from one they cannot understand how they are liable to another’. Such conscription was class based and acted particularly against the poor who could not afford to buy exemption through hiring a substitute. Nor could they afford to subscribe to one of the many insurance policies which could be taken out in case of 30 Robert Clyde, From Rebel to Hero: The Image of the Highlander, 1745–1830 (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1998), 150, 164, 166, 168, 170 and 176 and Matthew P. Dziennik, ‘“The Greatest Number Walked Out”: Imperial Conflict and the Contractual Basis of Military Society in the Early Highland Regiments’, in Kennedy and McCormack (eds), Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850, 17–36. 31 Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 101; Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 96–97; Cookson, British Armed Nation, 74; and T.L. Hewitson, Weekend Warriors from Tyne to Tweed (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), 23.

Introduction

19

an unlucky number in the ballots. Many joined the volunteer movement to escape the ballot.32 In 1809, with the French invasion threat reduced, the huge and time-costly volunteer movement was absorbed into a more professionalised and proletarian local militia. They were subject to stricter discipline and better training and were paid for sessions under arms. Quotas for each county and parish was again imposed, and with balloting if places were not filled. However, wartime economic dislocation meant many needy working-class people volunteered, glad of the regular supplementary income. These local militiamen included future working-class radical leader Samuel Bamford in Middleton, Lancashire and the poet John Clare in Northamptonshire. John Clare expressed the Hobson’s choice which many working-class men faced: ‘[We] had a cross graind sort of choise left us which was to be forced to be drawn and go for nothing or take on as Volunteers for the bounty of 2 guineas.’ Unsurprisingly, Clare and most of the poor took the money. As we shall see in the section ‘Mutinies and strikes’, in Chapter 4, below, these local militiamen were not slow to exercise their rights as citizen soldiers.33 Bullying for the line Once men were in militia or reservist uniform there was an overriding strategic need to get soldiers to volunteer for line regiments so that they could be deployed overseas, and official bullying to achieve this aim was widespread. This particularly applied to the mobilised county militia, who were always stationed far from home. These troops were regularly harassed to try to induce men to volunteer for line regiments. If they were married, their dependants would lose their separation allowance, but the high bounties offered tempted unwise militiamen. Though based on hearsay from a comrade, Thomas Morris described the process: The militia would be drawn up in line, and the officers, or non-commissioned officers, from the regiments requiring volunteers, would give a glowing description of their several regiments, describing the victories they had gained and the honours they had acquired, and conclude by 32 Cookson, British Armed Nation, 101–03; Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 96–97; Carole Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon: The 30th Regiment in the Napoleonic Wars (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2009), 26–27; Neil Ballatyne, History of the Thirtieth Regiment (Liverpool, 1923), 226–27; Cozens, ‘The Blackest Perjury’, 276; and Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 101–02. 33 D.W. King, ‘The Surrey Local Militia’, JSAHR, 54 (1976), 48; Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 114–20; Robert Poole ‘Bamford, Samuel, 178?–1865’, in David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 12 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 13–19, quoted in Bob Heyes, ‘John Clare and the Militia’, Journal of the John Clare Society, 4 (1985), 49; and Cookson, British Armed Nation, 88–89.

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Soldiers as Workers

offering a bounty, to volunteers for life £14; to volunteers for the limited period of seven years, £11. If these inducements were not effectual in getting men, then coercive measures were adopted; heavy and long drills, and field exercises were forced on them; which were so oppressive that, to escape them, the men would embrace the alternative and join the regulars.

It took determination, such as displayed by conscripted Buckinghamshire Baptist Private Mayett, to resist such ‘heavy volunteering into the line’; ‘during which time we that did not volunteer was very Sharply disciplined for they Continually marched us about from place to place and made us do all the duty’.34 William Wheeler, bored with garrison duty and excessive drilling in the Royal Surrey Militia, and fearful of a flogging, volunteered for the 51st Light Infantry: ‘I have at length escaped from the Militia without being flead [sic] alive. I have taken the first opportunity and volunteered together with 127 of my comrades … I rejoice to say that I have escaped with a whole skin.’ His comrade Robert Fairfoot, who volunteered for the 95th Rifles, had also suffered under Major Hudson of the Royal Surrey Militia: ‘as great a tyrant as ever disgraced the Army, known as “Bloody Bob” or “Wheel ’em again Bob”’.35 From the widespread nature of these accusations, it was clearly an operational function of militias to use tedious regimes to encourage volunteering for the line. An analysis of the 1813–14 Court Martial Book of the 1st Royal Tower Hamlet Militia confirms the hard lives of militiamen who, for example, were denied leave to visit sick relations – which resulted in a high rate of desertion. With identical training to the line, many militiamen easily slotted in their new regiments, which were less taxing than their old militia, and by the end of the French Wars one-third of the regular army had come that route. Former militiamen were also responsible for some of the most important rank-and-file memoirs of the wars.36 Women This book concentrates almost exclusively on male workers, which reflects the overwhelmingly masculine nature of the army. A few married women 34 John Selby (ed.), Thomas Morris: The Napoleonic Wars (London: Longmans, 1967), 6 and Ann Kussmaul (ed.), The Autobiography of Joseph Mayett of Quainton (Buckingham: Buckinghamshire Record Society, 1986), 47. 35 Basil Liddell Hart (ed.), The Letters of Private Wheeler (London: Michael Joseph, 1951), 17 and 19 and quoted in Mark Urban, Rifles (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 86. 36 R.J. Goulden, ‘Deserter Bounty Certificates’, JSAHR, 50 (1972), 164 and Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 110.

Introduction

21

were allowed ‘on the strength’ of each company of each regiment from the earliest days of the British army, where they drew rations. Unofficial and unmarried women also followed the regiments, even on campaign. Soldiers had to obtain permission to marry, which was largely discouraged by senior ranks. In 1871, only 13.19 per cent of rankers were married and in some regiments it could be much lower; in the 77th Foot in 1854 it was only 3.83 per cent. Only with the Cardwell reforms were the new county regimental depots provided with married quarters for NCOs, and after 1881, marriage was made easier for them, as a way of encouraging overall stability within the regiment. Others have chronicled how these women participated in the hardships of their men’s lives, sharing barrack rooms and, until the Crimean War, on campaign. Many of these women clearly worked; notably at laundry in cantonments or camps. Here a strictly rank-based class system was in operation, with NCOs’ wives being prevented from doing the washing for privates, but often doing laundry for officers. Regimental tradesmen were keen to retain their monopoly of some tasks commonly performed by women. All uniform repairs and alterations had to be done (at least officially) by the regimental tailors, but probably women’s seamstressing skills were also surreptitiously used. Cooking – at least in barracks – seems to have been the sole responsibility of company cooks. Nonetheless, on manoeuvres and on campaign, wives are recorded as aiding their husbands’ messes. Women, especially widows keen to take responsibility for their own lives rather than remarrying, often set up as sutleresses and competed with men (mainly retired soldiers) for potentially lucrative regimental contracts to supply supplementary food and drink. Women also acted as cleaners, nurses and midwives. Some later became army school mistresses, a trade reserved for NCOs’ wives or daughters. By 1865, 443 of them were running classes for infants and instructing older girls in laundry and industrial work. Outside the barracks, by the late-Victorian period, regimental women were a large component of a substantial outworking labour force which supplied the demand for ‘off the peg’ military clothing (especially shirts), which grew up around the main garrison towns of Aldershot, Colchester and Woolwich to dress the larger imperial army.37

37 Myna Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 32, 35 and 115; Veronica Bamfield, On the Strength: The Story of the British Army Wife (London: Knight, 1974), 59; and Holmes, Soldiers, 599. For a recent discussion of Georgian soldiers’ wives’ lives and work, see Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army.

22

Soldiers as Workers

An imperial army After the French Wars, the number of British colonies increased from 26 to 43 and included most of the world’s safest harbours. This enabled the Royal Navy to dominate the globe and protect the growth in trade which came out of the industrial revolution. From 1815, for the next 50 years, colonies were acquired at an average of 100,000 square miles a year, especially in India and the Far East. Empire therefore became increasingly important to the British army. Comparatively smaller than that of other European powers, the British army, unlike them, did not raise specific units at home purely for colonial service, except, as we have seen, the private army of the East India Company. In common with other powers, it also recruited defeated indigenous local soldiers to supplement its strength. But Britain throughout most of the nineteenth century still had to commit its regular army – particularly its infantry regiments – to a role that was little more than an imperial gendarmerie. This state of affairs was embraced by the military authorities as a way of maintaining the size of the army and the independence of its regiments. Although it decreased in numbers for a decade after 1815, thereafter the army’s upward trajectory was maintained throughout the century.38 As Linda Colley observed: ‘By 1815, virtually every British regular soldier could expect to spend half, and often virtually two-thirds of his career in imperial postings.’ She sees this situation as negative for these working men in uniform: ‘in Asia, the majority were soldiers, the worker bees of the British empire, yet still men who, after a fashion, were captives of their own state, captives in uniform.’ With no home leave for rankers posted overseas, this imperial gendarmerie policy could result in their exile from Britain for many years. By 1854, three-quarters of all infantry regiments were deployed in colonial garrisons, with 13 years the average length of posting. Between Waterloo and the Great War for example, the 46th Foot spent less than 15 years in the UK, and the rest abroad.39 India especially became central to the working lives of most soldiers. In 1857, 45,000 European soldiers were stationed there, alongside 232,000 Indian sepoys. The mass revolt of many of the latter in that year shook the 38 Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 474; David French, The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 124; Nick Mansfield, ‘Exploited Workers or Agents of Imperialism? British Common Soldiers in the Nineteenth Century’, in Billy Frank, Craig Horner and David Stewart (eds), The British Labour Movement and Imperialism (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 9–22 and Floud et al., Height, Health and History, 46–47. 39 Colley, Captives, 312; French, The British Way in Warfare, 124; R.G. Harris, ‘Book Review’: Michael Angelo Hayes, The Costume of the 46th Regiment, JSAHR, 51 (1973), 56.

Introduction

23

British Empire to its foundations. Thereafter, at least 62,000 British were thought necessary to keep internal order and to counter the Russian threat of the ‘Great Game’. Service in the late-nineteenth-century British army became synonymous with India and this was widely reflected in popular culture. The new two-battalion-linked county regiments of the Cardwell System were designed to counter this imbalance, with one stationed at home and one in the colonies. But even this could not resist the centrifugal force that was India. The year 1880 saw 59 regular battalions at home and 82 overseas.40 Despite the heat and disease, many rankers found colonial and Indian service to their taste. Taking advantage of the cheap labour on offer, even the rank and file employed servants to clean their kit and to care for their horses if they were cavalrymen. ‘Princes could live no better than we’, declared one Victorian trooper. Discipline was more relaxed in India, the cost of living was low, and there was time for a range of leisure activities, often in areas associated with higher social classes at home, such as shooting. Above all, as we shall see in the section ‘Pensioners, instructors and administrators’, in Chapter 3, below, it also opened up work opportunities for many rankers and for a chosen few it created unprecedented careers which would have been impossible for working-class men in the UK. Indeed, as John Rumsby concludes: ‘Many soldiers found service in India very congenial; in contrast to life in barracks at home or even civilian lives … nearly half of the men, when faced with returning to England, opted to transfer to other regiments.’41 Workers in a period of industrialisation This book studies the working life of common soldiers during an intense period of economic and political change. Just as in a world of globalisation and dominant neoliberalism workers today need varied skills, so nineteenthcentury proletarians often needed to change employment as part of a strategy to survive in an uncertain world and to achieve a measure of comfort in old age. So soldiering, even in peacetime, could be part of such a strategy. A good example of this flexible path is the career of radical soldier John Pearman. Born in Kingston, Surrey, in 1819, his first trade at 13 was as a sawyer. After seven years, he joined the Great Western Railway as Guard, 40 Holmes, Sahib, 81 and French, The British Way in Warfare, 140. 41 Holmes, Sahib, 155 and 164; Mansfield, ‘Exploited Workers or Agents of Imperialism?’, 13–14; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 164 and 190; and John Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers, 1822–1846: The Experience of Regimental Soldiering in India’, PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2004, 325.

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but disliking London and quarrelling with his supervisor, he enlisted in the 3rd Light Dragoons in 1843. Typically for a new recruit, Pearman deserted after three months, spent eight months on the run and after a court martial was imprisoned. Posted to India, he served in both Sikh Wars and was promoted to sergeant, but after seven years he returned to Britain and trained recruits for the Crimea as a Sergeant and acting Riding Master. Buying his discharge after another dispute with his superiors in 1857, he joined the newly formed Buckinghamshire Constabulary as a police constable. He worked his way up to Inspector and after 25 years’ service took his pension, which he continued to enjoy until 1908. Pearman was not an exceptional figure, either in his working life or in his political life, and we shall meet many men like him in the following chapters.42 This book is arranged in three further long chapters. While it can be read on its own, it will be enhanced by the companion volume, on popular politics, Popular Politics, Class and the Nineteenth-Century Military. Each chapter is subdivided into topics. Chapter 2 covers the class structure of the British army. It investigates the backgrounds of common soldiers and describes how their treatment was consistently worse than that of officers. It examines class and officers, including trading, the aristocracy, paternalism and the prevailing amateur officer tradition. Non-commissioned officers and the progress of a few them into the officer class are studied, along with the particular class nuances of the troops of the militia, East India Company and overseas military adventurers. It concludes with the debate over whether men preferred to be led by gentlemen or if rank and file were critical of officers. Chapter 3 provides an account of common soldiers at work. After surveying the use of the free time available to most soldiers, it looks at the regimental tradesmen who were recruited to carry out official duties, such as shoemakers, musicians, armourers, blacksmiths, tailors, clerks, schoolmasters, butchers and cooks, and finds evidence of civilian trades culture, with negotiations, and go-slows. In technical arms – like artillery, cavalry or engineers, skilled tradesmen included wheelwrights, harness makers, farriers and skilled artificers of all sorts. Large numbers of rankers were allocated as officers’ servants, and, like the tradesmen, were excused many routine duties and benefited from tips and perks. Other soldiers used various handicraft or ‘penny capitalist’ skills to undertake paid tasks for their comrades: as victuallers, letter writers or souvenir makers, catering for the needs of modern civilisation. Empire also later provided a large number of responsible 42 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 32, 209.

Introduction

25

administrative postings in public service or utilities for steady ex-servicemen as well as opportunities in the new uniformed working class in the UK. This chapter also surveys the special position of the Guards, mainly stationed in London, as well as post demobilisation working lives. Chapter 4 explores the mainly low-level class conflict. Held in a fiercely rigid legal code, with harsh punishments for any infringement, it is no surprise that most soldiers’ resistance was covert. Nonetheless, mutinies and strikes were found within an overarching contract culture. Passive resistance was always present, with looting, drinking, deliberate crime, desertion, feigned illness, self-harm and even, in extreme cases, suicide. All three chapters seek to uncover the hidden world of the nineteenth-century soldier and (to paraphrase Edward Thompson) to rescue him from the enormous condescension of most military and labour history. Politics and the military is generally disregarded here. The companion volume will seek to uncover the forgotten world of the political soldier.

2 Class Structure and the British Army Class Structure and the British Army

Introduction This chapter will argue that the army’s structure almost exactly reflected class distinctions as they were developing in industrialising Britain (see Illustration  1). It will examine how class pervaded every part of the nineteenth-century military. Army officers traditionally came from the gentry or aristocracy, though, with wartime enlargements, more enlisted from upper-middle-class backgrounds, notably in unfashionable and technical regiments. Until the 1870s, junior officers, except in the artillery and engineers, generally purchased their commissions and promotions up to Lieutenant Colonel, the highest rank in individual regiments. Higher promotions, up to General, though often dependent on family influence, was the responsibility of the War Office. The purchase system suited both the wealthy families of otherwise potentially unemployable younger sons, and the relatively small state, which did not have to provide for their retirement pensions. In contrast with much of post-revolutionary Europe, as a deliberate and class-based policy, British officers were rarely promoted from the ranks. Those who were elevated mainly had specialist or management roles, such as adjutants, paymasters or veterinary surgeons, which caused the prevailing amateurism of the British officer corps to continue. This unprofessional attitude, characterised by an aristocratic languor, was also adopted by junior officers from middle-class backgrounds. Even the abolition of the purchase of commissions in 1871 did not change the army’s class-based composition, and, except during the two world wars of the twentieth century, arguably, it continues to this day. The eighteenth-century custom of proprietor Colonels, who were entitled to make money from their office, was declining by the Napoleonic Wars. However, vestiges of official graft remained, centred on the provision of uniforms which was the responsibility of individual Colonels until after

Class Structure and the British Army

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1  Sandown Garrison, 1855. The class structure of the British army as drawn by Ensign Crealock of the 95th Foot; with his company commander, Captain Foster at the top left, Crealock himself at the top right, an NCO at the bottom right and a miserable looking private at drill at the bottom left.

the disasters of the Crimean War. In addition, officers in colonial postings could sometimes make money through trade, gifts or bribes from local rulers and wartime loot. This was the main compensation for service in the less prestigious army of the East India Company. War was welcomed by officers, not just for its honour, but because sudden death meant rapid and unpurchased promotion and the opportunity for plunder and prize money which was eagerly seized by officers as much as it was by penniless rankers. Common soldiers, by contrast, were nearly all working class. They have traditionally been viewed as a dangerous and unsettled under-class – ‘the very scum of the earth’ in the Duke of Wellington’s famous phrase. Even in the more respectable working class it was believed that ‘to go for a soldier’ brought disgrace to your family. In this analysis, the army comprising ruffians officered by gentry became a separate military caste, remote from and distrusted by the rest of British society, compounded by long overseas imperial service. This widespread and simplistic view is being challenged by recent research, which argues that recruits – especially in wartime or in economic depression – were from all parts of the working class and were not just its wastrels and drifters. Traditional military history has promoted the view that soldiers liked being officered by gentlemen, but other research has uncovered a radical rank-and-file voice, which challenged class-based unfairness, potentially equated gentle birth with incompetence and pressed the case for experienced sergeants to be commissioned. This was rare except where they could fulfil a technical role, or as an occasional reward for cases of extreme bravery on the battlefield.

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Soldiers as Workers

Sergeants and Corporals, the non-commissioned officers, were all promoted from literate and promising rankers, who held a special position in the army structure. It was they rather than the leisured officers who were responsible for most of the daily work and management of the regiment. With the increasing bureaucratisation of the army and the growth in technical jobs, the roles and power of the NCOs enlarged. Isolated colonial postings especially could result in increased responsibility and, given the right skills, amazing career opportunities for working-class people, which would be unheard of in their previous civilian life. ‘Scum of the earth’? Throughout the nineteenth century a strict class system operated: ‘the rank and file of the Army have been recruited from the lower stratum in society, and the command of these men has been entrusted to the higher class, and never, save at the time of the Commonwealth to any other.’ Popular military historians have assumed that the ‘ruffians led by gentlemen’ profile is accurate: ‘Soon soldiering reached the low place in British society it was to occupy until the Great War in 1914, an occupation despised by the middle and working classes as a disgrace hardly less than prison.’ Napoleonic historian Michael Glover claimed that: These voices from the ranks confirm that Wellington’s belief is the truth. When Wellington said that ‘English soldiers are fellows who have enlisted for drink – that is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink’, statistics suggest that he would not be greatly exaggerating. High-minded historians of a later age have censured Wellington for these words … At best, no respectable working-class family cared to see a son go for a soldier. To do so was the last resort of the shiftless.1

As early as 1969, Elizabeth Longford, in a passage tracing the variations in Wellington’s famous phrase, much repeated by him in the years of peace, concluded: ‘Of course he was wrong. His strictures, as so often happened, were over dramatized. Not nearly such a large proportion of the Army was “scum” as he implied.’ Since then, she has been joined by other historians: British privates were indeed recruited from the lower classes, and liberal Clode, Military Forces of the Crown, 62; Correlli Barnett, Britain and her Army (London: 1 Cassell, 1970), 139; Michael Glover, Wellington’s Army in the Peninsula, 1808–1814 (Crediton: David & Charles, 1977), 24–25; and Michael Glover, Wellington as Military Commander (London: Batsford, 1968), 21. For similar views, see also Richard Glover, Britain at Bay: Defence against Bonaparte, 1803–14 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), 131.

Class Structure and the British Army

29

historians who describe them as ‘scum’ might care to check their philosophic consistency. But they were not drawn primarily from life-long beggars and vagabonds. They were working people who had lost their livelihoods and communities through economic recession, famine or dispossession of land.2

Roger Buckley also pointed out that almost all accounts of ‘scum’ come from upper-class officers, who would be poor at identifying that their rank and file represented a cross section of working-class society. This view has been followed by historians of the eighteenth century: Rather than ‘the scum of every county, the refuse of mankind’ as [the contemporary] Lieutenant Colonel Campbell Dalrymple described them, soldiers came from all the ranks of the labouring classes and from across the British Isles … The army proved indiscriminate, skimming the cream as much as the scum from Britain’s plebeians.3

More recently, historians from various disciplines have carried out thorough research on the social background of rankers. The most detailed is from Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory, who have drawn similar conclusions from very comprehensive analysis of soldiers’ heights: No civilian occupation could guarantee uninterrupted employment for over 20 years, at however meagre a wage, followed by a pension. Nor was insecurity confined to the unskilled; a skilled worker in the engineering industry could be dismissed … and employers in many trades adjusted their work-force day by day to the level of demand. [The army was the] employer of last resort. Nevertheless, in the unstable markets of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, such a position made them attractive, at some time or another, to a large fraction of the British working class. Since this was so, it is no longer possible to regard military recruits as a race apart.

Whilst generally supporting such views, Edward Spiers’s work on the social composition of Victorian soldiers points out that ‘those who joined the army came primarily from the least skilled sections of the working-class’. But neat occupation classifications of working-class skills have themselves been revised in recent labour history. The term ‘agricultural labourer’, is now Elizabeth Longford, Wellington Years of the Sword (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2 1969), 379–80 and James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 23. Buckley, British Army in the West, 105–06 and 154 and Way, ‘Memoirs of an Invalid’, 32. 3 See also Arthur N. Gilbert, ‘An Analysis of Some Eighteenth Century Army Recruiting Records’, JSAHR, 54 (1976), 47.

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Soldiers as Workers

universally accepted by rural historians as often concealing a highly skilled workforce in the nineteenth-century countryside.4 Edward Coss has compiled a database of 7,300 soldiers, most of whom served in the Peninsular War, which identified over 360 different trades amongst their pre-enlistment employment. He argues convincingly that the rank and file of army in the mass mobilisation of the Napoleonic Wars were not ‘“the very scum of the earth”, but represented a cross section of the new working class’. John Cookson’s study of post-1815 Scottish military pensioners describes the ‘settled working man rather than the archetypal soldier thrown adrift on society on discharge from the army’. In a careful analysis of the occupations of the mid-Victorian 16th Lancers, John Rumsby suggests that cavalry regiments attracted more tradesmen as recruits – men used to making their own decisions and using their own initiative – than did infantry regiments. He concludes that 94.5 per cent of cavalry other ranks were literate, compared with a civilian rate of 66 per cent, and concludes that its rank and file were ‘drawn disproportionately from the literate artisan classes’.5 Others have identified significant regional variations in recruitment patterns, and the sudden decline of some trades in the face of industrialisation and specialisation, which could lead to mass recruitment of those whose livelihood was displaced. Neil Garnham has correlated the late-eighteenthcentury collapse of the Irish linen trade with the large numbers of Ulster army recruits. Individual testimonies also illustrate the economic impact of the French Wars for some individuals. Thomas Jackson of Walsall was employed by his father, a manufacturer of shoe buckles: ‘But owing to the long protracted war with several of those countries, our trade became nearly lost … Destructive, ruinous war was again proclaimed against France in May 1803. Trade now quite stagnated, and nothing but starvation was looked for by the working classes.’ Jackson joined the militia in desperation, which took him into the Guards. The loss of a leg in battle was compensated for with the wooden one: ‘A mighty poor recompense … I might never have been a military man but through the adversity of the times in those days when I entered the militia.’ By the end of the century, modern industrial Floud et al., Height, Health and History, 56, 57, 58 and 82–83; Edward M. Spiers, The 4 Army and Society, 1815–1914 (London: Longmans, 1980), 46–49; and on farmworkers, see, for instance, Howkins, Poor Labouring Men, chap. 2. Edward J. Coss, All for the King’s Shilling: The British Soldier under Wellington, 1808–1814 5 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), xxvii and 90–91; J.E. Cookson, ‘Early Nineteenth-Century Military Pensioners as Homecoming Soldiers’, Historical Journal, 52(2) (2009), 329; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 3, 72–75 and 82. See also Kevin Linch, Britain and Wellington’s Army: Recruitment, Society and Tradition, 1807–1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 90–91.

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disputes could also aid recruiting, as reported by one officer in 1904: ‘But we must remember that strikes and things of that kind give us a lot of recruits; sometimes a place is shut up and therefore it is through no fault of their own that men are out of work. We all know that strikes do us a lot of good.’6 Studies of soldiers’ increasing literacy, though with slightly varying statistics, tend to support the view that they were not ‘scum’. While in 1813 only 66 men of the Armagh Militia were literate, this is demonstrative of the state of education amongst the rural poor in Ireland. By 1873 (even before the Cardwell reforms bringing in shorter service took full effect), only 6 per cent of regular soldiers could not read and write (down from 20 per cent in 1858) and over 32 per cent were said to have a ‘superior education’. Over half of the 55th Foot in India in the 1850s subscribed to the regimental library. In 1899, 89.9 per cent of army recruits could read and write, a tribute to compulsory elementary education in the new Board Schools. Between 1874 and 1880, 61 per cent of recruits were listed as unskilled labourers, but this occupational group included servants (who could possess expertise) and agricultural labourers (who were often very skilled at farm work).7 Throughout the nineteenth century, contemporary military commentators asserted that rankers were working class and not scum. Though William Cobbett’s view was coloured by his radical politics, he knew about the army, having worked his way up from a ploughboy recruit to Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) in the 1780s: ‘In short, journeymen and labourers, when they become soldiers, are still the same men; they have the same hearts and minds that they have before, only with a great deal of additional intelligence and acuteness.’ Experienced recruiting Sergeant Griffiths reflected the same view, that enlistment was the result of unavoidable unemployment, in 1867: ‘The great mass of recruits are men doubtless in difficulties who only enter Her Majesty’s service because at the moment they have no other means of existence, and they view the step as a desperate remedy for their case.’ Charles Grey, serving in the Buffs in the 1880s, complained of ‘[Soldiers] stigmatised as drunken and illiterate sots. We were nothing of the sort but just ordinary young men, preponderatingly [sic] of the working classes and of the same education and habits.’ This was still echoed at the end of the century Neal Garnham, ‘Military Desertion and Deserters in Eighteenth Century Ireland’, 6 in Eighteenth Century Ireland, 20 (2005), 102, quoted in Roy Palmer, The Rambling Soldier (London: Peacock Books, 1977), 24 and 254; and Floud et al., Height, Health and History, 82–83. Peter Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922: Suborned or Subordinate?’, 7 Journal of Social History, 17(1) (1983), 37; E.A. Smith, ‘Educating the Soldier in the Nineteenth Century’, JSAHR, 66 (1988), 36 and 39; Alan Ramsey Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 310; and David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army and the British People c.1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 33 and 35.

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by Robert Edmondson, a Squadron Sergeant Major in the Boer War: ‘quite eighty per cent of our soldiers are the victims of “Hobson’s choice”. It is the Army or starvation with them. And empty pockets and hungry stomachs are the most eloquent and persuasive of recruiting sergeants.’8 Comparative treatment of the rank and file and officers Throughout the century, rank-and-file soldiers consistently received much worse treatment than officers in every single aspect of their military lives: pay, dress, accommodation, leave, discipline and justice. Pay Pay for private soldiers remained at £18 5s. 0d. per year, between 1792 and 1866. This worked out at the famous ‘shilling a day’ (i.e., 5p), before the numerous stoppages – for clothing supplied extra to regular issues, minor equipment and consumables. Cavalry troopers were paid a little more: 1s. 3d. a day after 1797, rising to 1s. 11¼d. in the more socially elite Household Cavalry. NCOs were also paid more, with Corporals at 1s. 2¼d. and Sergeants on 1s. 6¾d. a day. In 1806, extra pay was introduced for length of service, with one penny per day extra after seven years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry and twopence per day after 14 and 17 years. In addition, the French Wars recognised the responsibilities of NCOs with, in 1813, a rise for Corporals to 1s. 4d. and Sergeants to 1s. 10d., and for the new senior rank of Colour Sergeant in every infantry company, 2s. 4d. a day.9 The most junior commissioned officers (Ensigns) were paid more than the most experienced senior NCOs, with the RSMs at the top on 2s. 11d. a day. Ensigns, from 1806, were paid 8 shillings a day. Senior regimental officers earned much more, with Lieutenant Colonels in charge of a regiment on £310 5s. 0d. a year. Even with this payment, many officers could not afford to live in the UK without a significant private income, especially in elite regiments like the Guards and the cavalry, where officers were expected themselves to maintain two horses.10 There were wide differences in how officers and rankers could determine and spend their wages. Though officers had to buy their own uniforms Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1146, quoted in Floud et al., 8 Height, Health and History, 111; Grey, ‘Soldiering in Victorian Days’, 54, and quoted in Holmes, Soldiers, xxv and xxvi. Carole Divall, Inside the Regiment: The Officers and Men of the 30th Regiment during the 9 Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2011), 59–60; Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 109; and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 60. 10 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 60 and French, Military Identities, 52.

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and were charged for their food through mess fees, they could use their higher pay, and any private income, to plan their expenditure. Soldiers by contrast were subject to compulsory ‘stoppages’ for any clothing and kit above their regular issue and any alterations that had to be made to these ‘necessaries’. They also had to pay for cleaning equipment, underwear, food outside regular rations, laundering, cleaning materials, haircuts and barrack room damages. Colonels, Captains in charge in companies, Quartermasters, Paymasters and the regimental tradesmen (tailors, shoemakers and armourers) could all make a charge for their compulsory services and supply of equipment. With each layer potentially taking a cut, net income for rankers was confusing even to experienced soldiers. This system endured for most of the nineteenth century. Despite low inflation, the privates’ shilling a day was an even lower wage than every other working-class occupation, including unskilled day labourers, though, with subsidised basic clothing, food and accommodation, these differences were lessened. It was the decrease in deductions after the Crimea War that raised rankers’ real incomes, together with the ruling of a minimum one penny a day after deductions. Not until after the Boer War was the average basic private’s wage raised to 11s. 4½d. a week.11 For most of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the fortunate ‘seven-year men’ (soldiers who had enlisted under the 1806 legislation), pensions were only given in the case of severe disability. Some places for the infirm were also available at the Chelsea or Kilmainham Military Hospitals. Many ex-servicemen, unable to earn a living, were forced onto the Poor Law. By contrast, officers could mostly live in reasonable comfort on their half-pay, obtained when they resigned and sold their commissions. Many senior officers and some juniors who had done well from trade, prize money or loot, could lead wealthy and comfortable retirements. Dress Officers and men wore different uniforms. Officers’ dress, which they had to purchase themselves, was more elaborate, of a fine-quality cloth and handmade to measure, usually by civilian tailors. NCOs’ and privates’ clothing was mass-produced by War Office contractors or governmentowned factories after the Crimean War. They were often ill-fitting, despite the alterations to standard sizes, which had to be made by regimental tailors, paid for by the soldiers themselves. Even the traditional red coat – worn since the time of Cromwell, was of a different colour, with officers sporting 11 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 60; Michael Roper, Records of the War Office and Related Departments, 1660–1914 (London: Public Records Office, 1998), 67; and Spiers, Army and Society, 14, 53, 54 and 55.

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a bright scarlet and the ranks in a duller brick red. (With a new jacket only issued every second year, soldiers wore them out, which explains the rarity of regular rankers’ uniforms in military museums.) In the Crimea, British rank-and-file prisoners of war found that their own uniforms were vastly inferior to those of their allied French fellow captives in facing the Russian winter.12 Officers also continued to wear ‘mufti’, or combinations of fashionable high-grade civilian clothes. Myerly claimed they ‘saw it as [a] sign of their political status as free-born Britons’. By contrast, rankers were discouraged from even owning civilian clothes, which were an essential tool for desertion – a perennial problem within the nineteenth-century army (see the section ‘Desertion’, in Chapter 4, below). Myerley also argues that bright uniforms and mass spectacle were ‘an essential component of military management in the British army’. Off-parade ‘mufti’ was prevalent for officers not on duty, which was the majority of time, as is often illustrated in surviving ­contemporary photographs: The British Army and its derivatives had a special peculiarity in that without a direct order it was almost impossible to get officers into uniform, and that if it was achieved they got out of it as soon as possible. Orders are full of the fulminations of general officers against such deviations as a tendency to sport a mixed military and civilian costume, presumably in the interests of comfort.13

Accommodation In barracks, field officers (Majors and above) were allocated two rooms and Captains, Lieutenants and Ensigns had a room each. All officers shared a regimental mess room for dining and relaxing. Until the end of the nineteenth century, soldiers did everything in their packed barrack rooms: washed, ate, cleaned their kit, slept and even urinated overnight. Married soldiers quartered their families in temporary partitions made from blankets in the corner of the barrack room. Although most working-class people were used to cramped conditions, in 1858, it was claimed that even convicts got 1,000 cubic feet of space (i.e., about 30 cubic metres) compared with 400 cubic feet (11 cubic metres) for a soldier, and that soldiers often had to share a bed. The following year, another report 12 Scott Hughes Myerly, British Military Spectacle from the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea (London: Harvard University Press, 1996), 67–69 and David Inglesant, The Prisoners of Voronesh (Old Woking: Unwin, 1977), 73. 13 J.B.R. Nicholson, Military Uniforms: The Splendour of the Past (London: Orbis, 1973), 6. See, for instance, the photographs from Cheshire Regiment officers in the 1850s and 1860s in Ronald Barr, The Cheshire Regiment (Stroud: Tempus, 2000), 10 and 14.

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on an average barrack concluded: ‘The rooms are very confined, the beds are packed in close together, the windows are insufficient and ill-placed; where there are ventilators, they are so actively offensive, that the men risk the unfelt danger and stop them; and thus the soldier sleeps in poison and dies in consequence.’ A private of the 15th Hussars reported that Maidstone cavalry barracks were ‘packed so closely that I have seen them sleeping on the tables used for dining, under the tables and in the coal-boxes. This in the middle of summer.’14 The first housing reforms came after the Crimea. They allowed 450 cubic feet to each soldier, though workhouse inmates at the time were getting 30 cubic feet more. The first baths began to be installed in barracks in 1855, though the overnight urine tubs remained, and had to be cleaned out before morning washing. Even in modern barracks, like in Chatham, a space designed for 600 men had to accommodate 1,410 in 1861. It took the Cardwell reforms and the establishment of county regimental barracks and depots to drive this space up to 600 cubic feet, and gradually accommodation improved, with urinals, reading rooms and cookhouses.15 The worst and unhealthiest Victorian barracks were curiously those of the elite Foot Guards at Portman Street and in Woolwich, both in London: ‘The general result was that, whereas the general rate of mortality among the population of military age varied between seven and a half and nine in a thousand, that of the Guards was twenty, that of the line eighteen, and that of the Cavalry was eleven in the thousand.’ In the UK, consumption was the main killer, affecting 18 in 1,000 soldiers, compared with 3.5 in 1,000 of the general population. In 1857, the mortality rate in the army in the UK was 17.5 per cent. Even in Manchester – which contained the worst of the new industrial slums – it was lower, at 12.5 per cent for civilians. Some colonial stations, especially in India, were unhealthier still, with a mortality rate of 69 per 1,000. Unlike in the UK, epidemics here affected officers and men alike.16 On campaign, officers were consistently allocated the better quarters. In the Peninsular War, the sparse population made housing a critical issue. Tired troops were often evicted from their billets to make room for senior officers. Accounts demonstrate the thoughtlessness of the officer class and the acceptance that this was part of the natural order. In the Pyrenees in 14 Divall, Inside the Regiment, 38 and Holmes, Soldiers, 522. 15 Spiers, Army and Society, 56–57; Trevor May, Military Barracks (Princes Risborough: Shire Books, 2002), 19 and 21; Burroughs, ‘An Unreformed Army? 1815–1868’, 172; and Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 38. 16 J.W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 13 (London: Macmillan, 1930), 538 and Holmes, Sahib, 468.

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1813, men of the 95th Rifles made a hut for their officer, Lieutenant Harry Smith and his wife. This leaked in a sudden downpour: ‘we were drenched to the skin and as black as chimney-sweepers. The buoyant spirits of my wife and the ridiculous position we were in, made her laugh herself warm. We turned the servants out of our tent, and never enjoyed the late comforts of our castle again.’ In addition, officers brought comforts into the field, with large amounts of baggage, and most officers employed servants as well as batmen. In contrast, the rank and file had to carry all their belongings on their backs and lived rough. In the late-Victorian army, ex-Sergeant Arthur Palmer of the 79th Highlanders poured scorn on Lord Wolseley’s cleaning suggestion that the men’s shirts on campaign should be hung up in the sun and brushed: ‘I wonder if many officers would like to wear shirts “cleaned” in this novel fashion.’ On campaign and when moving quarters most officers could ride whilst the men marched. When being transported by river boat in Rangoon, just after 1900, Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers claimed that ‘there was hardly any room on the flats to sleep a wink in comfort. The officers’ chargers and polo-ponies which were aboard really had more room than what we had.’17 Sick and wounded Though exposed to the same dangers, officers and men had different experiences when ill or injured. If sick, officers would be cared for by their servants in their private rooms in quarters, whilst men would be shunted into insanitary and often improvised barrack hospitals. Here, minimal medical attention and dubious nursing regimes caused much higher mortality rates than civilian establishments. The Caribbean in the 1790s was the nadir of such systems, where the appalling living and campaigning environment made disease endemic. The crowded living conditions compounded by extremes of weather, unimaginable to most British recruits, were breeding grounds for epidemics which even in wartime killed far more soldiers than died in battle. Here, half of the 89,000 men sent to seize French sugar and slave islands died, only a tiny portion in battle.18 In battle, wounded officers were treated before men already waiting to see the regimental surgeons. John Green’s memoir details his experiences 17 Philip Haythornthwaite (ed.), The Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith, 1787–1819 (London: Constable, 1999 [1910]), 141–42; Charles Esdaile, The Peninsular War: A New History (London, Penguin Books, 2002), 85; Arthur Palmer, ‘A Private Soldier on the Private Soldiers’ Wrongs’, The Nineteenth Century, 163 (1890), 327; and Frank Richards, Old Soldier Sahib (Uckfield: Naval and Military Press: 2003 [1936]), 279. 18 Mansfield, ‘Exploited Workers or Agents of Imperialism?’, 14 and Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 87.

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at the battle of San Marcial in Spain, in 1813: ‘At length a surgeon began to examine me: he took off my shirt and ran his probe into the wound. In the meantime, the colonel of the Chasseurs Britanniques was brought to the spot, wounded in the head, and the surgeon left me in my naked state to attend to him.’ In combat it was the officers who were allocated limited cover from the enemy’s fire. At the defence of Cadiz, in 1810: ‘the bomb proofs [shelters] were nearly all destroyed. In what remained there was not shelter for half the men; and by a rule of division often practised in the army, that little was made less by the officers appropriating the half of it to themselves.’19 If there was limited transport during a retreat, it would be the rank-andfile wounded that would be left behind. Wellington left all his wounded to be cared for by the French after the battle of Talavera in 1809. Losing a savage fight against the Kandyans in Sri Lanka in 1803, all rank-andfile wounded were abandoned, to be slaughtered by the enemy, whilst wounded officers were carried with the retreating column. To avoid being cut off, Captain Madge evacuated the isolated Fort Macdowall at night, ‘unfortunately leaving nineteen sick men of his regiment behind him, for want of transport, but bringing off three officers’. All nineteen were killed. Whilst Captain Johnston, the CO, was exonerated at a court of inquiry, bizarrely, Sergeant Henry Craven of the 19th Foot, in command of a small column, was court-martialled for leaving four of his wounded comrades, and sentenced to transportation for life. He avoided this fate by dying of fever before being shipped out. But at least these hapless rankers had their names recorded. Until 1799, the dead rank and file on campaign were just reported as their regimental numbers, not their names: a situation which led to pitiful and often fruitless enquires from worried families to the military authorities (see the section ‘Printing trades’, in Chapter 3, below).20 Leave With the exception of the county militias, who were often given furloughs to return home and help with harvests (see the section ‘General labouring’, in Chapter 3, below), leave was not granted regularly to rank-and-file soldiers, even in peacetime. By the 1850s, rankers could only take furlough between 1 November and 10 March. They were not allowed to take their greatcoats with them, in the coolest part of the year, as these had been bought with public money. In contrast, officers enjoyed almost total freedom in taking 19 Quoted in Esdaile, Peninsular Eyewitnesses, 270 and Joseph Donaldson, Recollections of the Eventful Life of a Soldier (Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2009 [1838]), 62. 20 Ian Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars (Stroud: Sutton, 2003), 33–44 and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 156 and vol. 4, 929.

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leave. Even during the Peninsular War many senior officers were allowed to return to the UK when the army was in winter quarters.21 After the first fall of Napoleon in 1814, the cavalry of Wellington’s victorious Peninsular army returned to Britain, riding from the south of France. Officers of the Hussar brigade were given a week’s leave to visit Paris. By the 1870s, officers stationed at home were entitled to two and a half months a year hunting leave. British officers also took the fox hunting craze overseas. The army of occupation in France after Waterloo occupied their time with hunting and the select Royal Calpe Hunt enlivened the dismal posting of Gibraltar for officers. Packs of hounds even accompanied armies in the field, from the Peninsular War, via the disastrous Afghan campaign of 1842, through to the Great War in France and the Middle East, right up to Lebanon in 1942. Hunting leave was still being granted to British cavalry officers in the 1970s. The social apartheid between ranks was seen in other sporting fields, though by the 1840s there were regimental sports teams that contained officers, NCOs and men. In the Montreal garrison, the 71st Highland Light Infantry had mixed cricket and curling teams. But when the latter played civilian clubs, separate dinners had to be arranged for officers and other ranks.22 Troops taking the long voyage to India in the 1850s were not allowed to disembark when at Cape Town for fear of desertion, whilst their officers were allowed ten days’ shore leave. Once there, the rank and file were given no home leave in a posting which averaged at 13 years, whilst officers enjoyed long absences back to the UK.23 Military justice Nineteenth-century officers enjoyed many varied privileges of their rank which would be considered unjust in a modern age. Soldiers were bound to a fiercely rigid legal code in which their crimes were judged by a court martial consisting entirely of officers, with harsh punishments, often corporal, for any infringements. Though military law also held good for officers, barring exceptional treasonable crimes, which in practice were almost unknown, their most severe punishment was to be ‘cashiered’. With this, officers were discharged with ignominy and lost the total value of their purchased 21 H. Moyse-Bartlett, ‘Military Historiography, 1850–1860’, JSAHR, 45 (1967), 211. 22 John Mollo, The Prince’s Dolls (London: Leo Cooper, 1997); Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3, 99; Nick Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting and the Yeomanry: County Identity and Military Culture’, in R.W. Hoyle, Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850 (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2007), 241–56; and Elinor Kyte Senior, British Regulars in Montreal: An Imperial Garrison, 1832–1854 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1981), 177. 23 Holmes, Sahib, 104 and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 169.

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commission. Though rare, such penalties were sometimes used, particularly when the hard drinking culture spilled over into alcoholism in hot colonial postings. Even here, with total incompetence and debility demonstrated, it could take several courts martial of the unfortunate officer for him to be dismissed. This is demonstrated by the series of trials of Ensign John Herring of the 30th Foot in Trichinopoly, India in 1810 and 1811, which led to his dismissal. Occasionally, too, officers found guilty of cowardice could be cashiered, whilst rankers guilty of the same crime would face hanging or at least the lash. Officers’ courts martial were amongst those rare situations when the separate worlds of the ranker and his officer could collide, and soldiers were understandably nervous when they had to give evidence against their social betters, who could make their lives very unpleasant. Buckley reminds us that while the harsh military codes were leniently applied to officers, their often raucous behaviour and touchy honour, did lead to many prosecutions: ‘officers – particularly the junior ranks of ensign and lieutenant – were an ill disciplined lot’. Over 16 per cent of all courts martial in the French Wars were held on officers, a much higher percentage than those held on the rank and file.24 Supine rankers The nineteenth-century military regarded soldiers as of inferior capability – like children, with no views of their own, who needed officers to order them about because they would be unable to exercise initiative. This was linked to the widespread view that docile rural recruits made the best soldiers. Officers used to dealing with their servants in the countryside in a paternalistic way could feel comfortable exercising authority over rank and file of this type. Examples of supine behaviour were given ranging from the widespread dysfunctional binge drinking, when opportunity allowed during the Peninsular War, to incidents like the Vellore Mutiny in Madras, India, in 1806. Here rioting sepoys (in a dry run of the 1857 Mutiny) killed European officers at night and pinned down the white soldiers of garrison in their quarters: ‘the mutineers … [were] pouring volleys of musketry … upon the barracks of the Sixty-ninth. Surprised in their sleep and with no officers to direct them, the men made little resistance beyond holding the ingress of their barracks’. The mutiny was only put down when a senior officer arrived from a neighbouring garrison with British cavalry support, rescued the timid rankers and slaughtered the mutineers.25 24 LIM, Personal Records, East Lancs (30th and 59th), Court Martial of Ensign John Herring; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 150–57; and Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 207–08, 237 and 242. 25 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 6, 43.

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Though progressive officers from the time of Whiggish Sir John Moore tried to encourage soldiers away from well-drilled automata into using their initiative, the stereotype of the unthinking, docile but brave ranker still prevailed in most officers’ minds, with its conservative connotations. This was probably reinforced by the rankers themselves, who wished to keep their private world away from of the scrutiny of their superiors and their unpredictable and potentially savage punishments, by acting dull. Though the rural recruit was preferred, in reality the loyal quiet ranker from the countryside was increasingly replaced by those perceived as unhealthy urban specimens. Fortescue observed the: Physical deterioration of the men bred in towns and the steady fall in rustic recruits. Throughout this history … all officers without exception had declared these [rural] recruits to be preferable to any. They were not as a rule, so keen-witted as those drawn from the towns, but they were, generally speaking, strong, healthy, docile, steady, stable and trustworthy, and blessed moreover with good eyesight and alert observation.

Such opinions underpinned military policy as late as the introduction of the Cardwell system. David French points out the dysfunctional fetishism of Cardwell’s structure based on historical counties, when the new fertile recruiting grounds were to be found in the industrial cities. The view that soldiers were naturally supine was also challenged by many examples of the common sense and extreme bravery of soldiers acting on their own initiative. In dangerous situations, as we shall see, such acts were sometimes rewarded with battlefield commissions for deserving NCOs.26 Class and officers The popular image of mainly aristocratic officers in the army needs nuancing, if only because there were not enough aristocrats to staff the growing British armed forces. The literature on this subject, though quite extensive, is inconclusive. There was an influx of middle-class officers during the French Wars, with a swollen officer corps of 15,000 by 1815, five times that of 1793. Richard Holmes claims that: ‘We can identify a general trend for the proportion of aristocratic officers to decline and that of middle class officers to grow, reflecting changes in society at large.’ However, this may be wishful thinking. In the post-war peace, the aristocracy tended to reassert itself, particularly in its domination of the socially superior regiments of the cavalry and Guards, as well as the General staff.27 26 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 13, 8 and French, Military Identities, 35. 27 The pioneering work of sociologists C.B. Otley and P.E. Razzell, is neatly summarised

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A much higher percentage of Indian army officers – up to 77 per cent compared with only 47 per cent in the British army – came from middleclass or professional backgrounds. This applied to officers in both white and black regiments employed by the East India Company before 1858 and by the British Raj in India thereafter, as well as HM service officers from modest backgrounds who sought regimental postings in India to eke out their money. It has been argued that ‘The army was acquiring features of a hereditary class’ and, less debatably, that, by the Crimea: ‘British officers were almost all “gentleman” … One third came from titled or landed families, and the rest from gentleman’s professions – the clergy, the bar, and, most often, military service families.’28 Purchase In a hangover from the military enterprises of the early modern period, where Colonels owned their regiments, with certain exceptions (mainly in the artillery and engineers), officers bought their first commissions and subsequent steps in rank up to Lieutenant Colonel. Reform was resisted for a long time, by forces of conservatism, reinforced by the need otherwise to provide pensions for officers, with the result that overall very few officers were promoted from the ranks. In the Commonwealth, Cromwell did away with buying commissions but they were reintroduced by Charles II as a way of sorting out his considerable debts, and this was maintained thereafter. All over Europe, the convulsions of the Revolutionary period had resulted in more socially diverse officer corps, even in the autocracies. Britain may have briefly complied with this trend as the French Wars resulted in a fivefold increase in its officer corps. During this period, it is argued, only 20 per cent of commissions were bought and with constant campaigning more promotions were made from the ranks.29 However, with the peace in 1815, purchase by the richest reasserted itself and free commissions were largely confined to unfashionable or colonial units in Spiers, Army and Society, chap. 1. J.E. Cookson, ‘Regimental Worlds: Interpreting the Experience of British Soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars’, in Alan Forrest, Karen Hageman and Jane Rendell (eds), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 27; Holmes, Soldiers, 161 and 167 and Moyse-Bartlett, ‘British Army in 1850’, 231. 28 P.E. Razzell, ‘Social Origins of Officers in the Indian and British Home Army’, British Journal of Sociology, 14(3) (1963), 249; Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 15; and Robert B. Edgerton, Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War (Oxford: Westview Press, 1999), 49. 29 Anthony Bruce, The Purchase System in the British Army, 1660–1871 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), 74–75 and Michael Glover, ‘The British Ordnance Department 1815–1855’, JSAHR, 57 (1979), 242.

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like the West Indies Regiments, in which 85 out of 114 commissions were not purchased. In Britain, threats to abolish purchase were seen as unjustified modernity or even downright revolution, with Wellington himself defending ‘Men of fortune and character, men who have some connection with the interests and fortunes of the country … It is this circumstance which exempts the British Army from the character of being a mercenary army.’ These interests were maintained, with, overall, two-thirds of commissions purchased, in the whole period of its operation, from 1660 to 1871.30 Such conservatism was opposed by prevailing Victorian liberalism, hoping to throw open all careers to merit: ‘the large and important class of well educated young men, who depend for their advancement in life upon their own exertions, and not upon already accumulated means, and who constitute the path of the law, the church and other active professions are ordinarily excluded from the army.’ But the eventual abolition of purchase of commissions in 1871 actually resulted in a more aristocratic British officer corps, especially at the highest levels. Thereafter, over 40 per cent of Generals came from a landed background, usually after service in the fashionable regiments of Guards, cavalry and rifles, and there was increasing public school domination of the Sandhurst and Woolwich military colleges.31 Colonel proprietors Colonels were the proprietors of their regiments, and they were responsible for the recruitment, clothing, pay and feeding of their men. The state regarded the Colonel as any other contractor, and awarded a standard lump sum for these tasks, from which he could legitimately make money and charge soldiers stoppages from their wages for the services and goods he provided. Captains were responsible in a similar way for their individual companies. The Colonel appointed a Lieutenant Colonel to lead and manage the regiment, and the Quartermaster and Paymaster to carry out the often intricate calculations involved in running what was essentially a business. Such systems were common in Europe in the early modern period but were modified when absolutist states centralised in the eighteenth century and in the subsequent imposition of the Napoleonic system. In Britain, as late as the French Wars, it was claimed that Colonels were making profits of between £400 and £800 a year from their regiment’s clothing alone. Middlemen also made money from the state: ‘During the long war in the West Indies, from 30 Glover, ‘British Ordnance Department’, 242, quoted in R.E. Scouller, ‘Purchase of Commissions and Promotions’, JSAHR, 62 (1984), 221 and Holmes, Soldiers, 138. 31 Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, 1857, quoted in Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 7, 369 and Holmes, Soldiers, 156.

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1794 to 1798, many of the Commissaries by shameless fraud had made large fortunes.’32 Some claim that the army reforms of the Duke of York during the French Wars took away much of the Colonels’ power of patronage, proprietorship and ability to make profit out of public money. But some elements clearly remained: ‘Colonels still controlled the supply of clothing, and this was a major source of their expected profit from running a regiment.’ Not until after the mess of the Crimea was the responsibility for clothing infantry and cavalry taken from Colonels dealing with private contractors and given to government-run uniform factories.33 Officer trading For all their appearance of aristocratic languor, many officers were keenly interested in making money. They were poorly paid compared with many other professions and had high expenses. Officers also espoused the opinion that it was satisfactory to profit from a crown office. From the early eighteenth century, British officers governing isolated colonial garrisons were allowed and indeed expected to trade, often taking advantage of local shortages of consumer goods. The wealth of the East raised these expectations to a higher level. In late-eighteenth-century India, Officers … shared a personal ambition to make their fortunes as quickly as possible in order to escape the unwholesome climate of India and get back to Britain. Private trade was the conventional, approved way of making money … soldiers also engaged in a number of corrupt practices as a short-cut to wealth – fraudulent book-keeping, accepting or extorting presents or bribes from Indian princes and officials or loaning money at exorbitant rates to the peasants who fell under their power.

This culture saved the EIC money, with ‘[the] Directors’ policy of paying low salaries to their civil and military servants alike, on the principle that they would make a good living out of their many opportunities, honest or otherwise, of profiting from their service in India.’34 This situation grew more prevalent in the nineteenth century as Britishcontrolled India expanded. Officers expected ‘Quickened promotion, [and] lucrative transfers into civil positions – particularly diplomatic postings to 32 H. de Watteville, The British Soldier (London: Dent, 1954), 6 and 54; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 10, 188 and 192; and Holmes, Redcoat, 109. 33 Knight, Britain against Napoleon, chap. 11; Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 5; and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 10, 552. 34 Glanville J. Davies, ‘Military Leadership at Newfoundland before 1729, JSAHR, 59 (1981), 195; G.J. Bryant, ‘Civil–Military Relations in Early British India, 1750–1785, JSAHR, 83 (2005), 137; and Heathcote, The Military in British India, 54.

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Indian courts.’ The army was easily the most populous part of the AngloIndian community. In 1830, it consisted of 36,409 officers and men (of both EIC and HM services), 3,550 civilian EIC employees, and 2,149 other Europeans: ‘the Indian army was organised by its officers, not to make it an efficient fighting force … but to provide an equal chance for everybody to make his own fortune’. Indeed, this was supported from the top by both the EIC board and the British government with their jointly agreed expansionist foreign policy, dictated and paid for by voracious conquest. It offered opportunities for all for loot and trade. But HM officers continued still to make private fortunes in India. As late as 1857, Lieutenant William Forbes-Mitchell, landing at Calcutta, boasted to a colleague of a grand mansion: ‘“I’ll be master of that house and garden yet before I leave India” … Just thirty two years after, I took possession of the house No 46, where I have established the Bon Accord Rope Works.’35 Such activities quickly became a characteristic of other British colonies, especially in the chaos and power vacuums of the French Wars. After the conquest of St Domingo (Haiti) in 1797, some British officers took possession of the sequestered estates of French royalists and challenged as illegal Governor Simcoe’s instructions to relinquish them. As well as being noted for their disorder, the officers of the New South Wales Corps, formed to protect the fledgling convict colony, had, by 1793, obtained a monopoly of rum, the unofficial currency. By 1799, officers owned 77 per cent of the colony’s sheep, and after the corps was disbanded over the Bligh Mutiny in 1810 its officers went on to become the landed gentry of the continent. Though each private of the New South Wales Corps was given 25 acres, most land was then sold on to officers. After 1810, Australian garrisons consisted of regular line regiments. Many of these soldiers were interested in acquiring virgin land. Large grants were made to the Colonel of the 48th Foot in the early 1820s, and its adjutant, Lieutenant John Wild, an ex-ranker, owned 2,000 acres when he died in 1834.36 South America also saw attempts by army officers to amass large fortunes. The ill-starred invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806–07, which ended in a wholesale capitulation of the British army, was prompted by Admiral Popham’s persuasion of General Beresford of the trading opportunities opened up by South American wars of independence. Though the war was a disaster: ‘Beresford sent home nearly eleven hundred thousand dollars of prize money.’ Though Fortescue blamed sailors for chasing prize-money, it is 35 Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, 10, 54 and 76–77 and quoted in Holmes, Sahib, 111. 36 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 212; Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (London: Pan Books, 1987), 110–11; and Clem Sergeant, The Colonial Garrison, 1817–1824 (Canberra: TCS, 1996), 37, 106 and 167.

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clear that this desire was also shared by soldiers. Small wonder that officers undertook private commercial transactions when British strategy during the French Wars – especially in the blood and treasure allocated to the West Indies – was heavily influenced by trading needs.37 Aristocracy Certain regiments contained a high concentration of rich aristocrats. Whilst a line infantry subaltern might, if careful, be able to live off his pay, a cavalry subaltern needed a private income to supplement his salary. In the early nineteenth century it was the Guards, based mainly in London, that offered the most comfortable billet for aristocrats. Even the reforming Duke of York argued, in the French Wars, that for ‘young men of high rank and fortune … the Guards offer an opportunity of honourably pursuing the military profession without subjecting themselves to those inconveniences which would otherwise preclude their belonging to the service’. One surgeon reported of the three regiments of Horse Guards: But I found the officers of this corps were not imbued with military sentiment, as were those of many other cavalry regiments. Several had no intention to follow the military profession. Heirs to large properties, they had been placed in the blues [Royal Horse Guards] for a few years to learn life, and see a little of the world; then to retire and take charge of their own estates.

Less aristocratic officers had fewer chances of promotion in these regiments. Captain John Whale of 1st Life Guards was considered in 1817 to possess ‘not enough blood’ to make Major.38 By 1850, there were 54 aristocrats in the cavalry, with half in the Horse Guards and 142 in the infantry, with a third of these in the Foot Guards, including 23 in the Grenadier Guards alone. Here the concentration of languid non-professionals seems to have been the highest. Up until 1900, no member of the three Household Cavalry regiments had gone through the army’s higher education Staff College, though this did not prevent some of these members of these regiments being promoted to Generals. While titled aristocrats were comparatively rare in the Victorian army, many officers came from aristocratic families. The extraordinary number of aristocrats in 37 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 318; Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 228; and Christopher D. Hall, British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803–15 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 109. 38 Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 168, quoted in Bruce Collins, ‘Effectiveness and the British Officer Corps, 1793–1815’, in Linch and McCormack, Britain’s Soldiers, 57–76, and quoted in Michael Glover, ‘Sir John Moore and William Napier, 1803–04’, JSAHR, 55 (1977), 246; and S.G.P. Ward, ‘“Major Monsoon”’, JSAHR, 59 (1981), 69.

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the Guards was actually higher in 1912 than in 1830 or 1852. In 1912, 70 per cent of 1st Life Guards officers were aristocrats. These officers were allowed two days’ fox-hunting away from London a week, and continued to attract middle-class and radical criticism as the epitome of useless aristocratic drones. So even on the eve of the Great War, ‘A wide gulf continued to separate the soldiers from their officers, who, despite the abolition of the Purchase System, were still recruited from a limited area of society.’39 Amateur officer tradition Compared to the officer corps in other European powers, British officers were often wilfully unprofessional and anti-intellectual. Training in the Sandhurst and Woolwich academies was regarded as optional, being beneath the dignity of gentlemen, whose sole attribute was to lead men coolly under fire. From the early nineteenth century, reforming officers like Sir John Moore had been trying to change this culture, with severe criticism of those who did not take the profession of soldiering seriously. Moore disparaged the officers of the 6th Foot in Spain in 1808 as ‘unworthy to go upon active service’ and left them behind in garrison. Even in wartime, the taste for a hard drinking and leisured society prevailed and (it is claimed): ‘the officer corps of the British Army … were to a man given over to West Indian sexual debauchery’. Overall it was often difficult to get administration done, as ‘the British officer hates … literary work even in the form of writing letters’, complained the head of the Staff College. Lord Palmerston grumbled that officers wrote ‘like kitchen maids’, who should be taught to ‘compose English correctly’.40 With the long peace after 1815, the professionalism built up in the long war was dissipated. Officers could take long leaves (in the Guards, even Colonels could take up to six months a year), and training and administration were left to the Adjutants and NCOs, with soldiers rarely even meeting an officer. Officers stationed in the UK became well known for hard drinking and appallingly selfish and boorish behaviour. Especially in the cavalry, they ‘had little or no work to do, [and found it hard] not to get into loafing, idle, if not disreputable ways’. In August 1839, near Canterbury, six young ‘Hooray Henrys’ of the 11th Hussars rode across standing crops and assaulted the owner, John Brent, when he tried to remonstrate with them. 39 Harries-Jenkins, Army in Victorian Society, 29, 31–42, 44, 100–05; David Nalson, The Victorian Soldier (Princes Risborough: Shire Books, 2004), 5; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 4, 457; and Moyse-Bartlett, ‘The British Army in 1850’, 231. 40 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 6, 305; Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 167, quoted in I.F.W. Beckett, The Victorians at War (London: Hambledon, 2003), 179 and quoted in ‘Book Reviews’, JSAHR, 50 (1972), 186.

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A prosperous miller, alderman and magistrate, Brent could get no response from the CO of the 11th Hussars, except a challenge to a duel, but his case, taken up by the Morning Chronicle, led to widespread public criticism. Army authorities ignored such matters and fifteen years later the same CO, the Earl of Cardigan, led the Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade in the Crimean War.41 Throughout the century, ‘talking shop’ – professional business, was forbidden in the officers’ mess. ‘Ragging’ – organised bullying often sanctioned by senior officers – was widely carried out against junior officers who tried to study their profession or came from modest backgrounds, which ensured their transfer to less fashionable regiments. At best, interest in a military education was haphazard: ‘Eventually I suppose [the officer] feels an interest in his profession and desires to have a knowledge of it’, and at worst, downright hostile: ‘I think not in the English [sic] army, because we do not desire to make our officers more than serjeant majors.’ These attitudes affected the prevailing ethos at Sandhurst: ‘The majority of young officers will not work unless compelled; that “keenness is out of fashion”, that it is “not the correct form”, the spirit and fashion is rather not to show keenness; and that the idea is … to do as little as possible.’42 Michael Snape suggests that after the Crimean war the rowdy officer culture was being tamed, not only through the influential evangelical movement, with notable pious heroes such as Havelock and Gordon, but also because large numbers of officers were now the sons of clergy. This was especially so in higher regimental ranks, with 14 per cent of Colonels coming from a clerical background in 1854. But even after the abolition of purchase, overall there was ‘little change in … social composition’ and ‘the regular cavalry officer was very much a part timer’. The higher social groups (the peerage and the gentry) were over-represented amongst senior officers of Colonels and Generals and ‘the officer gentleman tradition remained pervasive’.43 In 1903, a reforming officer voiced his concerns about ongoing amateurism: The system which has stood in our way since [1815] had demoralised all ranks and paralysed all initiative. The young officers were not allowed to 41 Spiers, Army and Society, 22 and 26 and Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Reason Why (London: Constable, 1953), 56–57. 42 French, Military Identities, 126; Spiers, Army and Society, 24; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 2, 394, quoting evidence to the Military Education Committee from Earl de Gray and Captain H.M. Hozier; and Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 102. 43 Michael Snape, The Redcoat and Religion (London: Routledge, 2005), 120–22; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 94; Bruce, The Purchase System, 158–59; and Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 4, 362.

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learn their duties as leaders and having nothing to do with their spare time, naturally went racing and enjoying themselves; the older officers never having learned their work, were afraid of introducing change; and the adjutants, riding masters and sergeant-majors settled down into the groove of routine .44

NCOs and class Management of each regiment was directed, with reference to the CO, by a tiny group of technically skilled officers: Adjutant, Quartermaster and Paymaster, who sometimes were ex-rankers themselves. Also of critical importance, and part of this management team, was the RSM, the senior NCO. He was responsible for managing the NCOs and seeing that orders were transmitted. The NCOs, numbering about thirty-five Sergeants and forty Corporals for an average infantry regiment, formed a curiously opaque body: ‘Too little is known about these men, but there is good evidence that the army paid them increasing respect.’ During the French Wars this ‘foremen’ group of NCOs, were seen to be vital to the life or death struggle. They were given pay increases in 1797 and 1806, with larger proportional increases than privates, with Sergeants enjoying nearly double the wages of rankers. Pensions were offered and also promotion opportunities to administrative positions like RSM, Quarter Master Sergeant, Paymaster Sergeant and Colour Sergeant. Basic education was the key to these new senior positions, which required literacy and numeracy, though Corporals could still do without these skills. In the 28th Foot in 1815, only 32 per cent of rank and file have been found to be literate, but this rose to 63 per cent of Corporals, and 96 per cent of Sergeants.45 Strict separation NCOs found that junior management responsibility came at a price: ‘once wearing the chevrons, a distinct cleavage took place, and the sergeants messed together and held themselves in every way apart from the ranks.’ Strict segregation was dictated by standing orders: NCOs are never to suffer themselves to be treated by privates or ever drink with them … [or] will be immediately reduced to the ranks.

44 Quoted in Nick Evans, ‘“Sport and Hard Work”, Tactics, Reform and Equestrianism in the British Cavalry, 1900–1914’, JSAHR, 89 (2004), 140. 45 Cookson, ‘Regimental Worlds’, 32–33 and John D. Ellis, ‘Promotion within the Ranks of the British Army: A Study of the Non-Commissioned Officers of the 28th Regiment of Foot at Waterloo’, JSAHR, 81 (2003), 219.

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An NCO is never to permit a reply from a Soldier whom he reprimands. From the moment a Private Soldier is promoted to the rank of Corporal all intimacy between him and the men should cease, and he is not, on any occasion, to drink with, or suffer himself to be treated by them.46

Soon after the French Wars, separate catering arrangements were instituted for NCOs and men to reinforce the division and prevent mingling of classes: ‘unmarried [NCOs] will breakfast together and dine together, half an hour after the men.’ Separate Sergeants’ messes were formed in each regiment between 1815 and 1840 which aped the social manners of the officers’ mess.47 John Shipp recorded the separation after his promotion to RSM of the 22nd Foot in India in 1803: ‘I established a proper distance between my rank and that of all the other NCOs; giving them all the respect due to them, but emphasising that they must keep a proper distance between themselves and the private soldiers … I made good NCOs and they made good privates.’ Through extraordinary bravery at the Siege of Bhurtpore, Shipp earned an ensign’s commission in the 87th Foot (a feat he repeated an unprecedented second time later in the French Wars). He had been courting the daughter of a retired NCO who now had a job with the EIC. Such was the gulf between NCOs and officers that the retired NCO mistakenly assumed that the marriage would not go ahead: ‘I suppose you will break off your match with my poor Ann. You will look much higher now.’48 The gulf between NCOs and rankers continued throughout the century: The sergeant is a soldier and the private is a soldier; but there is a difference between them beyond the difference of pay, position, responsibility and dress. The sergeant might belong to a different race. In my Pre-War soldiering days an NCO was not allowed to walk out with a private and even if a young lance-corporal was caught walking out with one he was brought in front of the Colonel, who would ask him to explain why he had committed so deadly a crime.49

46 T.H. McGuffie, ‘Recruiting the Ranks of the Regular British Army during the French Wars’, JSAHR, 34 (1956), 127; NAM 1989-08-110 MSS, Standing Orders, Royal Staff Corps, 1807; and Standing Orders of the 40th Regiment (Devonport: Pyke, 1867), 23. 47 LIM, 82nd Regiment Standing Orders (Dublin, 1844) 11 and 74 and French, Military Identities, 126. 48 C.J. Stranks (ed.), John Shipp, The Path of Glory (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), 95 and 100. 49 Robert Blatchford, My Life in the Army (London: Clarion Press, 1915), 76 and Frank Richards, Old Soldiers Never Die (Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, n.d. [1933]), 315.

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Sergeants running things Most regimental management fell to the NCOs, who were responsible for: [T]he discipline of the corps … For it is more immediately their business, than that of the commissioned-officers, to instruct and form the soldiers; and from continual intercourse with them they have it in their power to attend to matters which cannot so well come under the notice of the others.

According to Sergeant Tale of 15th Hussars: ‘Whether in barracks, quarters, or on the line of march, the sergeant held his own Squad, and was more or less held accountable for their conduct.’50 The pinnacle of this structure was the RSM, who, according to a leading military manual: ‘must be thoroughly acquainted with all the details which regard the interior management and discipline of a regiment’. William Cobbett later recalled his service as RSM of the 54th Foot in Nova Scotia in 1784 in his typically cocksure style: ‘In my regiment I was everything; the whole corps was under my control.’ He also made a case for the unfairness of the system, lumping in effete officers with his enemy ‘Old Corruption’: We had a corps of Serjeants infinitely more able to command than our corps of commissioned officers were; and if the due merit was given, it would be seen upon all occasions, that to the serjeants and the corporals, nine tenths of the skill of a campaign fairly belong. There was one of our sergeants whose name was Smaller … he was promoted as soon as he could write and read; and he well deserved it, for he was more fit to command a regiment than any Colonel or Major that I ever saw.51

Somerville’s experiences as a cavalry recruit in the 1830s emphasise the social apartheid of the system: Persons who have no experience … think that the tyranny he suffers is from his officers, the truth being that a soldier comes very little in contact with his officers. [apart from] The drill sergeant, rough-riders, riding master, regimental sergeant-major … if a soldier keeps out of the guard-house … he may be a soldier for years without an officer speaking to him personally. To dare approach an officer was unthinkable. 50 John Williamson, The Elements of Military Arrangement (1791), quoted in Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 96; also quoted in Mollo, Prince’s Dolls, 60. 51 Quoted in Divall, Inside the Regiment, 80; also quoted in Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 71; also quoted in David A. Wilson, Paine and Cobbett (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 101; and Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1146.

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Even in the supposedly more paternalistic militia, Private Mayett claimed ‘No Soldier dared go to an Officer unless a Sergeant or Corporal went with him.’ Many accounts also emphasise that sergeants were capable of cruelty and bullying towards their charges, especially in helping the newly enlisted to spend their bounty money.52 In the artillery, whose more technical officers were the least affected by class, few took part in management: [N]ot being permanently attached to specific companies, [officers] took little interest in the battery instruction and instead left it to the NCOs. Of the four batteries at Woolwich in January 1849, it was claimed that ‘not one has ever been out under its Officers!’53

By the time of the Crimean War, Sergeant Timothy Gowing of the 7th Fusiliers concluded: ‘[It] was an army of lions led by donkeys. More than half the officers did not know how to manoeuvre a company – all, or nearly so, had to be left to non-commissioned officers – but it would be impossible to dispute their bravery for they were brave unto madness.’54 Compared to that of officers, however, NCO promotion was a meritocracy. Even though all NCOs operated solely within the regiment or corps in which they had enlisted, by the late-Victorian period, and especially after the introduction of Warrant officers in 1879, an elaborate structure existed just below commissioned rank. French records: ‘By 1892 there were no fewer than twenty grades of Warrant Officer, ninety-eight different grades of sergeant, and sixteen different grades of corporal and lance corporal.’55 Ex-ranker officers British NCOs promoted to officer’s rank were few compared with those in other armies in post-revolutionary Europe: Napoleon’s troops fought in bright fields where every helmet caught some beams of glory, but the British soldier conquered under the cold shade of aristocracy; no honours awaited his daring; no dispatch gave his name to the applauses of his countrymen, his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his death unnoticed.

Napier’s rhetoric is confirmed by subsequent research. In France, 77 per cent of Napoleon’s junior officers began as simple soldiers, and this tradition 52 Alexander Somerville, The Autobiography of a Working Man (London: Turnstile Press, 1951 [1848]), 134–35 and Kussmaul, Autobiography of Joseph Mayett, 34. 53 Quoted in Hew Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava: Tactics, Technology and the British Army, 1815–1854 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 107. 54 Quoted in Holmes, Redcoat, 123. 55 French, Military Identities, 171.

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continued after 1815 with only a third of French officers recruited between 1815 and 1870 being graduates of military school. Under the Second Empire, only 6 per cent of officers came from an aristocratic background and even some absolutist countries, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ‘pursued the most egalitarian policies of officer recruitment and promotion … clear for men of all conditions to become officers’.56 Nonetheless, in the British army, a steady trickle of exceptional former NCOs were commissioned so that the elaborate drills and detailed administration could continue to be well taught. The huge expansion of the army in the French Wars led to a large increase in officer rankers. A good example was Samuel Bircham of the 30th Foot. A son of the regiment in which his father was a Sergeant, Bircham enlisted as a drummer boy aged ten, fought in the American War of Independence and became a sergeant. After bravery at the Siege of Toulon in 1793, he was commissioned and campaigned in the Mediterranean, in Ireland in 1798 and in the East Indies. Typically, for a working-class officer without influence, he took many seconded jobs. In 1803, he drilled the Cambridge University Volunteers (which included the undergraduate Lord Palmerston, soon to be appointed Secretary-at-War) and went on to be acting Captain and adjutant of the Maltese militia. In the slow post-war promotion, he continued down the colonial route, with a posting to a Veteran battalion between 1823 and 1827. He joined the EIC’s Madras army in 1827 as a Major and finished as a Colonel of the Ceylon Rifles in 1834. Unlike most upper-class officers, these ranker officer/technocrats were hard working. Bircham ‘never had leave of absence for one month’. But Bircham was exceptional. The vast majority of the rankers commissioned in the French Wars remained junior officers and Adjutants and most took half-pay after 1815, uncomfortable with the reinforced snobbish mores of the peacetime army.57 Bircham was part of a family dynasty associated with the 30th for many decades. This became a typical pattern in many regiments, especially in staffing key technical offices. John Rumsby emphasises the importance of the Dynon family in the 16th Lancers in the 1830s and 1840s, with Patrick 56 Sir William Napier, The History of the War in the Peninsula (London: John Murray, 1828–40), vol. 3, 271–72; Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750–1820 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 10, 183 and 195; and Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 42. 57 Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 199; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 116–17; Ballatyne, History of the Thirtieth Regiment, 187, 201 207, 367 and 457; and Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, vol. 4, 478–79. The retirement of ranker officers from the Peninsular War can be individually traced in John A. Hall, A History of the Peninsular War, vol. 8 (London: Greenhill, 1998), 61, 92, 147, 269, 286, 345, 376, 387, 520, 547 and 605.

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Dynon, an ex-ranker Adjutant, and his two brothers simultaneously serving as Paymaster and Riding Master, with another as a Sergeant.58 In the French Wars, some NCOs were given commissions as a reward for acts of extreme bravery in battle. John Shipp led the failed forlorn hope at the abortive siege of Bhurtpore in India in 1805: ‘Lord Lake accepted the offer with great praise for my zeal, and promised – that if I survived I should have a commission … On the day of my appointment I was metamorphosed into a gentleman.’ Typically, Shipp needed a patron to fund his officer’s expenses, with Lord Lake declaring: ‘You may draw on me through the field paymaster for all you want.’59 Despite Wellington being against officers promoted from the ranks, the Peninsular War threw up more examples from Spain. Sergeant William Newman of the 43rd Light Infantry organised stragglers into a rearguard during the retreat to Corunna, and was rewarded with an ensigncy in a colonial corps: the 1st West Indian Regiment. He was also given £50 from the Patriotic Fund to cover the costs of his new uniform and equipment. The heroism of Sergeant Pat Masterson of the 87th Foot at the battle of Barossa in 1811 was unusually rewarded with a commission in his own regiment. But this was for the unique feat of capturing the first French Imperial eagle. Sergeant Charles Ewart of the Royal Scots Greys also captured a French Eagle at Waterloo, and was awarded an ensigncy in a Veteran battalion. However, his espousal of radical Swedenborgian views aroused official suspicion and problems with his pension which led him to finishing his days as a penniless fencing instructor in Salford.60 In typically snobbish style, Wellington unashamedly crammed his wartime staff with young aristocrats: ‘If there is to be any influence in the disposal of military patronage in aid of military merits, can there be any in our army so legitimate as that of family connection, fortune and influence in the country?’ Whilst their mistakes were overlooked, Wellington was ruthless with the errors of social inferiors. Major Alexander Todd of the Royal Staff Corps, a bridging expert, was the son of a butler, who achieved a commission though his father’s master. When one of his bridges broke down in southern France in 1814, he was given a public dressing down by Wellington, which finished with: ‘Are you going to take up your father’s trade?’ Todd was so mortified he was deliberately reckless in the following day’s fighting, which as a combat engineer he should have avoided, and was killed. Similarly, George Scovell, a brilliant staff officer, who deciphered the French secret 58 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 32–33, 42 and 169. 59 Stranks, John Shipp, 56 and 78. 60 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 6, 374, vol. 8, 59 and vol. 6, 374; Glover, Wellington’s Army, 39; and Mansfield, ‘Military Radicals and the Making of Class’, 62.

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code in the Peninsula, was constantly overlooked for promotion because of his lowly origins as an apprentice engraver.61 Some ex-Quartermaster Sergeants ended up as commissioned Quartermasters (QMs), though the need to lodge £2,000 as surety for good behaviour was often a bar to rankers. Though the enjoyment of perks was expected of such posts, this could easily spill over into corruption, making vulnerable ex-rankers liable to prosecution by their betters. In a row with a fellow officer, QM Greenwood of the 7th Light Dragoons ‘was accused of acting as agent for a contractor, of receiving presents (a couple of fowls from a farmer for supplying forage), for serving out hay already rejected, charging items wrongfully against men and issuing short weight candles.’ Even in wartime, the integrity of QMs as proper officers and gentlemen could be challenged. In the Peninsular War in 1811, QM Kingsley of the 30th Foot found himself court-martialled after a row with a superior officer from another regiment over transport, which upheld the officer’s contention that he ‘was no gentleman’.62 Even at the height of the mass mobilisation of the French Wars with its constant warfare, the number of ex-ranker officers was small. Glover claims that one officer in 20 of Wellington’s army had risen from the ranks, but of the 3,000 plus British officers who were killed or wounded in the Peninsular War, only twelve had been promoted from the ranks. Of these, only two achieved a higher rank than Lieutenant and eight were the archetypal Adjutant or Paymaster concerned with the mundane minutiae of running the battalion. This figure may be artificially low since many other ex-rankers who were QMs or Paymasters may have been far from the battlefield. Indeed, of the 803 NCOs commissioned during the period of the Peninsular War, 271 were QMs, 139 Adjutants, and the rest (393) Lieutenants or Ensigns, with very few able to purchase higher than their initial commission.63 With the exceptions of the technical posts, ex-ranker officers were rarely retained by their home regiment and were posted to unfashionable units. Of the three NCOs promoted from the ranks by the 7th Light Dragoons in the French Wars, two went as Cornets to the Royal Wagon Train and one was retained as Adjutant. The Royal African Corps, York Light Infantry, Garrison, Veteran and the West Indian Regiments were the archetypal homes of such working-class officers. Other opportunities became available 61 John Hussey, ‘Let No Man Lay to …’, JSAHR, 80 (2002), 99 and Mark Urban, The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), 26, 48, 73, 113 and 284. 62 T.H. McGuffie, ‘The Life of Light Cavalry Regiment’, JSAHR, 39 (1961), 24 and Divall, Inside the Regiment, 25, 30–31 and 83–84. 63 Glover, Wellington’s Army, 36 and 38; Hall; History of the Peninsular War, vol. 8, 61, 92, 147, 191, 269, 287, 345, 376, 387, 520, 547, 604; and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 106.

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in the foreign corps of the French Wars. John Harvey (1776–1860) ex-RSM of 50th Foot, became Adjutant and Ensign in the Royal Corsican Rangers. Whilst Harvey retired with the peace, a Sergeant Payne, who fought at Corunna with the Grenadier Guards, became their QM and served until 1855, though he was too old to accompany them to the Crimea.64 Some reforming officers thought that the failure to promote talented NCOs was a waste, claiming they would be more attentive of duties and sensitive to potential malingering, but little progress was made. Colonel Le Marchant, founder of Sandhurst, tried to establish a parallel educational establishment for NCOs, but this was rejected with the criticism: ‘it was inconsistent with the habits of the country to raise private soldiers to so close an equality with their officers, as well as from the apprehension that the measure might prove injurious to the service at large by leading to frequent promotions from the ranks’. Instead, Sir George Bell, a Peninsular veteran, claimed: ‘Many brave men were driven out of the service by tyrannical injustice. They could not break the system of being passed by and purchased over by boys from the nursery, who stayed at home and never smelt powder.’ As part of the post-Crimean War reforms, George De Lacy Evans, the radical General and MP, again pressed the case, hoping to ride the tide against the vestiges of ‘Old Corruption’, but his Commons motion was defeated.65 Though tolerated through necessity in the wartime crisis, reaction set in against existing ranker officers from 1815: ‘Soldiers are but soldiers, and officers are soldiers and gentlemen. Under this consideration the line of distinction is preserved, the profession, through all its tracts of honour, guarded.’ Above all, the Duke of Wellington, who virtually dictated post-war military policy, vehemently opposed officers being promoted from the ranks, telling an enquiry in 1836, they ‘do not make good officers; it does not answer. They are brought into a society to the manners of which they are not accustomed … they are not persons that can be borne in the society of officers of the Army; they are different men altogether.’ Thus, in its place, the army structure stagnated; ‘Between 1834 and 1838, out of 227 first commissions in the cavalry only six were granted without purchase.’ 66 There is evidence that ranker officers were sometimes deliberately set up to fail by their more fortunate colleagues, particularly over the elaborate peacetime uniforms: ‘If the cost of continually replacing the kit was not 64 McGuffie, ‘The Life of Light Cavalry Regiment’, 2 and J.P. Entract, ‘The Royal Corsican Rangers: An Inscription in a Country Churchyard’, JSAHR, 41 (1963), 210–14. 65 Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 146, quoted in Spiers, Army and Society, 22–23 and 109. See also Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 160. 66 Quoted in Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 109 and Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 156.

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enough to drive these poorer men out, those in command had only to alter the styles and thus increase expenses.’ The Duke of Cumberland (1771–1851), arch-Tory and future King of Hanover, was particularly active against those who had got war commissions, whom he saw as ‘a class of officers who were never intended for such a profession’. Current senior NCOs were reluctant to question these views, and were further discouraged by the more expensive uniforms and mess fees of the post-war army, with many NCOs also reluctant to give up their potentially lucrative perks.67 Nonetheless, the growth in imperial wars necessitated some ranker promotions. After bloody fighting in the First Sikh War in the 1840s, General Gough promoted five Sergeant Majors, but felt the need to defend his actions by saying: ‘I scarcely had an alternative; my losses in officers were so great that it was absolutely necessary.’ One was Sergeant Bernard McCabe of 31st Foot who became an Ensign for recovering his regiment’s colour at the Battle of Sobraon. The mass expansion of the army in the Crimean War resulted in 121 NCOs being commissioned in 1854, but this was less than one in five of new commissions. This was followed by the Indian Mutiny where three ex-ranker Lieutenants were promoted to Captain in 1858 for gallantry at Lucknow, but significantly into an unfashionable new colonial corps, the Royal Canadians, stationed on the North American frontier.68 The abolition of the purchase of commissions in 1871 curiously made the officer corps subsequently more exclusive. Statistics vary – between 1871 and 1893, only 3.1 per cent of commissions were made from the ranks, and less than 2 per cent between 1871 and 1875; but the trend is clear. Instead, ‘regiments continued to restrict the area of officer recruitment; they sought fresh blood from the products of particular schools, usually public schools, and from those aspirants who possessed the necessary degree of financial independence’. By 1900, 62 per cent of officers who served in the Boer War had been educated in public schools, with 11 per cent from Eton alone. Only 1 in 46 commissions from the ranks was granted between 1906 and 1913 (and that one not in the cavalry) and a mere seven in 1913: 1 per cent of the total. Most of these few fortunate ex-rankers were Adjutants, who ran the regiments, whilst their social superiors got on with social activities like hunting.69 67 Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 218 and Divall, Inside the Regiment, 81. 68 Quoted in Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 561; Philip Stigger, ‘Promotion as a Campaigning Reward in the Late Victorian Army, and an Unresolved Problem’, JSAHR, 76 (1998), 255; and Holmes, Soldiers, 172. 69 Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 200; Spiers, Army and Society, 24; Holmes, Soldiers, 201; Anglesey, A History of the British Cavalry, vol. 4, 472; and Bowman and Connelly, The Edwardian Army, 13.

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Late Victorian rankers who aspired to more than the technical roles had to be exceptional, like Hector MacDonald (1853–1903), a Highland crofter’s son. He joined the 92nd Highlanders, was commissioned for bravery in the 2nd Afghan War in 1879, served in both Boer Wars, and ‘saved’ the British line at Omdurman in 1897. Promoted to Major General, he killed himself rather than face investigation for homosexual offences. Even more remarkable was William Robertson (1860–1933), who uniquely rose from cavalry trooper to Great War Field Marshal. But Robertson claimed: ‘Apart from riding masters and Quartermasters it was very seldom that any one was promoted from the ranks – not more than 4 or 5 a year on average.’ Robertson could only afford life as a junior cavalry officer with his tailor father making his uniforms and by drinking water in the mess.70 Not quite ex-rankers were the deserving déclassé officers, which some Generals patronised, particularly the reforming Commander in Chief, the Duke of York. These were often from relatively impoverished genteel families who lacked the money for first commissions. A good example was Sir Colin Campbell (1792–1863), whose Colonel uncle educated him and secured him a commission through the Duke of York. After service in the Peninsular War, long-serving Campbell became a hero, with his Highland Brigade, of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny. York also had more working-class protégés, such as John Gillies, ‘born of very poor parents’, though of a respectable Highland clan background, who had enlisted in the ranks after working as a canal navvy. Despite being a Roman Catholic, after service in the Peninsular War, Gillies became a Lieutenant Colonel, and was knighted in 1831. With the need for more officers in the French Wars, some aristocratic or gentry families also found niches for their illegitimate offspring. A good example was George Dean (?1781–1851), a Berkshire plumber who served in the marines between 1797 and 1805, reaching sergeant. He was then recognised as a natural son by his father, George Pitt, 2nd Baron Rivers, who secured him a commission in the Royal African Corps. After service in the Caribbean and the Peninsular War and a period on half-pay, Dean was promoted through the ranks by merit rather than purchase. After various imperial postings he was made Commander in Chief in New Zealand and died there as a Major General in 1851, remembered as one of the founders of the country.71

70 Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 204–05 and William Robertson, From Private to Field Marshal (London: Constable, 1926), 29. 71 Holmes, Redcoat, 168–69; Glover, Wellington’s Army, 38; Alastair Roberts, ‘Faith Restored: Highland Catholics and the King’s Commission’, JSAHR, 85 (2007), 153; and Gervase Belfield, ‘Major-General George Dean-Pitt’, JSAHR, 92 (2014), 177–88.

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Class nuances in the militia, the East India Company and overseas military adventurers The categories of non-regular soldiering outlined in the section ‘Types of military service’, in Chapter 1, above, saw class play quite different and nuanced roles which will be examined here. Militia The county militia establishment saw itself as an idealised English rural society in arms. Its officers were from the county gentry, with often a resident aristocrat as the Lieutenant Colonel, with another landed magnate, usually the Lord Lieutenant – the sovereign’s local representative – as titular Colonel. Property qualifications were insisted on for commissioned ranks, ranging from income worth £50 a year for Ensigns to £200 for Captains. These scales operated for over a century until abolition in 1869. Until then, militia regiments were more socially exclusive than the regular army and ex-ranker officers were rare, aside from the Adjutants and Quartermasters. They were often promoted NCOs and veterans of the French Wars, who ran the cadres in county town barracks after the militia was stepped down in 1815.72 The idealised rank and file of the county militias were seen as poor but loyal agricultural labourers, estate workers and cottagers of rural England. Indeed, the militia was regarded as an offshoot of the economy of the countryside, with poor militiamen given an opportunity to supplement their meagre incomes with government money from soldiering. militiamen’s families were paid separation allowances from the parish poor rates (unlike those of the regulars), to supplement the established system of outdoor poor relief. Even during the period of invasion threats half the embodied regiment could be given furlough to help in their home counties’ harvests. The transformation of the Volunteer movement into the more-disciplined and paid local militia in 1809, in particular, was a godsend. It provided vital earnings to the poor whose lives were being threatened by the Industrial Revolution, changes in agriculture and by the economic dislocation thrown up by Napoleon’s Continental System. The compulsory ballot to serve might have been expected to bring in a wide social cross section of militiamen in the French Wars. In practice, these rank and file were nearly all rural or urban poor. The Volunteer regiments of the 1790s and 1800s were exempt from the militia and other ballots and composed of men from ‘a higher class of life, of such description of men as it 72 Owen, History of the Welsh Militia, 13, 71, 94–95. See chap. 3 (‘Pensioners, Instructors and Administrators’) for the ‘trade’ of the militia cadres.

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would not be proper to mix with soldiers of the Line, and whom no one would wish to see obliged to serve in the condition of a common soldier in a regular regiment’. As personal service was not compulsory and the better off could insure themselves against a bad number in the ballot, so many militiamen were substitute volunteers, attracted by the large bounties on offer.73 This link with the economy of the rural poor was continued after 1815, with the 28 days a year paid training that disembodied militiamen undertook. Throughout the nineteenth century, militiamen, whether part time or embodied, continued to be drawn from the poor, particularly the rural poor. In Buckinghamshire in the 1852 militia revival, over 90 per cent of rank and file were agricultural labourers. The establishment of the part-time Rifle Volunteer movement from 1859 included a sharp social apartheid in the backgrounds of their respective rank and file, illustrated in these observations from both officers and men: The Militiaman is a man of casual employment, and the Volunteer is a man of regular employment. In Yorkshire the men of the Militia come from a lower stratum of the working class than those of the Volunteers. The Militiaman in Yorkshire is usually a workman in intermittent employment. The Volunteer is far more intelligent and better educated.74

Even with the decline of the old landed establishment influence and their incorporation into the Cardwell county regiments, militiamen continued to be largely recruited from the unskilled working class. Their traditionally high desertion rate also continued until late in the century, reaching a figure of 25 per cent a year between 1894 and 1899. In isolated counties the ancient paternalistic privilege of the county elites could still be maintained over the militia. In Northumberland, the Percys continued to command the militia battalion after it was incorporated into the Northumberland Fusiliers, as well as their own volunteer artillery, which had evolved from the Duke’s own Household Artillery.75 East India Company As outlined in section ‘Types of military service’, in Chapter 1, above, the private army of the EIC existed from the early seventeenth century until 73 Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 88 and 128–29 and quoted in Glenn A. Steppler, Britons to Arms! (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), 21. 74 Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 150 and I.F.W. Beckett, ‘The Local Community and the Amateur Military Tradition’, JSAHR, 59 (1978), 94. 75 John K. Dunlop, The Development of the British Army, 1899–1914 (London: Methuen, 1938), 46–48 and Hewitson, Weekend Warriors from Tyne to Tweed, 31 and 107.

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1858, stationed entirely in India and campaigning only in the East, where the Company was extending its territory and influence. EIC officers, both of white regiments and black sepoy units, had a lower status and rank than the regular British army and there was little interchange between them. EIC commissions were not purchased and were open to all, though family influence with the Company counted heavily in appointments. Despite slow promotion, through seniority rather than by purchase, officers could live off their pay in the cheaper Indian economy, engage in trade and often undertake other jobs for the Company. Originally, Irish and Scots predominated in the officer corps, typically younger sons of impoverished gentry. These stood on their contractual rights with a long tradition of contentious protest, a trait shared with the rank and file, as we shall see the section ‘Contract culture’, in Chapter 4, below. In the nineteenth century, a more middle-class influence developed: ‘between 1805 and 1834 76% of EIC officers [were] being described as middle class as opposed to 47% of king’s officers’. Conversely, promotion from the ranks was less than in HM forces, with the first ex-rankers coming as a necessity after critical battle losses in 1842 and 1857.76 Officers and men of the EIC had a much less disciplined relationship than existed in HM forces, with its social apartheid. In the eighteenth century, EIC men had roughly the same background as British recruits, and, as with officers, Irish rankers predominated. The EIC offered higher basic pay and pensions (only generally available to troops with disabilities), and good opportunities for trade, loot, seconded promotion to sepoy regiments and post-army employment in the sub-continent. Particularly after 1815, the EIC army could be more selective, recruiting mainly in their London office from Londoners and provincials, and attracting better-educated and more literate recruits. Soldiers in India could live cheaply – ‘lived the lives of gentlemen’ – and could save and send money home. Especially if participating in the EIC’s early-nineteenth-century wars of expansion, with its batta and plunder, many made small fortunes. By 1850, Peter Stanley argues, within the EIC soldiery, a ‘respectable working class’ predominated, with men who had made a conscious career decision, with a high number of clerks, and other lower middle class: ‘none is willing to admit that he is a labourer’. After the Indian Mutiny and the dissolution of the EIC army, its white troops (by now over 10,000 strong) were transferred to British service, which resulted in the largest military strike of the nineteenth century (see the section ‘Strike and mutinies’, in Chapter 4, below). This ‘White Mutiny’ of 1858–59 was largely successful, with the strikers achieving lucrative discharge or more 76 Stanley, White Mutiny, 23–27 and 49–50 and Strachan, Politics of the British Army, 79.

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advantageous contracts than those who agreed to transfer. These became new southern Irish provincial regiments and, as soldier-socialist Robert Blatchford indicates in his memoir, they continued to enjoy the more relaxed culture of India for the rest of the century.77 Overseas military adventurers Through the early nineteenth century, overseas military adventurers in South America, Greece, Portugal and Spain were fighting for nationalist, liberal or even radical causes. However, the structure of these private armed forces owed much to that of the British army and was based largely on class rather than any revolutionary military theory. Class divisions became particularly apparent when things went wrong, a perennial problem with the various expeditions to support South American liberation movements. When Hippisley’s English Hussars were stranded on the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1818, after initially failing to connect with Bolivar’s armies, whilst officers were granted a free passage home, NCOs were told to seek work on the island – a difficult task, given the slave economy.78 Alexander Somerville, formerly of the Royal Scots Greys, the flogged radical military martyr of the Reform Crisis turned journalist, was recruited for the BAL in Spain, intervening on the liberal side. Many of the BAL officers took leave of absence from the British or EIC armies to gain experience but some at least shared the same political sympathies. Another anonymous BAL recruit, a tailor, considered his officers were quite varied: Our officers, as I soon found out were of the like heterogeneous description: bankrupts, horse-dealers, and seedy gentlemen of all sorts, with some good soldiers and gallant gentlemen, in whom a love of adventure overcame their aversion to the company they were obliged to keep, and, who, if afterwards they saw a man do his work gallantly, was for the time oblivious to his antecedents.79

But Somerville stressed the importance of promoted rankers in the BAL: As a fair example we may consider Mr Sked. He had been twenty-eight years in the Royal British Artillery, as known to be one of the best practical and most scientific gunners of the service, yet had never risen higher than a sergeant, and would never have risen higher had he continued twenty 77 Stanley, White Mutiny, 12–13, 21, 29, 38, 42, 43, 76, 83, 87, 92 and 118; Mokyr and O Grada, ‘The Height of Irishmen and Englishmen in the 1770s’, 83–92; and Robert Blatchford, My Life in the Army (London: Clarion Press, 1915). 78 Ben Hughes, Conquer or Die! Wellington’s Veterans and the Liberation of the New World (London: Osprey, 2010), 51. 79 Somerville, History of the British Legion, 109–10 and anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, The British Army and Navy Review, 4 (1866), 275.

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eight years more in British service. He went to Spain … and then got promoted to a commission in the Legion artillery.

Somerville was himself promoted to Sergeant and was later involved in the sort of trickery all too common in the British army to get his BAL comrades to renew their contracts in Spain: [I]t became necessary to resort to the common modes of recruiting – that mode which was always, when levies of men were required, pursued with militia regiments in Britain, in order to get them to volunteer into the regulars, namely, that of giving men money, and every facility to wallow in drunkenness until it was all spent.

By and large we can conclude that overseas military adventurers were largely governed by the British style of military organism and were subject to the same class-based pressures. But later groups like the Garibaldi Excursionists of 1860–61, largely London liberal artisans many of whom had been members of the new Rifle Volunteer movement, probably had a freer discipline inspired by their charismatic Italian idol.80 Criticism of officers by the rank and file Many rank-and-file soldiers were critical of their officers on class grounds. Such was the sense of oppression under which they worked, that these feelings could be revealed only in private. We cannot know how this was communicated in the opaque world of the barrack room at the time, but we do know that it is a consistent thread in private journals and later published accounts, especially when these were not dependant on gentry patronage. Unsurprisingly, cocksure William Cobbett asserted of his 1780s regimental comrades: ‘There is not a fault or foible of those commanders that they do not criticise. They canvass all their actions and all their motives.’ From a distance of twenty-five years, he also argued that soldiers had generally supported his radical stance; a dubious claim given his own inconsistencies.81 Independent evidence survives from exactly the same period as Cobbett’s soldiering, from James Aytoun, a Scottish shoemaker who served in the 30th Foot in the 1780s and 90s. Aytoun was consistently anti-officer in his private journal which was not published until the 1980s: During the time we were in Dominka we were commanded by officers who were very unfit for their trust of commanding four hundred men or 80 Somerville, History of the British Legion, 610 and Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 199. Overseas military adventurers will be featured in the companion volume; in the meantime, see the author’s ‘Military Radicals and the Making of Class’, 67–69. 81 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1147.

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more. Altho’ I write of the absurditys I have seen, still I am certain a great deal will not be believed. No wonder the Yankee drove such ill-treated men who were beaten by a parcel of raw militia. No wonder that so many of our men deserted to the enemy. The Practice of beating was so great that no man who went to drill … was sure of returning to barracks without a smart beating.82

Similar complaints appear in an anonymous surviving radical handbill distributed at Chatham barracks in May 1797 and supposedly written by soldiers: Is there not a man among us who does not want to defend his country and who would willingly do it without being subject to the insolence and cruelty of effeminate puppies? What makes a difference between a commissioned officer and a private, or non-commissioned? Are they better men? You must laugh at the thought? Do they know discipline half as well as our Serjeants? Don’t they owe their promotions to their connections with placemen and pensioners … Don’t colonels now draw half their income from what we ought to have, but of which we are robbed? 83

The well-known memoir of Sergeant Wheeler of the 51st Light Infantry, originally written as letters to his friends and family in Somerset, also report similar objections: I have often been tick[l]ed in reading the General despatches of the Army, when Some Lord or General or Colonel has been killed or wounded … Lord A- fell in the moment of achieving some great exploit, then follows a long lamentation of the serious loss Old England and H.M. Service has sustained. Then General B- is severely wounded, with a long panegyric of his military virtues and services etc. Or that Colonel C- of the General Staff of the Army had received a severe wound (scratch it should have been) that will deprive the Army of a valuable service for some time to come etc. But who shall record the glorious deeds of the soldier whose lot is numbered with the thousands in the ranks who live and die and fight in obscurity.

In contrast, Wheeler highlighted his comrade Tom Hooker, killed in the Pyrenees in 1813: ‘He was pre-eminently courageous, and would in any other service, but the British, have ranked as an officer.’84 82 James Aytoun, Redcoats in the Caribbean (Blackburn: Blackburn Recreation Services, 1984), 7, 8 and 11. 83 Handbill entitled ‘To the British Army’, in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards collection, Firing Line Museum, Cardiff. The museum also has two loyal response handbills. 84 Selby, Thomas Morris, 51

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Sergeant Donaldson, a middle-class Scottish ranker, who served throughout the Peninsular War and eventually trained as a doctor, was equally critical of most of his officers throughout his memoir: ‘supercilious overbearing tyrants who think their fellow-men [were] created to be their slaves, and ignorant swaggering coxcombs, whose puppyism must disgust all under their command’. Some evidence exists to show that officers from humble backgrounds were admired by soldiers and enjoyed a friendlier relationship with their men. An example is Major Peter O’Hare of the 95th Rifles, killed during the assault of Badajoz in 1812, who was often called by his first name by his men, though this was in an informal regiment, nearly always in skirmishing order, where more mutual dependence was necessary.85 Private criticisms of officers’ behaviour and the subservient position of soldiers continued in the post-war period. An unknown grenadier in 1840s complained: In India the men of the army are generally looked upon as so many pieces of one great machine that is passive in the hands of the engineer: and as to the sense of feeling, that is not thought of, the private soldier is looked upon as the lowest class of animals, and only fit to be ruled with the cat o’nine tails and the Provost Sergeant.

In the same period, Private Waterfield of the 32nd Foot, described one of his officers ‘as conceited a little fop as ever carried one of Her Majesty’s sword’ and ‘a poor vain weak man’. He also compared the punishments given for similar antics: ‘many other [officers’] pranks would be played with impunity and be the common topic of conversation in the mess room the next day. Whilst a poor private for staying out till 10 or 11 o’clock at night would be punished more severely than what a common thief would be in any gaol.’ Unsurprisingly, radical Sergeant Pearman of the 3rd Light Dragoons, also in India in the 1840s, contrasted the punishment of officers’ bad behaviour with that of his comrades: ‘Many an officer as taken more in other ways and not got flogged’, and especially their complicity in looting: ‘our own Commander in Chief had many things given to him’.86 Gunner Love of the Royal Artillery ruefully compared at length his treatment after the Crimea War to that meted out by Russian officers to their rankers: Lord Raglan the Commander in Chief rode past … and he said go on men with what you are doing and keep up your hearts, it will soon be over and 85 Donaldson, Recollections, 354 (see also criticisms on 45, 64 and 133) and Urban, Rifles, 46. 86 Quoted in Colley, Captives, 314; Arthur Swinson (ed.), The Memoirs of Private Waterfield (London: Cassell, 1968), 16 and 145; and Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 178.

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your country will reward you when you get home. But I am sorry to say, that it was a long time before it was over: and as for our countrys reward … what did the British Soldier get for his hardships they had to endure, during that memorable siege … Nothing but after we came home we were served out with new clothes, and had to go on short pay to pay for them, and the men that were not fit to serve after they got home were discharged with perhaps 6 pence or 8 pence per day for 6 or 8 months and he must have been a very good charseter to get that, and if not able to work go into the workhouse or starve, that was the reward the common herd got, now how were the men that we were contending against get treated, for their service in Sebastopol and they were not exposed to the weather as we were, but here is the diferance they were well fed well clothed and beds to lay on, and stone walls to keep them from the weather. People may call emperor Alexander of Russia a despot or by whatever name they think proper to call him; but he had respect for his men and every man that stood the siege was given 12 months’ service for every month they served during the time the siege lasted, and all honour be to his name for that alone.87

The thread continues into the 1880s, this time with a more political edge, from ‘soldier-socialists’, who will be explored elsewhere. According to Ex-Sergeant Horace Wyndham, who joined the Marxist Social Democratic Federation after discharge: ‘When he is facing the enemy the average private would much rather follow an intelligent lance corporal than somebody who is all blue blood and no brains.’ His fellow socialist, Robert Blatchford, ex-Sergeant of the 103rd Foot, who became a popular journalist and founder of the Clarion movement, opined: ‘An excellent thing for the Army would be promotion from the ranks. Get a few good sergeants made officers, and the “gentlemen” will have to wake up, or be left.’88 Men who preferred to be led by gentlemen In contrast to the criticisms above and linked perhaps to the ruffiansled-by-gentlemen theory discussed earlier, a number of memoirs claimed that rankers preferred being officered by real gentlemen. The majority of these views are from officers inferring the opinions of their men, but some assenting conclusions do appear in rank-and-file memoirs. The most often quoted is from Benjamin Harris, a Dorset shepherd and shoemaker, who 87 S.W. Jackman (ed.), ‘Crimean Experiences by William Love’, JSAHR, 60 (1982), 111 and 188. 88 Quoted in Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 202 and also quoted in Anglesey, A History of the British Cavalry, vol. 2, 381.

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was balloted into the Army of Reserve in 1803, before volunteering for the 95th Rifles: [I]n our army the men best like to be officered by gentlemen, men whose education has rendered them more kind on manners than your coarse officer, sprung from obscure origin, and whose style is brutal and overbearing. I am convinced that the English soldier is even better pleased to be commanded by some man of rank in his own country, than by one who has risen from his own station.89

Like many others of the period, Harris’s account appeared under the patronage of an ex-officer. It is also worth remembering that he never saw active service after contracting Walcheren fever in 1809 and his experience was relatively limited compared with other ranker memoirists of the period. So, arguably, he did not experience the intense camaraderie within the 95th Rifles that developed with officers like Peter O’Hare, as discussed earlier. Sergeant Joseph Donaldson of the 94th Foot was also disparaging of one working-class officer who was his temporary CO in Spain and contemptuous of his knowledge of soldiers’ dodges: Having neither the education nor breeding of a gentleman, [he] felt jealous in the company of officers, and lived in a sullen manner. He generally passed his time in gossiping with his barber and cook, or indeed any of the men, with an affection of entering into their concerns. By this and eavesdropping he became acquainted with little circumstances which another commanding officer would have distained to listen to, and which he made bad use of. The full extent of his malevolent disposition was not known, however, until he got command of the regiment, when he introduced flogging for every trivial offence.90

The rank and file were said to be especially contemptuous of General John Whitlocke, who surrendered an entire British army to Argentinean militia during a disastrous assault on Buenos Aires in 1807. Whitlocke’s background was relatively humble – his father was steward to the Earl of Aylesbury – and, according to Fortescue: His most objectionable characteristic seems to have been arrogant but spasmodic self confidence, with an affectation of coarse speech and 89 Christopher Hibbert (ed.), The Recollections of Rifle Harris (London: Leo Cooper, 1970), 28 and 67. For a discussion of Harris and other memoirists, see Neil Ramsay, ‘“A Real English Soldier”: Suffering, Manliness and Class in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Soldiers’ Tale’, in Kennedy and McCormack, Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850, 136–53. 90 Donaldson, Recollections, 145.

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manners which he conceived to soldier-like bluntness, but which often degenerated into rudeness towards some of his inferiors and familiar obscenity of language towards others. He stooped to court the favour of the rank and file by affected use of their phrases, with the inevitable result that he earned only their thorough contempt.91

Soldiers’ protests against Whitlocke took the form of graffiti, both in Buenos Aires and in London, where he was court martialled and dismissed (see the section ‘Passive resistance’, in Chapter 4, below). Peter Stanley’s recent study of soldiers’ graffiti in the Indian Mutiny cites examples which criticise the social origins of some officers. His conclusion is: ‘soldiers … were more acute judges of the nuances of class than we will ever be … they regarded [officers] as falling short of the gentlemanly qualities which soldiers apparently sought in their superiors’. This ties in with studies of other groups of unorganised workers, like agricultural workers or institutional servants.92 Paternalism and collusion The favourable view by soldiers of officers and gentlemen might have been linked to the exercise of paternalism. Direct references to paternalism on the part of officers are comparatively rare in nineteenth-century rankers’ memoirs, even though there was widespread debate on its retention or decline during the period. Inevitably, ex-RSM turned journalist William Cobbett had something to say about it, claiming that the paternalism he sometimes encountered in his army service in the 1780s was disappearing under the regime of barracks, shifting regiments and repression, whose ‘grand object is totally to efface from the mind of the soldiers all recollection of paternal and filial affection; to make him as insensible as the musket he wields’. Curiously, radical trooper John Pearman’s account of the Battle of Gurjat against the Sikhs displays affection for his CO: Jest at that moment a 9 Pound shot struck the ground at the Colonels horse heels but Coln White did not – move or Look round his Brave old Face never moved with his White hair round it he only said stiddy men, make much of your horses men. I think there was not a man or an officer who knew Colonel White that did not Love him such a happy Face and so kind to all.93 91 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 388–89. 92 Peter Stanley, ‘“Highly Inflammatory Writings”: Soldiers Graffiti and the Indian Rebellion’, JASHR, 74 (1996), 239. See, in particular, Mansfield, ‘Grads and Snobs’, 184–98. 93 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1146. Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 46–47. (Steedman also credibly outlines the tensions in the attempted paternalism by Pearman’s officers.)

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But Myerly’s assertion that ‘Sergeants frequently took on the role of an old family servant, guiding the young and inexperienced officers in the ways of the service’ seems to rest on quite flimsy ground. Myna Trustram, in her work on army women, more convincingly argues that in the Victorian army the continuing paternalism by ‘officers and gentlemen’ towards their regimental rankers and their families was a key element in the maintenance of their very identity. This was in the face of the potentially hostile professionalism being imposed by a more industrial society and related back to their gentry origins. Anne Crosby Stevens, in her detailed survey of the nineteenth-century Rifle Brigade, suggests that the officers of this elite regiment generally acted paternalistically towards their soldiers. Even after discharge she contends that contacts were maintained, small gifts were given, soldier servants were retained and, later, help was given towards future employment. The survival of paternalism concurs with the prevailing upper-class view of the army as expressed by such as the Duke of Wellington: ‘The British army is what it is because it is officered by gentlemen: men who scorn to do a dishonourable thing and who have something more at stake than a reputation for military smartness.’ 94 What is clear is that NCOs and soldiers largely succeeded in hiding their working-class allegiances from the middle- or upper-class worlds of their officers. A small example of this is recorded by Gunner Benjamin Miller who succeeded in avoiding punishment in 1800. Returning from drunken shore leave in Malta, Miller lost his headgear: ‘I should have been in a hobble for losing my hat and feather. But one of our men died soon after, so I got his hat and the Serjeant told the Officers that mine was blown overboard.’ These conflicting spheres did sometimes overlap, often in exceptional circumstances, especially during hard campaigning. The prolonged misery in Moore’s retreat to Corunna in 1809 affected officers more, according to a private of the 71st: ‘I have seen officers of the guards and others, worth thousands, with pieces of old blanket wrapt around their feet; the men pointing at them with malicious satisfaction, saying, “There goes three thousand a year”’.95 As we shall see later, on special celebratory occasions, officers, NCOs and men could collude in a truce of forced normality: 94 Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 3; Trustram, Women of the Regiment, 15; and Anne Crosby Stevens, ‘The Rifle Brigade, 1800–1870: A Study of Social, Cultural and Religious Attitudes’, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1995, 143–45 and 150 and quoted in Thomas Gilby, Britain at Arms (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), 344. 95 The Adventures of Serjeant Benjamin Miller, 1796–1815 (Uckfield: Arms and Armour Press, 2011), 16 and anon., Journal of a Soldier of the 71st (Edinburgh: William and Charles Tait, 1819), 86.

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On this day [Christmas Day] stern N.C.O.s winked their eye at everything: a man had to be raving mad before they would rush him along to clink … unpopular N.C.O.s made themselves scarce for the remainder of the day. Although all gambling was strictly prohibited, even the most regimental of the NCOs in the Second Battalion always winked an eye at it. Most were fond of a gamble themselves and on the line of march every one of them had a flutter now and then.96

Conclusion Close examination has shown the intricate and nuanced way in which class influenced the structure, development and individual experiences of all types of the nineteenth-century British military at every level. This concurs with recent research which emphasises how nineteenthcentury soldiers were not a separate semi-criminal caste, cut off from society, but a cross section of working-class men, whose pre-enlistment backgrounds and outside links with family, friends and home localities influenced their behaviour in uniform. This chapter has analysed the background of officers in the regular and other paid armies and concluded that despite gentlemanly pretensions the corps was keen on making money, generally lacked professionalism and enjoyed much better treatment than their rank and file. The growing importance of able NCOs has been shown in the actual management of the army and how the reluctance to promote them to officer’s rank – entirely on class grounds – created an unnecessary structural weakness in the British military. Instead, NCOs, to get by, usually sided with the soldiers they supervised to form an amorphous rankers’ world which officers could not penetrate. It has analysed the debate about whether soldiers preferred to be commanded by gentlemen and uncovered a critical majority rank-and-file voice, which judged that officer paternalism was often illusionary, and which pressed the case for promotion for talented rankers. Typically, serving rank-and-file soldiers buckled down to the army’s system and relied on their own hidden underground of the barracks, which was largely based on work. The next chapter describes the working lives of soldiers in more detail.

96 Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 49 and 74.

3 Soldiers as Workers Soldiers as Workers

Introduction As discussed in earlier chapters, we have seen that soldiers were a huge occupational group which has rarely been studied by labour historians. This chapter looks at male common soldiers pursuing pre-enlistment employment within the army from the period of the Industrial Revolution and class formation to the mature late-Victorian economy. It argues that soldiers were proletarians with their military phase often forming only part of their working lives. As suggested in the section ‘“Scum of the earth”?’, in Chapter 1, historians of the eighteenth century, like Peter Way, have previously argued that the British military was recruited largely from working-class men. Eighteenthcentury recruiters tried to avoid enlisting sedentary or ‘effeminate’ trades who would not be up to the demands of campaigning. As late as 1803, one military commentator could write, ‘No printers, bookbinders, taylors, shoemakers or weavers should be enlisted, as from their business they contract habits of effeminacy, and are unable to support the fatigues of war.’ Such were the manpower needs, though, that even in the smaller peacetime army these warnings were thoroughly ignored. Labourers and tradesmen adversely affected by trade cycles or mechanisation would still be the backbone of the rank and file and this became more apparent in the mass mobilisations of the French Wars, but it continued as the post-1815 army gradually grew under the impact of empire.1 Gradually, employment opportunities – some of extraordinary complexity – began to be opened up in which soldiers could use their pre-enlistment trades or develop new skills. In the infantry regiments, which were the backbone of the army, some tradesmen were recruited to carry out official duties. The Quoted in Urban, Rifles, 33. 1

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technical corps, which became typical of the twentieth-century British army, did not exist for most of the nineteenth century. So most necessary trades were based on the regiment, giving a wide variety of potential occupations for ambitious soldiers. Teams of armourers, blacksmiths, butchers, clerks, cooks, musicians, schoolmasters, shoemakers and tailors, each led by a tradesman NCO, were ‘on the strength’ and were excused nearly all military duties to carry out their skills on behalf of the regiment. They were paid more than other privates, through complicated and published price lists for goods made and supplied, with the money being deducted from their comrades’ pay accounts. They also earned extra money through bills which they could submit to officers. In technical arms – like artillery or engineers – and even in the cavalry or supply troops, the proportion of skilled tradesmen increased to include harness makers, farriers, wheelwrights and skilled artificers of all sorts. In times of need – for example, to equip troops suddenly posted abroad – the ranks were ‘combed out’ to provide temporary extra tradesmen, who received extra pay. At times, manual labour became compulsory for all soldiers in building fixed defences or in wartime sieges, for which extra pay was usually awarded. Expertise governed by contract often gave regimental tradesmen the upper hand in their dealings with the Quartermasters who were meant to organise the work. This provided opportunities for go-slows and workingto-rule, as well as maximising their earnings through various official and unofficial charges and perks. Large numbers of rankers were allocated as officers’ servants, usually because of pre-enlistment experience. Though they had less control of their working lives than the tradesmen, they were also excused many routine duties and benefited from tips and perks. Other soldiers used various handicraft or ‘penny capitalist’ skills to undertake paid tasks for their comrades and for officers and others: as victuallers, letter writers or souvenir makers. Particularly in the imperial postings, which became the norm by the late-Victorian period, regiments became self-contained, self-sufficient communities where most of the needs of European civilisation could be supplied by talented rankers, operating in their spare time. The mature Empire – especially in India – also provided a large number of responsible administrative postings in public service or utilities, both for steady NCOs and for some ex-ranker junior officers without private incomes. Neuburg outlines these mature potential opportunities of the late-Victorian army: Serving soldiers who achieved rank because they were skilled military tradesmen created a great leaven in the ranks, besides offering the beginnings of a varied career structure to able men who enlisted … [as] Conductors of Supplies and of Stores; Sergeant-Major of Works;

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Sergeant-Major Mechanist; several grades of Instructor and MasterGunner; Sergeant Farrier. Trumpeters, Buglers and Drummers might reach Sergeants rank, and below that there was a variety of specialist jobs for corporals. There was even a rank of Sergeant Photographer … and of course a range of ranks and appointments connected with pay offices and orderly rooms.2

This chapter will survey all the above aspects of soldiers as workers. It will further examine the special position of the Guards, mainly stationed in London, as well as post-demobilisation working lives. This includes soldiers’ particular role in the development of the British Empire and in staffing the new uniformed working class of the late-Victorian period. Industrialisation and its aftermath created a flexible workforce of men who often had to labour at a variety of jobs. This chapter emphasises that soldiering could be part of a varied career for many people. Free time Instead of combat, tedious garrison duty and repetitive drill and training comprised the working life of most nineteenth-century soldiers. Warfare has never played more than a relatively minor part statistically in the life of the armed forces. It has been claimed that ‘the average regiment will spend five minutes in battle for every fifty years’. Even the soldiers of Wellington’s Peninsular army – the pride of the early-nineteenth-century military, spent, at the very most, only 17 per cent of their time fighting during their seven years of campaigning. In Europe, soldiers had traditionally gone into quiet winter quarters when the bad weather came, so ‘the soldiers had then a great deal of leisure time in winter’. This was a Godsend for religious or studious soldiers: ‘What working man has half the opportunity for improving his mind, for attending the means of grace, or for usefulness in the world, possessed by soldiers?’, asked Nonconformist soldier John Stevenson in 1841. Even taking account of the hours spent cleaning uniforms and polishing kit, or on guard duties or fatigues, most soldiers, once trained, had time on their hands. Cavalrymen and artillerymen had to groom their horses and care for their more extensive kit, but for those stationed in India and other colonial garrisons, this work was undertaken by black servants. All had plenty of free time.3 The prominent radical William Cobbett was the RSM of the 54th Foot Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 25 2 Peter Thwaites, Presenting Arms: Representation of British Military History, 1660–1900 3 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), 2; Kevin Linch and Matthew McCormack, ‘Defining Soldiers: Britain’s Military, c.1740–1815’, War in History, 20 (2013); Thomas Jackson,

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in Nova Scotia in late 1780s. He claimed in his later journalism to run his battalion for his lazy and corrupt officers. In their absence, he arranged early parades: When I was commander, the men had a long day of leisure before them: they could ramble into town or into the woods; go to get raspberries; to catch birds, to catch fish, or pursue any other recreation, and such of them as chose, and were qualified, to work at their trades.

In these quiet Canadian garrisons ‘protracted leisure hours once morning drill and the midday dinner over’ led to ‘Common soldiers often become thoroughly disgusted with the monotonous hopeless and often annoying mode of life’, and consequently there were high desertion rates.4 Even newly raised units, like the overseas military adventurers of the BAL of 1836, were licked into shape so quickly that recruits only ‘had about three hours drill at day’. With few fatigues, and languor from high temperatures, India – typical of post-1857 army life – was a particularly lazy posting. Sergeant John Pearman described his life in the 1840s: our time was now spent very idle as all Drill was in the morning and Dismounted Drill in the Evening and as it was very hot during the Day we sat on our Charboy or Bedstead and Plaid at Cards, Back Gammon or Chess or anything that took our tast in this way our time was – past and at other times I would read Books or set at the Needle In the winter months I mostly went out with my Gun with a Comrade named Danl Larnden.5

In the late-Victorian period most soldiers finished work after the midday meal: ‘it was common for soldiers who had completed recruit training and who were not on guard or fatigue duty thereafter’. David French concludes: ‘To a civilian, accustomed to the long working hours that characterized the experience of labour for the working classes, one of the most striking features of the daily life of a trained soldier was how little work he was required to do.’ This situation was maintained into the twentieth century. John Lacy, a private of the Royal Irish Rifles in 1912, commented: Working hours are not long, and the holidays are numerous. A duty soldier, that is, fully trained, may ease his boredom by finding employment in various stores and workshops, by looking after horses, by making himself expert in specialized jobs, or by educating himself in the regimental Lives of Early Methodist Preachers (London: Wesleyan Conference, 1871), vol. 1, 109 and quoted in Snape, Redcoat and Religion, 143. Quoted in John Lewis-Stempel, The Autobiography of the British Soldier (London: 4 Headline, 2007), 99 and Peter Burroughs, ‘Tackling Army Desertion on British North America’, Canadian Historical Review, 61(1) (1980), 34. Anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 276 and Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 145–46. 5

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school. While in the army he may become, among other things, a cook, a waiter, a valet, a clerk, a butcher, an armourer or a storekeeper.6

Disproportionate free time was the key factor in the army’s main social problem: excessive drinking of alcohol in reaction to boredom. Cavalrymen behaved better than infantry, partly because they tended to be more educated and of higher social standing, and partly because care for their horses and equipment occupied the idle hours. So a certain amount of licence to the rank and file was deliberately allowed by officers in everyday army life. This included –where at all possible – allowing the more enterprising to work in their spare time to supplement their meagre wages.7 Regimental tradesmen A recent detailed analysis of the occupations of the men, numbering over 2,000, who went through the 30th Foot during the French Wars, has located 86 shoemakers and 54 tailors. These were the most common army trades in the nineteenth century. Under a tradesmen Sergeant, a team of around six were excused all drills and duties (except church parade) and made and repaired uniforms and boots for officers and men (see Illustration 2). These workers seem to have been found by the Sergeant tradesman from scrutinising new recruits for those who were ‘time-served’ in a recognised apprenticeship. Their higher pay was met through regimentally agreed price lists of charges that they could make to officers. The price lists also recorded the deductions that could be made from their comrades’ pay if the tradesmen needed to repair or supply more equipment than their regular issued allocation. Use of regimental tradesmen was compulsory, despite the often unfair deductions from the rankers’ meagre pay: ‘The men are strictly prohibited from altering the clothing themselves, all alterations however trifling are to be executed in the Tailor’s shop.’8 Surviving price lists were usually included in the official Regimental standing orders, which after 1820 were often printed. These often record other artisans working in the regiment, including small numbers of blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, painters and armourers. Price lists are almost identical to those agreed in civilian life between early journeymen trade societies (the forerunners of trade unions) and their masters or employers, which was the mainstay of early-nineteenth-century industrial relations for handicraft trades. Given the very detailed and specialised French, Military Identities, 97, 102 and 109. 6 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 11, 16. 7 Divall, Inside the Regiment, 27 and LIM, 81st Regimental Order Book, 1857–1880, 27. 8

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2  Shoemakers’ shop, Burma, 1906. The tools, equipment and lay-out of this shop of the 1st King’s Own Regiment, would be familiar to civilian and military tradesmen throughout the nineteenth century.

nature of those parts of the tailoring trade covered by the London tailors’ Military Lodge, it seems very likely that this tailors’ union branch consisted of ex-regimental tradesmen.9 Standing orders also record soldier tradesmen’s wages, which were roughly a third higher than those of their comrades: ‘Daily pay rates carpenters, painters, masons and other tradesmen 1s 6d a day, tailors when working for the Master Tailor 1s a day, labourers per day 10d.’ These rates were considerably less than those of most civilian artisans. Civilian shoemakers and tailors, even though not regarded as the most ‘honourable trades’, like printers, could easily make twice that figure. But civilians had to produce what the price list dictated in a given time. They had to be concerned about the supply of work, and be aware of trade cycles, either seasonal or related to technology, before they could necessarily reach an expected appropriate living wage. In contrast, military tradesmen had a constant supply of steady work, and had their bed and board found. Military tradesmen were expected to fulfil their outputs in the regimental price lists, which were very precise. In the 47th Foot in 1834, for example, tailors’ prices ranged from 8s. for an officer’s Regimental coatee, including For civilian price lists for common regimental trades, see Modern Records Centre 9 (MRC), Archives of National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, files, MSS 547/6/1/1, 7, 9 and 11, Working Class Movement Library, Salford, London Tailors archives, 1844, TU/ Tailors/7/20/1, TU/Tailors/3/7 and 14 Military Lodge.

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the Master Tailor’s initial cutting, to 10d. for a private’s trousers. Prices varied: a year later, the 47th Foot’s tailors were charging ‘Privates Trousers; Workman 6d, Master Tailor 8½d’. At the same time, their shoemakers were charging from 5s. 6d. for making officers’ boots, to 4d. for tipping and nailing a private’s boots. By 1844, the tailors of the 82nd Foot in Dublin could charge 17s. for an officer’s coatee (perhaps civilian competition in a capital city accounted for this price rise) though 10d. was still the rate for making a ranker’s trousers. Price lists issued by the shoemakers and tailors of the overseas military adventurers of the BAL were similar to those of the regular British army.10 Tradesmen’s work was supervised. ‘[The] Quartermaster is to observe a general superintendence over Regimental Armourer, Shoemakers, Tailors and workmen of every description.’ The military price lists were an attempt to control the output and make sure that Quartermasters, who had not served an apprenticeship, were not being deceived by slacking workmen. Though standing orders could state ‘their work [was] liable estimated by three competent persons’, in practice, it is unlikely that this ever happened. The only sanction was the monthly account submitted by the Master Sergeants to the Quartermaster, ‘who will cause the same to be charged on the several companies’ abstracts’. Though these could reveal obvious abuses, they were an inadequate tool for assessing the level of production. Though evidence, unsurprisingly, is absent, in theory, if the tradesmen maintained a good relationship with their Sergeant, they could all collude to demonstrate the agreed outputs, whilst actually being in the position of controlling their pace of work. This was the desired position of civilian workers, though often not achieved because they were supervised by time-served men who knew their trade intimately. In addition, unlike the civilians, the military tradesmen were still paid, whatever the output and whatever the state of the trade, and still ate their army rations. Moreover, the costs were met through bills to officers and rank-and-file deductions not by the vagaries of the market. Unsurprisingly, therefore, army life as a tradesman had many attractions: A steady year-round income could be attractive to a man in a trade notorious for seasonal fluctuations, such as building or even tailoring. A journeyman tailor (there were fifteen tailors in the ranks of the 16th Lancers in 1846) might bring home twenty-five shillings per week in summer, but only four to six shillings in winter. All living expenses had to be paid from such a wages. In these circumstances, the total wage of a cavalryman, nine shillings and fourpence per week, with most clothing, 10 LIM 47th Foot Standing Orders (Dublin: W. Frazer, 1834), 79, and 82–83, LIM, 47th Foot Order Book, 1830–1853, LIM, 82nd Regiment Standing Orders (Dublin: W. Frazer, 1844), 77, and NAM 6807-198, Regimental Orders 6th Regiment [BAL], 4 Apr. 1836.

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food, accommodation and medical care found, all year round, could be an attractive choice. Even the notorious stoppages from soldiers’ pay were not unknown in civilian life; a coal-miner provided his own candles and blasting-powder, and a tailor paid for his thread and trimmings.11

Hours were long. Those of the tailors of the 47th were typical in 1834: ‘assemble at 6 o’Clock in summer, and at day light in winter, they are to leave off at sun-set, unless they work by candle light, when they are not to be dismissed until eight’. For the 82nd’s tailors in 1844: ‘They are to assemble at day light and work until sun set, with the necessary intervals for their meals.’ But these were broadly similar to those of civilians, and all tradesmen expected to control the pace of their work through traditional breaks and other practices. There is some evidence that regimental tradesmen’s shops became strongholds of the alternative opaque world of the rankers, with, for instance, accusations of illicit drinking sessions.12 The fierce standing orders stipulation: ‘NB Workmen to find their own tools’, would be widely expected, as both civilian and military tradesmen were expected to own and care for their own tools, an important distinguishing feature from the unskilled working class. An additional perk was the absence of guard duty and fatigues, which meant uninterrupted nights and even absence at most parades. Tradesmen’s time was too valuable to the regiment: ‘81st Tailors excused all duties except church parade.’13 Tradesmen could add to their pay through various perks. By time-honoured trade tradition, sourcing materials, for which they were being paid, was regarded as the province of the workmen, but was sometimes contested as part of the constant tension between tradesmen and authorities. In the 47th: ‘The Master tailor will find all materials made use of ’, but not so for the shoemakers (the most radical of civilian trades): ‘Pay Sergeants to find Hemp, Hairs and Wax and the Shoemakers to furnish their own tools.’ Tradesmen too were expected to pick up leftover material such ‘grindery’ or ‘cabbage’, which was considered a legitimate perk of the respective trades of shoemaker and tailor. Likewise, regimental carpenters were entitled to ‘chips’, the traditional offcuts. It was in the tradesmen’s interest to maximise ‘waste’ materials which could be surreptitiously recycled. In every army trade 11 LIM, 47th Foot Standing Orders, 79 and John H.  Rumsby, ‘Making Choices: Constructing A Career in the Ranks of the Early Victorian Army’, in I.F.W. Beckett (ed.), Victorians at War: New Perspectives (London: Society for Army Historical Research, 2007), 23–24. 12 LIM, 47th Foot Standing Orders, 79; 82nd Regiment Standing Orders, 72; and John H. Rumsby (ed.), The Life of a Lancer in the Wars of the Punjaub (Solihull: Helion, 2014 [1855]), 20. 13 LIM, 82nd Regiment Standing Orders, 77 and ‘81st Regimental Order Book, 1857–1880’, 1861 entry.

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it could form the stock in trade of the handicraft ‘penny capitalists’ described later in the chapter.14 The supply of materials could also be a useful device for trying to conceal petty fraud. In 1830, Sergeant Richardson, Principle Orderly Room Clerk in the 47th Foot at Portsmouth, was found guilty and reduced to the ranks, as ‘The Oil and Emery allowance … had been supported entirely by false vouchers.’ In the same regiment, an enquiry was held in Buttivant, Ireland in 1850, into the Master Shoemakers and Quartermaster’s accounts, which recommended tightening up. This may be evidence of connivance for common gain and collusion between the shoemakers and the Quartermaster, who – as we have seen – was often promoted from the ranks.15 Tradesmen could also add to their pay through extra jobs for both their comrades and for legitimate ‘foreigners’ for officers. The latter were expected to pay for all their services, and would have only a vague idea of the true value of work provided, which no gentleman would deign to quibble over. Such extra jobs could be particularly confusing for newcomers to the service. As a cavalry recruit in the 1830s, Somerville describes his introduction to this new world: [being] visited by the regimental tailor, who measured us for over-alls, stable jackets and regimental dress coats. The master bootmaker, who had soldiers under him as journeymen … measured us for stable shoes and regimental dress boots. The regimental hairdresser came next and trimmed our locks to the prescribed length.16

Hairdressers were not amongst the official regimental tradesmen. Instead, grooming was shared between the rank and file, especially before the abolition of pigtails in 1808. Former hairdressers, though, could find a market for their skills, as reported by one officer in 1815: ‘Gibbons, before he enlisted, was a journeyman hairdresser and became very useful in shaving, hairdressing and setting the razors of officers.’ These unofficial hairdressers are inconsistently recorded – for example, in the 82nd Foot’s standing orders, which mention ‘Hair cutting 6d’, in 1844. This sum may have been standard, as Somerville also paid this amount in 1831.17 Not time-served tradesmen, but on the regimental establishment from the eighteenth century onwards, were pioneers. Each infantry regiment had ten 14 LIM, 47th Standing Orders (1834), 78–79; Nick Mansfield, ‘John Brown, a Shoemaker in Place’s London’, History Workshop Journal, 8 (1979), 135; and Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 31. 15 LIM, ‘Court of Enquiry Records’, 1830 and 1850, in 47th Foot Order Book, 1830–1853. 16 Somerville, Autobiography of a Working Man, 126–27. 17 B.W. Webb-Carter, ‘A Line Regiment at Waterloo’, JSAHR, 43 (1965), 61 and LIM, 82nd Regiment Standing Orders (Dublin, 1844), 77.

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3  Regimental tradesmen and workers, 2nd South Lancashire Regiment, 1907. Armourer, carpenters, clerks, cooks, tailors, orderlies, pioneers, postman, shoemakers, waiters and others proudly display the tools of their many trades in an Aldershot barracks, overseen by the seated central figure of the Quartermaster Sergeant. Their tradition of informal dress continues.

pioneers, led by a corporal, who performed basic field engineering duties. Marching at the very front of the column to clear the way, they were big men entitled to wear beards, leather aprons and grenadier caps, who lugged an assortment of axes, bill hooks, mattocks, pick axes, saws and spades, as well as firearms. ‘One of the perquisites of the job was that pioneers were allowed to charge for the wood they provided for the officers’ kitchen’. In the absence of skilled artificers, they attempted all sorts of tasks in camp. By the late-Victorian period, with the technical needs of the army increasing all the time, regiments were feeling that their pioneers’ skills might be extended: ‘The Pioneer Sergeant will exercise a general supervision over the skilled Artificers who have been appointed Pioneers. He will give every facility to any other men of the Regiment to practise and improve themselves in such trades as he may have tools available for.’ This became widespread in the more technical climate. A photograph from the 2nd South Lancashire Regiment shows pioneers with carpenters’ tools (see Illustration 3).18 18 D.S.V. Fosten, ‘Waterloo 1815: British Infantry, Tradition, 9 (1965), 27; Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 75; and LIM, Standing Orders of the 47th (The Lancashire Regiment) (Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1876), 25.

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New recruits were especially vulnerable to cruel deceits arranged between tradesmen and Pay Sergeants, in being issued faulty equipment and being charged for replacements: One mode of depriving the recruit of his pay is to give him an old shattered musket, easily injured; thus there are ten chances to one that some part of it gets broken while it is in his possession; and he has in consequence a round sum to pay on delivering it into stores when leaving the garrison … the armourer alone can decide; but in any case, he and the pay sergeants quietly arranged it all their own way.19

In the late-Victorian army the same tradesmen system still prevailed, with soldiers being charged for equipment which was accounted for in a cumbersome way. In 1890, the annual stoppages for a battalion of nearly 700 men amounted to nearly £214 for tailors’ bills and over £176 for the shoemakers. In the same decade, ex-Sergeant Arthur Palmer of the 79th Highlanders asserted: ‘Although they get their clothes supplied periodically … as is promised … they find out, much to their sorrow, that they have to pay the tailor for their being altered to fit them.’ Such a system functioned, albeit inefficiently, in the peacetime army in the UK. However, it struggled under pressure, especially on campaign, when tradesmen accompanied their regiments and were expected to carry out their duties whilst on the march.20 The pressures thrown up by campaigning or in preparation for war, or to fulfil particular tasks in garrison, could result in a ‘comb out’ of other tradesmen serving in the ranks as ordinary soldiers, to supplement the chosen team. These comb outs could, in dire need, be compulsory and involved non time-served men’s extemporised skills. When Costello, the Peninsular veteran Sergeant of the 95th Rifles, was appointed Lieutenant and Adjutant of the BAL’s new Rifle battalion in 1836, he took care to enlist ‘all the trades necessary to form a national hive of cunning craft and industry’. The flogged radical Alexander Somerville, recruited as a Sergeant in the BAL, recorded shoemakers and tailors and states that later in the campaign the Legion combed out ‘all carpenters, bricklayers, glaziers etc to be set to work into a habitable state of repair [on billets] … also set gardeners and others to work, and cultivated the gardens that were laying waste.’21 Sometimes tradesmen were combed out by senior officers for strategic purposes. These could be for mundane tasks. From the Napoleonic garrison in Sicily: ‘The troops in the Citadel will furnish five carpenters, also the 19 J. Macmullen, quoted in Palmer, Rambling Soldier, 85. 20 Palmer, ‘A Private Soldier on the Private Soldiers’ Wrongs’, 326 and Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 134. 21 Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 323 and Somerville, History of the British Legion, 107 and 298.

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troops in Messina … a like number who will attend the QMG [Quarter Master General’s] office … to receive their instruction.’ Their tasks could be connected to grand strategy. After the seizure of the Danish fleet in 1807, 3,000 carpenters were combed out of the British army and navy, 25,000 strong, occupying Copenhagen to prepare ships for the return to Britain. During the defence of Canada in the War of 1812, sailors were combed out of infantry regiments to man gunboats on the strategically important Great Lakes.22 Trades culture It is likely that military tradesmen shared much of the rich culture enjoyed by civilian handicraft artisans. This centred on pride in craftsmanship, serving recognised apprenticeship, and the trade societies that met convivially to discuss work-related issues. Trade societies stressed custom and practice in deciding the pace and outputs of work, through price lists agreed with master tradesmen or larger employers. Though trade societies saw their roots in the medieval guilds, most had evolved in the late eighteenth century but were threatened by mechanisation, with its emphasis on flexible unskilled labour and with the outlawing of their activities by the state as potentially subversive. They met these threats through sophisticated mutual support systems, elaborate ‘tramping’ arrangements to spread unmarried men geographically and by recourse to law, including petitioning Parliament to retain legal protection for apprenticeship. The last tactic was largely defeated by the Repeal of the Tudor Statute of Artificers in 1813, thus contributing to the flexible labour force needed by the Industrial Revolution, so artisans turned to radical politics for redress.23 Evidence is scarce to assess how much of this culture was shared by military tradesmen, though there are many similarities between pride in craftsmanship and pride in regiment. Duffy stresses that the Pan-European character of the ‘craft guild’ of eighteenth-century artillerymen was well established. Artillerymen defended their ancient ‘mysteries’ and rights, like ownership of bells in captured towns to melt down for their own purposes. 22 NAM 1972-04-08, Order Book, 2/27th Foot, 1808; Jonathan Crook (ed.), The Very Thing: The Memoirs of Drummer Richard Bentinck (London, Frontline, 2011), 17; and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 8, 535. 23 See The Book of English Trades (London: Phillips, 1824); Iorwerth Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London (Folkestone: Dawson, 1979), especially chap. 2; R.A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers (London: Granada, 1979); and Malcolm Chase, Early Trade Unions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). For shoemakers, especially, see Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon People (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), chap. 6 and Mansfield, ‘John Brown’ (1979), 128–35.

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They celebrated the feast of their patron saint, St Barbara, as with miners (who had provided most ordnance personnel from early modern times). John Rumsby connects the binge drinking of cavalry troopers, who in 1820s India were paid only every two months, with the widely observed contemporary ‘Saint Monday’ celebrations of civilian artisans extending their weekend. Overlap between military and civilian tradesmen could not be total, as occasionally troops were called out to disperse workmen’s strikes, such as the Chatham shipwrights’ dispute of 1801.24 Military tradesmen’s pride and culture were occasionally given public expression. At an inspection in Clomel, Ireland, in 1802: Mr Wheeler Burton, was described as a ‘cross-grained, grumbling, chattering politician [who] loved to thwart those in authority over him.’ The artificers had been ordered to wait while the soldiers marched past the Commander of the Forces in Ireland. Burton ‘took it into his head that he was insulted in being left behind’ and, in his plum-coloured coat with large white buttons, marched after the soldiers to the ‘horror and rage’ of the commanding major: ‘With the emblem of his trade, his claw hammer, held erect between his fingers, and his eyes fixed with imperturbable insolence of gaze on the Commander of the Forces, who in turn looked on with unmoved gravity, evidently taking Wheeler Burton for a legitimate part of the exhibition, whilst the major was foaming with rage, everyone else bursting with laughter.’25

Although army wages were lower than the average civilian tradesmen’s, the latter were dependent on the vagaries of the market, which during the period of industrialisation could be particularly harsh. It was very rare for superannuation to be provided by employers and, though the more skilled trade societies tried to provide it for their members, variable membership and lack of actuarial skills meant that such schemes rarely succeeded. By contrast, an army career could provide a tradesman regular work, at an acceptable and often self-controlled pace with an opportunity to accrue savings through outside work, official perks or unofficial scams, or to earn a pension. Such jobs were not unique to the army. Similar highly sought-after positions with similar benefits could sometimes be provided to tradesmen by large estates or in institutions like the Oxford and Cambridge colleges.26 The French Wars, with their rapid growth in the officer corps, increased the possibilities for private work. Thomas Bennet, Saddler Sergeant of 24 Duffy, Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 232; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 234; J.F.C. Harrison, The Common People (London: Fontana, 1984), 144–45; and Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 117. 25 Quoted in Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 106. 26 Described in Mansfield, ‘Grads and Snobs’, 184–98.

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the 13th Light Dragoons, made so much on ‘foreigners’, that he paid 160 guineas for a purpose-made carriage to take his kit to the Peninsular War. Though peacetime garrisons could not match this sort of money, regimental tradesmen could still make money dealing with suppliers and undertaking ‘foreigners’ for outside clients. Saddler Sergeant John Healey of the 16th Lancers left over £375 in his will in 1854. There is a general assumption of spendthrift behaviour by soldiers during this period, but soldiers could save large sums of money, especially in India where the cost of living was low. Between 1831 and 1839, the remittances of the 26th (Cameronian) Foot to their families, via the Edinburgh Savings Bank, amounted to over £8,000.27 At home, tradesmen could also enjoy very long and settled careers, especially in the Guards, usually posted to London or Windsor, which gave more access to outside work. In 1888, Saddler-Major McDonald of the 2nd Life Guards celebrated fifty years in his post. Evidence that even elite skilled tradesmen – like armourers – looked upon the army as a career choice, comes with the brother of Thomas Morris, the memoirist of the French Wars. Armourer Sergeant William Morris, was discharged as incapacitated from the 73rd Foot in 1820, but chose to re-enlist in the 63rd Foot, bound for Van Diemen’s Land in 1827. After working as an armourer there and in India, he retired with a 25-year pension in 1840.28 Cookson suggests that military tradesmen or ex-tradesmen may have been members of benefit or friendly societies. These were often, in the period of the Combination Acts and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, trade societies in disguise. He finds evidence that at least four post-war Scottish benefit societies were formed exclusively by ex-servicemen. Sylvia Frey has also found evidence of benefit societies in the British army on the American frontier in the 1780s. Certainly, Joseph Mayett was a member of a Buckinghamshire benefit society during his wartime militia service, drawing 15s. a week during a period of post-war unemployment.29 There is no evidence for trade societies organising in the army. There could also be potential conflict between regimental tradesmen and their civilian counterparts, especially those in trade societies. Two sergeants (a tailor and wright, or general engineer) were challenged at law by the trade societies 27 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 36–37; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 43; and Stephen Wood (ed.), ‘Thomas Carter and a Manuscript History of The 26th (or Cameronian) Regiment’, JSAHR, 67 (1989), 261–63. 28 R.G. Harris, ‘The Household Cavalry, 1854–1881’, JSAHR, 54 (1966), 205; Selby, Thomas Morris, 115; and Alan Lagden and John Sly, The 2/73rd at Waterloo (Brightlingsea: Lagden, 1998), 163–64. 29 Cookson, ‘Regimental Worlds’, 27; Sylvia Frey, The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 166; and Kussmaul, Autobiography of Joseph Mayett, 86.

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of Linlithgow in 1812, for their outside working. As honourably discharged soldiers could traditionally freely follow any trade without hindrance, the sergeants won their case. The following year, in 1813, the government repeal of the 1563 Statute of Artificers to remove limits to the free market, made similar prosecutions academic. Whilst Cookson may be reading too much into the evidence, the widespread involvement of ex-service tradesmen in post-1815 radicalism and trade unionism, does give his view credence as it demonstrates that the soldiers’ world was often not so far removed from the rest of society. The career of John Brown (1795–1861) is a good example of this. He enlisted in the army whilst on ‘tramp’ from the bitter and unsuccessful London shoemakers strike of 1812, was radicalised through involvement in the Cato Street conspiracy of 1820 and by the 1850s was a Liberal town councillor. The unexplained use of the union flag on many post-1815 trade society and radical banners, in an identical way to those on regimental colours, may also relate to this conundrum.30 The army remained one of the bastions of the artisan handicraft trades and its culture, when it was declining elsewhere, under the impact of mechanisation. By the late century, learning a trade in the army was part of the patter of the recruiting sergeant. A former sergeant of the 79th Highlanders recalled bitterly that plying a trade was, nevertheless, still the monopoly of the time-served man: What trade can you learn when soldiering save the trade of war? Of course, if you have been a tailor or shoemaker before you join the Army, the Government, with selfish consideration, profits by your knowledge; but I cannot now call to mind a single example of a man who learned a trade during the time he was serving he Majesty.31

Tailors and shoemakers Smart uniforms were essential to military discipline and pride, so tailoring became the archetypal military trade. The pre-revolutionary British army in North America had an enormous problem in importing ready-made military clothing, and the efforts of regimental tailors, even assisted by women camp followers and indigenous workers, was inadequate to the task. In such situations, ‘volunteers’ with experience of the trade were combed out of the ranks to supplement the official tradesmen. James Aytoun was one of seven 30 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 71–72; Prothero, Artisans and Politics, 51–61; Mansfield, ‘John Brown’ (1979); and Nick Mansfield, ‘Radical Banners as Sites of Memory: The National Banner Survey’, in Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrell (eds), Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 81–100. 31 Palmer, ‘A Private Soldier’, 334.

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extra tailors combed out in the 30th Foot in Dominica in the 1790s. He was even working on Sundays, ‘employed making watch coats for the different guards’. On leaving the island for the UK he entrusted the £30 he had earned to his lieutenant, who walked off with it during the confusion of the siege of Toulon in 1793.32 With the mobilisation at the start of the French Wars, the Devon Militia were ordered ‘to set the Taylors about fitting the new waistcoats and breeches as fast as possible. They are likewise to Divide the different Sises and fit them to the men of each Company as far as they will go’. Two months later, ‘The taylors Order’d to worke at new Cloathing by candle Light every evening till 10 o’clock.’ When new greatcoats failed to reach the 41st Regiment in Canada in 1809, the supplemented regimental tailors quickly ran up 200 from locally supplied cloth and repaired others using the old supply, to survive the ferocious winter.33 Even in the middle of campaigning, combed-out tailors finished new issues of rough-and-ready uniforms. In the winter of 1812, this happened in the 30th Foot in Spain and hot-weather campaign clothing was issued to Abercromby’s army in Egypt in 1801. During the long years of the Peninsular War, soldiers regularly bought coarse brown cloth at local markets which the regimental tailors made up into replacement issue trousers.34 Though the Guards were invariably better dressed, those battalions which went through the Peninsular campaigns were resupplied with coats shipped from the UK in April 1814, in southern France. But most of these: ‘were too small to be fitted to any of the men and many of the Serjeants coats were not sufficient for them … we were obliged to cut up two Serjeants Coats to alter the others which by joining both Cloth and Lace which makes those Coats so altered look so bad’. Moreover, the tailors had ‘left 160 coats all 5ft 6ins small, not a man in the Battn as they will fit’. The Quartermaster wrote: ‘I suppose you thought that our Men must be greatly fell way or half starved, but I can assure you that is not the case.’ Before going off to the Waterloo campaign the suppliers realised that the tall Guardsmen needed larger clothing. However, the Coldstreams’ work was only completed by the Grenadier Guards lending 16 of their tailors to aid the task.35 32 Frey, British Soldier in America, 36 and Aytoun, Redcoats in the Caribbean, 26–27, 31 and 40. 33 G.H. Hennessy, ‘Order Books of the 1st Devon Regiment in 1793’, JSAHR, 47 (1969), 215–21, 216–17 and Robert Henderson, ‘Not Merely an Article of Clothing’, JSAHR, 75 (1997), 27. 34 Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 71 and 196–98 and James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 75, 81, 85. 35 G.A. Steppler, ‘The Coldstream Guards at Waterloo: A Quartermaster’s Tale’, JSAHR, 67 (1989), 67.

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In the Spanish campaign, when the rank of colour sergeant was introduced without the issuing of official badges, Costello of the 95th Rifles describes the ‘Master tailor [with mates] who worked on an imitation with coloured silks, worked on the arms of the men appointed.’ The regimental colour of the 2/69th Foot was captured at the battle at Quatre Bras in the Waterloo campaign and later the regiment became part of the post-war Paris occupying garrison. To ask the new Royalist regime for its return would have irritated the still largely Bonapartist French army, so, unsportingly, the 69th ‘set their tailors to work and manufactured a new colour and they contradicted the statement of their having lost one’.36 Every soldier carried a spare pair of shoes in their knapsacks on campaign, but shoemakers also had to carry their tools and undertake ad hoc work. Benjamin Harris of the 95th Rifles brought a haversack of leather pieces to Spain but ‘The lapstone I took the liberty of throwing to the devil.’ Before the retreat to Corunna in 1808: ‘At Salamanca we stayed seven or eight days, and during this time the shoemakers were again wanted, and I worked with my men incessantly during their short halt.’ Harris made £200 in total during his army career before being discharged through Walcheren fever, which enabled him to set up his own shop in Soho. On campaign, regimental shoemakers were often sent far and wide to locate suitable leather supplies, with opportunities for underhand money-making deals with local suppliers and potential escapades. Memoirist Thomas Morris of the 73rd describes just before Waterloo accompanying his friend, shoemaker Sergeant Burton, on a drunken ramble near their billets through Flanders which ended in them getting lost, involved in fights and sleeping under a hedge. In contrast, it was the regimental shoemakers buying leather that brought the first news of the surprise French attack at Villa Muriel in 1812.37 Such ad hoc campaign work continued into the nineteenth century. An anonymous new recruit, a tailor by trade, enlisted in the 1836 BAL intervention in the First Carlist War. Possibly a political radical, he complained about having to undertake his trade rather than drilling: I got on well on as well as most of my sort for the time being, after which I was ordered into the tailors’ shop to assist the clothing … From these [drill] lessons I was absent; the shop, more correctly the floor, having stronger claim was unwillingly compelled to acknowledge. I did not come to Spain to tailor, I could have done that in London … it was taken against 36 Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 248 and Selby, Thomas Morris, 90. The regiment had lost their other colour to the French in the disastrous assault on Bergen Op Zoom the previous year. It still hangs in Les Invalides, Paris. 37 Hibbert, Recollections of Rifleman Harris, 28; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 71–72; Selby, Thomas Morris, 64–65; and Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 112.

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the wishes of the sergeant tailor, who I looked upon as my natural enemy … Some few days before we marched I got released from the tailors’ shop … and my labours … gave me a fair allowance of pocket-money.38

With the larger Imperial armies from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, uniforms and boots were mass-produced from 1859 by a government-owned clothing factory at Pimlico, as well as by civilian contractors. Production of boots was concentrated in Northamptonshire and shirt-making by women in villages around large garrison towns like Colchester or Aldershot. There were also specialist civilian military tailors for officers’ uniforms, often staffed by former regimental tailors, which could be very important to local economies. Even so, the regimental teams continued, working mainly on repairs until after the Great War.39 Cavalry and artillery trades Many recruits were attracted to the cavalry from previous experience of working with horses. One example is the long-serving radical activist Allen Davenport (1775–1846). As a poor country boy he went to work as groom for a gentleman farmer and ‘learnt in a considerable degree the art of horsemanship … [and] sometimes rode with master after the squire’s hounds’. Davenport then worked for a veterinary surgeon as a horse-breaker and enlisted in the Windsor Foresters (a light dragoon fencible regiment) in 1794. He served his whole seven years as an ordinary trooper, indicating that equine skills were probably widespread in the early nineteenth and that a man had to have exceptional talents to be taken on as a tradesman. Nonetheless, in cavalry regiments and in the artillery corps, from the French Wars onwards, the number of skilled tradesmen increased to include blacksmiths, carters, collar makers, farriers, harness makers, saddlers and wheelwrights, all of whom seemed to enjoy some degree of control over their work. Rumsby’s research indicates that cavalry tradesmen were overwhelmingly employed in their pre-enlistment trades.40 Regimental farriers provided both smithing skills and basic horse medicine. After battle, the master farrier (often called a Farrier Major) dispatched wounded horses with a pole axe and hacked off the hooves from the dead. Each horse was individually tattooed with a unique army number and this mutilation proved that the beast had died and not been surreptitiously sold. 38 Anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 280–81. 39 Roper, Records of the War Office, 177 and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 169. 40 Malcolm Chase (ed.), The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport (London: Scholars Press, 1994), 5–7; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 908–09; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 77.

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The post ranked as a Sergeant and literacy was essential to record these numbers. The French Wars proved that such skills were valuable and one farrier per troop became standard, with as many as ten in most cavalry regiments. On campaign, farriers were equipped with forge carts and even mobile forges carried mules in the Peninsular War. In addition, a second farrier per troop was recruited and every trooper carried spare horseshoes and nails, with some in each troop being trained to shoe in emergencies. From farriers evolved the veterinary surgeons – first mentioned in cavalry regiments in 1796 – which afforded career progression for small numbers of rankers even into officer status, though they retained their tradesmen’s position and were not commissioned until the late-Victorian period. Cavalry regiments also employed ‘rough riders’ for breaking horses. In the 16th Lancers in mid-Victorian India, the rough riders, who were all privates, were under Cornet William Webster, a classic ex-ranker who had served at Waterloo. Rough riders got tips from officers for breaking in chargers and for helping them pass equitation certificates. In India they could undertake private work, ‘breaking in and training horses for civilians and wealthy natives’.41 A six-gun troop of the new Royal Horse Artillery had an establishment of two mounted blacksmiths, two saddlers, one farrier and one wheeler. By 1810, this had increased to a carriage smith and a farrier, two shoeing smiths, two collar makers and two wheelwrights. Cavalry and artillery trades establishments increased further in peacetime. By 1869, C squadron (two troops) of the 10th Hussars had one Farrier Sergeant, one Saddler Sergeant and three Shoeing Smiths for 134 men. In the mid-Victorian army, skilled men were clearly enlisting to take up tradesmen’s ranks. The most common recruit trades to the 10th Hussars were grooms (11), saddler and smiths (three each), and farrier (two). Shoeing smiths were paid more than Corporals, and Farrier Sergeants more than Sergeants. By 1879, artisans attached to a Royal Artillery battery had risen again to three shoeing smiths, two collar makers and two wheelers commanded by a Farrier Sergeant paid at 3s. 4d. a day.42 On campaign, even infantry regiments recruited small numbers of blacksmiths to care for officers’ horses and make simple repairs to equipment. 41 NAM 2004-12-28-1 1978, Notebook of a Corporal Farrier of the Royal Horse Guards; D. Chandler, ‘The Journal of Edward Heeley’, JSAHR, 64 (1986), 130; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 77 and 96; and Marquis of Anglesey, A History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3, 67. 42 R. North, ‘The Raising and Organizing of the King’s German Legion’, JSAHR, 39 (1961); Roderick MacArthur, ‘British Army Establishments during the Napoleonic Wars, Part 2’, JSAHR, 87 (2009), 343, quoted in James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 222; Michael Barthop, ‘Anatomy of a Troop and Squadron 10th Royal Hussars, 1859–1872’, JSAHR, 62 (1984), 201–16; and P.E. Abbott, ‘Royal Artillery at Isandhlwana, 1879’, JSAHR, 56 (1978), 95–111.

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Costello’s memoir tells us the elite light troops of the ‘95th Rifles had a blacksmith who erected his forge in an old mail … shoeing the officers’ horses’. With generals taking the field with ten horses (three for servants), even Wellington’s General Staff in the Peninsula were allocated their own farrier. In peacetime, ambitious officers tended to disregard the contribution of tradesmen as not proper soldiering. When adjutant of 7th Hussars in India in 1892, the future Field Marshal Douglas Haig apparently ‘detested … [the] saddler, farrier, officer’s servant, signaller etc.’ because their work excused them ‘daily parades, drills and lectures’.43 Armourers In-house regimental Armourer Sergeants were first appointed in 1802. They were mainly recruited from civilian gunsmiths, which was an erratic process dependent on the state of the firearms trade. John Taylor, archetypically from Birmingham, served as a Fencible between 1799 and the Peace of Amiens, and rejoined the army in the 73rd Foot in 1807, at the height of the Orders in Council slump. He was appointed Armourer Sergeant in its new second battalion in 1809, fought with the regiment at Waterloo, and decided to stay on in his job in the Army of Occupation in France, only being discharged, with a pension, after an injury in 1817. Such was the premium on their skills that promotion for armourer sergeants could be very swift. Nathaniel Artis, a new recruit to the 30th Foot in 1803, and a civilian gun maker, served one day before being appointed Armourer Sergeant.44 Regimental Armourer Sergeants, often with a small team, were retained in the peacetime army after 1815. Given the army’s increasingly imperial role, such skills and resourcefulness were valued a long way from home. Ongoing colonial conflicts meant the trade became more important in the Victorian period, with a specialist training course, based at the Royal Small Arms (RSA) Factory in Birmingham, whose graduates attracted the highest NCO wages. Their 1870 weekly rate (£1 16s. 2d.) was more than Regimental Sergeant Majors, and nearly twice as much as junior officers. It compared well with the £1 18s. earned by civilian London engineers and was the equivalent to the earnings of ‘labour aristocrats’ like compositors or coachmakers. It is also likely that regimental Armourers were aware of the active participation of their civilian counterparts in trade societies and accompanying radical politics. Certainly, in 1817, there were several ‘attempts 43 Costello, Adventures of a Soldier, 125; James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 179; and John Hussey, ‘Douglas Haig Adjutant’, JSAHR, 73 (1995), 129. 44 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 908–09; Lagden and Sly, 2/73rd at Waterloo, 228; and Divall, Inside the Regiment, 82.

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made to seduce the military Depot at Weedon which had been visited by the radical brother to the armourer there’ (Weedon on the Grand National Union Canal in Northamptonshire was strategically important and intended as the refuge of the Royal family in the event of Napoleonic invasion).45 Though there was little promotion for Armourers beyond the regiment, the Board of Ordnance did have a few semi-civilian ‘proof-masters’ and storekeepers until after its abolition post-Crimea. One of these, William Parry, took a team of eight artificers to join Lord Byron’s adventurers in Greece in 1823, where they set up an Ordnance depot for the independence army. Thereafter, the RSA training course gave some opportunities as instructors for very skilled men. On leaving the army, armourers could expect secure and lucrative jobs in the burgeoning arms trade in private firms, mainly based in Birmingham. Dissatisfaction with private-sector profiteering led to the expansion of government factories, based in Enfield from 1816, in which many ex-army armourers also found employment.46 By 1900, the army employed over 500 Armourer Sergeants, whose high pay was further supplemented by perks; when soldiers’ firearms were adjudged dirty by inspecting officers or NCOs, hapless rankers were fined a shilling to cover the cost of specialist cleaning, which went to the Armourer. New recruit Frank Richards, angered by this injustice in 1900, and protesting, found himself confined to barracks for eight days. The introduction of the rifled musket in place of the old smooth bore Brown Bess created a need for accurate shooting. The army’s School of Musketry opened in Hythe in 1853, training Sergeant Musketry Instructors. This was another new tradesman’s post, which was rapidly adopted by all regiments.47 Butchers, food and drink Alongside the regimental tradesmen, other long-term, but non-establishment jobs were needed by the army, especially in wartime, largely supplied by recruits with pre-enlistment skills. In the UK, soldiers traditionally cooked their own food in small informal messes and poor ration food could be enhanced at a better price if pre-enlistment skills of a mess member could 45 Cameron Pulsifer, ‘Beyond the Queen’s Shilling: Reflections on the Pay of Other Ranks in the Victorian British Army’, JSAHR, 80 (2002), 331–32 and Michael Miller, ‘“The Ultimate Engine”: The British Army and Popular Radicalism’, MPhil. thesis, University of Southampton (Chichester), 1996, 19. 46 Roper, Records of the War Office, 46; Moises Enrique Rodríguez, Under the Flags of Freedom: British Mercenaries in the War of the Two Brothers, the First Carlist War, and the Greek War of Independence (Falls Village, CT: Hamilton Books, 2009), 334–35; J.W. Fortescue, The Last Post (London: Macmillan, 1934), 67; and Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 40. 47 Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 50–51 and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 58–60.

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be harnessed. James Aytoun, serving with the 30th Foot in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century, asserted: ‘We had a butcher in the mess and he and some more of the men used to go a mile or so into the country and buy a sheep which, when killed and all counted, cost us about 1s ½d per pound’.48 With no regimental cooks employed in the early nineteenth century, such skills were at a premium on campaign. In the Peninsular War, the largest number of combed-out men were butchers who processed meat carried ‘on the hoof ’ with the armies, but cooking was still shared out by the messes of the rank and file. In the words of a Corporal of the 42nd Highlanders: ‘Beef … we scarcely ever stood in want of, but it was marched alive with the army, and whenever we halted a certain number of bullocks were killed for the brigade by the butchers of the different regiments.’ ‘The butchers as a sort of perquisite were entitled to the bullocks’ heels which they sometimes sold’, alongside offal, heads and even blood: ‘bullock’s tail could fetch sixpence or a shilling and the liver five shillings’. In the inevitable plundering by hungry soldiers on campaign, other pre-war skills could also be useful, as reported from Spain in 1810 by a sergeant of the 7th Royal Fusiliers: ‘We found a box in which was a bag of Indian corn. This was taken by one of our men who had been a miller to a windmill at some distance. He set it going and ground the corn, of which we made several messes of passable porridge.’49 With the end of the French Wars, the widespread availability of recently constructed barrack accommodation and the new army role of imperial gendarmerie, cooking for troops began a slow process of professionalisation. The old, small self-catering mess system was replaced by regimental cooks in barrack kitchens, though separate dining rooms were a late nineteenthcentury development. Cooks began to be appointed, again largely on pre-enlistment skills, with a Sergeant supervising a group of about ten, one for each infantry company in a regiment. Food preparation (‘spud bashing’) became a regular activity for unwilling rankers in fatigue parties or as minor punishment for defaulters. The many strains on the army caused by the crisis of the Crimea and Indian Mutiny led to some food reform in which the celebrated chef Alexis Soyer played a part by designing a camp cooker with appropriate menus. No specialist training courses existed until 1875, leading to perennial ranker complaints about army food and especially the 48 Aytoun, Redcoats in the Caribbean, 2. 49 Quoted in Esdaile, Peninsular Eyewitnesses, 236; Eileen Hathaway (ed.) A Dorset Soldier: Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence, 1790–1869 (Staplehurst: Spelmont Press, 1995 [1886]), 88; Coss, All for the King’s Shilling, 92; James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 116; and John Spencer Cooper, Rough Notes of Seven Campaigns (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1996 [1869]), 50.

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workers who produced it. By 1900, the typical cantonment of the Indian Raj, which most late-Victorian soldiers would have encountered during their careers, contained a regimental dairy and bakery, plus a regimental bazaar, supervised if not staffed by cooks and their teams. In addition, as discussed later, rankers were sometimes allowed to set up their own supplementary catering businesses.50 Gardening was a constant activity in remote postings where regular fresh food supply was doubtful. As early as the 1750s, detachments in Canada were designating a soldier as gardener, who was then ‘Excused from all other duty’ and expected ‘Constantly to Attend on yt business’. The 48th Foot, the garrison of New South Wales in the early 1820s, ran a market garden and a windmill for grain to supplement their rations, under the supervision of a Sergeant Whelan. As late as 1911, the East Lancashires’ officers’ mess employed a kitchen gardener: ‘A soldier to be employed as gardener at 10s a month’.51 Napoleon’s armies had detachments of masons in their vanguards to build bread ovens for the advancing columns. Though this was not the British practice, masons in the ranks were useful in the Peninsular War in improving home comforts, including catering. In the spring of 1813, after inspecting snow on the floor of a field hospital for the Highlanders of the 42nd Foot, General Edward Pakenham acted: ‘His lordship enquired of the colonel if he had not some masons or bricklayers in the regiment, if so to send for them immediately. And on their coming he told them to build a fireplace there.’ Masons’, bricklayers’ and carpenters’ skills were also useful in preparing winter quarters in Portuguese villages: ‘we … turned all the skill our masons possessed to the construction of fireplaces that would not smoke, and it required all their knowledge … to succeed even in part’.52 Hospitals, military police and transport In the nineteenth century, hospitals were run by individual units under the supervision of regimental surgeons. These were established in barracks or 50 See my unpublished paper, ‘Class, Food, and the Nineteenth-Century British Army’, given at the conference ‘Food and Drink: Their Social, Political and Cultural Histories’, 16 June 2011 at University of Central Lancashire; Holmes, Soldiers, 530–31; and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 84. 51 George Yagi Jr., ‘Surviving the Wilderness: The Diet of the British Army and the Struggle for Canada, 1754–1760’, JSAHR, 89 (2011), 77; Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 27 and 121–22; and LIM, Mess Rules 30th Regiment [sic] 1911 (the regiment had been renamed the 1st East Lancashire Regiment thirty years before). 52 R.H. Roy (ed.), ‘The Memoirs of Private James Gunn’, JSAHR, 49 (1971), 107 and James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 49–51.

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colonial garrisons or improvised on campaigns. Under a Hospital Sergeant, soldiers – often convalescents – were seconded as hospital orderlies and were paid an extra 4d. per day. The orderlies were generally despised by fighting soldiers for offering minimal care. Sergeant Cooper of the 7th Fusiliers reported of his stay in a Peninsular military hospital: ‘Shirt unchanged and sticking to my sore back; ears running stinking matter; a man lying close on my right hand with both of his legs mortified nearly to the knees, and dying. A little sympathy would have soothed, but sympathy there was none. The orderlies were brutes.’ Sometimes such work was related to pre-enlistment experience. Thomas Morgan, Hospital Sergeant of the 16th Lancers, for example, was a druggist. Hospital staff were notorious for claiming perks, and worse, potentially robbing their comrades: ‘The post can be a powerful and a profitable one, involving procurement of drugs, and other supplies for the regimental hospital.’ Hospital Sergeant George Calladine of the 16th Lancers, made £5 to £6 per month in the UK, on washing alone. In India, the EIC paid an extra retainer of 10 rupees to hospital staff. Though they became more professionalised in the post-Crimea reforms with the formation of the Army Hospital Corps, its unsavoury reputation was maintained. The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) was formed in 1898, but the rest of the army claimed this stood for ‘Rob all my Comrades’.53 The office of Provost Marshal was an early modern creation, tasked with policing the potentially troublesome army and punishing criminals. Punishments were harsh and the Provost Marshal could administer summary justice in the field. He needed staff to carry out his commands. In the Peninsular War, the Provost Marshal had the support of another (junior) officer and 30 cavalry troopers, plus a clerk and an executioner. (There were 40 hangings in the course of the war, plus many judicial shootings.) Each division of around ten regiments appointed attached Sergeants as Assistant Provost Marshals, amounting to 24 in total. They enjoyed the temporary pay and allowances – but not the status – of an Ensign, the lowest commissioned rank. From 1813, these police were backed up by a small Cavalry Staff Corps, an offshoot of the Horse Guards’ own engineers.54 In the post-1815 Army of Occupation in France, rumbling discipline problems, such as when ‘soldiers of 43rd broke into a store in Bapaume and drank themselves into a stupor’, led to the appointment of Assistant Provost Marshals in each regiment. Steady Colour Sergeants, like John Ward of the 30th Foot, employed small squads of trusted seconded rankers to act as regimental military policemen. Thomas Morris of the 73rd, also serving in 53 Cooper, Rough Notes of Seven Campaigns, 150; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 43 and 270; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 190; and Roper, Records of the War Office, 227. 54 Divall, Inside the Regiment, 142–43 and Holmes, Soldiers, 543–44.

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the Army of Occupation, referred to the stigma attached to these regimental policemen who: seldom go back to their own regiments, but generally get promoted in some other corps, where they take special care not to mention the duty they have been on, or they would be received in the same way that ‘Jack Ketch’ would probably be, if he were to force himself into respectable civil society.

According to Sergeant Joseph Donaldson of the 94th Foot, in Spain in 1813, provosts ‘were guided more by caprice and personal pique than any regard to justice. In fact, they seemed to be above all control, doing what they pleased, without being brought to account, and were often greater robbers than the men they punished.’55 By the 1870s, each battalion had its own full time Regimental Policemen, under a Provost Sergeant. The regimental police of the 1st East Lancashire Regiment (ex-30th Foot) in 1886 consisted of one Provost Sergeant, two Provost Corporals and six to ten ‘habitually steady and well conducted’ privates. Although specialised corps of mounted and foot police were formed in 1877 and 1885, these were mainly active in large garrisons and the regimental policemen continued until the Great War.56 Wheeled transport was required on campaign or in movement between stations. Traditionally, army transport was provided by ad hoc hired civilians, but was supplemented with combed-out regimental carters, particularly in wartime. A waggoner from the 42nd Highlanders was reported as a deserter in 1779 New York, to be recognised from his ‘grey duffel coat’ working dress rather than a kilt. In 1794, a specialist unit, the Royal Waggoners, was formed. Though now part of the military, the personnel were the same rough civilians, according to one army official: ‘A greater set of scoundrels never disgraced an army. I believe it to be true that half of them, if not taken from the hulks, have at times visited them … They have committed every species of villainy, and treat their horses badly.’ Clad in blue, rather than the red coats of the line, they were sardonically nicknamed ‘The Newgate Blues’ by other soldiers. They were soon followed by a Corps of Artillery Drivers, whose reputation was similar: ‘drivers were notorious above other corps for their misconduct’.57 55 Thomas Dwight Veve, The Duke of Wellington and the British Army of Occupation in France, 1815–1818 (London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 86; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 87 and 94; Selby, Thomas Morris, 50; and Donaldson, Recollections, 222. 56 LIM, Standing Orders of the 47th (The Lancashire) Regiment (Aldershot, 1876), 37; Standing Orders 1st East Lancashire Regiment (Lahore, 1886); and Holmes, Soldiers, 543–44. 57 ‘Note 1020’, JSAHR, 46 (1968), 251; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 85; and Glover, Peninsular Preparation, 88.

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The waggoners and drivers had their own farriers, saddlers and blacksmiths to care for their horses and equipment. Although renamed the Royal Wagon Train in 1812, the Waggoners’ performance in the French Wars was poor and the corps was abolished with the peace. A new Land Transport Corps and a Commissariat Corps of Waggoners (both 1,000 strong) had to be hastily assembled to help cope with the horrors of the Crimean War, with the same lack of success. In the same conflict, another ill-disciplined workforce was the semi-militarised Army Works Corps formed from London navvies. Though subject to military law, they were drunk, insubordinate and mutinous and loathed by soldiers for being better paid (5 shillings a day) and worse at digging trenches. ‘All they did was to drink, smoke and play at cards’ according to one hussar private.58 The post-Crimea army reforms saw the gradual removal of many of these transport and manual jobs from the regiments. They transferred to new army departments, like the service, medical and veterinary corps, and became increasingly professional. However, this was a slow process and even by the Boer War many tasks were still duplicated by the regiments, a product of innate conservatism, compounded by long foreign postings in battalion-sized garrisons. Not until the late-Victorian period did army transport become militarised, with the labour corps having to wait until the Great War. Most regiments employed various other NCOs or senior soldiers in specialist roles. In training, fuglemen demonstrated drill movements to recruits. On the march, the regimental Quartermaster employed ‘camp colour men’ who would mark out with small flags the position of each company’s bivouac for the coming night. Telegraph men were employed both in the UK and in overseas garrisons to staff the new coastal communication system. Recorded examples of telegraph men range from the Shropshire Militia at Gorlestone in 1813, critical to the defence of the port of Great Yarmouth, to ‘Signal Man’ Private Charles Hutchinson of the 29th Foot, who received a 24 shillings a year extra pay on Mauritius in the late 1820s.59

58 MacArthur, ‘British Army Establishments during the Napoleonic Wars’, 354–55; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 299, vol. 13, 224–25; Dick Sullivan, Navvyman (London: Coracle, 1983), chap. 15; and William Douglas, Soldiering in Sunshine and Storm (Edinburgh: Black, 1865), 163. 59 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 131; McGuffie, ‘The Lord Bradford Militia Documents’, 142; Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 258–301; and LIM, Garrison Orders, Mauritius, 1826–31, 334.

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Clerks and servants Clerks and other white collar workers were in constant demand and could provide the literate and competent ranker opportunities for progression. This is illustrated by the army career of William Cobbett, who saved ‘a hundred and fifty guineas’ whilst serving in North America in the 1790s. Clerks could easily be promoted to Paymaster Sergeant, who, under the supervision of a regimental Paymaster, handled money and paperwork for each of the ten companies in a regiment. Sometimes these Sergeants did not even need to be literate. Nonconformist Private Mayett, balloted into the Buckinghamshire Militia, acted as a clerk to his Pay Sergeant who could not read or write, seemingly a widespread practice during the huge mobilisation of the French Wars.60 Quartermaster Sergeants with their ready opportunities for perks and fraud, had a notorious reputation but some made the commissioned ranks as Quartermasters. It was thought that these ex-rankers would be better at spotting petty larceny. The peacetime army supplemented Paymaster Sergeants’ Clerks with Orderly Sergeants, but opportunities for peculation continued. James Bodell describes the unmasking and trial of a fellow Orderly Sergeant in the 1860s, after ‘several hundred [undelivered] letters were found … and the Pennies purloined’. With scant sympathy for stealing his comrades’ property, this Sergeant Tuke, was tried, flogged and drummed out of the 59th, far from home in Hong Kong. On the other hand, continuing lack of professionalism by many of the officer corps and increasing Victorian working-class respectability, led to the growth of a sober and steady organisation of clerks. They then provided the bureaucratic backbone of a complex imperial army and were eventually consolidated into an Army Pay Corps in 1877. Outside the core staffing of the various stores and offices of the established Victorian army, army clerks undertook a variety of other tasks. One example was the earliest history of the 26th Foot, which has been attributed to two Victorian Sergeants, successive Orderly Room Clerks.61 Servants, like soldiers, have, until recently, largely been ignored by labour historians, despite their undoubted importance in the nineteenth-century workforce. In the Georgian period, officers’ servants were still largely hired civilians, often wearing their master’s or occasionally a special regimental livery. With the increased size of the officer corps in the French Wars, and 60 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army, 186; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 82–83; and Kussmaul, Joseph Mayett, x, xxx and 47. 61 Keith Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire: The Reminiscences of James Bodell, 1831–92 (London: Bodley Head, 1982), 68–69 and Wood, ‘Thomas Carter and a Manuscript History’, 258–65.

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with the difficulties of recruiting civilians on overseas operations, personal servants and grooms began to be provided from the ranks, generally through pre-enlistment experience.62 Like other soldier workers, personal servants were excused many routine duties and benefited from tips and perks. On the march or on campaign they led a pack horse loaded with their masters’ and regimental possessions, so were listed as ‘Bat Horse man’, which later became shortened to ‘batman’. Specialised servant roles also developed – for example, to staff the growing number of officers’ regimental messes. Memoirists of the French Wars have left varied accounts of the batman’s role. Militia conscript Joseph Mayett, a dour Baptist, became one and, though tempted by the better food, regarded the role as sinful. Hard-bitten Private Wheeler of the 51st Foot eventually disliked the job enough to ask to return to his mess mates in the ranks. Gunner Miller, serving in the Mediterranean, was an officer’s batman for 15 months in Gibraltar and in Minorca and then an officer’s mess servant in the Egypt campaign, but again asked to return to his guns. In hard campaigning, where supply systems broke down, the more unworldly officers were totally dependent on the scrounging and pillaging abilities of their servants. These memoirs also demonstrate that the servant’s role could be one of several that a soldier might undertake during his service. Mayett and Wheeler both became clerks at various times, with Wheeler finishing as Sergeant Schoolmaster, and Miller undertaking outside building work. A lucky few found specialised roles and good billets with long-term attachments to staff officers. John Hill of the 30th Foot, was servant to Generals Graham and Murray in succession, in the Peninsular War, and continued in this role when his regiment was posted back to the UK. Cavalry officers going on active service took large numbers of spare riding and baggage horses. The 27 officers of the 7th Hussars, took 70 horses between them to the Corunna campaign in 1808, which required large numbers of grooms as servants.63 It was generally the unfit, underage or elderly soldiers (who were less useful in combat), who were allocated as officers’ servants, and who on campaign and in battle were stationed with the baggage. At the climax of the French wars, with overall manpower stretched to capacity, attempts were made to tighten up the workforce. New regulations in 1811 stipulated that: No Soldier is to be employed as an Officer’s Servant, who is not perfect in the Drill, and who has not acquired a complete knowledge of his Duty as 62 For a discussion of the literature on servants from labour historians, see John Benson, ‘One Man and his Women’, 204–05 and 212. 63 James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 25; Kussmaul, Joseph Mayett, x and xxx; Adventures of Serjeant Benjamin Miller, 6, 13 and 29; Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 105; Divall, Inside the Regiment, 60; and Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 185.

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a Soldier … They are to mount Guard with the officers they are allowed … They are to fall in with their Companies at all reviews, Field Days, Inspections and Marches.

Assuming that the tallest men made the best fighters and to weed out the shortest soldiers, General Orders from 1815 stipulated that men selected as officers’ servants were to be the shortest in the regiment. Private civilian servants continued in the UK and in nearby seats of war – one 15-year-old groom left a Waterloo memoir. In more exotic postings, foreign civilian servants were generally hired. All servants could draw rankers’ rations and were subject to martial law.64 With the peace in 1815, private civilian servants continued to be hired by wealthier officers. This led to ‘the practice of some officers of dressing their soldier-servants in their own livery instead of the corps uniform’. Regimental standing orders tried to outlaw this practice, for example, in the 9th Lancers in 1836. In the 30th Foot, a regimental livery was specified as late as 1852 on Cephalonia, where it was stipulated that ‘officers’ servants who attend mess are to be dressed in the Regimental Livery viz Brown Coat, white waistcoat and yellow plush breeches with a button bearing the Sphinx and Crown’.65 Such formality centred on the officers’ mess. Here, individual officers’ servants were supervised by the Mess Sergeant, with a small team of mess waiters, often with a specialised ‘silver man’, who cared for the regimental trophies. Mess servants fed better than comrades on the leftovers, and could benefit from tips, especially given the often hard drinking culture. For the Mess Sergeant this could be very lucrative. Mess servants, along with Quartermasters, could easily extend perks through theft or corruption. With the Empire, a dual system of hiring servants – either locals or soldiers – continued. In India, menial work was done by locals, but more trustworthy and potentially lucrative jobs were held by British rankers. Thomas King of 14th Light Dragoons was described as ‘in charge of the Officers’ Mess, a very trustworthy and responsible position. He had 64 black servants under his command … moving in a very respectable sphere in the army … equal to any gentleman in England … The sergeant who previously held this post for 12 years had died last month leaving £500’. In contrast, in parts of the ‘white’ Empire, the high cost of all labour generally meant soldier servants were employed, with perhaps the exception of French Canada where ‘an English servant cannot get on well in marketing unless he can speak French’.66 64 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 100 and Chandler, ‘The Journal of Edward Heeley’, 99. 65 Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 71 and LIM, Mess Rules 30th Regiment. 66 Holmes, Soldiers, 566–68; Peter Beattie (ed.), ‘The Letters of John Curtis Binkley, 1843–1849’, JSAHR, 61 (1983), 32, quoted in Senior, British Regulars in Montreal, 53.

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Amongst other specialist servants were the huntsmen employed by regimental officers who travelled abroad with packs of fox hounds. Wellington also had his own pack from Shropshire during the Peninsular War. Tom Crane was Wellington’s huntsman, a Shropshire man, he had been a private in the Coldstream Guards, and before that a huntsman to a border pack. Wellington had obtained his release from the shackles of marching and musket, and now, clad in a different kind of red coat, he pursued his legitimate occupation across the Plains of Portugal and Spain.

Crane later joined Wellington at the Congress of Vienna and in the British Army of Occupation in France. British officers also ran horse races in garrisons and campaigns and employed their soldiers as menials. Twenty dragoons kept the course clear at Op Hasselt in Flanders, the month before Waterloo. Hunts were found in overseas garrisons across the world, some of which had enormous cachet. The Royal Calpe Hunt, for example, which was formed by officers in Gibraltar in 1813, immediately after the French withdrawal, had successive Kings of Spain as patrons. The pastime continued to be an obsession of many officers into the twentieth century. Cavalry regiments hunted behind the Western Front and in Egyptian deserts in the Great War and mounted yeomanry regiments still had their packs in 1942 in the Middle East.67 By the late-Victorian period, rates of pay for soldier servants had become standardised at 2s. 6d. a week in the cavalry and 1s. 6d. in the infantry. Upper-class officers compared their batmen with their civilian servants. General Bengough sentimentalised his ‘Guppy’: ‘the British soldier is possessed with the strongest feudal feeling that makes him ready and willing to follow the leader of the higher social rank, which he and his forbears have for generations been accustomed to regard with respect and submission.’ Although private civilian servants had mainly disappeared by the end of century, as late as the Boer War, Captain Richard Foot of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, when summonsed immediately to the Cape, recruited Herbert Camfield as a servant. This man was a civilian footman at a country house where Foot had been staying at the time.68

67 Obituary in Sporting Magazine (1830), 351; James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 197–205; and Mansfield ‘Foxhunting and the Yeomanry’, 241–56. 68 Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 134, quoted in Michael Lieven, ‘A Victorian Genre: Military Memoirs and the Anglo-Zulu War’, JSAHR, 77 (1999), 116; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 101; and M.R.D. Foot, Memories of an SOE Historian (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2009), 7.

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Schoolmasters Before they had become officially organised, in the Victorian period, a few regimental schoolmasters existed in the late Georgian army through appointments made by some progressive colonels. Regimental schools were particularly encouraged by Whig General Sir John Moore during the training of his famous Light Brigade at Shorncliffe at the turn of the century. In 1811, the Commander in Chief, the Duke of York, introduced an initiative to teach basic literacy and numeracy to the rank and file in a bid to improve the skills of the larger numbers of NCOs needed in the expanded forces. By the end of the war, difficulty in recruiting led to many very young soldiers in the ranks, including specifically formed boy battalions. The Adjutant General encouraged the creation of regimental schools in these, to create: ‘Abilities in the necessary Qualifications of reading and writing, with the view of … [boy soldiers] becoming hereafter useful and valuable NCOs’.69 The appointment of schoolmasters – usually as Sergeants – was still up to individual Colonels and could lead to difficulties. When the reforming Colonel of the Bedford Militia ordered NCOs to attend the new regimental school and to pay for their instruction, a group of old soldiers protested. When the Sergeant Major was then imprisoned, they challenged the legality of this order via the courts. (This is a good example of the widespread contract culture discussed in the next chapter.) The case, Warden v. Bailey, went to appeal, where the judge concluded: ‘It is no part of the military duty to attend a school and learn to read and write. If writing is necessary to corporals and sergeants, the superior officers must select men who can read and write.’ Schoolmasters also taught mature students – usually those seeking promotion – who were expected to pay for tuition, sometimes on a sliding scale according to rank (up to threepence a week for sergeants). They also taught the children of the regiment, though their fees were sometimes covered by regimental charitable funds.70 Like other regimental tradesmen, schoolmasters were often appointed on the basis of pre-enlistment skills, but others were able to capitalise on general literacy skills. Schoolmaster Sergeants could charge fees for private students, could expect perks, and usually sold equipment at a slight profit. They also kept the regiment’s Register of Baptisms and in 1813 were paid ‘a shilling fee for giving a copy to the parent’. Like other tradesmen, they 69 T.A. Bowyer-Bower, ‘Some Early Educational Influences in the British Army’, JSAHR, 33 (1955), 5–12; Clive Emsley, ‘The Social Impact of the French Wars’, in H.T. Dickinson, Britain and the French Revolution, 1789–1815 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 220; and Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies, 125. 70 Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 72 and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 72.

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were excused most duties. In the British base on Corfu in 1824, Wheeler of the 51st Foot celebrated his appointment as Regimental Schoolmaster: ‘I have nothing to do with parades or drill, when the school is over my time is my own … besides Colonel Rice allows me to take as many Greek scholars as I can get. I go in plain clothes except to church on Sunday mornings and to muster on the 26th of each month.’ Private tuition was also provided by other literate rankers. When stationed on Mauritius in 1832, Colour Sergeant John Allez of the 87th Foot, though not a schoolmaster, earned 25 dollars a month in 1832 teaching English to local families. Even some British prisoners of war in Russia in 1855 were allowed to give English lessons.71 By the mid-Victorian period, the army schoolmaster had become an accepted part of the regimental workforce, serving both adults and children: The CO recommends that all NCOs and Lance Corporals take advantage of the Regimental school and endeavour to improve themselves in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic … as selections for promotion in future will be made in a great measure with reference to the proficiency in them of the persons to be promoted … All Married soldiers will send their children to the School of the Regiment on pain of being liable to be deprived of … residence of their wives in Barracks.72

With varied quality of instruction, the army began to systematise training for schoolmasters, but not until 1849 did the first graduates emerge from the Model School, associated with the Royal Military Asylum, which was established in Chelsea. Candidates had to re-enlist, thereby loosing existing service for pension purposes, so the first generation were mainly civilians, usually from middle-class families. Supervision of the new Corps of Army Schoolmasters, formed in 1846, was provided by the Chaplain General and schoolmasters’ duties were later extended to running barrack libraries. The old ranker schoolmasters remained as well and until 1857 they were paid through deductions like the other regimental tradesmen: ‘The amount of the charges so authorised will be paid over to the Schoolmaster Sergeant as a remuneration and for the use of pens, inks and slates provided during school hours … Adults attending School will be charged monthly as follows, viz Sergeants 8d, Corporals 6d, privates 4d.’73 71 McGuffie, ‘Life of Light Cavalry Regiment’, 25; Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 238; The Political Soldier, 28 Dec. 1933; David Inglesant, The Prisoners of Voronesh (Old Woking: Unwin, 1977), 186. 72 LIM, 30th Foot Regimental Orders, 1846–1880, Mar. 1847 and Standing Orders 30th Foot (Chatham: Burrill, 1850), 47. 73 Hew Strachan, The Reform of the British Army, 1830–54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 1984, 95–97; Roper, Records of the War Office, 228; NAM 2008-04-62-15,

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For the long Indian postings, a new category of teacher appeared after the Mutiny: ‘The Interpreter … holds classes of instruction in the native languages for NCOs and men.’ But there was still suspicion of the reformed service. As one commentator wrote in 1864: ‘Many Commanding Officers have a deep rooted objection to Normal Schoolmasters, for being … in a kind of indefinite position; they are neither officers nor sergeants, but a mixture of the two; disliked, and termed upstarts by one party and while looked down upon and snubbed by the other.’ By 1870, there were 250 trained army schoolmasters across the Empire. Women were first appointed as schoolteachers in 1840. Initially they were used for the instruction of female regimental children in washing, sewing and nursing. From 1850, they also staffed mixed infant schools. By 1865, there were 443 of them, mainly ‘wives and daughters of NCOs [who] found employment as schoolmistresses … in charge of the infant school and instructed the girls in industrial work’.74 The two large residential schools for 1,500 mainly orphan children of ex-servicemen also provided homes for significant numbers of NCOs in quasi-military administrative roles. An anonymous Irish sergeant, on retiring in 1823, became a superintendent of children or ‘Colour Sergeant’ of the Royal Military Asylum in Chelsea, largely as a result of glowing references from senior officers of the 43rd Light Infantry.75 Printing trades British printing trades were amongst the best paid and most respected crafts, with the compositors, who did the actual printing, at the very top. Some of these ‘labour aristocrats’ also found their way into the army. Coss’s survey of 7,300 Napoleonic recruits identifies 30 printers, plus 11 from associated trades like the eight bookbinders and three engravers. In 1811, during the long Peninsular War, the inability to get administrative forms printed locally in English led general staff to set up a printing office. A comb-out call was sent to regiments: ‘any men who understood printing and the arrangement of type are to be forwarded by the first opportunity to headquarters and report to this office’. The Adjutant General also employed his own printer: a Corporal Buchan recruited from the 3rd Foot Guards.76 Standing Orders of the 73rd Regiment (Cape Town, 1850); E.A. Smith, ‘Educating the Soldier in the Nineteenth Century’, JSAHR, 66 (1987), 202; and Holmes, Soldiers, 570. 74 LIM, Standing Orders of the First Battalion East Lancashire Regiment (Lahore, 1886), 18, quoted in Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 114; Roper, Records of the War Office, 228; and Trustram, Women of the Regiment, 115. 75 Anon., Memoirs of a Sergeant (Stroud: Nonsuch, 2005 [1835]), 210–11. 76 Coss, All for the King’s Shilling, 347, table 72; Alistair J. Noble, ‘Note 1669’, JSAHR, 80 (2002), 177; and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 35.

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Overseas military adventurers in Bolivar’s army also recognised the importance of the press in publicising the patriots’ aims. Reacting to the Liberator’s plea: ‘Please send the printing press … it will be at least as useful as gunshot’, Andrew Roderick, a printer within their ranks, came out with his own press and in August 1818 set up the first newspaper in Venezuela, the multilingual El Correo del Orinoco. In Spain in 1836, three soldiers of the 6th Regiment of the British Auxiliary Legion ‘remained attached as Printers to Headquarters’. In smaller imperial garrisons the government printing offices were staffed by combed-out printers. The Corfu office typeset one of the most important rankers’ memoirs of the early nineteenth century, The Letters of Private Wheeler.77 One particular group of skilled ‘artisan’ engravers was combed-out of Wellington’s army as he prepared to invade the south of France in 1814. These were the 40 or so forgers, who were recruited surreptitiously and offered double pay with full indemnity to make counterfeit 5 franc coins in a never-implemented plan for economic warfare. Such ‘skills’ had already been employed on the home front. Only the year before, Private Andrew Shaw of the 71st Foot was caught, having forged 90 billeting orders for troops without barracks to be lodged in inns or private houses. Shaw had tried to extort money by selling these fake orders to worried householders, so that they could avoid taking in soldiers. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.78 Traditionally, the Drum Major handled post in return for the perks of his position, which was subscribed to by the regiment’s officers. It would, however, be wrong to infer that letters were entirely the province of officers and beyond illiterate rankers. During his army service in the 1780s, William Cobbett recalled: ‘our Regiment, which was the West Norfolk, when an old soldier was going home discharged, he took with him his knapsack full of letters into the county, and though he might not fulfil all his promises in delivering the message of those who could not write, he would naturally fulfil many of them’. An act of Parliament in 1795 tried to improve these potentially haphazard arrangements by introducing cheap postage for soldiers and sailors. This enabled literate rankers to keep in touch with home during the French Wars. Four years later, free postage for relatives seeking information about the deaths of soldiers on campaign was enacted, with postage for all except officers reduced to one penny.79 77 Hughes, Conquer or Die!, 115; NAM 6807-198, Regimental Orders 6th Regiment [BAL], 25 Feb. 1836; and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 8. 78 Charles Oman, A History of the Peninsular War, vol. 7 (London: Macmillan, 1930), 289 and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 60. 79 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1146 and Peter B. Boyden, ‘The

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In the Peninsula, letter distribution was initially an additional responsibility of senior NCOs, like the Bugle Major in the 95th Rifles or the Trumpet Major in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. Soon, the 7th Light Dragoons appointed a letter carrier, who ranked above a Corporal, and the 3rd Foot Guards appointed a Postmaster Sergeant with a Corporal and a small staff. Distribution of post from the Lisbon Post Office became the responsibility of the new Royal Staff Corps. Letters to and from the rank and file could be infrequent. Those of Private William Windsor of the 2/59th Foot might be considered typical. When he expected to go on active service in 1811 he wrote to his family in Somerset: ‘If it is Sicily you will not hear from me for four months, as we shall be on the water a great while.’ Two years later, when serving in Spain, he supposed that at home, ‘People will think that soldiers in Spain and Portugal will never come back’. Missing the battle of Waterloo, in 1815, Windsor became part of the Army of Occupation, writing to his wife: ‘I long for the time to be up that I may get my discharge for I will never soldier any more.’ Tragically, he drowned in the wreck of the Seahorse transport whilst returning to Ireland in January 1816. In the Victorian army, postal duties were taken over by Royal Engineers.80 Musicians Musicians were the most numerous military trade, and were needed throughout the army. Since the early modern period, drummers and trumpeters were employed to transmit drill orders. They were supplemented over time by Colonels who employed extra musicians to form bands for a variety of entertaining and recruiting purposes. The government generally refused to fund these extra musicians unless they also doubled as paid and efficient soldiers. The best musicians were not necessarily tough fighters and Colonels were reluctant to expend costly hired talent on repetitive drill or in battlefield danger. This created a tension which lasted well into the nineteenth century. It was generally solved by getting the extra bandsmen to act as stretcher bearers in the event of war, for which they drew the basic private’s wage (an arrangement standardised in 1803) and by the officers’ mess covering other expenses, including the generous perks. Instruments were often provided by the regiment, as well as army uniforms, which could also be worn during private civilian engagements, with these providing bonuses, tips, free food and drink. Even more than the shoemakers or Postal Service of Wellington’s Army in the Peninsula and France, 1809–1818’, in Alan J. Guy, The Road to Waterloo (London: National Army Museum, 1990), 149–50. 80 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 929; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 99; and LIM, manuscript letters of William Windsor.

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tailors, tossed around by fluctuations in trade, the peripatetic nature of a musician’s life could make army service, with regular bed and board, seem attractive. As Herbert and Barlow point out: ‘Military music was an attractive proposition as one of the few lines of work that provided musicians with a regular salary, while also allowing them to take external engagements.’ Some bands accompanied their regiments on campaign. They played to improve morale in camp, on marches or even on the battlefield. In the Peninsular War they also gave concerts to cement relationships with Portuguese and Spanish civilian populations. Bands had a key role in entertaining the troops in the monotonous imperial postings which became common in the second half of the century. In remote garrisons like New South Wales, the presence of a regimental band formed a key part of the survival strategy of a fledging colony, with the players of the 48th Foot being paid £42 for performing between 1823 and 1824. The death of First Fleet Marine Bandsman Sergeant Harry Parsons in 1819 left a gap as ‘[he was of] very great utility to the Colony as Instructor of Sacred Music’. Parsons had remained with each successive garrison regiment’s band. Such men forged careers as music pioneers in Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.81 Drum and Trumpet Majors enjoyed special status as skilled players and arrangers. They were later joined later by Fife Majors in the infantry, Foot Guards and Royal Artillery. In the early modern period, guilds of trumpeters which existed to protect their interests were tolerated by military authorities. The nineteenth-century army often overlooked the high-handed behaviour of regimental bandmasters, often still civilian and frequently foreign, especially German. Their emphasis on highbrow music could conflict with the need for stirring marches or popular favourites which were to the taste of most of the troops. This could also lead to disputes with their bandsmen trying to control their working lives. Paolo Castaldini, Bandmaster of the 1st Foot, was beaten up in 1847 by sixteen of his musicians, whose sentences were mitigated when the court martial heard that Castaldini had left three previous bandmaster positions under a cloud.82 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries black percussionists were employed to add a touch of exoticism, dressed in outlandish ‘eastern’ costumes and playing ‘Turkish’ instruments like the Jingling Johnny. Even 81 Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow, Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7, 59, 248, 226–27 and 261–63 (the authors were kind enough to make their book available to the author in proof form). See also Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 148–49. 82 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 26, 32, 46, 61 and 134 and Holmes, Soldiers, 476.

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the unfashionable Denbigh Militia employed a black drummer in 1805. Though seemingly the practice died out, regimental inspection reports still asked about ‘men of colour’ in the 1840s. John Baptist, a French Caribbean percussionist was not discharged from the 3rd Foot Guards until 1841 and the 11th Hussars still had three black musicians in the 1840s.83 A wide range of army musicians existed in the nineteenth century. At the top, serving London society, ‘members of the bands of the elite London regiments generally did not go near any military conflict, because they made their living in London opera houses and theatres’. These were mainly from the Guards but also included the famous Royal Artillery band, the largest and most talented in Britain. Generally, ‘a good living was made by wind players who accumulated a portfolio of engagements through work in theatres, oratorios, pleasure gardens and regimental bands’. A typical London musician was William Jenkinson, a bassoonist, who in the 1790s ‘made his living variously with the 3rd Regiment of Guards, at Ranelagh Gardens and the Circus, and through “other Musical Business”’. By 1839, average London-based bandsmen could earn up to 8 shillings per night in theatres.84 At the bottom end, with the Peace of 1801, the Gentleman’s Magazine reported ‘the number of military bands established in the Kingdom, have so much extended a degree of knowledge, in musick, that either some discarded soldier, servant, or player, scrapes a fiddle in every parish, and promotes drunkenness, lewdness, and idleness, by bringing the lads and girls together to dance.’ At a time when opportunities to hear music were rare, military bands served to attract people to an unpopular service. Several memoirists of the French Wars attest that being charmed by musicians accompanying recruiting parties was a major factor in their enlistment. As late as 1859, the Horse Guards confirmed that Fifes and Drums should be employed in all recruiting parties.85 Regulations in 1803 tried to limit musician numbers to one private soldier per infantry company or cavalry troop and one NCO as bandmaster. But these were constantly transgressed in the nineteenth century, as regiments vied with each other for best band and fudged the number of civilians employed. Even after 1815, with the peacetime cuts, the number of musicians per regiment increased, and was given official sanction to 14, plus a Sergeant 83 Holmes, Soldiers, 475; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 177; John D. Ellis, ‘“Left to the Streets and the Workhouse”: The Life, Visual Representation and Death of John Baptist, 3rd Scots Fusilier Guards’, JSAHR, 82 (2004), 206; and Holmes, Redcoat, 127. 84 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 30, 49 and 77. 85 Quoted in Snape, Redcoat and Religion, 53 and 80 and Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 34.

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in 1823, and to 20 in 1846. Corps bands were even bigger. The celebrated Royal Artillery band mustered 80 in 1856 and 91 by 1882, with what was in effect a full-scale orchestra. With the addition of drummers, even infantry bands like the Queen’s regiment numbered 60 in 1876 and that of the Grenadier Guards 55 in 1907. The Commander in Chief, the Duke of Cambridge, whilst considering an Army School of Music, asked for numbers of musicians to be counted in 1856. It was concluded that bands existed for 112 battalions of infantry, 26 regiments of cavalry, 10 colonial units, plus the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers and for various depots (despite these being officially forbidden). These provided employment for about 4,500 musicians, which had risen to 140 regular bands with 5,000 employees by 1894: ‘tens of thousands of men passed through the British military as musicians in the nineteenth century’, making the army easily the largest single employer of British musicians.86 These numbers did not include musicians employed in the parallel militia establishment of 130 county infantry regiments, or the 69 yeomanry regiments, which often employed a few professionals, and those in some rifle volunteer units, formed from 1859. Even the tiny Rutland Militia of 97 men employed an eight-strong band during its French Wars mobilisation, whilst Shropshire’s larger county militia regiment engaged 28. Using the prestige of its COs, ‘The militia band thus became perhaps the most significant means through which the aristocracy and gentry of the British shires sponsored instrumental music’. They became a key part of social and cultural life, playing for county occasions and events even in peacetime, when not embodied. This also applied to Parliamentary county politics, especially before the Reform Act of 1832. Despite standing down after 1815 and their erratic record on annual training, county militias often retained their band. In 1833, the Dorset Militia still mustered eleven players. Militia Colonels also hired musicians to double up as NCOs – who could undertake their limited peacetime tasks and even perhaps cope with the official annual training. The special social role of bands in provincial polite society trumped military efficiency in the non-embodied militia cadre. Like the regular bands, the militia musicians played a very wide repertoire, ranging from marches through to dances and concerts. Militia bands had another major flowering during their mobilisation for the Crimean War. After demobilisation in 1856, some regiments (like the 3rd West Yorkshire) retained their Bandmasters in their full-time cadres, along with Adjutants, Quartermaster, Sergeants and drummers. Shortly afterwards, the rifle volunteer movement gave an immense boost to the profession of military music and later the Childers and Haldane Reforms gave official status to 86 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 55, 57, 58, 64, 65, 191, 197 and 207.

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the full-blown bands of militia as they became the Special Reserve of their county regiments.87 Militia bandsmen could enjoy very long careers of relatively obscure but locally distinguished musicianship. William Shepperd, an Exeter bootmaker enlisted in 1st Royal Devon Militia on its embodiment in 1853 at the age of 21. He became a drummer the following year, and achieved band sergeant in 1889, a post he held until discharge in 1907, aged 75. His surviving diary gives a unique picture of the life of a provincial military bandsman. Both regular and militia bands played a full part in the complex civic and public life of Victorian Britain. For big civic occasions several military bands could be hired. The Preston Guild, held once every twenty years, in 1862, saw the participation of the bands of the 14th Hussars and the 49th Foot from Manchester and the locally based 3rd Royal Lancashire Militia.88 Before the development of formal music education, the nineteenthcentury army provided the best training and future career opportunities for amateur players of modest means wishing to turn professional. This was enhanced by the establishment of advanced training at Kneller Hall after the Crimean War. Army life, though, even for relatively pampered bandsmen, was too much for many musicians, especially those from shabby genteel backgrounds. One officer stated in 1861: ‘There is no greater amount of desertions in any regiment than from the band; but that is simply because they get a certain amount of musical education which enables them to earn a livelihood, and they go away.’ The high rate of desertions from bandsmen improved with the Cardwell reforms, with ambitious players more willing to endure the new six-year short-term enlistment. But the imperial gendarmerie role of the infantry continued to thwart ambition. Whilst members of the elite London bands continued to undertake a wide range of outside engagements, opportunities were much more meagre for those of the line regiments, with their constant moves and foreign postings. This led in turn to a severe problem of retaining trained musicians in the face of potential civilian enticements.89 The other training route for army musicians was to enlist when very young. From 1805, small boys could be enrolled as drummers and fifers if they were thought likely to grow in stature. Many such trainees came from 87 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 105, 110, 111–12, 113, 117, 130–31 and 305. The numbers are calculated from Arthur Sleigh, The Royal Militia and Yeomanry Cavalry Army List (London: British Army Despatch Press, 1850). 88 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 68–69; ‘Diary of a Victorian Military Bandsman’, ed. Helen Barlow (www.open.ac.uk/Arts/cultures-of-brass); and Alan Crosby, The History of Preston Guild (Lancaster: Carnegie, 1991), 184. 89 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 68, 77–78, 80 and 202–03.

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families of the regiments with fathers serving in the ranks. Later, most boy recruits came from the orphans from military families being educated at the Royal Military Asylum or Hibernian Military Asylum. Here they were cheaply trained as musicians, playing in the Asylums’ own bands. With the post-1850 need for larger imperial armies, music (along with shoemaking, tailoring and carpentry) became a training option for boys at a growing number of Industrial and Workhouse schools – up to 200 by 1903. These were designed to prepare juvenile minor offenders or orphans for a useful life in the armed services.90 Military bands offered unique opportunities for some virtuoso workingclass recruits. John Parry, son of a North Wales stonemason, joined the Denbigh Militia aged 17, in 1793, and subsequently became a leading Londonbased woodwind player and composer. Late nineteenth-century talented bandsmen could extend their careers flexibly into the developing symphony orchestras. They also became principals, composers and instructors in the exploding amateur brass band movement. Family dynasties of influential musicians and band masters covering all these fields usually originated with the army. The Godfreys, stellar Victorian musicians, were descended from a drummer in the Napoleonic Royal Surrey Militia who became bandmaster to the Coldstream Guards and Musician in Ordinary to the King.91 Average players in line infantry battalions received their basic wages of one shilling a day as a private soldier plus varied extra wages and bonuses from the officers’ Band Fund. Perks could bring in sums far in excess of their wages. After one performance in 1813, the band of the 7th Light Dragoons were paid £13 from the officers’ Band Fund because Cornet Blake had ‘deprived the men of their subsistence’. Free drink was also common. For the band of the 30th Foot in 1848, ‘On occasions when the band attends at mess an allowance of one pint of wine shall be given to the Band Master also one pint of Beer to each man – such expense to be charged to the officers in mess.’92 The subsidised cost of military bandsmen threatened the wages of civilian musicians (many of whom were ex-army). Unlike many of the other trades existing in the army, it was hard to establish trade unions for musicians because of the widespread availability of potential players willing to play for low wages. Not until the late-Victorian period did musicians become organised. The newly formed Amalgamated Musicians’ Union (AMU) 90 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 70, 138–39 and 203–04. See also ‘List of Industrial, Workhouse and Reformatory Schools in the UK’ (1903). 91 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 73 and 74. 92 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 77–78; McGuffie, ‘Life of Light Cavalry Regiment’, 21; and LIM, Mess Rules 30th Regiment.

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recognised the danger immediately and ‘regarded military bandsmen as the main challenge to the battle for fair wages for civilian musicians, because they had their “daily bread” paid for them and were able to undercut civilians’. In 1894, the AMU wrote, prior to a planned strike, to the CO of the Salford Barracks complaining that four bandsmen playing with the Carl Rosa Opera Company were being paid less than a quarter of the civilians’ fee. But by the late-Victorian era weak organised labour had little effect on the full and complex career structure that existed for army musicians. First Class Bandmaster Sergeants received a salary of £100 a year from 1874 and with private engagements ‘best men commanded and obtained something like £360 a year’. All this made bandsmen the premier success story of the world of military tradesmen.93 Miners and diggers From early times, civilian miners were readily transposed into siege operations. The free miners of the Forest of Dean earned their privileges as a reward from Edward I for service besieging Berwick. During siege of Gloucester, in the English Civil War, in 1643, the Parliamentarian garrison enlisted ‘professional miners from the [nearby] Forest of Dean’, who were employed to counter Royalist mining. In the 1680s, the army defending the beleaguered outpost of Tangier requested Cornish or Derbyshire miners to counteract Cretan miners used by the Moors.94 At the failed siege of Burgos in Spain in 1812, ‘miners of a sort were found by calling upon men who had been coal miners in civil life to volunteer from the ranks’. As late as the Indian Mutiny in 1857, the garrison of the Lucknow Residency was the 32nd Foot, in theory Cornwall’s own regiment: ‘They [Mutineers] were foiled, however, by the activity of the chief engineer, Captain Fulton, who, choosing a select body of old Cornish miners from the Thirty-second, brought all hostile projects to naught by ingenious counter-mining.’ British miners, in the complex nineteenthcentury economic diaspora, could find a place for their skills in military situations as well as industrial. Cornish miner William Bevan served the patriotic forces in South America, under radical British General William Miller. Welsh miners in Scranton, Pennsylvania were drafted as engineers into the Union army in the American Civil War.95 93 Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 80, 142 and 203–04. 94 David Clark, Battlefield Walks: The South (Stroud: Sutton, 1996), 80 and P.M.G. Routh, Tangier: England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost, 1661–1684 (London: J. Murray, 1912), 320. 95 Glover, Peninsular Preparation, 106; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 13, 282; John Miller (ed.), The Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru, vol. 2

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In wartime sieges, or in improving imperial defences, all infantry rank and file could be pressed into manual labour. This work, though sometimes attracting more pay, was universally disliked. Military tradesmen especially were key to the economic viability of colonies, given the huge skills shortages in many areas. Peter Way argues that the army was essential to developing the eighteenth century American frontier: Soldiers performed many mundane duties – digging, hauling, building, crafting goods – in common with civilian workers. Nevertheless, they were a peculiar type of paid worker subjected to a more restrictive labor contract and discipline, making them less than free. Hardly a unique situation, unfree labor was the norm in the Anglo American world … Men built roads, chopped wood for fires and construction purposes, cut fascines for defenses, harvested hay for forage, made baskets for shifting dirt, built dams and millraces, or loaded bateaux around waterfalls.96

Soldiers’ contributions to North American frontier society continued in the Victorian period. It was noted: ‘Notwithstanding the lodging with wages of 1s 1d a day, soldiers may have been among the least remunerated of all labourers in early nineteenth century Canada.’ In addition, poor barrack housing, the Canadian winter, and a culture of drinking, fighting and whoring caused high mortality rates. In her study of Fort Wellington on the St Laurence River, Duffin identified the ‘probability of any one man being admitted to hospital in a given year was close to being 100%’. Despite all this, the influence over time of troops in the development of colonies was immense: the 15,000 to 20,000 troops in Canada during the early 1840s were active participants in the social and economic life of their communities and had a direct impact on the development of the country … The men worked in the kitchens and garden, and were required to make repairs to the buildings and their uniforms. The garrison could service a police function … soldiers could also work as firefighters. Occasionally military men were sent to work on construction projects and road maintenance.97

The largest project was the construction of the Rideau Canal between 1826 and 1832, designed by Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers, with skilled (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829), 143; and William D. Jones, Wales in America: Scranton and the Welsh, 1860–1920 (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1993), 51. 96 Peter Way, ‘Rebellion of the Regulars: Working Soldiers and the Mutiny of 1763–64, William and Mary Quarterly, 57(4) (2000), 765 and 770. See also Frey, The British Soldier in America, 55. 97 Jacalyn Duffin, ‘Soldiers’ Work; Soldiers’ Health: Morbidity, Mortality, and their Causes in an 1840s British Garrison in Canada’, Labour/Le Travail, 37 (1996), 37, 38, 45 and 48.

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4  First Camp, Bytown, September 1826. Engineering officer’s sketch, typical of the (literally) ground breaking and skilled work undertaken by artificers in colonial development. Sappers and Miners of the 7th company building the first camp for the construction of the Rideau canal in Canada.

input and construction supervision given by two companies of the Sappers and Miners (see Illustration 4). By providing water transport away from the dangerous St Laurence River, it transformed the Canadian economy.98 The requirement to labour from all rank and file was a long-standing tussle, for which extra money was expected, especially as it was considered dishonourable for NCOs to do more than supervise. On Minorca in 1800, ‘soldiers who construct them [field works] are Duties of honour not fatigue’ and in addition they were given a discretionary payment of ‘every eight days, sixpence per day for the men whose exertions are approved by their officers’. Whilst for the ‘senior NCO of each working party for his extra trouble in receiving and retiring the Tools etc. [the CO] is pleased to increase the gratuity allowed him to one shilling’. Whilst the NCO was also responsible that ‘they work to the utmost of their abilities’ and for enforcing a ‘Scale 98 Robert W. Passfield, Building the Rideau Canal: A Pictorial History (Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1982), 42 and 177.

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of fines for misuse of tools’, such working situations gave opportunities for workplace collective bargaining.99 In the French Wars, troops seem to have been more willing to do digging. In the siege of Cadiz in 1810, the 30th Foot sent one Sergeant and seven privates to the engineers as carpenters and artificers as well as 26 posted as emergency artillerymen and drivers. For those men under fire, rewards could be greater. Also defending Cadiz, men of the 71st Foot ‘were busily employed at this time working at the batteries, which they were building on the island; for which they received ninepence per day, in addition to their pay. They had also extra rations, such as coffee and sugar for breakfast, and a pint of porter daily; but the labour was very hard and the exposure to the sun brought on sickness.’ The same year during the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras, 150 soldiers of the line, combed out from tradesmen, helped just 18 Royal Military Artificers to supervise a Portuguese workforce in the construction of nearly 90 kilometres of fortifications which protected Wellington’s army. When Portuguese engineering officers claimed that the task was impossible, Corporal Wilson and Private Douglas stripped off and did the work themselves, earning promotion.100 The ad hoc extra payments for all troops were regularised in 1811 as: a summer’s day, work of ten hours, and eight in winter, which received an extra penny an hour, with supervising NCOs receiving an extra one shilling a day. With the peace this money was reduced. Sergeant Peter McAllister of the 99th Foot ‘took charge of the Tools of the Working Party receiving an allowance of 5d per diem’ on Mauritius in 1826. Governor General Napier – a political radical – had the troops working on the civil engineering projects on 1820s Cephalonia that were designed to bring the Greek island into the nineteenth century. Such work was disliked. Despite his admiration of Napier, hard-bitten veteran Sergeant Wheeler wrote: ‘Another complaint is, the men are obliged to work on the roads’. In the same decade, soldiers of the 48th Foot supervised convict gangs making roads in New South Wales, for which they were issued with an extra half ration of tea, sugar and soap. Although such work may have been considered part of the job in remote garrisons, by the time of the next major war, soldiers roadmaking at Sebastopol in 1854 were again objecting. In the words of one officer: ‘Our youths had not bargained for this when they assumed the red coat.’101 99 NAM 1993-03-218, Standing Orders Island of Menorca [sic], 1800. 100 Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 42; Donaldson, Recollections, 82; and Whitworth Porter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889), 150. 101 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 72; LIM, Garrison Orders, Mauritius, 1826; Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 202; Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 87; and Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 224.

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Artificers and sappers Labouring work by combed-out rankers was meant to be supervised by the Royal Engineers, a tiny corps which consisted only of commissioned officers. More productivity was anticipated from supervision by a specialised tradesmen’s corps of Sappers and Miners. First raised in the siege of Gibraltar in the 1770s, it was officially established in 1787 with six companies of 100 men. With NCOs from the Royal Artillery, each company contained 12 carpenters, 10 masons, 10 bricklayers, 8 miners, 5 smiths, 5 wheelers, 4 sawyers, 2 collar makers, 2 coopers, 2 painters and 30 labourers. Recruits had to be ‘strong able bodied men … duly qualified for their several trades and occupations’, and an enhanced bounty of 3 guineas was necessary to attract civilian tradesmen plus a ‘working pay of up to 1s. 4½d. a day’. But ‘enlistment of labourers … [was] not in any sense welcomed by the old artificers, who conceived they were losing caste and position by association’. So already the Sappers and Miners were demonstrating a control over their work which was to endure; labourers were soon deleted from their establishments and provided when needed by seconded infantrymen.102 More complicated wartime military engineering demands meant that by 1806 these artificer companies had up to 30 carpenters, 20 masons and 18 bricklayers, 10 miners, and 10 smiths, and later 30 miners (specifically for the Peninsular campaigns). The wartime expansion of the corps was achieved through recruitment from militia regiments in mining areas like Denbighshire, Glamorgan and Somerset. In 1798, and again in 1802, Cornwall and Devon also raised a new supplementary miners’ militia, known as the Stannaries Regiment, which was balloted specifically from tin miners, who spent the war mainly working on the defences of Chatham and Dover. On the latter job, their labourers were supplied by 300 men from the East Suffolk and Montgomery Militias. The Sappers and Miners were again expanded in 1811, doubling the numbers of tradesmen. They were supplemented by a wide range of new trades recruited from time-served civilians: bricklayers, braziers, file cutters, gardeners, limeburners, modellers, nailers, slaters and tilers. By 1813 (when renamed the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners), they were nearly 3,000 strong.103 The corps retained the artisan’s reputation for resourcefulness and 102 Porter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, vol. 1, 135, 136 and 139; Glenn A. Steppler, ‘British Military Artificers in Canada, 1760–1815’, JSAHR, 60 (1982), 154; T.W.J. Connolly, The History of the Royal Sappers and Miners (London: Longman’s, 1857), 45; and MacArthur, ‘British Army Establishments’, 350. 103 MacArthur, ‘British Army Establishments’, 349 and 351; Sleigh, Militia and Yeomanry, 15; Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 281; and Porter, Corps of Royal Engineers, 140 and 141.

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independence, but combined lack of discipline and ill-kempt appearance with non-regimental working dress. The company on Gibraltar in particular enjoyed a relaxed discipline: ‘none were punished if found drunk’, and ‘foreigners’ or private work was tolerated. The Plymouth company, known for ‘drunkenness and irregularity’ rioted in 1795 and several members ‘deserted when discipline [was] repossessed’. But the Artificers were not all drinkers and contained such strong-minded individuals as Henry Ince, who pioneered Methodism on Gibraltar. The Plymouth company signed the loyalist response to the handbills inciting troops to subversion, which were widely distributed in 1797. Likewise, the Woolwich company refused to join striking artillerymen who paraded under the slogan ‘More pay; less drill’ in the Chatham depot disturbance of the same year. At a time when artisans were the core of the new popular radicalism, the artificers might be thought particularly vulnerable to subversion, so the authorities were quick to reward their loyalism. Their working pay was increased from ninepence to 1s. 2½d. as an ‘opportunity of expressing the good conduct of the corps … [the CO] believes it is not in the power of the most artful traitor to seduce the soldiers of the Royal Military Artificers and labourers from their loyalty and attachment to King and Country’. In gratitude, the Woolwich company gave three days’ pay to support the war effort. Artificers often delighted in spending their high wages, like many civilian artisans. Those building the barracks at Lewes in Sussex in 1803 commissioned a performance of Richard III from the local theatre. When they tried to take the best box seats, usually occupied by the officers of the garrison, a class-based riot ensued with ‘the whole house … thrown into an uproar’.104 A major problem arose when in 1802 the martinet Duke of Kent became Governor of Gibraltar, with a mission to reduce drinking and with ‘drill and discipline vigorously enforced’. The artificers were ‘deprived of the privilege of working privately in the town, and were once a week taken from the command of their own officers and drilled and disciplined by the Town Major’. They initially joined a demonstration by the protesting rank and file of the 2nd and 25th Foot. But meeting separately with their Engineering officers, the artificers successfully negotiated more working pay, the removal of canteen restrictions, and ‘stated their wish to be drilled by their own officers’. They stood aside from the rest of the disturbances which rumbled on through the Christmas of 1802. The insurgency was put down 104 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 51, 61, 74, 95, 111, 112, 113, 117; Snape, Redcoat and Religion, 61; Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 61; and Gillian Russell, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics and Society, 1793–1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 113. For more details of the 1797 protest, see ‘Strikes and Mutinies’, in Chapter 4, below.

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by loyal artillery and infantry and ended with three executions. According to one of the participants, the artificers even built the gallows. By clever negotiation (probably learnt in civilian trade societies), the artificers had achieved complete victory: Discipline was almost entirely relinquished and drill was an unfashionable exercise. The former was relaxed on account of the men being regarded in the light of civilians than soldiers … [they] evince a spirit of disaffection when anything occurred to infringe upon the liberties or privileges that the usages of the corps had given them a right to enjoy … dirty in appearance and slovenly in attire … Yet with all this misconduct and want of training in soldier like principle and bearing they always exhibited an active pride in their fair name as mechanics.105

Their skills were in such demand that these traits were necessarily tolerated and rewarded by huge recruitment bounties, which rose from 5 guineas in the 1790s to 12 guineas, as the renewed war in 1803 resulted in an increase to 12 companies each of 126 tradesmen. Though they suffered heavy casualties in the sieges of the French Wars, they were rewarded by generous prize money, especially in the Caribbean campaigns. Sappers and Miners served in isolated sieges, often with one skilled man advising generals. Private George Mitchell (a mason) was promoted to Sergeant for bravery at the Siege of Frederici in Surinam in 1804. Artificers also provided skilled advice to exotic allies, like the 76 tradesmen sent to aid the Turks in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, or the 15 sent to the Neapolitan army in 1806, or Corporal Borthwick serving alone with the Russian army in the Baltic in 1812.106 By 1812, the recruiting bounty for artificers was raised to £14 3s. 6d., but only 53 new recruits responded (such was the demand for civilian workers), until volunteering was allowed from the militia and then the line. The last resulted in 134 volunteers from 46th Foot alone; nominally from South Devon, one of the old mining areas. With growing economic depression after the end of the war, the higher pay and responsibility of the Sappers and Miners could be attractive to civilian artisans in need of steady work. Trials were given to all recruits ‘to check they were qualified for their several trades and occupations’. Senior carpenters, masons and smiths were promoted as ‘master’ Sergeants, whilst the heads of lesser trades – bricklayers and wheelers – were merely Corporals. The miners may have ‘elected’ their foremen. Such assumed rank based on skill would have been very familiar to civilian artisans, and wisely the military authorities adopted it for the 105 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 97, 138 and 139 and Haley, Soldier Who Walked Away, 41. For more details of the Gibraltar protest, see ‘Strikes and Mutinies’, in Chapter 4, below. 106 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 66, 99, 103, 121, 152, 157 and 185.

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new corps. Though long-serving and non-tradesmen artillery Captains were promoted as Majors to command these companies, their touch was light and they did not attempt to impose discipline. One, Major Todd, said ‘that he found the soldiers with minds quickened by the wider range and variety of knowledge attendant on their service, were more ready of resource and their efforts’. Their pride and independence were demonstrated in one of the last sieges of the war at Antwerp in 1814. When asked to hold a horse for a member of the entourage of the Prince of Orange, Private Brennan, who ‘was busy with his shovel at the time, turned his face towards the staff and feeling that as a sapper he was 2 or 3 removes above a groom, replied, “Egad Sir, I’d sooner be shot layin’ sandbags”’.107 By 1815, the Sappers and Miners companies in the major naval ports of southern England had posted detachments of highly skilled and well-paid miners and artificers (many unsupervised by officers) to most significant imperial outposts. These were mainly retained into the peace despite the army cuts. In 1819, there were 12 companies, which had increased to over 2,000 men with an ‘excellent system of practical instruction’ by 1850.108 During the French Wars the traditional rivalry between the Board of Ordnance and Horse Guards had resulted in the creation in 1804 of the Royal Staff Corps. This was seen as the solution to the chronic indiscipline of the artificers. The Royal Staff Corps was a more militarised body of civil and combat engineers, under the direct control of Horse Guards. Volunteers were sought from the Guards and infantry: ‘They must be strong active Men … having regularly served an Apprenticeship and possessing a complete knowledge of one of the following trades; Viz, Carpenters, Wheelers, Sawyers, Shipwrights or Boat Builders, Masons, Bricklayers, Miners (not mere colliers or quarrymen).’ The Royal Staff Corps also took on some promising unapprenticed men, not tainted with the tradesmen’s culture, claiming it could ‘quarter the recruit with really good soldiers who can give them every instruction’. Their dress was also prescribed as ‘regimentals and not coloured cloaths’, the working dress which typified the sloppy artificers. In the peacetime reductions, though, it was the Royal Staff Corps which was disbanded.109 To complicate matters further, a more immobile Barrack Artificer Corps was formed by the Board of Ordnance in 1805 to service the increasing real estate. This also recruited: ‘Carpenters and Joiners, Sawyers, Bricklayers, 107 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 64, 66, 68, 150, 216 and 218. 108 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 65 and 253 and Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 134. 109 Quoted in Glover, Peninsular Preparation, 105 and NAM 1989-08-110, Standing Orders Royal Staff Corps, 1807.

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Rough Stone Masons, Plaisterers [sic], Miners, Lime Burners, Smiths, White Smiths, Plumbers, Glaziers, Painters, Wheelwrights and Coopers’. In addition to carrying out the work of providing accurate maps of the UK on the pioneering Ordnance Survey, a small specialist Corps of Royal Military Surveyors and Draftsmen existed from 1805 to 1817, supervised by officers of the Royal Engineers. Their tasks were taken over by a specialist survey company of the Sappers and Miners in 1824.110 In remote imperial outposts, lone artificers and tradesmen of the Sappers and Miners retained the artisan’s pride in craftsmanship. They were responsible for astonishing and unsupervised feats of nineteenth-century engineering, and for the development of settlements. In New South Wales they were ‘trained to undertake a wide variety of tasks including trigonometrical and topographical surveying’, even before the addition of the survey company. Private John Bennett, Clerk of Work and Island Storekeeper on St Helena (where his comrades had built fortifications during Napoleon’s incarceration), returned to the UK in 1843, when he became Surveyor General of Prisons, and died as the Steward of Dartmoor in 1853. Corporal Andrew Lawson, a bricklayer on Public Works on Corfu, died as the Clerk of Works in Sierra Leone, in 1834. Lance Corporal William Beal surveyed the rock strata of Ascension Island, then his career took him to Bermuda and Nova Scotia. His last job before discharge in 1849 was as a draughtsman on the Rideau Canal, linking Upper and Lower Canada. Private Robert Mustard, on the hazardous New Holland expedition in Australia in 1837, was described by his CO as the ‘jack of all trades, the mechanic and architect; equally a tailor and a tinker, the ready mender of boats and the efficient millwright and armourer of the party’. Thirteen artificers volunteered to accompany the BAL to Spain in 1837, where ‘they could turn their hands to anything and everything’, said Lord John Hay RN. Twelve artificers surveyed and built the official buildings on the Falklands Islands, with Sergeant Hearden proclaiming the government of Falklands in 1843, as well as giving his name to a hill fought over in 1982.111 Many of the artificers’ skills – particularly as draughtsmen – were eminently transferable to the private firms of Victorian capitalism. Sergeant Major Forbes became surveyor of Trent and Mersey Canal. Some of his colleagues who had already helped drive through the Shakespeare Tunnel at Dover for South East Railway were ‘head hunted’. The corps lost over 300 to the 1840s railway boom, immediately negating its increase to 1,200 in 1839.112 110 Glover, Peninsular Preparation, 105 and Roper, Records of the War Office, 44. 111 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 71; Whitworth Porter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, vol. 1, 144; and Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 257, 279, 310, 368 and 388. 112 Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 344, 415, 416 and 447.

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Engineers By the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, the Royal Sappers and Miners mustered over 4,000, proving their worth to the expanding Empire. Amongst those mobilised for the conflict was a three-man photographic unit which was especially trained for war service. Sadly, all were drowned and their equipment lost whilst aboard a transport in Balaclava harbour before they could begin their work in earnest.113 The post-Crimea army reforms amalgamated the Royal Sappers and Miners with the engineer officer corps, to consolidate technical skills. This more professionalised Royal Engineers grew to contain within their ranks an increasing and varied selection of skilled trades emerging from the mature Industrial Revolution, which reads like a catalogue from the Great Exhibition. Royal Engineer Sappers (the term was retained for all rank and file) had to be 5 foot 6 inches (168 cm) minimum height (1 inch higher than men of the line) and of [g]ood character, able to read and write; and lastly, by actual trial in the trades to which they profess to have been brought up or apprenticed, their qualifications must be scrupulously and accurately tested. The attraction of intelligent recruits … is precisely that which attracts London police and Irish constabulary, and indeed to all trades and professions, men of superior attainments.

They were supervised by the lowest proportion of officers to men in the service: 1 officer to 47 men, compared with 1 to 22 for the line. In 1857, the Royal Engineers had the highest percentage of rank and file able to read and write: 97 per cent.114 Sappers were more easily recruited than the rest of the army, as tradesmen were prepared to accept lower wages than in civilian life in exchange for constant employment. By the late-Victorian period their ‘working pay’ was officially standardised at 2 shillings a day. In practice, individual trades still received ‘working pay in accordance to their classification as workmen or artificers for those days on which they are actually employed on public works’, in a series of complicated pay scales similar to those of comparable civilians. The ‘working hours of the corps were fixed by the Engineer Code’, ranging from 9 hours 50 minutes in summer to just over 7 hours in December, with one hour for dinner.115 113 Francis B. Head, The Royal Engineer (London: John Murray, 1869), 32 and Glenn Fisher, ‘John Pendred, Royal Sappers and Miners’, JSAHR, 87 (2009), 146–61. 114 Head, Royal Engineer, 89 and 195 and Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 87. 115 Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 124 and 134 and Head, Royal Engineer, 89 and 92.

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Sapper specialisations amongst the Royal Engineers included architecture, archaeological surveying, chemistry (with a gas department), general surveying, Morse codes, map makers and meteorology. For campaigns, there was a mounted corps with artificers’ wagons with a huge range of tools and supplies. The printing department alone employed ‘4 compositors, 2 lithographers, 2 copperplate engravers, 1 letterpress printer, 2 assistants and bookbinders’, who worked on ‘pay lists, numerous tabular forms for the issue and receipt of stores, military reports, nominal rolls, notes of lectures etc.’ Just as the earlier artificers and sappers had pioneered exploration, the rank and file of the late-Victorian Royal Engineers was celebrated for individual ingenuity in encouraging new inventions. By the 1880s, the corps had embraced ballooning, diving, electricity, photography, postal services, railways, submarine mining and telegraphs. Such technical skills were extended to the engineering contingents in the late-Victorian volunteer movement, continuing the enduring existing links with civilian trades. By 1900, as the corps numbered over 7,000, the draft for service in the Boer War sent by the Newcastle Engineer Volunteers contained such trades as Sergeant farrier, leather hose maker, tinsmith, blacksmith, wheelwright, patternmaker, engineer, draughtsman, fitters, joiners and bricklayers.116 Guards In London, the special position of the Guards, under the direct order of the sovereign and protected from overseas service, except in wartime, offered additional particular part-time employment opportunities. The mounted Life Guards had been formed from the Royalist courtiers around the exiled Charles II. They retained their sense of superiority well into the nineteenth century with better pay and pensions. They became a home for ‘gentlemen rankers’, who could not afford the cost of officers’ commissions, mainly ‘native Londoners with alternative sources of income, whose part-time jobs as private gentlemen simply furthered family business interests’. In the eighteenth century, Captains of the Foot Guards could hire out their men to work for civilians for ‘outlyers’ money’, which was used to support the officers’ mess. According to Fortescue, in the 1780s: ‘the [Royal] Horse Guards were simply a collection of London tradesmen’, and, in the Duke of York’s judgement, they were ‘the most unmilitary troops that were ever seen’. ‘Outlyers’ money’ was abolished in the Duke’s reforms, though the 116 Head, Royal Engineer, 106, 112, 150, 158, 172, 175, 176, 185 and 284–85; Porter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, vol. 1, 144, 145, 143. 150, 151, 180, 185, 187 and 189; and Hewitson, Weekend Warriors from Tyne to Tweed, 31 and 116–17.

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War Office picked up the costs of the messes and the tradition of working outside for rankers remained.117 Frey has reported a much higher percentage of English soldiers in the 1770s in the Foot Guards than in the line regiments. As well as recruits from the Home counties, especially Middlesex, in London the Foot Guards provided a refuge for the penniless migrants from all over southern England, displaced by economic developments throughout the period. Unskilled labourers, who could satisfy the stiffer Guards height requirement, formed almost 40 per cent of their recruits in the 1770s and it was this group which provided much of the casual workforce for the capital. Guards officers who in the late eighteenth century were allowed eight months’ leave a year, did little to change these working traditions.118 This workforce has been noted by a number of historians, but not discussed in any detail. Cookson asserts guardsmen were ‘an extension of London’s proletariat’, and Roger Wells claims their brawn was needed on the docks for coal-heaving: ‘In the docks of the East End … there were few employed in delivering [unloading] the coal ships except Irishmen & Soldiers’. The Grenadier Guards still apparently retain the nickname of ‘The Coalheavers’. Interestingly, there is no mention of guardsmen in Dorothy George’s classic account, though Jennine Hurl-Eamon’s recent study does throw some light on the subject and emphasises the strapping guardsmen as ‘lumpers’ in unloading ships, especially coalers, as well as their diversified employment strategy. One example in 1805 was Private Thomas Voss who worked for a hosier ‘as a general servant, a porter … work[ing] in the frame making stockings … cleaning windows and talking down beds’. Others worked in building trades, like Samuel Barnes of the 3rd Foot Guards who was drowned whilst repairing the brickwork of a Pimlico sewer in 1816. Such activity could be useful to the military. One experienced officer claimed of their combing-out during Peninsular War sieges: ‘The Guards work better than any soldiers, from their working habits in London.’ The frequent queries about the political loyalties of the Guards will be examined elsewhere.119 The capital offered specialised work opportunities. ‘An additional attraction of serving in a Household regiment was that soldiers were allowed 117 Quoted in Holmes, Soldiers, 79 and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 3, 539 and vol. 11, 36. 118 Frey, British Soldier in America, 15 and Holmes, Soldiers, 79. 119 Cookson, British Armed Nation, 184; Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience, 1795–1803 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1983), 80; Charles Messenger, A History of British Infantry: For Love of Regiment, vol. 2 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2014), 226; Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1930); Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army, chap. 6, especially p. 191; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 72; and Haythornthwaite, Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith, 61.

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to wear uniform outside barracks whilst undertaking a second civilian job.’ Whilst this was unlikely to have applied to the dirty jobs discussed above, in their bright uniforms (of scarlet rather than the dirty brick red of the line on campaign) they were in demand for staffing society events or as extras in theatrical performances, particularly in patriotic popular productions: ‘Sometimes theatre managers enhanced the visual impact by hiring soldiers in uniform to perform’. Though this was opposed by some Colonels: ‘It appears that these performances were useful as wartime propaganda, however, and guardsmen “were allowed by the authorities” to take part in a London production which staged the Battle of Inkermann in August 1855’. Their size also supported casual employment as scene shifters in theatres, and their black musicians – usually percussionists – were especially in demand.120 Guardsmen were counted amongst the noted professional pugilists of the period, one example being the celebrated Corporal John Shaw of the 2nd Life Guards who ran amok and lost his life at Waterloo. Shaw had deliberately enlisted in that regiment from remote Nottinghamshire to further his boxing career. With their well-developed physiques, Guardsmen were also in demand as artists’ models. Shaw had been used by Benjamin Haydon and William Etty (a nude Etty sketch of the boxer forms the centre of a display on the subject at the Household Cavalry Museum, along with a copy of his skull!). An unknown private of the Life Guards was later used by John Everett Millais in his painting ‘The Black Brunswicker’ (1860).121 Some Guardsmen were active in the sex industry in the capital over three centuries, particularly as male prostitutes. Known as a ‘Bit of Scarlet’, this was centred upon the royal parks convenient for their barracks in St James’s. Daniel Houlbrook’s claim that homosexuality was part of mainstream Guards life in the twentieth century may also be true of the nineteenth. Despite its being severely censured, male prostitution went on, only revealed by legal action. In 1806, Guardsman Greenhough was pilloried at Charing Cross and pelted by women, ‘highly exasperated at the enormity of his offence, [and] “attempts to commit unnatural offences”’. After this, he and a colleague were imprisoned for 12 months. The popular press – and especially the radical section – was keen to publish exposés like that of the Bishop of Clogher in 1822. Here, Private John Moverley of the 1st Foot Guards was accused with the Bishop of a sexual act in front of witnesses 120 Ellis, ‘“Left to the Streets and the Workhouse”’, 206 and Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 144. See also Russell, Theatres of War. 121 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 27 and Lady Lever Art Gallery (www.liverpoolmuseums. org.uk/ladylever/collections/paintings/gallery2/blackbrunswicker.aspx).

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in the backroom of a Haymarket pub. The incident attracted the attention of William Cobbett, who raised the case of an unfortunate Irishman who had accused the Bishop of importuning him in 1811 and had been flogged and imprisoned for his pains. Both Clogher and Moverley skipped bail and disappeared from history. In 1833, James Flowers, another Guards private, was prosecuted at the King’s Bench, ‘accused of an attempt to commit an unnatural act’ along with W.J. Bankes, Tory MP for Dorset. The defendants drew on character witnesses including the Duke of Wellington and the future Lord Raglan for Bankes, and fellow soldiers for Flowers, and both were acquitted, though Bankes went to live abroad in 1841 after a further scandal.122 Guardsmen’s involvement in homosexual prostitution continued in a more discrete way into the mid-Victorian period. Edward Leeves’s diary from 1849 to 1850 highlights his obsession with privates of the Royal Horse Guards (particularly a trooper named Jack Brand who died of cholera) and his ‘romance with the gallant Blues’ who were ‘all that I love’. ‘He gave them money and collected their regimental canes and buttons’.123 Such risky trade gave opportunities for further profit through extortion and blackmail, often with soldiers’ wives as accomplices. In 1794, the wife of Private Paul Hill, accused Charles Butts of an affair with her husband, with a mob at her back, shouting that Butts was a ‘b–gg–r and a sodomite’ and demanding silence with half a guinea. Wealthy clients were more typical, leading to considerable earnings, up to £50 a week by the 1930s, when a police inspector could report: ‘I am afraid that … there is an atmosphere of this kind permeating a section of the Guards’.124 The living conditions of guardsmen in unsanitary barracks in St James’s and Portman Street were a disgrace to the Victorian army, with Portman Street’s 22-man rooms described thus: ‘it requires a strong nerve on the part of one who would put his nose into it’. Overcrowding, damp uniforms and the emphasis in London on sentry duty, also contributed to a high level of disease, particularly consumption. By the 1850s, ‘The general result was that, whereas the general rate of mortality among the population of military age varied between seven and a half and nine in a thousand, that of the Guards 122 Matt Houlbrook, ‘Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys: Homosexuality, Masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of Guards, circa 1900–1960’, Journal of British Studies, 42 (2003), 351–88; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 72; Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 206–07; Penny Young, Two Cocks on the Dunghill (South Lopham: Twopenny Press, 2009), 242–43; Annual Register, 1833, 164–69; and The Political Soldier, 7 Dec. 1833. 123 Edward Leeves, Leaves from a Victorian Diary (London: Secker & Warburg, 1985), 112. 124 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army, 205 and Houlbrook, ‘Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys’, 361, 363 and 372.

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was twenty, that of the line eighteen, and that of the Cavalry was eleven in the thousand.’ This was compared with an average civilian rate of 3.5 per thousand.125 The Guards’ minimum height requirement of 5 foot 9 inches (175 cm) made it more difficult to recruit in the late-Victorian period. Not only did they have to compete with the civilian labour market, but the military could offer better paid opportunities for big men as artillerymen. These were needed especially to manoeuvre large equipment in the recently formed, and generally home-based, Royal Garrison Artillery. With a more professionalised service, the earlier outside employment possibilities in the Guards declined. After the Cardwell reforms introduced short-term rank-and-file enlistment, recruitment improved slightly. There is evidence that young men from respectable working-class families joined the Guards as a deliberate career move. After only three years in the ranks, they would be better placed to join the Metropolitan police.126 General labouring Though difficult to gauge in scale, casual outside employment of soldiers appears to have been widespread when stationed in Britain. Sometimes this had official sanction: ‘From 1777 the 51st Regiment kept a book for recording the names and behaviour of all given permission to work’. This is confirmed by the recent work of Jennine Hurl-Eamon. Such traditional practices were more problematic in key overseas garrisons, with soldiers on eighteenthcentury Gibraltar being prosecuted for working as porters.127 Given the paucity of available manpower during the mass mobilisation of the French Wars, men stationed in Britain were often given time off to help with harvesting, for which they were paid by farmers. This was especially so in the militia, with its high percentage of agricultural workers and paternalistic relations with its officers. In the Cambridgeshire Militia, furloughs were given to men to journey to their home areas. In good years half the regiment would be off harvesting in August and September. By the harvest of 1801, with the lessening of the threat of invasion, only one tenth of the regiment was retained in its barracks at Colchester.128 125 May, Military Barracks, 19 and 21 and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 13, 538. 126 Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 124 and French, Military Identities, 35. 127 G.A. Steppler, ‘Regimental Records in the Late Eighteenth Century and the Social History of the British Soldier, Archivaria (summer 1988), 13; Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army, chap. 6; and Tatum, ‘The Soldiers Murmured Much’, 99, in Linch and McCormack, Britain’s Soldiers. 128 Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 68 and CRO, Cambridgeshire Militia Order Book, 1801–03, L 79–4.

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Other, less-vital work was tolerated even during the wars, though it could be hazardous. In 1814, after recruiting duties, Sergeant Benjamin Miller returned to the artillery depot in Woolwich: ‘On settling my account, I was 40 pounds in the agent’s debt and got leave to work until I was clear.’ Whilst working for a local builder, Miller fell from a ladder, was seriously injured and subsequently discharged. That same year, two privates of the 3rd Dragoons doing some freelance well sinking at Canterbury were poisoned when descending a foul well and labourer Private Potter of the North York Militia had his head fatally crushed loading timber onto a cart. Such odd jobs for locals sometimes took place when billeted overseas. Somerset man Thomas Knight of the 95th Rifles, when stationed in Belgium prior to the Waterloo campaign, was befriended by a farmer and ‘assisted him at ploughing’, and men of the 14th Foot were recorded working for peasants, weeding flax and corn and planting potatoes.129 With the peace, outside work continued under supervision and was acknowledged in some standing orders: ‘No soldier is ever to be suffered to work without the approbation of the officer commanding his company.’ Such toleration even extended to potential aids to desertion: ‘any man that has leave to work must never appear in his uniform but must provide himself with clothes for the purpose’. In theory, NCOs were excluded from this private world of work by their superior position in the military class structure: ‘No NCO is ever to be employed personally on any duty of fatigue, nor is ever to be seen holding or leading a horse on the street, carrying a bundle, basket etc, etc, or in any way to appear below the dignity of an NCO.’130 The Guards, especially the better-paid Household Cavalry, took advantage of longer postings around London and Windsor, to work and then buy houses or land. Troopers of the Royal Horse Guards are recorded farming their own plots around Windsor Castle along with even better paid specialists like Armourer Sergeant Sam Morton who joined the 2nd Life Guards in 1813 and retired in 1857. This trend increased in distant colonial stations unlikely to be disturbed by war. Private Robert Reid of the 48th Foot, stationed in New South Wales, signed an indenture to work for a rich settler in 1820. Shortage of labour in Canada gave plentiful opportunities for outside work, but such was the danger of desertion in this posting that the military authorities were reluctant to sanction it. This did not stop employers from offering jobs and shelter to soldiers on the run. The farmers of Prince Edward Island and lumbermen of New Brunswick were particularly known 129 Adventures of Serjeant Benjamin Miller, 43; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 72; Knight, British Battalion at Oporto, 14; and James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 219. 130 LIM, 82nd Regiment Standing Orders (Dublin, 1844), 13 and 17.

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for employing deserters, and local magistrates turned a blind eye to the practice, to keep on good terms with their settler neighbours.131 ‘Penny capitalists’ Common soldiers were also found working part-time in those nebulous trades, dubbed as ‘penny capitalists’ by John Benson, providing food, drink, various services, goods or favours to their comrades. Officers generally tolerated penny capitalists and the handicraft producers, discussed later, as a way of diverting soldiers from drink into wholesome spare-time activities. Especially again in colonial stations, where the benefits of European civilisation may have been lacking, officers were keen consumers of their products and services and even commissioned some on occasion.132 Early-nineteenth-century recruits sometimes encountered penny capitalism when enlisting, as recruiting Sergeants often ran shops selling kit at inflated prices to gullible newcomers, which enabled them to recoup the bounty money. Despite being banned in the Duke of York’s reforms, similar scams went on throughout the century. Few missed encountering it in their service, as described by John Shipp: ‘The post of pay sergeant is certainly one of consequence … He feeds and clothes the men, lends them money and sells them watches and seals, on credit … I never served in a company in which every individual could not buy, sell, exchange, lend or borrow on terms peculiar to themselves.’ Shipp himself lent money ‘at a moderate rate and on good security’. Such dealing could easily spill over into the illegal sale of ‘necessaries’ or issued kit to civilians by soldiers which so bedevilled the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century military. Soldiers sometimes charged for their literacy skills, to read letters or write home, for less-educated comrades, though this could be done as a kindness, or in exchange for another service. As late as the Zulu War, Frank Bourne of the 24th Foot, who had been one of the defenders of Rorke’s Drift, wrote: ‘I found myself “unpaid secretary” to several men who could barely read and write, and I deciphered and answered their letters home, feeling quite happy in our relations.’133 131 B. Granville Baker, Old Cavalry Stations (London: Heath Cranton, 1934), 141; Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 139; and Burroughs, ‘Tackling Army Desertion in British North America’, 43. 132 John Benson, The Penny Capitalists (Dublin: Gillan Macmillan, 1983). On its operation, see, for instance, the experiences of the enterprising Sergeant Bodell in Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 69 and 158. 133 Linch, Britain and Wellington’s Army, 86; Stranks, John Shipp, 41, quoted in Michael Lieven, ‘The Soldiery and the Ideology of Empire: Letters from Zululand’, JSAHR, 80 (2002), 131.

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Evidence of penny capitalism is hard to locate, but recent studies of barracks show temporary food stalls run by ‘sutlers’. Soldiers only got two meals a day until the Cardwell reforms and regimental canteens were rudimentary, so there was ready demand. Most sutlers seem to have been ex-soldiers or the wives or widows of soldiers, until the regimental canteens were established after the Crimean War. It is claimed that in the 1840s the War Office was making £65,000 a year from sutlers’ rents at barracks.134 In overseas stations, controls were more lax. Some soldiers are recorded making and supplying illicit liquor or trading rations for more congenial local food. Technically, both activities were illegal and were sometimes prosecuted. On Barbados in 1842, Lance Corporal James Horton of the 47th Foot sold 50lb (23 kilos) of company ration meat: ‘hawked on a public highway … giving the money received for the Meat to the Men of the company … that something [salt fish] might be purchased for the Men’s Dinners’. The luckless Horton received 28 days’ hard labour and demotion to the ranks for providing fish for his probably Roman Catholic comrades on a Good Friday, in an example of the cultural insensitivity of officers. Of Guardsmen stationed in London barracks in 1809, it was also recorded: ‘it is usual for them to sell off their beef ’. A Quebec-based soldier sold a cow for £6, a ‘high price for a cow but she bears the character of the best cow in the place’ – before embarking for home in 1807.135 Drink, though legal, was a more serious problem for the imperial army. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, the premier North American station until 1867, Bonnie Huskins has calculated that the garrison of up to 4,000 supported nearly 300 drinking premises. Sergeant Thomas Maguire ran the spirit shop in Hobart, Tasmania, for which he paid the 48th Regimental Fund £1 a week. He allegedly made £2,000, before succumbing to cholera in India in 1824. In Victorian India, regimental canteens were meant to function with less corruption. The canteen of the 16th Lancers was overseen by a quarterly committee of the CO and two subalterns, who managed a Canteen Sergeant, European assistant and native servant. The overall inability of officers to penetrate the working world of their rankers is illustrated by their ineffectual attempts not to ‘deprive the soldier of his comforts while realising a fortune in two or three years for the canteen sergeant’. Canteen 134 Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 66. See also Pete Arrowsmith, ‘Hulme Barracks, Hulme’, unpublished report, Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit, University of Manchester, 2009. 135 LIM, 47th Foot Order Book, 1830–1853; Hurl-Eamon, Marriage in the British Army, 99; and Carol M. Whitfield, Tommy Atkins: The British Soldier in Canada, 1759–1870 (Ottawa: National Historic Parks Canada, 1981), 47.

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Sergeant Thomas claimed to have made £1,400 in eighteen months and another Sergeant left £4,000 in his will.136 Sergeant Laverack of the 98th Foot developed a whole catering empire at Umballa, in 1860s India: The Colonel has taken the sale of coffee and eatables from a native for selling inferior articles, and I am appointed sole proprietor of the coffee and eating rooms, manufacturer of ginger beer, baker of bread and confectioner.

Employing two European and eight native bakers, Laverack had his own bread ovens built and won the Divisional contract to ‘supply the men at daybreak with coffee, cakes, buns, tarts, spice loaves, etc., etc.’ A trusted businessman as well as a Methodist and temperance supporter, he was also ‘appointed canteen superintendent … and head president of the sergeant’s mess. I have kept an eye on the mess liquor books and prevented excessive drinking.’137 Regimental canteens remained open to abuse and graft, with Canteen Sergeants and Quartermasters a byword for making money from their comrades. This continued despite the intervention of three officers who formed the Canteen Mess Co-operative Society in 1894. Its unlikely membership of the co-operative movement enabled it to undertake bulk-buying and pass on savings to soldiers. Ex-service private traders gradually disappeared from the barracks and regimental canteens were reformed, with official tenders supervised by Colonels replacing the old graft and sub-standard supplies of stewards and sutlers. But new corruption appeared, with contracting-out to major suppliers like Liptons, who provided canteens to 87 regiments. This business was worth over £500,000 a year in 1910. The allegations of their wholesale bribery resulted in nearly 150 prosecutions, mainly of NCOs, but also of one former CO.138 On a smaller scale, smart thinkers amongst the ranks could take advantage of changes in station and varying exchange rates to trade rare goods. On his return from India in 1853, Sergeant John Pearman evaded customs duties for cigars and even found one ‘Custom officer Brought most of Cigars themselves I sold one 300 Cinsurah Cigars at 1 penny each they only Cost me 1 rupee 12 annas about 3s 6d in English money’. Though early trading in the East Indies 136 Bonnie Huskins, ‘From Haute Cuisine to Ox Roasts: Public Feasting and the Negotiation of Class in Mid-19th-Century Saint John and Halifax’, Labour/Le Travail, 37 (1996), 9–36; Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 47, 49 and 147; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 165–67. 137 A. Laverack, A Methodist Soldier in the Indian Army (London: T. Wollmer, 1887), 178–79. 138 French, Military Identities, 112–13 and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 163. See also J.W. Fortescue, A Short Account of Canteens in the British Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928).

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was dominated by officers – especially those of the EIC – very occasionally rank-and-file penny capitalists could find undreamed of wealth. William Hope – once a private in the Madras Europeans – founded the merchant house, Hope and Co., and became the richest white man in the Presidency, only to drown with his entire family on the homeward voyage in 1811. Probably more typical was ex-Troop Sergeant Major William Musgrave, who, after discharge at Meerut, India in 1843, set up as wine merchant with his son.139 Entertainers Entertainment for the troops was another avenue for soldiers’ talents and money-making enterprise. An enormous impact had been made on Britain’s leisure world a generation earlier by one ex-serviceman. Cabinetmaker’s son Philip Astley (1742–1814) enlisted in the newly formed 15th Light Dragoons in the Seven Years War and after distinguished service in Germany was discharged as a Sergeant Major in 1766, with his horse Gibraltar. By the time of his death he had set up a multinational entertainment business based on equestrian skills and battle re-enactments and is considered the creator of the modern circus. He was also a philanthropist. To help alleviate the sufferings of British troops in the Low Countries in 1793, Astley donated ‘500 flannel jackets and at the corner of each of them was sewed in a shilling … that made the latter popular through the whole army … being thoroughly conversant with the wants of soldier in a campaign’. After the Peace of Amiens, he gave free seats at his shows for returning soldiers: ‘This made him more popular than ever with the government and military … [and] it drew him crowded audiences every night, to behold so many brave men who had endured the fatigues and toils of a soldier’s life.’140 Subsequently, entertainers of various sorts found work, catering mainly for their comrades especially in isolated postings at home or abroad. In the 1790s, Edward McMurdy, a gunner in the Royal Artillery, augmented his salary while his regiment was in Jamaica, by being employed ‘as a singing man’. On a grander scale, in 1813, Joe Kelly, a singer serving in the Life Guards, performed at a dinner given by the Duke of Wellington to his generals in Spain.141 139 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 186; Stephen Taylor, Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809 (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), 16 and 137; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 342. 140 Russell, Theatres of War, 117 and J. Decastro, The Memoirs of J. Decastro, comedian … accompanied by an analysis of the life of the late Philip Astley (London: Humphreys, 1824), 72 and 74. 141 Patricia Y.C.E. Lin, ‘Caring for the Nation’s Families: British Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families and the State, 1793–1815’, in Alan Forest, Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendell (eds),

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Gillian Russell points out that, for some soldiers, performance in military amateur dramatics could result in future stage careers. The remarkable John Shipp was promoted twice from the ranks. After performing in India, he wrote plays as well as his memoirs on his return to the UK. Obscure ex-rankers such as John Brown and Robert Hay became local strolling players. Earlier, Frey points out the importance of amateur dramatics in the American frontier, to which civilians were invited as paying customers. Amateur dramatics formed key social events whilst Wellington’s Peninsular army was in winter quarters, creating bonds with the local population. Some regiments, especially in colonial stations, ran their own ‘pro-am’ theatres, with regimental bandsmen as the orchestra, and opened their productions to all comers. In a very varied army career, Sergeant James Bodell was the Stage Manager of the 59th Foot’s theatre in Hong Kong in the 1850s.142 Trumpeter Daly was recruited to the 9th Lancers as a boy soldier of 15 in 1873 through his skills as a contortionist, which were needed in the regiment’s own circus in India. When the circus closed, Daly turned his hand to running a pickle factory. In India, the 30th Foot in 1880 boasted their own blackfaced ‘Christy Minstrels … G Company Nigger Troupe’, which may have been renamed the ‘East Lancashire Eithiopean [sic] Troupe’ by 1882. Charles Wells describes these Christy Minstrels and taproom pianists being paid in beer at the Buffs Depot in the 1880s. The stage provided an outlet for soldiers to satisfy the popular interest in dramatic imperial events. In 1897, Piper Findlater of the Cameron Highlanders, who won the VC on the North West Frontier for continuing playing whilst wounded, re-enacted this nightly at the Alhambra Theatre in London, until stopped by senior officers. The well-developed story-telling traditions, especially after lights out, were used by Robert Blatchford as a plot device in his novels about his army life and transposed wholesale to his Clarion socialist cycling movement in the 1890s.143 Other entertainers promoted illegal gambling. House (later developed as bingo) was the favoured game of the army in India by the end of the period. Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 111 and James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 122. 142 Russell, The Theatres of War, 183–84; Mansfield, ‘Grads and Snobs’, 193; Frey, British Soldier in America, 68; and Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 157. 143 The Life of Trumpeter C.E. Daly (n.d. [c.1900]) (I am grateful to John Rumsby for this information); LIM, XXX Gazette, Aug. 1880 and Mar. 1882; Grey, ‘Soldiering in Victorian Days’, 64; Dunlop, Development of the British Army, 8; Robert Blatchford, Tales for the Marines (London, Clarion Press, 1901); and Denis Pye, Fellowship is Life (Bolton: Clarion Publishing, 1995), 15.

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Sessions could last up to seven hours and the promoters ‘considered that they had had a bad day if they did not make between thirty shillings and two pounds between them’.144 Handicrafts Penny capitalists also produced craftwork. Britain’s many military museum collections all contain ‘soldiers’ handicrafts … which were encouraged by the military authorities to prevent the soldiers from turning to drink. Macramé, embroidery, carvings in wood and bone, examples of poetry, drawings, paintings and useful handmade items like brushes, combs, and pots and pans abound in displays’.145 Little is known about these ubiquitous objects. A recent Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles survey systematically scrutinised some surviving examples: There is evidence to support the proposition that some quilts were made by military tailors, constructed from scraps from the cutting floor rather than pieces of uniform. In addition to access to materials, regimental tailors would have the skills base to facilitate complex designs and construction, and the ability to transport unfinished patchwork with their stock of tailoring materials.

Samuel Atwood, an army tailor active in India in the 1850s, was certainly engaged in very complex constructions (see Illustration 5). Sue Prichard discounts the myth that quilts were made to memorialise fallen comrades from their uniforms, and suggests that civilian cloth was widely used, though considers that their late-Victorian decline may have resulted from the widespread adoption of khaki. Quilting was very common in Indian stations in hot weather and reached its apogee amongst the many sick and wounded convalescing after the Crimean War. These created elaborate quilts with up to 30,000 pieces and was actively encouraged by military authorities and temperance societies to discourage heavy drinking. One soldier was quoted as saying: ‘I must be employed, or I shall get into mischief.’ Quilts were included in a series of Soldiers’ Industrial Exhibitions held from the 1860s in India and in the Royal Military Exhibition at Chelsea in 1890, with awarded prizes. Making quilts for practical as well as ornamental use was a pastime shared by regimental tailors and skilled amateurs, using cloth from cast-off ‘Melton Cloth’ from uniforms, and ‘cabbage’ or offcuts, the traditional perquisite of tailors in both civilian and military life. The 144 Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 74. 145 Thwaites, Presenting Arms, 84.

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5  Sam Atwood, army tailor and quilter in India, c.1850. Such intricate constructions were made over months in hot weather from off-cuts from the tailor’s shop floor.

omnipresent military pin cushions are also said to date from the Crimean War, with their production, it is claimed, representing a longing for home and hearth.146 Needlework skills seem to have been common. In the 1840s, Light Dragoon John Pearman was taught needlework on the voyage out to India by a ‘comrade named Hamilton, a tailor … which I found afterwards to be very useful to me … as it was very hot in the day we sat on our Charpoy [and] … set at the Needle’. Company soldier Quinney described: When the heat of the day rendered it unpleasant to go abroad, the barrack room frequently presented the appearance of a workshop, some being engaged making straw hats, others netting [sic] socks and gloves, some making thread buttons (an article much used here, as they stand the washing better than any other kind), and a number in sewing … These 146 Sue Prichard, ‘Precision Patchwork: Nineteenth Century Military Quilts’, Textile History and the Military, 41(1) supplement (2010), 216, 218 and 219 and Ruth Kenney, Jeff McMillan and Martin Myrone, British Folk Art (London: Tate, 2014), 14, 38, 120 and 128. I am grateful for the guidance of Sue Prichard and Holly Furneaux on this issue.

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together with shoemaking, tinkers, etc., formed a variety seldom met with in one apartment.147

Other craftsmen made decorated functional objects, which were needed by all soldiers in their daily lives and which were coveted by their comrades. One Corporal in Mauritius in the 1850s described: ‘The ebony buttonstick of ebony wood (most of them made by a man named Guy) was a work of art … but the fashion must be followed’. Although they were already being superseded by paper cartridges in the late eighteenth century, elaborately engraved powder horns were still being made by soldiers, with regimental battle honours and patriotic sentiments. (The Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London has several examples, one with an anti-war poem.) Many regimental museums also contain small watercoloured portraits of rank-and-file soldiers, occasionally with their families. Usually in naive style, some are self-portraits or pre-photographic illustrations made by talented comrades to send as keepsakes to families, especially where a long overseas posting was expected. Artistic ex-rankers also set up business at embarkation points to provide these souvenirs to departing soldiers. The King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum in Lancaster has two made by Charles Dean, who signed himself ‘Late 15th Regiment’. His inscription for Private Henry Watts of the 4th Foot, bound for Australia in 1831, reads: ‘Dear Parents when you see this remember me And bear me in your mind When i am far in a Foreign Clime’ (see book jacket).148 The fullest account of the part-time soldier/handicraft-maker comes from James Bodell of the 59th Foot whilst stationed in Hong Kong: I must not forget to mention my industrious Habits the time before I was promoted to Sergeant in 1851 … I had as a comrade a Yarmouth fisherman … This man was expert in making all kinds of Network … and it occurred to me to get my mate to learn me to make nets. I soon picked net making up, and I was in the habit of earning money by painting the name number Regt and Company on the Boxes belonging to the men also the same as the Knapsacks and type cutting also, and Hair Cutting I had a little Cash in hand [and] I suggested to my mate to commence making Horse Nets. To this he agreed, he making the Needles and holder out of Bamboo cane … In a few months we had opened a regular business and made Horse 147 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 146 and 220 and Quinney, quoted in Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 174. 148 David J. Rowlands, ‘The Dress of the 1st Battalion 5th Fusiliers’, JSAHR, 64 (1986), 213. (I am grateful to Mark Dennis and Peter Donnelly for their help with folk art.) See www. kingsownmuseum.plus.com/galleryhenrywatts.htm. For other portraits, see, for example, Rene Chartrand, ‘Private Charles Traveller, 70th Foot, Canada, 1841’, JSAHR, 70 (1992), 1–3, a self-portrait by the dying soldier to send to his brother.

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Nets for the General and his son besides numbers of Military officers and Merchants. We used to get from 5 to 6 Dollars for each net the material costing from 1½ to 2 Dollars.149

Particularly in the imperial postings, which became the norm, and especially in isolated garrisons, where cheap indigenous labour did not exist, regiments became self-contained and self-sufficient communities. They fulfilled their own European standard of consumer demands and the more sophisticated needs of modern civilisation that could be supplied from the pre-enlistment skills of talented traders and artisan rankers, operating in their spare time. Even in India, despite competition from cheaper local labour, post-Mutiny racism and general lack of fatigue duties resulted in the CO of the 14th Light Dragoons reporting that ‘some men do work as tinmen, curriers, carpenters and turners’. Private Michael Fennerty of the 16th Lancers was a monumental mason, who in 1828 inscribed the tomb of a Greek merchant in Delhi. In the same decade, Sergeant George Carter of the EIC Europeans carried on his trade as a bookbinder. In 1878, the new regimental journal of the 59th Foot, published in India, carried advertisements from artisans soliciting work from fellow rankers, like F. Wilton, Clockmaker and Thomas Wardall, Regimental Printer. Presumably, tradesmen like these had established quite sizeable premises. Other examples are ‘Special artist Photographer’ Colour Sergeant J. Hull of the Northamptonshire Regiment at Secunderabad in 1896, and Corporal James Hutchinson of the 1st Inniskilling Fusiliers, a self-taught photographer, who mastered complicated processes to develop and hand colour photographs, specialising in Edwardian exotic photographs of China.150 Sometimes craftsmen concentrated on an export market. ‘Many soldiers of the 32nd in the Punjab caught butterflies and moths, or purchased them from local inhabitants, and made them up into decorative cases, which could be sold for as much as £5 or £10 in England.’ Sergeant Gould of the 16th Lancers also made up cases of exotic butterflies and beetles and O’ Neill of the EIC dealt in ‘matchlocks, jassails, ancient Greek coins procured at Cabul and other trifles’.151 This handicraft culture was still evident in the Edwardian period. Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers described: 149 Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 69. 150 Quoted in Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 2, 359; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 176; Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, 82–83; LIM, The Sentinel (1 Feb. 1878); and Arthur S. White, A Bibliography of Regimental Histories of the British Army (London: Society for Army Historical Research, 1965), 297. Hutchinson’s photographs are recorded in Bill Jackson (ed.), The Corporal and the Celestials (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2008). 151 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 176.

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Two men whom I knew very well, even denied themselves a smoke in their endeavour to save as much money as they possibly could before returning to civilian life. These two were expert knitters: they bought wool from the Bazaar with which they knitted jerseys with fancy designs, and blow belts, for keeping money in, which a large number of men wore around their waists. They made a handsome profit out of their work.152

Adventurers and settlers Many rankers, especially NCOs, relished opportunities to show initiative and shoulder responsibilities. Some NCOs were trusted to undertake exotic and isolated missions. Examples include the few ‘NCOs, together with arms and ammunition to the Indians [Creek and Choctaw]’ sent to aid them against Andrew Jackson in August 1814, or the corporal and four privates of the 19th Light Dragoons that accompanied radical General Sir Robert Wilson, the British envoy to Russia, during the 1812 and 1813 campaigns.153 The growth of the British Empire, both in the 1815 peace settlement and thereafter through wars of conquest, opened up amazing chances for rankers smitten with wanderlust. Skilled or trusted soldiers, especially from the Sappers and Miners, were often used in Victorian exploration. As early as 1816, ten men of the Guards and Royal Staff Corps joined a disastrous search for the source of the Niger, in which most died of disease. In Australia in 1817, Thomas Thacker, a literate ranker of the 48th Foot, accompanied surveying expeditions as a clerk and walked 250 miles back to Botany Bay with a message, despite an injured arm, earning NCO’s stripes. Eight Sappers – attracted by double pay – joined the Niger expedition of 1841 to blast the rocks hampering the passage. Corporal Edwards accompanied a later Niger expedition, had a dalliance with an Ibo Princess, and ended his working life as Foreman of Works at Portland Prison. Sergeant Thomas Sim and two artificers opened up the Euphrates steam navigation route from India in 1835. Sappers James F. Church and J. Macquire accompanied an astronomic observation to Lake Chad in 1853, tasked with care of its scientific equipment. Macquire was murdered by locals but Church managed to return to Britain after two years in the bush. A Wiltshire mason by trade, then trained by the Royal Engineers as a photographer, he was discharged with a pension in 1869, after 22 years’ service as a Quartermaster Sergeant Instructor.154 152 Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 129 and 164. 153 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 10, 150 and Antony Brett James (ed.), General Wilson’s Journal (London: William Kimber, 1964), 87. 154 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 35; ‘Note 1325’, JSAHR, 69 (1991), 263–64; ‘Note 1325’, JSAHR, 70 (1992), 134; and Connolly, History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, 354 and 385.

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Some soldiers went on to achieve extraordinary careers in the Empire. Charles Fraser (1788–1831), a Scottish gardener who enlisted in 1815, was part of the garrison of New South Wales with the 48th Foot. He joined the Swan River and other expeditions collecting flora, was appointed colonial botanist in 1821, at 5 shillings a day, and went on to found the Sydney Botanic Gardens. He rates an entry in the Dictionary of Australian Biography. Another Scotsman, William Glass, had worked as a groom for the Duke of Roxburgh’s estate before enlisting as a driver in the Royal Artillery in the French Wars. Promoted Corporal, he was part of a small British garrison on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan Da Cunha, established to keep watch on Napoleon in exile on St Helena. When the troops withdrew, he elected to stay with his family and established a paternalistic Utopia on the colony until his death in 1853. He may have been influenced by the ideas of Thomas Spence (1750–1814), the radical theorist, since Glass’s constitution declares: ‘The stock and stores of every description … shall be considered as belonging equally to each’ and ‘that in order to ensure the harmony of the Firm no member shall assume any superiority whatsoever, but all to be considered as equal in every respect’. Private Charles Masson (alias James Lewis) of the EIC’s Bengal Horse Artillery, ‘deserted after the siege of Bhurtpore and went on to become a celebrated explorer of central Asia’. He was also a pioneer archaeologist and a semi-legendary early participant in the ‘Great Game’.155 In various parts of the Empire, offers of ‘virgin’ land were often made to soldiers nearing the end of their contracts as a means of populating imperial frontiers with suitable martially inclined settlers. This process started after the American Revolution when soldiers, especially American loyalists, were settled in Canada, but it seems to have stalled after 1815. Cookson’s recent detailed work on Scottish potential settlers after the French Wars argues that few military pensioners wanted to settle in the Empire and emphasises the ease with which they got back into civil society. Indeed, 90 per cent of ex-servicemen returned to Scotland, with 75 per cent returning to their native parishes.156 After 1815, settlement schemes had varied outcomes. On the borders of 155 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 35; ‘Frazer, Charles (1788–1831)’ (http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/frazer-charles-2068); William Glass (www.kelso.bordernet.co.uk/people/williamglass.html); ‘At the Edge of the World’, Independent, 9 Aug. 2005, 13. For Spence, see Malcolm Chase, The People’s Farm: English Radical Agrarianism, 1775–1840 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Stanley, ‘“Highly Inflammatory Writings”’, 232; and ‘Masson, Charles’ (www. iranicaonline.org/articles/masson-charles). 156 Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire (London: Harper, 2011), 87 and Cookson, ‘Early Nineteenth Century Military Pensioners as Homecoming Soldiers’, 326.

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the Cape Colony, grants given by Sir Harry Smith in 1819 to disbanded men of the Royal African Corps (a penal corps; see the section ‘Deliberate crime and penal corps’, in Chapter 4, below) seem to have been remarkably successful in providing a cheap defence against the Kaffirs. Thirty years later, they were still thought to be effective against raiders. In Canada, partly as reaction to high desertion rates to the USA, the settlement programme was extended, as Canadian self-government developed. However, in 1830, an ambitious scheme by Lord Grey for 3,000 ex-soldiers to forego their pensions in lieu of grants of land in Canada was an appalling failure, with most participants reduced to penury. A Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment was specially formed in 1839. A higher percentage than line regiments of wives ‘on the strength’ was allowed, to encourage reliable married soldiers, who were then offered land grants after their retirements. In New Zealand, after the First Maori War in 1846, 500 ex-servicemen located at Auckland ‘proved to be idle, intemperate recruits with little taste for farming’.157 Small-scale, organic settlement seems to have worked better than these grand schemes. Fifty-seven members of the 48th Foot settled in New South Wales after the end of their seven-year tour in 1824, most buying or marrying into land. Typical was Quartermaster Sergeant George MacDonald, who came to the colony as a First Fleet marine and bought or inherited 130 acres. Some land grants were also made available by the Governor but were often unsuccessful: ‘The Military habits of these people, render them the worst description of Settlers, being almost universally lazy, dissipated, turbulent and discontented.’158 Pensioners, instructors and administrators Army pensions, administered by Chelsea Hospital, were generally hard to get. Only awarded for serious wounds, injury or debility through service, they were variable throughout the century. The pressing manpower needs of the French Wars briefly led to the establishment of short-term enlistments and offers of pensions, but fraud and escalating costs resulted in widespread tightening up. Nonetheless, the wars caused a spike in government liabilities, which reached a peak of 86,000 pensioners in 1828 and continued at this level until the mid-century. Later those pensioners who were deemed fit had to earn their money by compulsory enrolment in a special force to be used against the Chartists. Disinclination to serve or voicing radical opinions resulted in its withdrawal, with 8,720 mustered by 1847–48. Volunteer pensioners also 157 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 11, 396, vol. 12, 520 and vol. 11, 440; Burroughs, ‘A Unreformed Army?’, 167; and Burroughs, ‘Tackling Army Desertion’, 66. 158 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 106 and 131.

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formed a temporary Ambulance Corps for the Crimean War of 348 men, though this initiative was not regarded as a success.159 Pensions based on rank, long service and good conduct (as well as disability) were established in 1836. They were relatively modest for the rest of the century, with NCOs receiving about 5 shillings a week, and privates eightpence (raised to 1 shilling after the Boer War). Only in rural Ireland would a retired senior NCO have enough to keep him in comfort. Poverty and the workhouse were the lot of soldiers who failed to rejoin the labour market, with nearly 9,000 ex-servicemen in receipt of poor relief by 1897.160 NCOs nearing the end of their careers and worried for their future in the outside world sought pre-retirement jobs to tide them over. Fortunately, the growing Empire and interest in part-time or volunteer soldiering at home and abroad provided a range of opportunities. These could be mundane jobs as instructors in locally raised colonial units. If reasonably literate, there were openings for administrators to imperial barracks, fortifications and other quasi-governmental or voluntary positions. In the UK, long-serving NCOs also found jobs attached to regimental depots, training recruits for drafting to active battalions, as instructors in volunteer or yeomanry regiments, or in the peacetime permanent staff of the county militias. This process started early in recently conquered and uncertain frontier areas. Grenadier Sergeant James Thompson, of Fraser’s Highlanders, disbanded in Canada in 1763, stayed behind and was ‘appointed overseer of the works with the Quebec garrison’s engineering department, which he held until a few years before his death’. Established Mediterranean stations rapidly developed infrastructures for such staffing. By 1817, the Malta garrison had the following staffing: Deputy Paymaster General, Assistant Deputy Paymaster General, Barrack Master General, Assistant Barrack Master General, Town and Fort Majors, Provost Martial [sic] and Assistant, Deputy Commissioner of Prisoners of War, Purveyor to the Forces and Deputy, Hospital Mate, Clerks in several Departments, Commissary and Paymaster to the Ordnance Department and Deputies, Captain of the Keys … Deputy Store Keeper General, Clerks in the Commissariat, Commissary of Prisoners and Musters [and deputies], Chief Commissionaries of the Field Train Department 159 Spiers, Army and Society, 1815–1914, 84–85 and Glenn Fisher, ‘The Failure of the Ambulance Corps in the Crimean War’, JSAHR, 90 (2013), 161–81. 160 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 339; Cookson, ‘Early Nineteenth-Century Military Pensioners as Homecoming Soldiers’, 320; Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922’, 52; and Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 147.

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with Deputy and Assistant Commissary, Dispensers of Medicines and Surgeon’s Mate.

Other local appointments found included the ‘Clerk of the Works, Bridge Master and Garrison Quartermaster’. Many of these posts had lucrative perks and dodges. Barrack masters were notorious for demanding expenses for damages from all ranks. According to the young Garnet Wolseley in 1852: ‘A cracked pane of glass was a silver mine to these men. Fifty ensigns may have occupied the quarter with this cracked pane in it, and all had to pay for a new one.’161 In sparsely populated colonies, soldiers were natural recruits to government jobs. In remote New South Wales, local officials employed ex-soldiers as carpenters and builders to erect convict huts and sheep yards, under an ex-Sergeant John Evans of the 46th Foot, who was Superintendent of Government Works. His comrade, Sergeant George Waddy, a steady soldier who had founded the first Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Tasmania, became storekeeper and second in command of the Sarah Island Penal Settlement, where he set up Bible classes for convicts. Also in Australia, Sergeant Hudson became keeper of the Commissariat Store House at 2 shillings a day, and Private Stephen Partridge worked his way up to become by 1818, Superintendent of Convict and Public Labour. Large numbers of soldiers and ex-soldiers were involved in the administration of the convict system. When the convict system was extended to Western Australia, over 1,000 ex-NCOs were recruited. Between 1850 and 1880, they acted as guards on convict ships and settlements as part of the Enrolled Pensioner Force, who were also offered land grants after seven years’ service.162 In India, post-army employment became highly sophisticated. As the Regimental Sergeant Major of the 22nd Foot in 1813, John Shipp was also the local Gaol Keeper, with sidelines in undertaking and log-cutting: ‘The perquisites of all these posts brought me in a good income.’ Shipp also courted and married the daughter of a stores conductor, a fellow post holder, typical of the growing family networks in the expatriate community.163 By the late nineteenth century serving in India had become central to rank-and-file working experience. With a British army of up to 90,000, stationed there to avoid a repeat of the 1857 rising, most regular soldiers 161 Earl John Chapman ‘“Ordered Home to be Broke”: The Disbandment of Fraser’s Highlanders’, JSAHR, 88 (2010), 292; NAM 7310-72, Standing Orders 8th Foot, quoted in Holmes, Sahib, 94. 162 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 47, 49, 78, 83, 106 and 111 and Frank Broomhall, The Veterans: A History of the Enrolled Pensioners Force (Perth: Hesperian Press, 1985). 163 Stranks, John Shipp, 96.

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could expect to serve in the sub-continent, with an average length of service for an infantry battalion of 14 years. After the abolition of the East India Company, the army and the expanding government became intertwined in India, creating the ‘British Raj’, and forging potential new career paths for white soldiers, which became standardised into a Town Major’s List for each cantonment. As time elapsed, soldiers were prevented from settling as civilians, so quasi-military and government jobs were essential for those with Indian families, and eventually absorbed up to 10 per cent of British military manpower. These posts encompassed military secondments as instructors, Regimental Sergeant Majors and Quartermaster Sergeants to sepoy regiments and to military (particularly Ordnance or Commissariat, Barracks Departments), technical and medical establishments. There were also postings for soldiers with some education to junior government service of all types and jobs in newly established public utilities such as railways, libraries, museums, engineering, telegraph and postal services. These all brought status, more interesting employment, pensions and the opportunity to stay on in India for those who had married locally.164 One private of the 10th Hussars recalled the Town Major’s lists of the 1850s: horse keepers, servants, warrant officers, apothecaries, commissariat, conductors, auctioneers, tailors and saddlers … assistant apothecaries, sub-conductors … bazaar sergeants, provost ditto, ditto on the road and tank department, with a sprinkling of clerks belonging to the adjutant and quarter master’s departments.165

Government job opportunities were also available mid-career as well as on retirement from the army proper. Irishman John Lyons joined the EIC infantry in Bombay in 1854, was promoted to Sergeant after four years and joined the Barrack Department as a sub-conductor after nine years, reaching the rank of honorary Captain. Staff Sergeant N.W. Bancroft joined the EIC Bengal Horse Artillery as a nine-year-old band boy in 1833, was seconded for two years to the native 7th Light Cavalry, retired on a pension in 1866 and was for 22 years in charge of Calcutta Lunatic Asylum. Adventurous NCOs might seek wider opportunities. George Stent, an NCO of the 14th Light Dragoons, became the officer in charge of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service. By 1900, most Town Major’s posts had been made conditional on passing certificates in Hindustani or Persian. Instruction was given by native teachers under the supervision of regimental schoolmasters. Large employers 164 Stanley, White Mutiny, chap. 12 and Holmes, Soldier Sahib, 149–50 and 237–39. 165 Douglas, Soldiering in Sunshine and Storm, 2.

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like the Indian railway companies also organised six-month supervisors’ courses for discharged soldiers.166 In the UK, long-serving NCOs found jobs as instructors in volunteer or yeomanry regiments, or in the peacetime permanent staff of the county militias. The vast army of part-time volunteers in the French Wars (nearly 350,000 in total) were entitled to one paid Sergeant Major per 300 men and sometimes had other paid specialists like drill Sergeants and musicians. (These were the only part of the volunteer movement subject to military law and corporal punishment.) As discussed earlier, the numbers of musicians were maintained throughout the century by the gentry, as a contribution to the cultural life of the shires. In 1818, the full-time Shropshire Militia staff consisted of a Sergeant Major, 33 Sergeants, 33 Corporals, a Drum Major and 14 drummers. Though reduced to 48 NCOs in 1819, they could still expand to full establishment size through part-timers when the regiment was embodied for annual training in 1820. Some of these NCOs were also tradesmen. A corporal tailor, with 28 years’ service, was reported on in 1820.167 The militia staffs were sometimes used for the support of the civil power in the disturbances of the early nineteenth century. But as the political importance of the county militias declined so did the numbers of full-time workers employed in their establishments. In 1839, the militias, though, still employed 1,144 full-time permanent staff. At an average of 8.8 men for the 130 county regiments, these cadres were typically made up of Adjutant (usually a half-pay regular and sometimes an ex ranker), Paymaster, Quartermaster (sometimes these roles combined, occasionally all three in one person), plus staff Sergeants and musicians. Their pay remained unaltered for much of the nineteenth century, with sergeants drawing 1s. 6d. and drummers one shilling a day. But it was regular and ‘they did little more to justify their existence than parade for church on a Sunday and occasionally supervise the training of a few Enrolled Pensioners’, thus leaving time for other activities.168 The Cardwell and Childers army reforms of the late-Victorian period gave a specific role to militias as part of the depot for the new county regiments, thereby reviving them as institutions. This also opened up job 166 Holmes, Sahib 233 and 240; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 43; and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 137 and 216. 167 Philip J. Haythornthwaite, ‘The Volunteer Force, 1803–04’, JSAHR, 64 (1986), 193, 194 and 204 and McGuffie, ‘The Lord Bradford Militia Documents’, 137. 168 F.C. Mather, Public Order in the Age of the Chartists (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 141; Sleigh, Militia and Yeomanry List, 47; and Owen, History of the Welsh Militia, 13 and 95.

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possibilities for experienced NCOs. By 1899, they gave full-time employment to 4,332 Sergeants and musicians. As the militias were now part of the county regimental depots, there was a better career structure for NCOs between regular, militia and volunteer battalions, especially as instructors for training new recruits. Fulwood Barracks at Preston had 47 NCOs and other experienced men in 1881, with another 19 as associated commissariat, administrative and domestic staff.169 The county militias lost their political role and became more professionalised as a regularised part of Britain’s army. However, the county yeomanry remained a key part of county society in every sense. As part-time mounted volunteers, farmers’ sons officered by the gentry and based on local foxhunts, they saw themselves as the rural elite. In the nineteenth century they acted as a class-based and politically motivated country gendarmerie against a huge variety of radical and working-class opponents, frequently with violent consequences They operated as private armies often funded by the aristocracy and only loosely controlled by the Home Office through the county Lords Lieutenants, and were largely held in contempt by regular soldiers.170 Yeomanry units sought the best staff as instructors. In Lancashire, the Furness Cuirassiers chose Waterloo veteran Private Thomas Gardener as their drill Sergeant and built him a suitable memorial in Great Unswick Church after his early death. The 2nd West Yorkshire Yeomanry Cavalry appointed Major Thomas Johnson, ex-private of the 13th Hussars and survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade, as their Adjutant between 1869 and 1881. William Courts retired as Troop Sergeant Major of the 16th Lancers in 1860, and became instructor in Midlothian Yeomanry and then the Fife Mounted Rifles. Richard Hall Williams of 17th Lancers and another Light Brigade charger, was Troop Sergeant Major to the Worsley Troop of the Duke of Lancaster’s Yeomanry. He was postmaster of Worsley and also taught drill to schoolchildren on a local estate. Hussar memoirist Edwin Mole was appointed a Sergeant instructor to a yeomanry regiment in the Eastern counties on his discharge in the 1880s, where he supplemented his earnings by giving private riding lessons to officers. By 1869, the permanent staff of the Yeomanry employed 33 Adjutants, 280 Sergeant Majors and 44 Trumpeters; most were ex-regular cavalry NCOs.171 169 Dunlop, Development of the British Army, 321 and Appendix D and W.D. Shannon, ‘Soldiers and their Families in Fulwood, 1851–1881’, MA thesis, Lancaster University, 2004, 21. 170 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting and the Yeomanry’, 241–56 and Nick Mansfield, ‘The Yeomanry: Britain’s 19th-Century Paramilitaries’, History Today (Aug. 2013), 10–17. 171 John H. Rumsby, ‘Attentive Soldiers and Good Citizens’: Militia, Volunteers and Military Service in the Huddersfield District, 1757–1957’, 145–70, in E.A. Hilary Craig, Huddersfield a Most Handsome Town (Huddersfield: Kirklees Cultural Services, 1992), 151; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 345; James W. Bancroft, The Way to Glory: Men of the North

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After the big expansion of the part-time volunteer movement from 1859, there were also many vacancies for instructors in rifle volunteer units. Given the lower-middle-class and even working-class composition of these corps, such posts had less cachet and lower pay than those in the yeomanry. John Ford, an Indian Mutiny veteran, was for 20 years Armoury attendant and instructor to the Huddersfield Volunteers. To make a living he had to combine the post with a job as a theatre usher. But aristocratic employ did not guarantee high pay: in 1840, William Williams (ex-Royal Artillery) was appointed as armourer and gunner to the Duke of Northumberland’s own Household Artillery, a post he had to combine with Keeper of the Abbey Lodge at Alnwick Castle.172 Overseas, there were increasing opportunities for instructors in colonial militias and volunteers. William Brown, former Sergeant Major of the 32nd Foot, became adjutant of the 1st Montreal Volunteer Militia before joining the Montreal police. Even more successful was Colour Sergeant Thomas Wily of the 83rd Foot (middle class though a ranker) who used his fluency in French to become drillmaster of the Royal Quebec Volunteers in 1838, and then was commissioned as Adjutant in the 1st Provincial Regiment. In 1844, he became Montreal’s Chief of Police. Senior bandsmen could also take up posts as musical instructors to colonial units, with those of the Indian army being particularly lucrative.173 Another small area of public semi-military service was that of the Yeomen Warders of the Tower, or Beefeaters, as they were popularly known. These posts were highly sought-after in the early nineteenth century, because of the fees and tips given by tourists coming to the Tower of London. Warders’ posts were bought and sold to anybody as part of ‘Old Corruption’. The Duke of Wellington reformed these posts after his appointment as Constable of the Tower in 1826. Numbers were reduced to around 50, the service militarised and made the prerogative of long-serving, well-behaved and gallant sergeants. Sergeant Townshend of 1st Foot Guards, who refused to surrender in the debacle of Bergen op Zoom in 1814, first became steward and porter at Wellington’s residence, Walmer Castle, and was then brought into the reformed Yeomen. Brice McGregor, one of the party of Foot Guards that closed the gates at Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo, also served as a Yeoman Warder for 25 years. It is claimed that Sergeants West Who Rode in the Charge of the Light Brigade (Manchester: Richardson, 1998), 11, 15, 18 and 21; Edwin Mole, A King’s Hussar (London: Cassell, 1893), 247; and Anglesey, British Cavalry, vol. 2, 151 and 445. 172 Rumsby, ‘Attentive Soldiers and Good Citizens’, 163 and Hewitson, Weekend Warriors, 51. 173 Senior, British Regulars in Montreal, 27 and 34 and Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 265.

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James Daily and John Armstrong of the detachment of the 45th Foot which shot the Chartists to pieces at the Castle Hotel, Newport in 1839, were given wardenships by the Duke of Wellington as a reward. Armstrong, it is argued, was whisked immediately away, to prevent him giving evidence at the state trial of the Chartist prisoners, thus simplifying the prosecution case. But implications of consistent political favouritism are hard to sustain. A later warder was Irish Roman Catholic Edward Costello, late of the 95th Rifles, Adjutant of the Rifle battalion in the Evans’ British Auxiliary Legion and possible political radical.174 Before the Municipal Reform Act of 1834, unreformed corporations often employed small teams of part-time ceremonial officials to perform archaic rituals on civic occasions. Norwich, for example, had its snap dragon, whifflers, boy poet and standard bearers. There were striking similarities between the unwritten language communicated by civic standard bearers and the etiquette of flourishes used by those carrying military colours. Surviving examples of both types of banner also have similar union flags in the upper right canton. It is likely that ex-soldiers were employed in a variety of these civic ceremonial roles. Even after the reforms many were kept on for sentimental reasons. Ex-Trumpeter Harry Rowe was musician to the High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 43 years, which he combined with running a puppet show.175 Policemen Discharged soldiers were viewed as ideal candidates for the new Victorian occupation of policing. The introduction of a professional police force in the early nineteenth century, first in Ireland, then in London and lastly in the provinces, is often regarded as possible only through its staffing by discharged soldiers. Fortescue emphasised this point: ‘The first recruits for the Metropolitan Police in 1829 were mainly disbanded soldiers, who were reported by the Police Commissioners in 1849 as the most trustworthy cohort of employees’ and ‘the bulk of the original police were picked old 174 Janette Martin, ‘Reinventing the Tower Beefeater in the Nineteenth Century’, History (2013), 730–49; Andrew Bamford, A Bold and Ambitious Enterprise (London: Frontline Books, 2013), 213; Charles Dalton, Waterloo Roll Call (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1904), 271; John Humphries, The Man from the Alamo: Why the Welsh Chartist Uprising Ended in a Massacre (St Athan: Glyndwr Publishing, 2004), 302–03; and Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier. I am also grateful for the guidance of Paul Ward. 175 See Nick Mansfield, ‘Radical Rhymes and Union Jacks: A Search for Evidence of Ideologies in the Symbolism of Nineteenth-Century Banners’, University of Manchester, Working Papers in Economic and Social History, 45 (2000), 22–26 and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 173.

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soldiers, and the non-commissioned officers were old military sergeants to a man’. In the provinces, ‘The institution of police for counties and boroughs in 1856 lightened the Army’s burden of maintaining order at home, but … depleted the Army of some of its best men.’ This view is supported by more modern historians: ‘Chief Constables were frequently selected from service officers … and Peel’s Irish Constabulary of 1814 and the Metropolitan Police of 1829 could scarcely have come into existence without the ability of the authorities to recruit large numbers of ex-servicemen.’176 The situation on the ground was more complex. It was also influenced by the negative reputation of the new police. In London and other cities, off-duty soldiers had a propensity for joining in anti-police riots on the people’s side. Carolyn Steedman’s research cautions against Fortescue’s positive portrayal and points out that ex-soldiers were regarded with some suspicion by Chief Constables, as potential drunkards. Once established, the county constabularies attracted a more diverse range of recruits. In Buckinghamshire, for example, in 1857, only 28 out of 154 new constables had an army background. Though the Metropolitan Police initially recruited 440 ex-servicemen, this had only risen to 640 by 1866, one-twelfth of its total strength. This view is supported by Rumsby. He points out that the stipulation from the Metropolitan Police that their recruits had to be under 30, in practice precluded most ex-servicemen.177 While the senior ranks of the police were often filled straight from commissioned army officers, ex-rankers started as constables and most remained at that rank. A minority were promoted, such as Thomas Catlin of Huddersfield, who served as a private with the 83rd Foot in the Indian Mutiny. He ended as a ‘highly esteemed inspector in the Borough Police’ as did his regimental comrade, Thomas Galvin, in the same force. More typical, perhaps, was John Smith Parkinson, late of the 11th Hussars, who after working on the railways joined the Birmingham police, and retired as sergeant after 26 years. Some specialist police roles also attracted ex-soldiers. Sergeant Albert Mitchell, late of the 13th Light Dragoons and a Light Brigade survivor, became ‘Instructing Constable’ to the Kent Mounted Constabulary. Two rank-and-file memoirists of the Sikh Wars, Corporal John Ryder of the 32nd Foot and Sergeant John Pearman of the 3rd Light 176 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 9, 105; Fortescue, Last Post, 40; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 13, 524; and Norman Gash, ‘After Waterloo: British Society and the Legacy of the Napoleonic Wars’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (1978), 69 and 110. 177 Carolyn Steedman, Policing the Victorian Community (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 74; Peter Reese, Homecoming Heroes (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), 43; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 346.

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Dragoons, also had long police careers. By 1889, 8,000 ex-soldiers were policemen, but this had apparently fallen to only 1,098 by 1913.178 In the ‘White Empire’, ex-soldiers predominated in the founding force of dominion constabularies. The first Australian mounted police were formed in 1825 from soldiers of the 73rd Foot garrison to counteract bushrangers. They remained on regimental rolls and under military discipline for 25 years. This seems appropriate, given that their early service in New South Wales amounted to a guerrilla war against bushwhackers and aborigines. Buck Adams of the 7th Dragoon Guards includes his service in the gendarmerie of the Cape Mounted Police in his memoir. Other ex-troopers, like Joseph Lane of the 13th Light Dragoons, became a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, and received an 80-acre land grant on retiring in 1880.179 Uniformed working class Police service was only one of range of opportunities in the Victorian period for ex-soldiers in the new, mainly uniformed working class in prisons, railways, post offices, libraries, museums and workhouses. Despite the same reservations as were voiced with military recruits to the police, prison work attracted ex-servicemen in considerable number. By 1876, two-thirds of warders had an army or navy background. Some rose to the highest echelons of the service. Edwin Cowtan, an ex-ranker cavalry Adjutant, finished his thirty-year prison career as governor of Wakefield Prison. John Shipp had enjoyed an unprecedented military career, being commissioned twice from the ranks in the early nineteenth century, which finished in civilian life as Superintendent of Liverpool’s Night Watch police force and then as Master of Liverpool Workhouse, an amazing achievement for a Suffolk workhouse orphan. The tramways of Victorian cities gave opportunities for specialist soldiers like John Cunningham, an ex-Sapper in the Crimea, who was a Watchman for Huddersfield Trams, who when he stepped down through poor eyesight was provided with a Corporation pedlar’s licence.180 Across Europe, minor public service jobs were reserved for ex-soldiers, 178 Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 161; Rumsby ‘Attentive Soldiers and Good Citizens’, 163; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 193 and 346; Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 215; John Ryder, Four Years’ Service in India (Leicester: Burton, 1853); Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale; and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 45. 179 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 12, 393–94; Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 30, 142, 144 and 169; A. Gordon Brown (ed.), The Narrative of Private Buck Adams (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1941), especially 63–103; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 343. 180 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 347–48; Stranks, John Shipp, 229; and Rumsby ‘Attentive Soldiers and Good Citizens’, 163.

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but in the UK the process was left to private philanthropy and the market. As early as 1814, the Colonel of the 7th Light Dragoons was providing a recommendation for an ex-trooper seeking a post at the East India Company warehouse. Anne Crosby claims that smart regiments like the Rifle Brigade maintained contact after discharge and were paternalistically concerned for their ex-riflemen to obtain access to minor civil service or Post Office jobs. Cardwell short-term enlistment increased the volume of ex-servicemen needing jobs. Successive late-Victorian governments toyed with employment schemes or reserved government posts, with little success. Instead, officer-led paternalistic national, regimental and local organisations emerged, like the Corps of Commissioners formed in 1859 and specialising in finding posts for armless discharged soldiers. After the Wantage Committee of 1892, some junior civil service jobs were reserved for ex-soldiers, but these amounted to fewer than 5,000 places. Nonetheless, by 1913, 19,500 ex-servicemen were found in menial civil service posts as messengers, watchers, park keepers, attendants and porters.181 The attendants at the Great Exhibition in 1851 were mainly ex-soldiers. They were kitted out with quasi-military uniforms on which they were entitled to wear their medals. The British Museum in London seems to have recruited many ex-soldiers, including disabled ones, and may explain why the building was fortified and staff issued with firearms in the preparation for the expected Chartist coup in 1848. A typical career might be that of Private Henry Hook of the 24th Foot, who won the VC in the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. A Gloucestershire man, he bought himself out of the army in 1880 after only three years’ service. He then worked at the British Museum for the next 24 years, in the portering staff. He became Foreman of Library Dusters and then Umbrella Caretaker, posts which he combined with that of part-time Sergeant Musketry Instructor for the 1st Volunteer battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and as a temperance advocate. Another respectable uniformed career path for a few of the many pious ex-rankers were the missionaries employed by religious societies of many denominations, such as the Army Scripture Readers and the Soldiers’ Friend Societies. They were evangelising both at home, especially in working class areas, and in the Empire.182 181 McGuffie, ‘Life of Light Cavalry Regiment’, 157; Stevens, Rifle Brigade, 1800–1870, 93; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 146–47; Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 45; Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 205 and 212–15; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 350–51. 182 Andrea Bluhm, The Colour of Sculpture (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 1997), 122; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 349; Barry C. Johnson, Rorke’s Drift and the British Museum: The Life of Henry Hook VC (London: Johnson/Taunton Military Press, 1988); and Snape, The Redcoat and Religion, 99 and 227–29. (Henry Hook was the complete antithesis of his depiction in the 1964 film, Zulu.)

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The Post Office also recruited many ex-soldiers, as they were accustomed to the uniform and irregular hours. John Walsh served in the 22nd Foot, following in the footsteps of his father and three uncles, who all served in the regiment during the First Sikh War. He was discharged about 1877, and became a Liverpool-based postman. Walsh was a founder member of the Postmen’s Federation in 1891 and remained a key activist in the movement for union recognition until his retirement in 1914. His memory was still being invoked during the postal strike of 1971. Later, the GPO was keen to attract telegraphists who had trained in the Royal Engineers and gave preference in recruitment to ex-military men. It employed 2,644 ex-servicemen by 1913.183 The spectacular mid-Victorian growth of railways in Britain offered a unique employment opportunity for ex-soldiers. Numbers of railway workers rose from 47,218 in 1847 to 274, 535 in 1873. Relatively well- and regularly paid, railwaymen’s ‘developing loyalty to the railway company was fulfilled by disciplined ex-servicemen who were used to the often dangerous work and company owned accommodation and regarded it as a great privilege to work on the railway’. Ex-servicemen also influenced the structure of the industry: ‘The division into three grades has deep historical roots. The early railways were organised on a military basis, with grades replacing military ranks.’ By the Edwardian period, an average of 600 jobs a year were being offered to ex-soldiers on the Irish railways alone.184 The evolution of this highly disciplined workforce was primarily due to safety considerations but also ‘from the expectations of railway officials, many of whom were from the army and were used to controlling large numbers of uniformed and obedient men’. In particular, after the Indian Mutiny, many ex-EIC officers filled the salaried grades of the railway companies: railway uniforms also had military echoes and each company had its own, the equivalent of army ‘regimentals’. A man did not go to work; he went on ‘duty’. His position was a ‘post’, and when he left that ‘post’ he was ‘relieved’. Senior grades were referred to as ‘Officers’. ‘Absent without leave’ and ‘charge’ were used in the formality of railway industrial relations. Early strikes became the equivalent to mutiny to the managers.

By 1889, 11,000 ex-soldiers were railwaymen which had doubled to 23,724 183 Francis Devine, ‘“This was a Man…” Mr John Walsh of Liverpool and the Postmen’s Federation, 1854–1927’, North West Labour History, 37 (2012–13), 9–15 and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 45. 184 Philip Bagwell, The Railwaymen: The History of the National Union of Railwaymen (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), 19–21; Frank McKenna, A Glossary of Railwaymen’s Talk (Oxford: History Workshop, 1970), vii; and Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922’, 52.

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by 1913. Although only a small portion of the total workforce, their military ethos dominated the service.185 Foreign service Despite the range of employment activities engaged in, many soldiers regarded soldiering as their primary trade. Even when, for various reasons, they were discharged from the British army, many sought to pursue it elsewhere. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, deserters in overseas climes sometimes ended up taking foreign service, even when this meant opposing the Crown. This was usually accidental and a temporary means of earning a livelihood in an uncertain world. There were still opportunities well into the nineteenth century for soldiers to choose to ply their central trade outside the British army, in the service of Indian princes and in private expeditions to South America and parts of southern Europe after 1815, or in the armies of the Ottoman Turks until after the Crimean War. Sometimes such soldiering in foreign service was the result of resistance to military authority or in the support of political views. Ex-British army soldiers fought in the Italian Risorgimento, and on both sides in the America Civil War. Four survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade later saw service in the Union army in the American Civil War and one, Corporal Thomas Morley, became a yeomanry instructor on his return to the UK.186 A typical example was Kerryman Maurice Shea, who fought with the 73rd Foot at Waterloo and in Ceylon. Honourably discharged as a Corporal in 1822, he found it difficult to keep a large family in Ireland and joined the British Auxiliary Legion as a Quartermaster Sergeant, served in 26 engagements in the Carlist Wars in Spain and was decorated. Discharged again in 1838, his family migrated to Canada after the Famine and he died in 1892, aged 97 – one of the last survivors of Waterloo. More outlandish was John Rees (alias Jack the Fifer) from South Wales. He probably served in the British militia and then in the army of the Texas Republic at the time of the Alamo. Returning to Wales and involved in political radicalism, he helped lead the disastrous Chartist attack on Newport in 1839, fled to the USA and fought as a Texas Ranger in the Mexican–American War of 1846. After taking part in the 1849 Gold Rush, he died in California in 1893.187 185 Frank McKenna, ‘Victorian Railway Workers’, History Workshop Journal, 1 (1976), 28; Skelley, Victorian Army at Home, 215; and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 45. 186 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 343 and Bancroft, Way to Glory, 13 and 17. 187 Lagden and Sly, 2/73rd at Waterloo, 205–07; Ivor Wilks, ‘Insurrections in Texas and Wales; The Careers of John Rees, Welsh History Review, 11(1) (1982), 67–91; and Humphries, Man from the Alamo.

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In addition to those in the Indian army, opportunities existed for NCO trainers in other colonial corps. The re-raised West Indian regiments of 1867 each employed 18 white senior NCOs to undertake all technical and training roles. British NCOs also trained the Egyptian army from 1882 and were entitled to the generous ‘Khedival allowances’. Until the Great War, NCOs in India could be seconded as instructors – ‘a well paid staff job’ – to the large private armies of the Indian princes. These forces were tolerated in parallel to those of the Raj. Sometimes such jobs involved actual fighting. Ex-Sergeant James Bodell of the 59th Foot was out of luck after the failure of the Victoria gold rush in Australia. Still ‘a good drill’, he signed up with nearly 1,000 others (mostly ex-servicemen) as a Sergeant Militiaman for the Maori Wars in New Zealand in 1863. Bodell considered this contract of 2s. 6d. per day for privates and the 3s. 6d. for Sergeants ‘not bad terms’ compared with HM service, even after extensive fighting during his three years’ service. The militiamen also got a grant of land of 50 acres for privates, and 80 acres for Sergeants, which prompted Bodell’s settlement in the dominion.188 Parade strengths Amongst serving regiments the high number of soldiers doing other jobs led to perennial complaints by senior officers. They claimed that the parade strength and firing line was being leeched by increasing numbers of non-combatant specialists. For the eighteenth-century army Houlding formulated the ‘friction of peace’ theory, in which day-to-day concerns were a distraction from war and its preparation. In 1845, Major Macready of the 30th Foot criticised the paper strength for the regiment at Waterloo, in which he served: In the returns of Captain Siborne’s History [recently published], the numbers of the 30th are given as 615 men, whereas 460 bayonets was the outside of what marched into the field at Quatre Bras. It is not for me to say what portion of the residue went to Guards, hospital, provost, stores or what not, but I know near fifty effective soldiers were away from the battle as servants and batmen … whereas 160 rank and file was strength when we piled arms.

Some regimental workers were keen to join their comrades in battle. The 2/73th Foot formed a square with Macready’s battalion against repeated 188 G. Tylden, ‘The West India Regiments, 1795–1927’, JSAHR, 40 (1962), 43; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3, 91; Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 94; and Sinclair, Soldier’s View of Empire, 125–26.

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French cavalry charges at Waterloo and counted their Schoolmaster, Sergeant Charles Collins, amongst the dead.189 The problem continued, as gentleman ranker J.E. Acland described in 1873: There is a point which I may explain here, which puzzled me very much when I first joined, and no doubt seems curious to many, viz, why there should be so few men on parade. Why, when a regiment has, say 500 men, there should be only 250 or 300 out on a day, when it might be expected that everyone would appear? It is often asked, ‘Where in the world do the men get to?’ (I can quote a case which is a purely chance one from an old ‘parade state’ I have before me). There appears that the total strength of ‘H’ Company, –th Regiment, on 7 November 1873, was 4 sergeants, 4 corporals, 51 men. When the officer came on parade at 10 o’clock that day the sergeant reported, and perfectly truly, ‘All present, sir’ – and whom did he see? 2 sergeants, 1 drummer boy, 3 privates! I must remark that this was only an ordinary drill, not a special parade, but it was still the chief parade of the day. Where, then were the other non-commissioned officers and 48 private men? As follows: 8 men on guard; 3 bandsmen; 4 servants or grooms; 1 corporal, 1 private employed as tailors; 1 pioneer; a corporal and a private doing clerks’ work; 2 men sick; 1 cook; 1 sergeant and 2 privates on some regimental duty, such as canteen or quartermaster stores; 5 men on public works, such as road making or building; 13 men on various fatigue duties. Total, 44 privates, 2 corporals, 3 sergeants.

By 1902, this auxiliary workforce was estimated as costing the army 7,000 on permanent employment and 10,000 on daily casual employment.190 Career progression and conclusion Whilst many ex-soldiers ended their days in the workhouse system, many others used their training and work experience in the ranks to forge prosperous careers. As others have argued, we know comparatively little about post-service careers and need more longitudinal studies, as ‘military service would have been only part of a man’s life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Joining the army could be a deliberate step on a career path. The connection between short service in the Guards and the Metropolitan Police has already been mentioned. By the 1860s, according to the CO of the 12th Lancers, ‘considerable numbers of young men, especially 189 J.A. Houlding, Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army, 1715–1795 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 57–74; D.C. Hamilton-Williams, ‘Captain William Siborne’, JSAHR, 66 (1988), 78; and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 67. 190 J.E. Acland, quoted in Victor E. Neuburg, ‘The British Army in the Eighteenth Century’, JSAHR, 61 (1983), 46 and Edward M. Spiers, ‘Reforming the Infantry of the Line 1900–1914’, JSAHR, 59 (1978), 86–87.

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in the cavalry, brought their discharge within the first few years of their service. Not only did they get valuable training with horses, of great use to them in civil life, but they also learned … to keep accounts they are taken away for clerks’. Rumsby has identified the particular careers chosen by some soldiers in India. Such were the benefits and career opportunities that large numbers of soldiers elected to transfer to other units when their regiments were ordered home. Private William Dickenson transferred three times, having been born in India and never having been to the UK.191 Soldiers not based in India, like Sergeant James Bodell of 59th Foot, could also achieve highly successful careers: We did very well at this business [netmaking in Hong Kong] better than Boxes or Knapsacks, in fact I must say that all through my career in the Service or out of it, I have always been anxious to make money, and never begrudged working hard for it.

On discharge, Bodell failed at hotel keeping at Ballarat during the Australian Gold Rush and, penniless, signed up as a militiaman in New Zealand in 1863. Whilst fighting in the Maori Wars: It became known amongst the officers that I was a rough Carpenter and in September 1864 an officer came to me and asked if I could make a Clothes Press. I said I could if I had the tools. He said he had the Tools and I went to work. In 3 days I had the Job finished and then had another to make for Mrs Major John. One Job after another kept me going and I was doing well making 4 to 5 pounds per week beside my pay.

Officers, as private and public consumers of these products, not only tolerated but encouraged individual enterprise. Bodell’s next job was erecting camp huts: ‘The colonel remarked he must have an Orderly Room like it … I had a contract to cut out a frame of a Building … In a few days a Pass was put into my hand by the Colonel to go to Maketu to build this frame I had cut out.’ After discharge from the militia, Bodell married and settled in New Zealand and tried his hand at brewing, and in the 1870s, ‘I worked 14 to 16 hours per day as a Carpenter, Builder, undertaker, Barber, Cordial Manufacturer.’ He later also sold insurance, was a land agent, grocer, temperance hotel keeper and photographer. He was wealthy enough to revisit his family in Leicester in 1883, after an absence of 35 years.192 William Gould, discharged from the cavalry in 1849, had an equally varied post-service career. This included: 191 Linch and McCormack, ‘Defining Soldiers: Britain’s Military, c.1740–1815’, 152; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 2, 331; and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 330. 192 Sinclair, Soldier’s View of Empire, 69, 158, 168 and 180.

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steward at the East India United Services Club, a servant to a gentleman going to South Africa to breed horses, and as a volunteer officer during the Kaffir Wars, before entering business, which failed, prompting a return to England. Here he was employed in quick succession as a railway stationmaster, a volunteer drill-master, and a hotel superintendent, before finally emigrating to Canada.193

Other ex-rankers rose into professions. Joseph Donaldson, Scottish memoirist of the Peninsular War, after ten years as a recruiting sergeant for the EIC, funded a degree at Glasgow University from the proceeds of his book, practised medicine and died in Paris aged 37 whilst studying anatomy. Another French Wars veteran, Troop Sergeant Major Edward Cotton (1792–1849) of the 7th Hussars, returned to Waterloo and married a local woman. He ran a very successful inn and museum, conducted British visitors and published a best-selling tour guide.194 Archibald Forbes (1838–1900) became the most famous British foreign correspondent of his day and a major literary figure. This clergyman’s son, though educated at Aberdeen University, served as a gentleman ranker in the Royal Dragoons until invalided out, an experience which enabled him to gain support from officers and soldiers in covering numerous Imperial campaigns. He is also remembered for his sympathetic coverage of the ‘Revolt of the Field’, the mass movement of English farmworkers in 1872. Robert Blatchford (185 –1943), an ex-Sergeant of the 103rd Foot, became the most influential journalist and author of the British socialist movement, whose Clarion newspaper and cultural organisations dominated the British left until the 1920s.195 High-flyers from the ranks were the exception. The majority of the mainly working-class rank and file of the British army plodded along undertaking other work, usually in their pre-enlistment trades. The regimental tradesmen and army artificers retained their artisans’ culture and attitudes throughout their careers. This tradesmen’s culture continued throughout the century. The workmen of the 2nd South Lancashire Regiment, shown in a photograph from 1907, proudly display the tools of their particular trades in the same way as their civilian cousins widely did in the milieu of artisan customs and regalia (see Illustration 3). 193 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 344. 194 Donaldson, Recollections, iv–vi and Edward Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo (London: Green, 1862). 195 Philip Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 52–53; Horn, Joseph Arch, 51; and Judith Laird and John Saville, ‘Robert Blatchford (1851–1943)’, in J. Saville and J.M. Bellamy, Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 4 (London: Macmillan, 1977), 34–42.

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To a large extent, army tradesmen and their ilk were reliant on pre-enlistment existing skills and training. But other employment opportunities within the ranks or post discharge could be exploited by soldiers with modest literacy and numeracy skills, especially given the growing bureaucratisation of the Victorian world of work, with its vast army of clerks. Although – despite the recruiting sergeants’ claims – official training opportunities were very limited, many rankers used their unique access to free time to improve their talents and capabilities. These interests could often make money and provide the foundations for future careers. Some of these, especially in the Empire, could lead to respectable professions or substantial financial gains. Others gained experience of more mundane army tasks like the care of animals or waiting at table, to find similar quiet and modest employment in civilian life. Many also failed, as former soldiers who lacked the necessary drive and aptitude successfully to engage in the civilian labour market could descend into poverty, alcoholism or the workhouse. This chapter has attempted to do justice to the huge unstudied occupational group that common soldiers represent. They worked as artisans, artificers, servants, clerks, dealers and small businessmen providing goods and services to their comrades and the outside world. Their generous free time often allowed them to work at several jobs, increasing their employment portfolio and income. Whatever their part-time occupation, these soldiers largely showed pre-enlistment working-class attitudes and demonstrated solidarity in numerous ways. Soldiers continued to act as members of the working class after discharge, even if going into public or quasi-military employment, like police, prisons or railways. Military service then usually formed one phase of their careers and overall life experience. Within the army itself, despite rigid controls, all sorts of class conflict, albeit at low level, can be uncovered and this forms the substance of the next chapter.

4 Class Conflict in the Army Class Conflict in the Army

Introduction Service life for nineteenth-century soldiers was generally hard, with poor pay, strict discipline enforced by severe punishments, cramped living conditions, inadequate food and a culture of hard drinking. At a time of industrialisation and class formation, such hardship was often the lot of the working class. Whilst much of conflict that resulted from these conditions could be termed criminal, much had a class component. It is argued here that military class conflict merits closer study and can reveal similarities with the civilian labour market. Resistance in the military could be defined as the classic conflict over wages. A contract culture, with customary rates of pay and set outputs, similar to that of contemporary civilian workers, was defined and defended by regimental tradesmen and skilled artificers with the vigour as members of trade societies – the early trade unions. Both were adapting to the demands of the Industrial Revolution, resulting in go-slows and work-torules. Military tradesmen and artificers concentrated on the pace of work, customary outputs and in acts of resistance when their practices were challenged. Evidence for such go-slows and strikes is, though, sketchy and opaque. In addition, though, expertise, regulated by contract, often gave regimental tradesmen the upper hand in their dealings with the Quartermaster, Paymaster and Adjutant, who were meant to organise this work. Wily tradesmen could often hoodwink these untrained supervisors without resorting to conflict. There are parallels with some civilian working lives, such as in agriculture, where, in the absence of formal organisations like trade unions, informal negotiations seem to have taken place about accepted outputs. Similarly, in the army, NCOs often acted as a cross between foreman and shop steward in collective bargaining with management, in the form of the regiment’s Adjutant and Quartermaster. Soldiers, like civilian

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workers, were often able to control their pace and output (the ‘stint’), in a surreptitious way, as described by an officer in 1885: Tommy Atkins was busy cutting down trees in the methodical manner peculiar to him when on fatigue duties … An English soldier hardly ever labours alone; if a bucket has to be carried twenty yards, two men go and march it off solemnly, one on each side, as if it was a prisoner of war. So, in cutting down mimosa trees, one man throws a rope over a tree and bends its head on one side, another takes an axe and gives it two or three chops at the stem; two more stand on the right and left waiting till the tree is down, and then all four set to work to haul it to its place.1

The army contract culture was embraced by all rankers when faced with official demands deemed unacceptable to customary practice, in a combination of Thompsonian ‘moral economy’ and modern class conflict. This included unskilled and ill-paid privates, as well as artisans. The results then could be spectacular, as demands for popular rights overcame fear of fierce retributive punishment. Large-scale strikes could then erupt, such as the widespread mutinies over peacetime pay reductions in North America in the late 1760s and perennial conflicts over batta, traditionally given to troops in India over many decades. The citizen soldiers of the county militia were also liable to take mass action. There was widespread conflict all over southern England in 1795, linked to bread riots and disputes over contract changes and clothing allowances with the local militia in 1810. Regulars were not immune, as instanced by the Gibraltar Mutiny of 1802, triggered by harsh treatment and contract disputes with the peace. Both officers and men of the East India Company were renowned for militancy over their contracts. This culminated in the ‘White Mutiny’ of 1858–59, when thousands of soldiers struck work and occupied their barracks over enforced transfer to Crown service, with its reduced terms and conditions of service and pension provision. Go-slows or local strikes also took place when keen officers expected too long a ‘stint’ from the labour of their men. Unpopular officers, who persisted in what were seen as unreasonable demands, could find it impossible to enforce discipline and even risked shooting in the back during the heat of battle. Despite the harsh discipline, the nineteenth-century army worked mainly through consensus, informal contracts and collusion. Wise officers would often listen to the views of experienced NCOs in getting tasks completed. Protests often arose when consensus through these natural systems broke down. Then trouble could occur. Even battlefield tasks, Quoted by Charles Lowe in ‘The Battles around Suakim’ (in anon., Battles of the 1 Nineteenth Century, vol. 4 (London: Cassell, 1897–1900), 640).

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when deemed impossible or suicidal, could be the subject of strikes. The troops who had already made unsuccessful assaults on the impregnable Indian fortress of Bhurtpore, in 1805, refused to undertake another. Although such actions would normally attract appalling punishments, if timed correctly, wise commanding officers would accept that soldiers had been pushed too far and sometimes tacitly condoned or even colluded in these proceedings. Desertion was a perennial problem, both at home (in 1833, one in five soldiers in the UK had been imprisoned, most for desertion) and in imperial postings, where goldfields or virgin land offered tempting prospects. Although little is found in regimental histories about this low-level class conflict, some soldiers’ memoirs contain accounts of an underground of backchat, undermining of unpopular officers and officially sanctioned binge drinking. Sergeants were sometimes depicted acting as a combination of foremen and shop stewards in a world which officers could not penetrate. Other low-level conflict clearly had a class element. Held in a fiercely rigid legal code with harsh punishments for any infringement, it is no surprise that most soldiers’ resistance was covert. This could be seen in the passive resistance of dodges, looting, fraternisation with the enemy, or service with a foreign, or even an enemy power. Though the last problem declined throughout the century, others were enhanced through long imperial postings after 1815, especially in India. Extreme boredom caused mental health problems, resulting in feigning illness to avoid duty or actual self-harm, with the availability of firearms contributing to an army suicide rate three times that for civilians. Others deliberately committed crimes to gain transportation to Australia, dishonourable discharge or even prison. All these forms of popular rank-and-file resistance could be construed as class conflict and will now be explored in detail. Contract culture Other historians have recognised prevalent conflict in the British military over contracts of work. It is most fully covered by Peter Way in his work on British soldiers in pre-revolutionary North America. Here he found in 1763 an officer of the 45th Foot complaining that his men: ‘behaved in a Most Seditious Manner, would Scarce hear me and explain the order; one and all declaring that they had inlisted for pay and & Provisions, and that if their Contract was broken with them, they would no longer Serve, and insisted upon my discharging them to a Man’. Way concluded: ‘Soldiers shared a collective culture that understood their rights … Army recruits, coming from labouring and craft backgrounds, brought with them common notions

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of customary obligations … the right to a just wage as well as a tradition of plebeian resistance too perceived incursions on customary rights.’2 Way’s view is partly supported by other eighteenth-century specialists. Conway emphasises that ‘soldiers had not entirely given up the character of liberty-loving Britons when they joined the colours. Volunteer recruits effectively entered into a contract. They would provide military service, and in return their officers would undertake to ensure that they were properly provisioned and not ill-treated.’ Tatum has investigated the range of soldiers’ reactions when they felt their contracts had been broken, from complaints, quiet subversion, firm negotiations to downright mutinies.3 John Cookson suggests that in the French Wars soldiers continued to value their freedom to protect their own interests: It is not too much to say that soldiers (and seamen) had a conception of their ‘rights’ even if it often seemed to be nothing more than an elementary sense of justice and resistance to servility at the hands of their superiors … In this they were hardly different from the poor in general.

Specifically, this related to contract culture: Most trouble within the army and ‘permanent’ auxiliaries [militia] assumed the form of ‘trade disputes’ in which pay and conditions were the chief issues and the rank and file took collective action, usually by peaceful representation through the NCOs, against their officers. Soldiers, often regarded as little better off than slaves by wealthy civilians, still maintained a firm sense of their ‘rights’ in terms of army regulations, parliamentary legislation pertaining to them, their original agreement to enlist and general entitlement to fair treatment.

Evidence suggests that this culture continued amongst soldiers throughout the nineteenth century. John Rumsby has emphasised the contractual right in the cavalry over the widespread career strategy of men exchanging regiments remaining in India. Rumsby located one soldier who exchanged regiments four times in the early Victorian period.4 Contracts were especially important for the post-1815 overseas military interventions since pay was a prime motivation for the rank and file. In the BAL in Spain, in 1836–37, one soldier reported a comrade named Nelson who was ‘invalided for home and left hospital; to go on board ship … Way, ‘Rebellion of the Regulars’, 789, 767 and 791. 2 Stephen Conway, ‘The Eighteenth-Century British Army as a European Institution’, 3 29 and Tatum, ‘The Soldiers Murmured Much on Account of this Usage’, in Linch and McCormack, Britain’s Soldiers, 100 and 112. Cookson, ‘Regimental Worlds’, 25; Cookson, British Armed Nation, 190; and Rumsby, 4 ‘Making Choices’, 26–27.

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but came back the same evening, refusing to embark unless he was paid his back pay before going on board’. Nelson died that night in hospital. Edward Costello, adjutant of the BAL Rifle battalion was an ex-ranker who successfully negotiated contracts with the mutinous soldiers by admitting: ‘their claims I acknowledged as just’, enabling him to stop the disintegration of the unit.5 As late as 1858–59, the contract culture was central to the successful ‘White Mutiny’, where EIC troops objected to their transfer to Crown service, as their expressed grievances to authority make clear: I do not find myself justified by serving her Majesty without either reenlistment or bounty, and consider it unlawful and unjust in the manner they have handed me over to the crown. I agreed to serve the Company and the contract is at an end. Like as if I had agreed to serve a man who became bankrupt.6

Sometimes these disputes could be accurately defined as the classic conflict over wages. A contract culture existed, with customary rates of pay and self-defined outputs, which was virtually identical to that of contemporary civilian workers. In late 1792, a group of the Royal Scots Greys quartered in Manchester met as a committee, apparently with the support of many of the rank and file, in reaction to the high cost of provisions in the burgeoning industrial town. They later met weekly to read the work of Tom Paine. As the only Scottish regular cavalry regiment, the Greys attracted more educated recruits, and displayed a long radical tradition.7 NCOs often acted as a combination of foreman and shop steward in their dealings with officers. A good example occurred during the career of Andrew Pearson of the 61st Foot. Serving in Sicily as an acting bodyguard to the absolutist King of Naples in 1807, the 61st had been promised prize money from their part in the victory of the Battle of Maida the previous year. Sergeant Pearson recorded his feelings when this only amounted to a derisory sum: I was dumfounded and did not know how to face my company, as the greatest of rejoicings had been going on for some days on the faith that every man would receive at least a guinea. When I returned to the Anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 497 and Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 5 403–04. Quoted in Stanley, White Mutiny, 2 and 154. The last witness, a former sailmaker, 6 emphasises the artisan origins of many of these soldiers. Clive Emsley, ‘The Military and Popular Disorder in England, 1790–1801’, JSAHR, 61 7 (2004), 100 and Mansfield, ‘Military Radicals and the Making of Class’, 61–62. Soldiers’ political radicalism will be discussed in more detail in the companion volume.

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barrack-room, and told what each might expect to receive the men were not sparing in their remarks about the meanness of this fugitive king. I was told that I was not to accept any portion of the prize money, as not a man in the company would take it.

With other Sergeants taking a lead from Pearson, the Paymaster reported him to the Colonel and he was imprisoned as ‘the chief offender’, but released after 48 hours and told ‘I should hear nothing about it.’ Such give and take was a regular feature of the working lives of nineteenth-century soldiers. Similar interactions have also been reported in other areas of civilian labour relations, where trade unions were absent or weak – for example, amongst farmworkers.8 Delegations to complain about problems seemed to have been quite common, but could be fraught with difficulty for ‘ringleaders’, especially in the politically explosive atmosphere of the French Wars. The Scots Greys, stationed in Manchester in 1792, found that their committee was dispersed. Future radical Allen Davenport, whilst serving as a young man as a fencible light dragoon, took part in one delegation at Dunbar, Scotland in 1796: At that time the soldier’s pay was so low, that we were literally starving … I and another comrade, went on a deputation to the Colonels’ marquee to complain, but we could get no redress; starvation seemed our portion. Guess our joy on receiving the information that our pay was increased three pence halfpenny per day.9

Davenport was lucky that his delegation coincided with the government’s general pay rise, so he was not singled out for punishment. To avoid this, anonymous complaining letters were sometimes sent to officers. In 1795, the commander of the Cambridgeshire Militia at Landguard Fort on the east coast received an anonymous letter concerning poor meat rations. Enquiries from the RSM failed to identify the writer from the close world of the rankers, despite a 5 guinea reward. Contract disputes were typical amongst the tradesmen described in Chapter 3. Waggoners of the Royal Irish Wagon Train clung to their ‘Ireland only’ contracts when Wellington attempted to draft them for the Peninsular War. Regimental musicians, steeped in artisan culture, were particularly vigilant about their terms and conditions of work. In 1802, the bandsmen of the Donegal Militia petitioned their Colonel for increasing their expenses, claiming that excessive wear on uniforms because of parade duties ate up £12 of their £18 yearly allowance. They also demanded the right to undertake more outside engagements to earn a living wage.10 Haley, Soldier Who Walked Away, 47. See Howkins, Poor Labouring Men, chap. 2. 8 Chase, Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport, 8–9. 9 10 J.R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge &

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The more paternalistic outlook amongst militia officers could also encourage the contract culture. In the Cambridgeshire Militia, a complaint about the quality of shirts in 1812 brought an apology and a ‘Board of Survey’ from the Colonel, which put matters right. An inspection in 1813 could therefore report of the regiment: ‘there has been no corporal punishment in the last six months.’11 Thoughtless operational decisions which caused rankers’ resentment were common in the Guards, who were expected to dress smartly for their extensive ceremonial duties: Some dissatisfaction prevails among the Life Guards, now stationed in Windsor, in consequence of the men being compelled to wear their [white] summer trowsers during the present inclement season, while the clothing proper for the season lies useless in store. The men endure a great deal of extra labour in keeping these garments clear from mud … being often obliged to put them on wet, many of the men are afflicted with severe colds.’12

Soldiers could even try to enforce contract culture on campaign. William Lawrence of the 40th Foot found himself a spokesman in a dispute over a rum ration, after the successful but bloody storm of Badajoz in Spain in 1812: Much to everyone’s discontent, the officer in charge of us – who nobody in the regiment liked – served out only half. I spoke up and said that we ought to have it all, that we had fought hard for it and the colonel meant us to have it. The sergeant then went to the officer to ask … [with the conclusion] ‘Let the rascals have the lot’.

New recruit Thomas Morris had not been paid all his enlistment bounty before he found himself on a transport to the Low Countries in 1813: I made application for it to the officer who had charge of the company, and he rather unceremoniously ordered me to go about my business … this repulse did not deter me from reporting the circumstance to the colonel [who] … asked ‘if he had the books on board? … the colonel found there was a balance due to me, of one pound eighteen shillings … The necessary sum was produced and I was settled with … in pressing the claim, I had made an inveterate enemy of the officer, who was after on the watch to do me an injury.13 Kegan Paul, 1965), 419; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 4, 188–89; and Herbert and Barlow, Music and the British Military, 79. 11 CRO, Cambridgeshire Militia Order Book, 1812–13, L79-5. 12 The Political Soldier, 28 Dec. 1833. 13 Hathaway, Dorset Soldier, 128 and Selby, Thomas Morris.

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The seven-year contract signed by Sergeant Cooper of the 7th Fusiliers had expired just before the Battle of New Orleans in 1815: The same evening, hearing that we were to storm the enemies’ works in the morning, several of us went to the Colonel’s tent and reminded him that we should have been discharged at Portsmouth and sent home, according to the orders from the Duke of York, then Commander in Chief. He said that it could not be helped. This did not satisfy us, so we hurried to the headquarters, to speak to Sir Edward Pakenham, but he was out viewing the enemy’s defences.14

Cooper was lucky not to be amongst the casualties of the heavy British defeat, especially as peace terms had already been signed across the Atlantic, unknown to the two armies. That same year, Thomas Knight of the 95th Rifles, stationed at Ypres in the brief peace before Waterloo, described the views of a comrade, also on a seven-year contract. This Corporal got drunk on guard duty and was: ‘tried by court martial, and sentenced to receive three hundred [lashes] … tied to a tree on one of the public walks. The corporal being tied up first told Colonel Ross that he was a seven years’ man, and in six months would not care for him or any other officer.’15 Though soldiers could make complaints to their officers, the prevailing culture in the ranks was to keep silent and not be singled out as a troublemaker. In the peacetime army, soldiers could take grievances to Generals undertaking the twice-yearly inspections, but it took a very determined man to display such ‘civilian attitudes of natural justice and self-help’: Private James Bell [16th Lancers] showed himself amazingly persistent in the pursuit of his perceived rights. He protested to the inspecting general in December 1834 that his regimental commander had unfairly taken away the horse that he himself had broken. Despite the general’s verdict that the complaint was ‘… too frivolous to require any Remark’, Bell repeated his claim in May 1835 … General Stevenson … ordered that Bell be severely reprimanded. Even then Bell did not give up, and when he complained again in December he was brought before a district court martial, found guilty and punished. Bell must have been a stubborn man, because he renewed his compliant yet again in May 1836, earning him another warning in front of the regiment.16

Sergeant James Bodell, formerly of the 59th and now serving with the New Zealand Militia, led a protest in the field in 1864 against unreasonable work levels: 14 Cooper, Rough Notes, 149. 15 Knight, British Battalion at Oporto, 8. 16 French, Military Identities, 194–95 and Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 254.

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After being at the Work … a few weeks we had been working on Sundays also. At last 26 of us would not work on Sundays. Captain Breaton wanted us to go up the River on Sunday again and we went to our Captain and told him we must have one day in each Week to do our mending and washing. Captain Hill said quite right my men … I hope you won’t be made more slavey by Captain Breaton. [Bodell was arrested by Breaton but] … Next day an Order came from General Callaway for us to be released and to have half Saturday and all Sundays to our selves, when our Services were not specially required for Urgent Service.17

Whilst serving in Glasgow in 1866 against potential Fenian subversion, Private Edwin Mole of the 14th Hussars was part of a strike which took place in a pub, against an arbitrary change to weekly wage payments made by a new Major. In those days it was the regulation to pay soldiers daily and the men resented the infringement of their rights and in a rather arrogant way demanded their money … This was respectfully pointed out to him by three troop Sergeant Majors, but he did not give way and it came to this, that a serious outbreak threatened on the part of the men actually there for the purpose of quelling disorder in others … the major was driven out by beer bottles and oaths: ‘Make him give us our pay’, ‘We mean to have it’ … The sergeants … in a few minutes returned with the three days pay.

Although 12 ringleaders were later arrested and one imprisoned, the change was reversed and the Major, having lost the confidence of fellow officers and men, resigned his commission. In the Crimean War, British rank-and-file prisoners of war, being escorted into the Russian interior, even negotiated with their captors over food, allowances and billets, as well as forming courts martial of the oldest soldiers to punish minor crime.18 The citizen soldiers of the militia were particularly contract culture conscious. In 1855, radical shoemaker and poacher Corporal James Hawker described how his comrades in the Leicestershire Militia – mobilised for the Crimean War – collectively defeated the threatened compulsion contained in the new Panmure Act that would extend their voluntary service: The men Lay Down there Arms in the Barrack Square and refused to Drill. Lord Burleigh Begged of the men to take up there arms, saying ‘This is Mutiny.’ At 9.30 p.m. the bugle Sounded again and the Orderly Sergeant announced the Order sending Home all Men who enlisted under the Act.

Hawker later decided to re-engage in the militia but was mistakenly arrested for desertion after his original enlistment was not cancelled in the 17 Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 147–48. 18 Mole, King’s Hussar, 78–80 and Inglesant, Prisoners of Voronesh, 72 and 167.

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regimental records. He insisted on pursuing his case to a magistrates’ court and was awarded damages.19 The citizen soldiers of the Channel Islands, which had conscription for its militia since 1771, were also potential protesters. After heavy punishments from an unpopular CO, ‘in May 1899 there was mass insubordination in the 2nd Royal Guernsey Militia when nearly 150 men refused to parade for their annual training’. The Jersey Militia had similarly ‘mutinied’ in 1895. Even as they were effectively wound up in the Edwardian Haldane reforms, over a third of all existing British militia rank and file refused to join the new Special Reserve battalions. Instead, they took free discharges or stubbornly served out their period of enlistment of their militia contracts as militiamen. Earlier, 4 militia regiments (3 Irish and 1 Scottish) even refused to send volunteer drafts to the Boer War, though the vast majority did comply, with over 45,000 militiamen departing for the Cape or other imperial garrisons.20 Strikes and mutinies Standard military histories, especially regimental ones, largely ignore the contract culture, especially when it spilled over into strikes or mutinies. Sporadic incidents could, though, be extensive and widespread, as will be outlined in this section. Peter Way has researched the large-scale mutinies which occurred all over the eastern seaboard of North America in 1763–64, when troops were being stood down after the Seven Year War. Their reactions, as their wages and conditions were being reduced, were recorded in contemporary accounts: When he ordered out a party [of the 44th Foot] to cut wood: the men came in a body and complained of the grievance they laboured under in being Stopp’d for their provisions and ordered to work which they Said they Expected to be paid for otherwise they would not work. Soldiers of the 40th: with one consent, threw down their Arms and Accoutrements, and with one voice declared, That it was Impossible for them to Serve in this Country upon these Terms.21

In the Georgian period, Highlanders, in particular, were concerned with contract culture and the danger of being ‘sold’ by their ‘lairds’ to service 19 Garth Christian (ed.), James Hawker’s Journal: A Victorian Poacher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 6 and 8–9. 20 French, Military Identities, 198; Dunlop, Development of the British Army, 90; and Bowman and Connelly, Edwardian Army, 121. 21 Way, ‘Rebellion of the Regulars’, 783 and 786.

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in the East or West Indies. Matthew Dziennik’s recent work argues that the existing contract culture of the Highland soldiers was consolidated by growth of the market economy, the decline of paternalism in their regional society and its relationship with dynamic British imperialism. Such fears were shared by other troops and could lead to mass action. In 1780, the Anglesea Militia, which had been mobilised during the American Revolutionary War, mutinied at Ellesmere, Shropshire and ‘abused and very ill treated their officers’. The Worcestershire Militia at Shrewsbury put down the revolt and arrested the ringleaders. The line regiment, the 83rd Foot, mutinied at Portsmouth in 1783 against being sent to India. They won the conflict, with the soldiers discharged according to their contracts.22 The fencible regiments, raised mainly in Scotland during the French Revolutionary Wars for home service only, seemed particularly prone to contract protests. (No Scottish militia had yet been formed.) After their officers attempted to extend their contract to England, the Strathspey Fencibles mutinied at Linlithgow in 1794. Trouble continued the following year in their next two postings in Dumfries and Musselburgh. Although arrested protestors had been released from prison in Musselburgh by soldiers their strike was then broken by fresh troops. Four soldiers were condemned to death and, after drawing lots, two were shot on Gullane Links, with three other regiments paraded to observe the draconian punishment. Cookson argues that the French Wars bred extensive suspicion in all troops – line, militia, fencible and volunteers – of being inveigled into signing away rights and being sold for unhealthy service in the Indies.23 A different sort of protest arose in the crisis spring of 1795. Soldiers from the Gloucestershire, South Hampshire, Northamptonshire and Herefordshire militia regiments joined other food rioters – including some from volunteer units – in sixteen locations all over southern England. These ranged from Devon, Somerset, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, to Sussex and Kent. In Plymouth, rioters were joined by some regulars from the 67th Foot and the newly raised 114th Foot joined in at Wantage. The Royal Oxfordshire Militia staged the most serious outbreak. They were based on the south coast camps at Seaford, waiting for the French invasion. When quelled, the militiamen were court-martialled and two leaders (Sergeant Corke and Private Parish) were shot in Brighton by a firing squad formed from their pardoned comrades, as an object lesson in front of the entire invasion camp. It is claimed that the disgraced Oxfordshires lost their 22 Dziennik, ‘The Greatest Number Walked Out’, 17–36; Shrewsbury Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1780 and 5 May 1781; and Tatum, ‘The Soldiers Murmured Much’, 109–10. 23 Clyde, From Rebel to Hero, 166 and Cookson, British Armed Nation, 9 and 234.

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Royal title and had to change the colour of their regimental facings on their collars and cuffs from royal blue to yellow.24 That same year, several of the newly raised regular infantry regiments also mutinied over their contracts. This was in response to being threatened with drafting to other regiments bound for overseas service, potentially to the death trap of the West Indies. These mutinies included the Londonderry Regiment at Exeter, which was suppressed by the 25th Light Dragoons, the 104th and 111th Foot in Dublin and the 33rd Ulster Light Dragoons, fencibles enlisted for home service only, when an attempt was made to hassle them to serve abroad. The most serious outbreak was at Cork, where the newly raised 105th (Leeds Regiment) and the 113th (Royal Birmingham Volunteers) ‘declared they would not be separated, they would serve His Majesty together’. Spurred by the publication of a handbill setting out their case, ‘the populace encouraged their resistance’. The two regiments occupied their barracks for three days before being overawed by militia and regular cavalry.25 Politically motivated mutinies in the 1790s were rare. Rumours spread that ‘little books’ (almost certainly periodical copies of Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man) were circulating amongst northern militia regiments and there was some distribution of radically inspired handbills. Subversive handbills (of which some examples still exist) were distributed in Chatham, Maidstone and Salisbury in 1797. In the same year, the more educated artillerymen timed their disturbance at Woolwich in 1797 with that of the Nore Mutiny. Despite the distribution of a protest handbill, the account of this incident reads more like an industrial dispute than a revolutionary coup: When the sailors seized their ships the royal artillerymen turned their officers out of barracks, fortified themselves within the building, hung out placards ‘more pay and less drill’. They had long protested against the food which was inferior and insufficient but had obtained no satisfaction, and in resorting to this extreme measure of insubordination they declared that their only object was to call attention to their grievances. Meanwhile 24 Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 42–43; Roger Wells, ‘The Militia Mutinies of 1795’, in John Rule (ed.), Outside the Law: Studies in Crime and Order, 1650–1850 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1982), 35–64; Ian Beckett, ‘The Militia and the King’s Enemies’, in Alan J. Guy (ed.), The Road to Waterloo (London: National Army Museum, 1990), 34; Dudley Edwards, The Soldiers’ Revolt (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1978), 9 and 18; and John Bohsted, Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1983), 14 and 48–49, 53 and 250. 25 Exeter Flying Post, 13 Aug. 1795; Michael Duffy, ‘The British Army and the Caribbean Expeditions of the War against Revolutionary France’, JSAHR, 62 (1984), 66–67 and T.H. McGuffie, ‘The Short Life and Sudden Death of an English Regiment of Foot’, JSAHR, 33 (1955), 52–53. The protest handbill is reproduced in Guy, Road to Waterloo, 128.

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to their credit they carried on all garrison duties in good order and peace, and when Government sent down a commission of enquiry, they made so good a case that they were forgiven, and obtained a concession on nearly every point of their demands.26

The strike settled to their satisfaction, like loyal soldiers elsewhere, they turned on the subversive handbill distributor: ‘the NCOs and men subscribed a sum of money, which offered as a reward for the detection of the offender; and further, signed voluntarily, a paper declaring their loyalty to the King and fidelity to the country.’ But with the re-emergence of popular radicalism after the French Wars, further military protest risked accusations of radical subversion, such as the 3rd Foot Guards mutiny in London in June 1820 over living conditions, pay and excessive duty.27 Disaffection was more common amongst Irish troops before the Rebellion of 1798. Men from 11 Irish militia regiments, plus the 5th Dragoons, were court-martialled for sedition and many punished by flogging or transportation. This culminated in four of the Monaghan Militia being shot in May 1797, charged with being United Irishmen and for refusing to name other members. During the rebellion itself, most militiamen soldiered loyally, though the 5th Dragoons were disbanded. The evidence for reaction by serving troops to the subversive radical handbills of 1797 is mainly from Irishmen, like the three marines executed at Plymouth. The refusal at Liverpool of 70 men of Midlothian Light Dragoons (a fencible regiment) to take ship for Ireland in May 1797 could have been linked to naval mutiny and ongoing Irish ferment. The mutiny conspiracy of the 49th Foot in Upper Canada in 1803 – which resulted in seven executions – may also have had political connotations, given its large number of Irish rankers. But it was prompted by ill-treatment from its CO and, allegedly, American agents.28 One of the largest mutinies took place in 1802. After the Peace of Amiens was signed, the martinet Duke of Kent (father, later, of Queen Victoria) was 26 W.T. Vincent, Records of the Woolwich District, vol. 2 (Woolwich: Jacks and Virtue, 1890), 412. 27 Francis Duncan, The History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery (London: John Murray, 1879), 72 and Spiers, Army and Society, 77. The Firing Line military museum in Cardiff has a radical handbill in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards collection, together with two loyalist responses subscribed to by rankers. 28 Emsley, ‘The Military and Popular Disorder in England,’ 100; Britt Zerbe, ‘A Bridge between the Gap: The Martial Identity of the Marine Corps, 1755–1802’, 100, in Kennedy and McCormack, Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850, 104–05; Thomas Bartlett, ‘Counter Insurgency and Rebellion’, in Keith Jeffrey and Thomas Bartlett, A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 271; Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763–1798 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997), 225; and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 8, 59.

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sent to Gibraltar. His mission was to tighten up discipline in a garrison with a lax reputation and which was home to the largest contingent of artificers. Kent’s disciplinarian style had already resulted in the mutiny of his own regiment, the 7th Royal Fusiliers, in Canada. Instituting two daily parades and closing down most drinking establishments, he rapidly annoyed the Gibraltar garrison. According to one soldier of the 54th Foot, ‘he was a very bad man, he would not let us drink … and the parades, he never missed one’. By the Christmas of 1802, Kent’s actions resulted in a mutiny which affected most of the garrison. Corporal Andrew Pearson of the 61st Foot claimed that it was triggered by Kent’s imperious reaction to a petition from soldiers, with ‘duration only’ contracts, who should have been demobilised at the Peace, and that the mutineers threatened to hand the garrison over to the Spanish. Starting with the 1st Foot, drunken mutineers botched seizing Kent himself and failed to gain support from the 25th and 54th Foot, just arrived in Gibraltar after the Egyptian campaign. Though many of the 25th regiment later joined in the inchoate protest, the CO of the 54th rallied his men and with the help of an artillery detachment fired on the mutineers, causing nine casualties, which restored order.29 Gunner Miller’s account of the battle shows sympathy with the mutineers: Many of the Royals were shot before they could get their redress … I was at a gun that was formed up close in front of them and expected every man of us would have been put to death, our guns loaded and matches lighted. They frequently cried out ‘Charge the Bugars’ ‘Fire a volley at the Bugars’. I was more afraid than ever I was fighting against the French, and we found it more dangerous to fight against exasperated British soldiers standing out for their rights … They at last went off to their Barracks … and every 10th man was picked out to be shot or transported. Eleven were actually transported and a few days afterwards three were shot … Duke was obliged to fly to England.30

As discussed in Chapter 3, the tradesmen of Gibraltar stood aloof from the violence and used the opportunity to negotiate with their officers for concessions. Ten mutineers were condemned to death, though seven of these were transported to Australia for life. Pearson’s account has Kent’s oppressive regime toppled by his own officers to avoid further bloodshed. Whilst this is unlikely, Kent was certainly recalled in disgrace in March 1803, with the soldiers achieving a moral victory. Pearson’s memoirs are not always reliable, being written nearly fifty years afterwards. The 61st, though 29 Jason R. Musteen, Nelson’s Refuge: Gibraltar in the Age of Napoleon (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2011), 54, 55–59 and 194. 30 Adventures of Serjeant Benjamin Miller, 30.

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it fought alongside the 25th and 54th in Egypt, was then part of the Malta garrison, so Pearson’s account was presumably based on hearsay. That this flawed report celebrates soldiers victorious in their rights is itself fascinating evidence of the prevalent contract culture.31 Although potentially hazardous to ‘ringleaders’, protests could be very successful if the officers felt that their position had infringed soldiers’ ‘natural rights’. John Shipp witnessed a successful soldiers’ strike by the newly arrived 22nd Foot in Madras, India in 1803: It had been the custom when troops arrived at Fort William to stop eight rupees from every man’s pay, for what reason no one was ever told … So the greater part of two companies marched in a sober, deliberate manner to Sir Hugh Bailey’s HQ to seek redress. Here they were told that it was the custom to stop the eight rupees from each man in order to make sure he got a decent burial. This explanation only made bad worse … When the men returned to barracks drink added to their fury … until they were bent on open rebellion and mutiny. This determination was strongest in the grenadier company … the Adjutant they loathed. ‘Kick him out!’, ‘Turn him out!’, and he narrowly escaped with his life. When he left they quieted down again and went sullenly to their cots. The next morning the eight rupees were refunded.

Shipp, later to be uniquely twice promoted from the ranks for acts of bravery, was already a Sergeant in 1803, so probably stood aloof from the protest, which had added weight from being led by the regiment’s senior company, the grenadiers.32 The Volunteer forces were stood down in 1809, as French invasion seemed unlikely. It was replaced by a more professional and proletarian local militia, linked to the full-time county militia and subject to military law and punishment. With their apparent changes in contract, the rank and file of new regiments, distrustful of their officers, were subject to a wave of disputes, strikes and mutinies in their early days. In Norwich, with its radical reputation, in May 1809, a private answered his roll-call with ‘Here, with an empty belly.’33 Though imprisoned, his comrades rescued him, in the sort of action repeated up and down the country. In 1810, the West Mendip Militia refused orders after the cost of their trousers was deducted from their one-pound marching allowance. They then rescued their imprisoned spokesmen from Bath gaol. In the same year, the jailing of a protesting Sergeant of the Wiltshire Militia led to an attempted rescue, which was faced down by the 31 Haley, Soldier Who Walked Away, 42–44. 32 Stranks, John Shipp, 42. 33 Colley, Britons, 316–17.

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gentry yeomanry at Devizes. Overall, the local militia participated in 25 protests, including outbreaks in Herefordshire, Aberystwyth and Reading.34 The most significant consequence to these mutinous acts was at Ely, where the Cambridgeshire local militia protested in June 1809 about a stoppage for their knapsacks ‘which occasioned the men to surround their officers and demand what they deemed their arrears’. Five ‘ringleaders’ received the severe sentence of 500 lashes, and the punishment parade was guarded by four squadrons of Hanoverian cavalry from the King’s German Legion. The use of German ‘mercenaries’ led radical journalist William Cobbett to write an apoplectic leader on the subject in his Political Register and resulted in his imprisonment by the government for seditious libel. Two soldiers of the regiment – James Newell, who went on to became a Sergeant, and Aaron Layton, a balloted bricklayer – were later actively involved in the Ely and Littleport riots of 1816. Both were transported for life, though commuted in Layton’s case.35 White troops of the EIC were renowned for mutinying for their rights, with the first being recorded in 1674. In 1798, the European Madras artillery’s protest over arrears of pay and conditions of service was defeated and six ringleaders were executed (one being blown from a gun following the old Moghul practice). White EIC officers – from both local sepoy and European regiments – also formed ‘combinations’ from the 1760s. This culminated in a widespread officers’ strike in the Madras Presidency in 1809, which was supported by their sepoys. The disturbances were ended by white regular Crown troops, though 150 were killed in the clashes. Mutinies by white EIC troops continued. In one year alone (1834–35) military courts martial in Bengal alone (one of three Indian ‘Presidencies’) handed down 48 convictions for mutiny and mutinous conduct to its white troops, which amounted to 30 per cent of all convictions. Black troops had a much better disciplinary record; during the same period, only one sepoy was convicted of the same offences. In the disastrous Kabul campaign of 1841–42, as the Anglo-Indian army disintegrated, it was the British rank and file who attempted mutiny and desertion when pay was lacking, rather than the loyal sepoys, who soldiered to the last.36 34 Lawrence James, Warrior Race: A History of the British at War (London: Little, Brown, 2001), 377–78; Lawrence James, Mutiny in the British and Commonwealth Forces, 1797–1956 (London: Buck & Enright, 1987), 14; and Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 118. 35 The Courier, 29 June 1809 and Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 1 July 1809. For the 1816 riots, see A.J. Peacock, Bread or Blood: A Study of the Agrarian Riots in East Anglia in 1816 (London: Gollancz, 1965). I am grateful to the late Reg Holmes for locating evidence of Newell and Layton’s military careers in the Littleport Parish Records. 36 Holmes, Sahib, 428; Llewellyn-Jones, Great Uprising on India, 4; Heathcote, The Military in British India, 63–65; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 69; Divall, Redcoats

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The relatively lax white regiments of the EIC were especially successful in negotiation over work tasks. Stanley describes the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers refusing to carry their knapsacks on a long march in 1843. They dropped them in unison but agreed to carry their greatcoats, to save face with their CO. In 1858–59, the ‘White Mutiny’ involved nearly 15,000 white troops employed by the East India Company over enforced transfer to the Queen’s service. Led by spokesmen quoting radical rhetoric (one named Benjamin Franklin Langford!), they occupied their barracks in what was described as a ‘Manchester Strike’. Apart from one execution and several imprisonments, the protest was a complete success; 10,116 out of 15,000 secured their discharge and home passage, costing the government £250,000.37 Unsurprisingly, mutinies were typical of the overseas military interventions. This was a result of their potentially explosive mixture of political idealists and mercenary adventurers, while reliant on pay from foreign governments, sometimes in exile. Unpaid, the British Battalion in Portugal in 1832–33 was reduced to eating snails and ‘The men refused to turn out and fall in ranks till their bounty of £2 5s was paid and clothing distributed to them.’ After some violence, the dispute was initially settled, but Corporal Knight recorded it flaring up again: ‘I had been told that the men had mutinied again for their pay … [and that] some British had deserted.’ The residual ‘Scotch Fusiliers’ regiment led by Charles Shaw (later Chief Constable of Manchester and a subsequent Chartist sympathiser) also mutinied in the winter of 1833 over non-payment of wages.38 In 1836, the 8th Battalion of the BAL in northern Spain mutinied, when its officers attempted illegally to extend the soldiers’ twelve-month contracts. When four leaders were imprisoned, these were freed by NCOs and soldiers acting together, who forced the officers to back down and honour the original contracts. They were joined by the 6th and 10th BAL and by some of the 1st Lancers (led by Corporal Montgomery late of the Royal Scots Greys). They were all protesting about non-payment of wages, as well as their extended contracts. Though a few arrests were made, one culprit flogged and another imprisoned, the men largely got their way, but back payments from the Spanish government led to a drinking bout which incapacitated the BAL for six days. Alexander Somerville, the flogged radical martyr of the Royal Scots Greys in 1832, was by then a Sergeant in the BAL. He against Napoleon, 204; Taylor, Storm and Conquest, 268–69; Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, 251; and Colley, Captives, 355–56. 37 Stanley, White Mutiny, 75, 138, 220 and 222; Spiers, Army and Society, 137; and Heathcote, The Military in British India, 110–15. 38 The Political Soldier, 28 Dec. 1833; Rodríguez, Under the Flags of Freedom, 79; and Knight, British Battalion at Oporto, 102, 109 and 114.

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claimed that the success of the dispute was due to secret organisation, which deliberately excluded NCOs, though many were sympathetic: ‘Immediately a regimental union was formed and a regular system of delegates from the different companies established. They met, and made arrangements for carrying out the strike.’39 This sympathy was shared by Edward Costello, once a sergeant in the 95th Rifles and now Captain and Adjutant of the BAL Rifle Battalion: Disgusted with the privations they had endured … they refused to mount guard, much less meet the enemy, unless their demands were satisfied … A great number of the men had enlisted only for a twelve month … Their time of service was now up and whole companies of the 6th and 8th Scotch gave notice to their officers and the next day followed it up. I was present when they piled arms, and hung their accoutrements upon them. The whole Legion, however, was in such a state of insubordination, that it was with much ado they could muster enough men to march the delinquents to the castle.40

In the UK, Irish troops continued to be at the forefront of protests. In 1830, the 87th Foot (an Irish regiment), after posting to Ulster, mutinied when its band was forbidden to play traditional Irish airs on their way to Roman Catholic church services, and fought with local Orangemen. The North Tipperary Militia was embodied in 1855 and disbanded the following year after the Crimean War. When ordered to return their uniforms, militiamen complained of unpaid bounties, rioted (along with their band, playing Irish music) and refused to return their trousers. Becoming known as ‘The Battle of the Breeches’, after a few days of skirmishes with loyal troops, in which a militiaman and a private of the 41st Foot were killed, the bounty money was paid, though nine ‘ringleaders’ were imprisoned. Later, in the 1860s, the Fenian movement attempted to subvert Irish troops and may have sworn in up to 7,000, culminating in an abortive rising in 1867. There is also evidence that Fenians deliberated enlisted to obtain military training and gain access to barracks.41 Large-scale mutinies could still happen in the more regulated late-Victorian army. Charles Grey gives a hearsay account he heard serving in the Buffs in the 1880s: 39 Somerville, History of the British, 134–37 and 180; anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 500; and Brett, British Auxiliary Legion, 96–99. 40 Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 392–93. 41 Spiers, Army and Society, 78 and Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army’, 45–46. For Fenian subversion, see R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985) and Brian Jenkins, The Fenian Problem: Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858–1874 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008).

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In 1887 the Army Service Corps at Portbello [Dublin] provoked by a tyrannical major stormed his house brought out all his furniture and effects and set fire to them on the barrack square, after which they all marched down to the Royal Barracks and gave themselves up. Most got heavy sentences but the major was quietly retired after a decent interval.42

In the same year, at Curragh Camp, troopers of the 19th Hussars refused to go on Saturday afternoon parade after exercises all morning. At a local pub, 69 of them engaged in a stand-off with military police, and declared to two of their junior officers: ‘They were over paraded and all they wanted was an inquiry in order to have Lt Col Craigie [their CO] shifted.’ But following the officers back to barracks (including the future Lord French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914), all were arrested and seven were imprisoned for up to eight years. As late as 1890, a company of the 2nd Grenadier Guards in London refused to parade after what they regarded as excessive night duty. They were punished by six courts martial and a posting to what was then regarded as an outlandish station: Bermuda. The Grenadier Guards apparently retained the nickname, ‘Bermuda Guards’, as late as the inter-war period.43 Occasionally, protests took place on active service. British troops were ordered to make a fifth assault on the Mahratta fortress of Bhurtpore, India in February 1805 after earlier attacks had caused nearly 2,000 British and Indian casualties: ‘But the men, though they were from the remnant of the Seventy-fifth, Seventy-sixth and Hundred-and-first regiments, which had covered themselves with glory during the past weeks, refused to move out.’ The ‘76th Foot to whom [General] Lake had turned again and again in the campaign, refused, as they said, “to go out there to be slaughtered”’. After a suitable rest, the troops resumed their duties. None was punished but the mutiny influenced Lake to sue for peace. A similar strike in India also occurred during the war against Nepal eight years later. Here, soldiers of the 53rd Foot refused to obey their officers’ orders to mount an assault against the strong Gurkha fortress of Ramghur, after the failure of initial attacks. Again, no retribution took place and the British were forced merely to blockade the fort.44 Battlefield strikes were not unknown in the subsequent wars of Empire. 42 Grey, ‘Soldiering in Victorian Days’, 325. 43 Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3, 77–79; Beckett, Victorians at War: New Perspectives, 155; and Messenger, History of British Infantry, 2, 226. 44 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 125; A.S. Bennell, ‘The Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–5’, JSAHR, 63 (1985), 160; and Lieutenant Colonel Newham-David, ‘The Gurkha War, 1814–16’, in anon., Battles of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 3 (London: Cassell, 1897–1900), 206.

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Private Alfred Burrows of the 1st Leicesters recorded such protests in letters to his family as late as the Boer War: On the trek, they marched & marched them until the men were thoroughly done up. One company flung their arms down & refused to go any further until they had a rest & they got it too. Again about 3 days ago, on the work they are on now, a Major set them a task to do. They worked hard & finished it, & up comes the Major again, & was so pleased that he gave them another job to do. The men struck and refused to do it. The Colonel fell them in, & after hearing the case, sent them to camp.45

Passive resistance Mutinies, strikes and disputes took place against a background of unwavering passive resistance. Although little is found in regimental histories about this low-level class conflict, some soldiers’ memoirs contain accounts of backchats, the undermining of unpopular officers and widespread collusion between officers and men. This resulted in sanctioned rule-breaking, with Sergeants often acting as a combination of foremen and shop stewards. Passive resistance has also been identified in recent histories of domestic servants: [which] suggest that rather than taking strike action or seeking legal redress, domestic staff, both male and female, turned to strategic behaviours … methods of revenge against unfair treatment, using familiar weapons such as sulking, misinterpreting orders, semi-deliberate spoiling of materials, wasting time and sullen dumb insolence.46

As with domestic servants, nineteenth-century soldiers, often displayed low-level resistance as they went about their day-to-day business, evidencing pre-enlistment attitudes. Such conflict is little recorded but took place, especially in imperial postings. Dealing with this behaviour, which could take the form of grumbling, disrespectful talk and binge drinking, was the responsibility of NCOs, who could collude with or even support it. Such behaviour carried over from the eighteenth century. William Cobbett recalled his own army service in the 1780s: ‘Soldiers do not talk in the hearing of their commanders; but they talk pretty freely behind their backs.’ Physical demonstrations of protest were occasionally made like the banging of musket butts on parade. A Captain of the 30th Foot was tried in 1805 for 45 Robin Jenkins, ‘‘One of the Human Atoms’: A Soldier’s View of the South African War, 1899–1902’, JSAHR, 85 (2007), 11. 46 David French has the only recent serious discussion of the issue. See French, Military Identities, 198 and Benson, ‘One Man and his Women’, 204.

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being drunk on duty in Dublin. Witnesses – officers from other regiments – reported: I heard some of the men say that the Captain ought to be confined as being disguised in liquor and giving the Guard so much trouble … it appeared to me that they were huzzaing and knocking the butts of their firelocks on the ground.

An officer described the noises made by a punishment parade of soldiers witnessing an unfair or severe flogging: the faces of the spectators assumed a look of disgust: there was a low whispering sound, scarcely audible, issuing from the apparently stern and silent ranks [even] when the soldiers believed in its justice … the culprit had disappeared and the martyr had taken his place.47

Private Morris of the 73rd Foot described how troops could speak to officers in the field, if no one in authority was around: We had been several days without any other provision than fruit, and one of the men was eating potatoes by the camp-fire, when an officer came up, who was universally disliked … Coming up to the fire, and assuming, for the moment, a look of the utmost kindness, he said, ‘Smith, I wish you would give me a few of those potatoes.’ ‘I’ll see you d---d first’, was Smith’s reply; (before giving it, however, he ascertained there was no one by that was likely to bear witness, in case the officer should charge him with disrespect).48

In the same campaign, Thomas Knight of the 95th Rifles describes dealing with an unpopular CO in Flanders: There was a heavy snow on the ground, and Colonel Ross being no favourite, we one night collected an immense snow-ball, and rolling it up to the door of his quarters, closed it, and obliged him in the morning to get out by the back of the house. He laughed at the trick, but never was afterwards without a sentry.49

In 1836, an anonymous tailor serving with the BAL in the Basque Country gives a good example of backchat, when asking an officer to pay a debt: In a bye street leading off the Grand Plaza, I came full butt upon Captain Oakley, and under the influence of the extra pint of wine, asked him for a dollar owing for tailoring done some time before. ‘Go to your barrack, 47 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, 32(37), 13 Dec. 1817, 1146; LIM, Court Martial Records, Captain Thomas Leach of the 30th Foot, 1805, and quoted in Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 85. 48 Selby, Thomas Morris, 51. 49 Knight, British Battalion at Oporto, 9.

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you drunken scoundrel’, he said, ‘and I’ll give you two dozen [lashes] in the morning.’ – ‘I am not afraid of you,’ said I, looking round to be sure there were no witnesses, ‘so sure as you flog me I’ll shoot you.’ I think he could see mischief in my face as I turned away, and he called me back and threw a dollar towards me, which, after saluting him, I picked up and walked off with it.

Though NCOs and privates were usually united in this passive resistance: ‘If an officious young man [NCO] overweighted with his own importance commenced to throw his weight around among the old soldiers, they found ways of getting level with him without incurring a risk of the Guard Room.’50 The white regiments of the EIC were especially noted for their relaxed discipline and relatively casual relationships between soldiers and officers. A sentry could challenge an orderly officer with: ‘Arrah … Major … go home again, the boys are very tired & fast asleep!’ and not be charged. NCOs and privates were also allowed to socialise and interact in ways which were forbidden in HM service, including the settling of private scores.51 Soldiers and hard drink had to be dealt with carefully given the culture of excess. Standing orders advised: ‘Officers should avoid speaking to, or reprimanding a man in liquor, but they are of course to take immediate steps to confine him.’ But officers licensed potentially drunken celebrations for special anniversaries. The dominance of Irish soldiers in 1816 meant that St Patrick’s Day was celebrated even in ‘English’ regiments like the 30th Foot. In the words of one of their officers: Such days were the saturnalia of our poor fellows, so we could not refuse them. They brought us to our room on their shoulders, preceded by a blind fiddler … our strict disciplinarians may frown on this, but heaven knows I care not for their wrinkles. If I can contribute to the happiness of the brave fellows under me, by now and then running with them a few yards out of the highway of regulation, I’ll do it.52

Officers also tolerated a certain amount of licensed binge drinking when hard-earned back pay had arrived. After the end of the Peninsular War, Donaldson of the 94th Foot reported: ‘exiled from home and all its enjoyments for number of years, without some spreeing, the commanding officer wisely resolved to relax the reins of discipline a little’. Another example of officers turning a blind eye to official policy took place on changing regimental 50 Anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 287 and Grey, ‘Soldiering in Victorian Days’, 85. 51 Stanley, White Mutiny, 74. 52 47th Standing Orders (Dublin: William Frazier, 1834) and quoted in Ballatyne, History of the Thirtieth Regiment, 335.

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stations in the UK. Here ‘unofficial’ women – common law wives or sweethearts – were found spaces on carts or railway transport: ‘Of course the officers and non-commissioned officers shut their eyes to all this.’53 Peter Stanley’s pioneering work shows how soldiers in India used graffiti chalked on walls to demonstrate a variety of previously concealed feelings, ‘in the otherwise hidden world of the Victorian barrack room’. Comments cover racism: ‘Kill the Darkie’; the resentment of the ‘non-gentlemen’ EIC officers: ‘Sind him back to his ould mutinous sepoy regiment’; corrupt NCOs: ‘Sergeant – is suspected of having put water in the grog; ’tis to be hoped that he’ll not be guilty of such unsoldierlike conduct in future’; resentment against prize agents: ‘Delhi taken and India saved for 36 rupees and 10 annas’, and the ‘White Mutiny of 1859: ‘“Unity is Strength”, Men and Comrades are we to be sold like a lot of pigs … now let us be men and stand up for our rites [sic]’, ‘Damn the Queen, Company for ever, give us bounty, shoot Briggs’, ‘Stick up for discharge or bounty; if refused, immediately for Delhi’ and, lastly, ‘John Company is dead, we will not soldier for the Queen.’54 The miserable British captives after the surrender of their failed assault on Buenos Aires in 1807 no doubt mystified their captors with the chalked comment on their commander: ‘General Whitelocke is a coward or a traitor or both.’ This slogan was apparently soon also seen on the streets of London. During the Crimean War groups of prisoners of war being escorted into the Russian interior communicated with each other through pencilled graffiti left in their nightly billets. This technique was a long-established form of civilian working-class protest. It was used extensively by trade societies in disputes to shame mean employers who would not pay the agreed price of labour, and adopted by political radicals to campaign and communicate in the post-1815 government repression.55 Fraternisation with the enemy was on occasions tolerated in this hidden world of passive resistance. In the more formal eighteenth-century wars, trading of goods between outposts and informal truces were common. This continued in the more ideological French Wars: It was no uncommon sight to see a British or French soldier picking apples from the same tree, with as much unconcern as if they were belonging to the same service. Commissaries of opposing armies ignored their enemies 53 Donaldson, Recollections, 254 and Sinclair, A Soldier’s View, 40. 54 Stanley, ‘Highly Inflammatory Writings’, 236, 238, 240 and 242–43. (The last penultimate example refers to the way Delhi was taken by black mutineers in 1857.) See also Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 2, 234. 55 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 430 and Inglesant, Prisoners of Voronesh, 87. For civilian political and trades graffiti, see Prothero, Artisans and Politics, chap. 2.

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if encountered in no man’s land whilst foraging, both sides’ cavalry watered their horses in turn at the same stream and rankers developed a regular trade in trading commodities scarce in each camp. Outlying pickets also adopted a system of live and let live with notice given if an advance was ordered from higher command.56

Such actions may be less class resistance and more soldier solidarity over shared hardships across armies. But Sergeant Donaldson of the 94th described French and British soldiers looting wrecked ships on the beach side by side during the siege of Cadiz and then drinking together. From these incidents grew regularised gentlemen’s agreements about foraging and watering horses, and trading of scarce goods was often colluded with or even encouraged by officers.57 British militiamen guarding French prisoners of war also fraternised with their captives. It is likely that they acted as agents for imprisoned French craftsmen in the marketing of the intricate folk art produced for British civilians. There were at least three successful instances of bribery. In Dartmoor Prison in July 1809, two Nottinghamshire militiamen were shot and two flogged for accepting a bribe to facilitate an escape. Two years later, four privates from the same regiment were again caught for bribery, though only one (who had supplied a pistol) received (450) lashes. At Perth Depot in 1813, six prisoners bribed Durham militiamen. The plot was only betrayed when one soldier found out that the bribe was in forged bank notes.58 Fraternisation could also take place in the wars of Empire. Unlike most Indian campaigns where no quarter was given, British troops in Nepal in 1816 fraternised with Gurkha soldiers, whose basic English came from the words of command used by European adventurers.59 Looting and prize money In contrast with many European armies, the British were well supplied on their home ground or within range of their properly equipped navy. Shortages of food only occurred when their expeditions penetrated the interiors of Europe or Empire. To maintain discipline, looters, if caught, could face capital punishment from their Generals. John Cookson suggests that: ‘On 56 Duffy, Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 161; Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 74–75 and 83; and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 130. 57 Donaldson, Recollections, 65–66 and 301–02; James, Life in Wellington’s Army, chap. 18 and 301–02; and Oman, History of the Peninsular War, 7, 294–95. 58 Clive L. Lloyd, A History of Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2007), 280, 313 and 353. 59 Stranks, John Shipp, 136.

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active service, among foreign populations, a “moral economy” seems to have operated in that soldiers assumed a “right” of forage, requisition and even plunder from civilians whatever the “law”’ in the shape of military authority, directed’. In the words of George Lindau, a German soldier serving in the Peninsular War: ‘A soldier in the field, even if he gets supplied … according to the commissary’s weight, has a persistent overwhelming hunger; he looks for provisions, knows where to find them and sits himself down … in spite of all the provosts with cords and lashes.’ The problem was particularly pronounced in Spain, as candidly recorded by British rankers: ‘At this period [1810] the English troops made sad work in Portugal by plundering the inhabitants … to steal pigs, poultry, wine etc.’ and ‘We haversacked a few sheep, and ran into an old shepherd. We soon relieved him of all he had, viz. A four-pound loaf, some cheese and about a quart of wine. The poor old fellow cried. It was no use: we had not seen a bit of bread these eleven days.’ 60 Officers’ collusion with their men over looting was widespread when all were hungry: ‘Nor were Officers any better off. They would look steadfastly another way if they came across a soldiers staggering under a side of pork, and a piece of it quietly dropped into their tent would seal their lips to silence.’ In the Peninsular War, collusion could extend to senior officers. A Grenadier of the 42nd Highlanders, when digging up potatoes in a peasant’s field, was warned by General Pack, his brigade commander, to ‘take care of the provosts’.61 Unsurprisingly, collusion over looting also occurred in the overseas military interventions. The British Battalion intervening for the liberals during the Portuguese Civil war of 1832–33 found: The best of all were the pigs themselves; – we had leave to kill those that made their way into the garden, but not to touch those in the wood and roads; however … we fell upon the plan of driving them in, closing the gate and killing them. The first night we caught three, which the Captain saw lying dead in the kitchen going his rounds … ‘Oh, I see how it is, but take care I don’t catch you at it.’ 62

Similar activities sometimes occurred in remote imperial campaigns. Ex-regular Sergeant Bodell, serving in the New Zealand Militia in 1864, poached settlers’ cattle: ‘The Beef was soon cut up and hung up in Joints. Early next morning we sent a nice Plate of Steaks into the officers Hut, no questions asked.’ 63 60 Cookson, ‘Regimental Worlds’, 25, quoted in a review of his memoirs in JSAHR, 88 (2010), 344; Cooper, Rough Notes, 12; and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 117. 61 Crook, Very Thing, 66 and Roy, ‘The Memoirs of Private James Gunn’, 65. 62 Knight, British Battalion at Oporto, 65. 63 Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 155.

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British soldiers regarded plundering from both enemy soldiers and luckless civilians as a natural right and a just recompense for poor pay, hard service and danger. Tight discipline would normally prevent too much damage, but in defeat British soldiers, who were poor campaigners compared with other armies, could be ruthless as they took out their hungry frustrations. William Lawrence’s memoir records how he cheerfully robbed and scavenged from French wounded stragglers and hapless Spanish cottagers alike, often protected by his officers. ‘These actions are bad, but when you consider the frequent hungry state that such a large body of men were in during the war, perhaps they are understandable.’ It was a short step for such amorality to be applied to the looting of money or treasure. Moore’s army, retreating for its life to Corunna in 1808–09, looted as it went, with ‘upwards of fifteen hundred robust marauders … [who] passed through the rearguard of the reserve’. Wellington’s retreat from Burgos in the autumn of 1812 coincided with the grape harvest and appalling weather. Whole regiments disintegrated through want of supplies, drinking themselves to a stupor with Spanish wine. Here, Private Wheeler of the 51st Foot, along with his comrades, even robbed a fellow British soldier from the 6th Dragoons of his stash of 632 dollars.64 Terror and rapine were also unleashed on civilians after successful but bloody assaults on fortified towns in the Peninsular War at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and San Sebastian. Strangely, such activities were meant to be regulated by international law, as first promoted by Hugo Grotius in 1625. Besieged towns with a practical breach in the walls, which refused to surrender, were legally subject to plunder. Then, soldiers could be capable of appalling conduct, as all control by officers was lost: ‘it was rather a dangerous place for a[n] officer to appear, I saw many of them running as much risk to prevent inhumanity, as they did the preceding night in storming the town [Badajoz]’.65 Loot was a key motivation for soldiers volunteering for the dangerous storming parties sent against fortifications: All three of us had been quartered at Badajoz after the battle of Talavera so we knew where the shops were located. Having heard a report that, if we succeeded in taking the place, three hours of plunder would be allowed, we arranged to meet at a silversmith’s shop.

Lawrence of the 40th Foot made this rendezvous, despite being wounded during the assault. Costello, also wounded, confirmed the same motivation: 64 Hathaway, Dorset Soldier, 60; a British officer quoted in Ronald Fraser, Napoleon’s Cursed War (London: Verso, 2008), 232; and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 103. 65 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 6, 364 and 616–23; Bell, First Total War, 46–47; and Donaldson, Recollections, 159.

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‘if truth must be told, the chances of plunder in the town.’ Shooting off the locks of Spanish shops, he secured ‘26 dollars for my own share’.66 Such behaviour came to a head at Vitoria in north-west Spain in July 1813. Here, the British army secured a complete victory over Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother and the puppet ruler. His army disintegrated and his wagon train was captured. It contained treasure and artwork plundered from the whole Peninsula during five years of harsh French occupation. In addition, 5.5 million francs sent by Napoleon to pay Joseph’s army largely disappeared into the back pockets of the Allied soldiers. Only 5 per cent was recovered: ‘Thousands of the men had appropriated large sums of money by plunder’, and ‘Little else of value found its way to the Commander in Chief or military chest’.67 The resulting scene of looting and devastation features in many memoirs of the war, as British soldiers fought their comrades or allies for the best pickings, with the retreating French even joining in. Private Wheeler of the 51st Foot, after securing ‘a small box of dollars’, compared it to ‘an Arab camp after a successful attack on some caravan’. Some memoirists mention that officers, far from holding back the men, also took part themselves, perhaps, with the war ending, mindful of future genteel poverty on half-pay. Costello of the 95th robbed a Spanish muleteer of £1,000. He retained his swag by threatening a British cavalryman of the recently arrived Hussar Brigade (who looted rather than charged the French) with a loaded rifle.68 The looting stragglers (about 12,500 men) equalled the army’s casualties in the battle itself. Wellington, outraged because the army could not pursue, with so many men absent from the ranks, reportedly used his famous phrase, ‘very scum of the earth’ for the first time. Furthermore, the rank and file, beginning ‘to look upon their life as of some value, were not over anxious to go much to the front’. Many soldiers now saw an opportunity to take enough money home to open a pub. Only those veteran regiments not at Vitoria and the newly arrived troops volunteered for dangerous jobs, like the later assault on San Sebastian.69 Soldiers sometimes looted during battle. In one Peninsular skirmish, Costello of the 95th Rifles described both sides looting from riderless horses. At Waterloo, Wheeler of the 51st Foot joined with other ‘old campaigners … 66 Hathaway, Dorset Soldier, 75 and 76 and Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 143 and 178. 67 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 9, 186; Oman, History of the Peninsular War, vol. 6, 434–45 has the most detailed ‘inventory’. 68 Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 118; Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 240; and Oman, History of the Peninsular War, vol. 6, 443. 69 Glover, Wellington’s Army in the Peninsula, 171; Michael Ross, The Reluctant King: Joseph Bonaparte (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976), 214; and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 9, 197.

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[who] agreed to stick by each other come what would and all plunder would be equally divided’. The group picked up an (Allied) Dutch cavalryman’s fallen purse and after shooting a French Hussar officer ‘We had a rich booty, 40 double Napoleons and we had just time to strip his [metallic] lace … when we were called to join the skirmishers.’ On campaign in India in 1818, John Shipp (a junior officer promoted from the ranks) complained that his Colonel was killed in a surprise attack because the ‘rank and file stole off in search of plunder’.70 Soldiers could even loot from the dead of their own side, especially from officers. Donaldson of the 94th served in the siege of Cadiz in 1811: A [British] major of engineers came over to supervise the operations … when he was struck by a cannon shot and fell a lifeless corpse … It is remarkable to observe the covetousness of some men, even in the midst of danger. When he fell, the epaulettes were torn from his shoulders, and the gold watch was taken out of his pocket. The watch was afterwards recovered, but not, I believe, until the chain and scales were disposed of.71

Pickings on Spanish battlefields paled into insignificance alongside those of the Orient. New to India in 1804, ex-workhouse boy John Shipp was mesmerised by the riches encountered during the Mahratta Wars: We took possession of the town having glorious plunder from their hoards (shawls, silks, satins, money and other spoils) … the breaking open of houses, the tearing apart of boxes, and bales of silk, shawls and satins, the fighting and the tumult … the prize agent hard at work trying to keep our lads from picking and stealing, but if there had been a thousand of them, all lynx-eyed as could be, it would have been just as hopeless. I have heard of a private in the Company’s foot artillery, who got away with … £1,000.

One man, at the sacking of Seringapatam in 1799, walked off with £10,000. This contrasts with the official £4 offered in prize money to each ranker (which was not distributed to the survivors until 1807).72 British soldiers continued to loot, drink and burn throughout the early nineteenth-century wars of Empire, from Rangoon during the Burmese War of 1824 to the sacking of Multan in the Punjab in 1849. The effect on civilians in the last town was described by Ryder of the 32nd Foot: One of my fellow corporals, who was never worthy of the jacket he wore, was guilty of cold-blooded murder. He shot a poor, grey-headed old man while he was begging that he would spare and not hurt his wife and 70 Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 93; Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 169 and 173; and Stranks, John Shipp, 208. 71 Donaldson, Recollections, 77 and Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 196–98. 72 Stranks, John Shipp, 46 and Holmes, Sahib, 275 and 278.

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daughters; nor take away the little property they possessed, consisting of a few paltry rings upon their fingers and in their ears. This fellow pulled the rings off in a most brutal manner.73

In the east, native enemies sometimes used their knowledge of harsh terrain for guerrilla war, so British soldiers were encouraged to loot as a method of warfare. In the conquest of Sri Lanka in 1803, they ‘hunted down the unfortunate inhabitants away from their homes, burned their houses, destroyed their crops, and cut down valuable trees … since it left them free to plunder and destroy, was by no means unpopular.’74 Radical trooper John Pearman had no compunction in looting from civilians in the Second Sikh War: Each of us had money we made on the Campaign (Lute) I sent home £5 to my friends … when on piquet when we see a man with two Bullock – made him tell us where he had put his money but he would not say until we showed him our pistols when he gave us a Bag of Gold about one quart with silver.

Nor was looting in the Sikh Wars confined to the rank and file. An Assistant Surgeon, Patrick Laing, recorded in his Indian journal of 1845: ‘ransacked the loot, boned the medicine chest, some charms and a few odds and ends … Things sold well, realising the sum of R2000’.75 The Indian Mutiny also afforded ample opportunity. Private Wickins reflected the widely held view that class featured in looting: the prize agents as busy as their occupation would allow them, seizing everything that they came into contact with or what they found on any private soldier or NCO. Of course the staff officers and the commanding officers had every opportunity of smuggling loots out of the palace, when the real captors of the place had no opportunity of getting anything away whatsoever.

As at Vitoria in 1813, the British could not pursue immediately after the fall of Delhi in September 1857. They were prevented from marching to the relief of beleaguered Lucknow, as much of the army was still looting. Again this was not confined to the rank and file. A chaplain’s wife, Mrs Harris, commented: ‘We bought some very pretty cups and saucers today from a soldier of the 90 Ft. The Ferred Bux [palace] was full of china and all sorts of valuable things, the soldiers are always offering them for sale’. Much of this 73 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 11, 278; Holmes, Sahib, 389, and quoted in Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 590. 74 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 5, 159. 75 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 142 and 177 and H.B. Eaton, ‘The Journal of Patrick Sinclair Laing, 86th Regiment, 1842–1848’, JSAHR, 62 (1984), 85.

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loot had been owned by murdered Europeans. Sergeant Forbes-Mitchell also reported that the prize agents were disregarded and even illegally harboured loot themselves: ‘I could myself name one deeply encumbered estate which was cleared of mortgage to the tune of £180,000 within two years of the plunder of Lucknow.’76 Looting and destruction were widespread in the wars against China in 1840–42 and 1860–61, and Abyssinia in 1867, with many officers involved. Some larger pieces of plunder became part of collections in regimental and ethnographic museums. The British Museum sent a representative with the Abyssinian expedition and museum collections also benefited from looting of 900 Benin bronzes and carved ivory in West Africa in 1897.77 As late as the Boer War, ‘military police struggled to contain the looting, straggling and as the war dragged on, drunkenness among the regular, irregular and colonial forces’. In the same year, Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers serving in the Boxer Rebellion in China admitted: ‘At Tientsien there was tidy bit of looting … pockets full of Mexican dollars and unwieldy silver ingots.’ After the fall of Peking, ‘the city would be given up to loot for twenty-four hours. Our officers said that all loot must be taken to a certain building for collection and redistribution. But nothing was taken there. The difficulty … [was] finding valuable things small enough to carry off in a haversack.’78 After battle, all loot was meant to be collected and sold by official army prize agents and the money later distributed. But army prize money was poorly organised compared with the Royal Navy. Perennial complaints were made about its unfair distribution and the length of time of payouts, so that widespread evasion took place. A complaint by James Miller of the 15th Foot about the capture of Havana in 1762 is typical: Little however came to the share of the Non Commission’s Officers, and private men, owing to the two commanders in chief sharing one third of the whole between them! … how far this was consistent with equity must be submitted to posterity, and whether after the most extraordinary fatigues, in such a climate, the blood of Britons should be lavish’d to agrandize individuals.79

Distribution could take years. The prize money from the Isle de France (Mauritius) campaign of 1810 was not distributed until 1819, by which 76 Peter Wickins (ed.), ‘The Indian Mutiny Journal of Private Charles Wickens of the 90th Light Infantry’, JSAHR, 36 (1958), 22 and Llewellyn-Jones, The Great Uprising, 13, 114 and 148. 77 Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 130 and 421. See Louise Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display (London: Berghahn, 2011), chap. 2. 78 Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 323 and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 140–41. 79 Peter Way, ‘Rebellion of the Regulars’, 776.

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time many potential recipients, particularly the rank and file, were dead or untraceable. General suspicion of the military authorities was often justified,  so most soldiers would rather trust to their own illegal looting. This was especially so, given the class-based distribution. Prize money for the bloody storms of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz in 1812 resulted in 7s. 6d. for each ranker, with Generals getting 450 times as much. After Waterloo, a grateful nation awarded a bigger sum from the sale of the captured French camp of £2 11s. 4d. for rank and file, but field officers (Majors and above) got £433 3s. 4d. Only when a large asset was captured, for example, the Danish Fleet in 1807 at Copenhagen, was a decent sum (£3 13s. 6d.) given to privates.80 Prize money could be immense in Far Eastern campaigns: subalterns got £800 from the capture of Kratten on Java in 1812. In India in 1804, the prize agents themselves – Captains or Lieutenants – were paid a commission: 3 per cent on cash and 5 per cent on all sold goods. Ex-ranker officer John Shipp was appointed a Prize master in India in 1818: ‘We were the whole day in getting the prize goods properly together. There were elephants, horses, camels, bullocks, animals and merchandise of every kind.’ In the Second Sikh War, John Pearman of the 3rd Light Dragoons inveighed against the prize agents who searched looters and confiscated their bags, marking them with the broad government arrow. They ‘got all that was worth having but never the Less the Division of the army that came down from Moultan Fort had Plenty of Money. Belts round their Body and the waist of their Trowsers Lined with Gold.’81 The Indian Mutiny prize agents took until 1862 to pay out for privates two shares (worth 17.8 rupees per man) for the taking of Delhi in 1857, whilst Major Generals got 76 shares. Small wonder that during the ‘White Mutiny’ of 1858–59, widespread graffiti appeared proclaiming ‘Delhi taken and India saved for 36 rupees and 10 annas’, as the EIC unfairly used the prize money to reduce its huge debt incurred by the rebellion.82 Batta, a field allowance, had traditionally been paid to all troops on active Indian service beyond the EIC’s boundaries. An additional twelve months’ batta was due if troops came under fire, so was eagerly welcomed: ‘now to find the enemy and as the Boys would say to get Batta or Prize Money’. Though payouts were often delayed, it could amount to a considerable sum: 80 Holmes, Sahib, 310; Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 628; Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 179; and Crook, Very Thing, 31. 81 Khanna and Tandon, ‘Siege of the Fort of Deeg’, 52; Stranks, John Shipp, 192; and Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 177–78. 82 Llewellyn-Jones, The Great Uprising, 152–53 (10 rupees then were worth £1) and Stanley, White Mutiny, 92–93.

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for the Sutlej campaign in 1845, it came to nearly £8 per soldier, indicating why it was so tenaciously defended.83 Desertion Desertion was a major problem for the nineteenth-century army. Despite draconian punishments, soldiers found that this form of resistance, again related to contract culture, could be effective. Joseph Cozens’s recent study of early-nineteenth-century desertion supports this view: It will be argued that both enlistment and desertion were viewed by the labouring poor not primarily in terms of loyalism or nationalism but through the prism of the makeshift economy. Desertion, in particular, was seen as a tactic for seizing control of the price and conditions of one’s labour and it was this concern which coloured the way in which the lower orders saw armed service.

He further argues that: ‘desertion begins to appear more like a conscious act of protest than a spontaneous decision … men deserted in order to seek better work … [and] desire[d] to evade capture and punishment, to find gainful employment, and to support his dependants financially’.84 Available statistics are varied over time, but all point to a serious situation. In 1769, 8 per cent of rank-and-file soldiers on the Irish establishment were absent without leave. Between 1800 and 1815, 37 per cent of all tried crimes in the British army were for desertion, with 53,759 deserters in total between 1803 and 1812 (over 7,000 in 1815 alone). Bounty jumpers were especially common in the chaotic recruiting of French Wars, with individuals enlisting in multiple regiments, and deserting soon after the bounty money was received. The Duke of York, as Commander in Chief, planned on a desertion rate of one in ten. To help keep track of these culprits, branding on the hand or chest with ‘D for Deserter’ could be part of the court martial’s punishment and this was not abolished until 1871. Though punishable by death, such were the manpower needs during the French Wars that only a handful of executions took place in the UK and an amnesty was introduced in 1805 for existing deserters.85 In 1833, one in five men serving on the home establishment had been imprisoned, with the most common crime being desertion. Ten years later, 83 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 150 and Rumsby, ‘Making Choices’, 32. 84 Cozens, ‘“The Blackest Perjury”’, 261, 274 and 277. 85 Garnham, ‘Military Desertion and Deserters’, 92; Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 221; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 92; Linch, Britain and Wellington’s Army, 101; Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 121; Cozens, ‘“The Blackest Perjury”’, 257; and Holmes, Soldiers, 511.

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there were 3,000 deserters in the UK, about 1 man in 14. By the time of the Crimean War, 63 per cent of offences in the army related to desertion, with young soldiers and recent recruits the most susceptible. Desertion was worst in the infantry, where, in the 1840s, 11.1 per cent of the home strength was lost each year to this cause. There were much lower rates in the Foot Guards (1.45 per cent), the cavalry (1.2 per cent) and with the ‘tradesmen’ of the artillery (0.9 per cent).86 As will be discussed below, Canada was a particular desertion hot spot throughout the period: in 1833, over 12 per cent of the British garrison deserted and over 28 per cent in 1857. In terms of campaigns, the Peninsular War threw up particular problems. The inhospitable landscape often meant that taking service with the French was the only way that stragglers could stay alive. In all, 52 British soldiers were executed, for desertion to the enemy, during the Peninsular War, along with 28 foreign allied troops. In every battalion there were soldiers who simply disappeared. Even the elite 1/95th Rifles lost 21 unaccountable soldiers during the course of the war, with a conservative overall estimate for Wellington’s army of nearly 2,000 men. Sometimes those who disappeared left official traces, like William Mason of the 2/30th who during the battle of Fuentes in 1811 ‘went over to the enemy’ before disappearing from history.87 Occasionally, rankers left records of their desertion journeys. In 1813, in northern Spain, Sergeant Andrew Pearson of the 61st Foot was reduced to the ranks after being mistakenly accused of withholding back pay from a comrade. Outraged, he deserted and walked from the Pyrenees to Oporto and worked a passage to King’s Lynn disguised as a Portuguese sailor. He returned to his home in Northumberland and with the end of the war was not prosecuted. He worked as a gardener on a local estate before writing his memoir as an old man. Even more remarkable was the case of Private John Riley of the 2/30th Foot. Already under arrest for being absent without leave, he slipped away from his guard during the march to besiege Burgos in 1812. He reappeared again in October 1816 when the battalion was stationed in Tralee, Ireland, and tried to claim his back pay. Recognised as a probable deserter, his story of an amazing European journey as a prisoner of war in Saragossa, Montpelier, Lyons and Hanover went to a regimental court martial, with an assumption that, as an Irishman, he had taken service with 86 Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 1, 135; Peter Burroughs, ‘Crime and Punishment in the British Army, 1815–1870’, English Historical Review, 100(396) (1985), 553–54; and Strachan, Reform of the British Army, 89. 87 Whitfield, Tommy Atkins, 143; Burroughs, ‘Crime and Punishment in the British Army’, 553; Hall, British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 7; Urban, Rifles, 254 and 257; and Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 56.

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the French Irish Legion. But Riley’s luck held. His luckless guard had died in Spain, and lack of evidence failed to convict him and he even got his back pay.88 After the large-scale looting at Vitoria in 1813, the army’s desertion problems increased as it neared the borders of France. The French distributed handbills which promised, amongst other things, permission for deserters to pursue their pre-enlistment trades. Wellington wrote: ‘The desertion is terrible, and is quite unaccountable, particularly amongst British troops. I am not astonished that the foreigners should go … but they entice away the British soldiers, there is no accounting for their going away in such numbers as they do’. The General clearly could not understand the survival needs of the working-class men under his command and regular shootings of deserters were carried out to halt the flood. After the end of the Peninsular War, as troops waited at Bordeaux in the spring of 1814 to return to Britain, many who had contracted common-law marriages to Spanish women deserted and disappeared over the border. There were six cases alone in the 1/95th Rifles.89 With the US frontier within walking distance, and its endless possibilities of future land and prospects, Canada was particularly prone to desertion: ‘Desertion was probably worse here … than anywhere else the British army was posted in the nineteenth century and a soldier would know he would be deserting to a similar society to his.’ The situation deteriorated with the War of 1812 between the two countries. In the summer of 1813, three defending British battalions lost 122 deserters to the other side. One British Colonel wrote to his sister; ‘I have had a hard set to deal with, the 41st Regiment have plagued me to Death – numbers deserting to the Enemy, don’t mention this, but the Americans hold out such inducements to our men to come over, besides the getting of liberty which is perhaps not so much to be wondered at’. British defeats worsened the situation further (as reported): ‘the affair on Lake Champlain and the retreat of the army before a handful of Americans which caused about five hundred English soldiers to desert … everyone is discontented’.90 After 1815, the American military authorities were keen to tempt British soldiers into their own army with offers of more money, easier service 88 Haley, Soldier Who Walked Away, 116–21; LIM, Court Martial Records; and Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 196–98. 89 Esdaile, Peninsular Eyewitnesses, 273; James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 305; Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 276; and Urban, Rifles, 254. 90 Carol Whitfield, ‘The Deserter’, National Historic Parks News, 1 (1973), 2; Robert S. Allen (ed.), ‘The Bisshopp Papers during the War of 1812’, JSAHR, 61 (1983), 25; and quoted in James, Warrior Race, 309.

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and free land on the frontier when their contracts had expired. This took place despite heavy fines imposed on these American ‘crimpers’ throughout the period. The Horse Guards discouraged regimental savings banks in Canadian garrisons, arguing that this would result in more desertions as soldiers would be tempted to seek a better life. An American border sentry told a British officer that ‘there were only seven Americans in the regiment, the rest were almost all British deserters’. Canadian employers, themselves desperate for labour, would readily shelter soldiers on the run, despite various pieces of legislation threatening harsh punishments enacted between 1801 and the 1860s. The Californian Gold Rush of 1849 also saw another peak in desertions. Recruiters from south of the border were particularly active during the American Civil War, so British regiments had to undertake ‘Look-out Service’: ‘This duty was peculiar to Canada and originated during the American Civil War, when the Union felt the want of trained soldiers and NCOs. They therefore held out bribes and hopes of commissions to any English soldier who would desert their colours and enlist with them.’ With the Irish, especially: ‘At least some recruits, deliberately joined regiments serving or embarking for British North America with the premeditated intention of thereby reaching the US.’ This process was intensified by the Fenian movement in the USA, which invaded Canada in 1867, as members of the brotherhood had enlisted in the British army to take advantage of military training before their desertion south.91 Reforms were attempted to curb Canadian desertion from the 1840s. Taverns were controlled, barracks were better lit in the long winters, and libraries, fives courts and cricket pitches established. The system existing in India was adopted whereby soldiers could transfer to an incoming regiment when their own was being posted elsewhere. This enabled soldiers with Canadian wives or other ties to settle legitimately when their army service was over, and married quarters in barracks began to be provided. In addition, the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment of experienced and married soldiers was raised specifically for garrison duties in isolated settlements (see the section ‘Adventurers and settlers’, in Chapter 3, above).92 In the early days of the colony, remote Australia was a difficult station from which to desert. However, with the long regimental postings, many were tempted by the rumour of China being just beyond the horizon, only to fall victim to the outback, aborigines or bush rangers. Indeed, many of 91 Whitfield, Tommy Atkins, 60, 63, 67, 140 and 143; Burroughs, ‘Tackling Army Desertion’, 7–8; and LIM, XXX Gazette, Aug. 1880. (I am grateful to Mairtin O’Cathain’s extensive knowledge of Fenianism.) 92 Senior, British Regulars in Montreal, 35, 149 and 150.

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the latter gangs included deserters and transported ex-soldiers, as well as escaped convicts, who fought a guerrilla war with their former comrades. One example was Private Peter Septon of the 2/95th Rifles who was caught deserting to the enemy during the Siege of Cadiz in 1811 and transported to New South Wales for life. The following year, Septon deserted again to the Australian bush, where he joined a gang of bushwhackers and was killed in a brawl in 1817. Many serving soldiers disappeared into the outback, carrying messages, pursuing absconders or deserters.93 With rapid settlement in Australia after 1815 and enormous demand for labour, deserters could now find a hiding place and possibly a new life. In the words of one officer: the soldiers are not in Sydney kept in a state of separation from the people; but mix, marry, and live amongst them and are in all respects identified with them: they hear their opinions, share in their feelings, discuss their grievances, and would with infinite difficulty, if at all, in a matter of public concern be brought to act against them.94

During the Crimean War, 94 British soldiers deserted to the Russians. They were ostracised by fellow prisoners of war, but some managed to return to Britain. One, Thomas Toole of the 7th Fusiliers – a Manchester Irishman – returned via Germany and the USA and tried to lie low. But, recognised by a Manchester policeman of his acquaintance, he was arrested and tried for desertion, with the aggravation of giving intelligence to the enemy, which had resulted in heavy casualties amongst his own regiment. In 1858, he was sentenced to transportation for life and apparently ended his days in Western Australia.95 As in the USA, the free republics established by the Boers after the Great Trek of the 1830s, with their shortages of white labour, provided another opportunity to make new lives for potential deserters in South Africa. Three survivors from the artillery battery at the Zulu War disaster of Isandhlwana deserted after so many of their comrades had been slaughtered. The local commanding General wrote in 1880: ‘The proximity of the Free State offers a strong inducement … The desertions among the King’s Dragoon Guards have been exceptionally heavy since the regiment was under orders for India.’ The Boers organised escape routes, with one claiming 260 deserters. This was centred on a patriotic Boer brothel Madame, who declared: ‘Had 93 Sergeant, Colonial Garrison, 7 and 89–90. 94 Quoted in J.F. McMahon, ‘Review of the Military in the Maintenance of Security in New South Wales, c.1810–1830’, unpublished paper (1988), 27. Copy in LIM. (I am grateful to Jane Davies for bringing this to my attention.) 95 Glenn Fisher, ‘Thomas Tole: Deserter to the Russians’, JSAHR, 88 (2010), 237–43 and Inglesant, Prisoners of Voronesh, 20.

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she started earlier … there would not be a single private left in the King’s Dragoon Guards.’96 Postings to key ports of the Empire also provided particular opportunities for desertion. In 1850s Hong Kong, Sergeant Bodell records that his 59th lost men to American ships (bringing ice) bound for California and Australia and claimed to have met several of these in his later travels in New Zealand.97 Desertion was also a problem in the county militias which were re-established in 1852, after the ballot was suspended in favour of voluntary recruitment with a bounty. With the heavy manpower needs of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny, volunteering was again allowed between militia and the line. This led to a spate of militia desertions and fraudulent enlistments. Out of 47,000 militiamen in 1858, there were over 9,000 desertions. One man had deserted and re-enlisted 47 times in different militia and line regiments. The Cardwell reforms also resulted in a threefold rise in desertions in the 1870s, as the new young short service recruits quickly found that the harsh side of soldiering did not live up to the recruiting sergeants’ claims. From 1880 to 1882, 7,177 men with less than a year’s service deserted. As late as the Edwardian period, nearly 5 per cent of annual intake were reported missing within a year.98 Serving the enemy As we have already seen in Chapter 3, circumstances, including desertion, caused many British soldiers to continue their old trade in the service of other powers. Eighteenth-century soldiers frequently took service with foreign (sometimes opposing) countries in European wars. Though less common in wars of empire, changing sides was a feature of the lives of some British rankers. Miserable service in the garrison of Tangiers in the late seventeenth century caused many British soldiers to desert to the Moorish opposition – even some veterans of Cromwell’s army. Whilst many converted to Islam, others took their place as Christians against their former comrades in a 1,500-strong European renegade force. The corsair states of North Africa continued to recruit Europeans until their suppression after the French Wars.99 96 Abbott, ‘Royal Artillery at Isandhlwana, 1879’, 226 and Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry, vol. 3, 53 and 205. 97 Sinclair, A Soldier’s View of Empire, 60 and 64. 98 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 13, 531; French, Military Identities, 16; Holmes, Soldiers, 289; and Richard Van Emden, Boy Soldiers of the Great War (London: Headline, 2005), 21. 99 Colley, Captives, 39 and 95.

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The ideological change that came with the French Revolution brought in a new morality for soldiers based on nationhood. As will be discussed in the companion volume, several liberal British officers took service with the French. The Irish especially were valued as cadres for a potential revolution in Ireland, though most arrived too late to play a decisive part in the 1798 rebellion. Napoleon formed the remnants of these United Irish revolutionaries into an Irish Legion in 1803 and in 1809 its two battalions fought against the British in Spain and at Walcheren in the Netherlands. In 1811, Daniel McCarthy of the 30th Foot, who had been captured at the battle of Fuentes, reappeared amongst the army’s pickets and claimed that he had taken service with the French Irish Legion in order to rejoin his own lines. Though supplemented by other foreign soldiers, and a few English who had been bullied by the Legion’s recruiting parties, its core of United Irish officers served until disbandment in 1815. Irishmen served in other French Imperial regiments: an Irish Cuirassier was killed at Waterloo by a trooper of the Life Guards. The Bonapartist monarchy in Spain also recruited Irish deserters for their own Royal irlandais regiment.100 In the Americas during the 1790s, several white military deserters joined the fierce escaped slave Maroon societies in the interior of Jamaica. In the semi-piratical campaigning along the River Platte in South America in 1806–07, some British deserters took service with the Argentine army. This happened when a whole British army of 8,000 men surrendered after a disastrous assault on Buenos Aires. Though released when peace was established, many soldiers preferred to desert to the soft southern culture, with the 71st Foot alone losing 35 men through desertion.101 The problem of deserters joining a foreign service was on a more serious scale in the long-running Peninsular War. John Fisher of Berwick was captured during the retreat to Corunna in 1808 and took French service. In his new role three years later, he apparently survived Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and after the peace worked as an Edinburgh detective, where he helped arrest the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare. By early 1812, after the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, Drummer Richard Bentinck of the 23rd Foot reported: When we entered the town by the breach to my surprise I saw one of 100 Liam Swords, The Green Cockade: The Irish in the French Revolution (Dublin: Glendale, 1989), 169; Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 67–68; Ballatyne, History of the Thirtieth Regiment, 262–63; G.A. Turner (ed.), The Diary of Peter Bussell, 1806–1814 (London: Peter Davies, 1931), 59, 92, 114–15 and 130; Ian Fletcher, A Desperate Business (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2001), 124–25; and Oman, A History of the Peninsular War, vol. 7, 48. 101 Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 226; Hathaway, Dorset Soldier, 24–26; and A. McKenzie, ‘Charles Cother (1777–1855)’, JSAHR, 49 (1971), 10.

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my own comrades lying dead, dressed in French uniform who had been fighting against us, one of the men who had deserted us at the starvation camp. Two others who had also deserted us … were captured alive, dressed as Spaniards.

Over 20 turncoats were captured, and a few more at the siege of Badajoz a few months later, and all were executed in front of their comrades, as an example.102 In other theatres of the French Wars, the French garrison of Mauritius in 1810 contained several hundred Irish. After its surrender, around 40 deserters were sent to London for trial for high treason. Seven were convicted and two hanged in March 1812, with five pardoned ‘on condition of serving in colonies beyond the seas’ in penal battalions. The end of the war in 1814 saw the 2/30th taking the surrender of Antwerp which again included ‘a great number of our own countrymen’. The military diaspora of the French Wars threw up other random examples of foreign service, particularly when hapless British rankers were left behind in unsuccessful Continental campaigns, with no way of earning a living. Peter Bussell, a merchant seaman imprisoned in France between 1806 and 1814, met Irish fugitive rebels from the 1798 rebellion. They had served in the Prussian army before capture in 1806 and then seen service with a French foreign corps. Bussell also met wounded British infantrymen abandoned by the Duke of York in 1795 who had taken Dutch service, and three English stragglers from Moore’s retreat to Corunna who found employment with the renegade Portuguese Legion of Napoleon’s army; ‘by the account they gave they were obliged, being half starved, to take the step they did’.103 The US army in the War of 1812 included many British deserters. At the battle of Queenston Heights, as the invading Americans were literally hurled off the cliffs of the Niagara River: ‘One man was heard to cry significantly to a group of his fellows, “Come, men: it’s better to be drowned than hanged”; for there were many British renegades serving in the American army.’ After the defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans in early 1815, the American recruiters targeted the pariah 44th Foot, which had panicked during the attack. They successfully persuaded many soldiers to desert, whilst, unbeknownst to the protagonists, the peace treaty between the UK and the USA had already been signed. Twenty-three ‘Americans’ born in the British Isles were transported to face the capital charge of treason. They 102 Philip J. Haythornthwaite, Wellington’s Military Machine (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1989), 36; Crook, Very Thing, 68–69; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 93; and Urban, Rifles, 158–63. 103 Taylor, Storm and Conquest, 331; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 7, 602; The Times, 17 Mar. 1812 and quoted in Ballatyne, History of the Thirtieth Regiment, 302; and Turner, Diary of Peter Bussell, 48, 71, 104 and 131–32.

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were still imprisoned awaiting trial when peace came in 1815, minus two who had died in captivity.104 Deserters continued to provide a portion of the comparatively well-paid US army until British garrisons withdrew after Canadian Confederation in 1867, fighting in many wars of American expansion. Irish sergeant John Riley, after deserting south to the 5th US Infantry, later became a drill instructor at West Point Military Academy. Deserting again in April 1846, he took service with the Mexican army just as the 1846–48 war broke out. He led the Irish San Patrico battalion throughout the war, until captured by the Americans. Saved from execution, which was the fate of 26 of his comrades, because his desertion came before the declaration of war, Riley was flogged, branded and discharged and went to live in Mexico.105 As will be discussed in a future volume, many ex-soldiers took service in one of the overseas military interventions in South America, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. Generally, they were loyal to their liberal employers but hungry deserters from the BAL in northern Spain in 1836, tempted by offers of food and good wages, deserted to a Foreign Legion raised by their Carlist opponents. They may have numbered as many as 400, even boasting their own bagpiper, but bad treatment by the Carlists made some desert again, this time to the BAL.106 India and Persia offered exotic opportunities for foreign service. Specialists, like artillerymen or musicians, were particularly valued by Indian princes. More than 100 rankers acted as drill sergeants to the forces of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in the 1780s, many recruited from captives after the British disaster of Pollihur. When poised to go to war with the Marathas in 1804, the EIC demanded that any British soldiers employed by the Maratha princes should resign or be considered traitors. During the war in 1804, a British artilleryman was caught attempting to desert to the Marathas and there were still around 60 British specialists, especially artillery NCOs, in their service, not all of whom accepted the amnesty from the EIC after war broke out.107 John Shipp encountered deserters who served against the British in his Indian campaigning: a drummer who had deserted from the 76th Foot at the 104 Angus Evan Abbott, ‘Queenston Heights’, in Battles of Nineteenth Century (London: Cassell, 1896), vol. 1, 525; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 8, 174; and Lloyd, History of Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War, 56. 105 George Winston Smith and Charles Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 433–37 and 509. 106 Brett, British Auxiliary Legion, 39 and 66 and Somerville, History of the British Legion, 363–65. 107 For the best contextual account of these British renegades in India, see Colley, Captives, 316–28. See also Hernon, Britain’s Forgotten Wars, 336; Bryant, ‘Foreign Service in Early British India’, 150; Khanna and Tandon, ‘Siege of the Fort of Deeg’, 253; and Holmes, Sahib, 308–10.

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Siege of Deig in 1804 and an EIC artilleryman who organised the Gurkhas’ artillery (complete with English commands) in 1816. During the siege of the supposedly impregnable Indian fortress of Bhurtpore in 1824–25, Bombardier Herbert and gunners Henessey and O’Brian deserted to the Jat defenders, improving the effectiveness of their artillery fire. After the British storming of the city, Herbert (who had fought at Waterloo) was hanged and his two comrades transported. Foreign service with the enemy continued in India into the nineteenth century. After the Burma campaign in 1826, rather than returning, some British soldiers deserted and took service with the Burmese princes. Another renegade was shot out of hand by the 3rd Foot in the Gwalior campaign of 1843 and there were still a few British serving in the Sikh army in the 1840s. One was bayoneted whilst trying to surrender by British soldiers at the Battle of Sobraon.108 A few British fought with the Boers resisting the expansion of British South Africa. After the battle of Boomplaats in 1848, the British captured two deserters from the 91st Foot serving with the Boer Voortrekkers. ‘One of these men, it is said, can be proved to have served the [Boer] gun.’ Private Robert Hill was shot, whilst his comrade James Lapping was transported. As well as taking service with the enemy, the severity of the sentence was in response to the long-term problem in South Africa of soldiers deserting to the Boer settlements, which actively offered work such as cutting timber. The search raids for deserters by the gendarmerie of the Cape Mounted Rifles contributed to the tension.109 As late as the Crimean War, Irish soldiers in the trenches before Sebastopol fraternised with a group of Irish sailors serving with the Russians. They tried unsuccessfully to get them to change sides. Even in the unlikely and bloody context of the Indian Mutiny, a few British fought alongside their revolting sepoy comrades. There were rumours of many more, as the quality of the mutineers’ gunnery was deemed superior to that expected from Indians. The best documented is Sergeant Major Robert Gordon, a 44-year-old former cabinetmaker from Galloway, who after service in the EIC artillery was an instructor in 1857 with the 28th Native Infantry. Spared after their mutiny, he joined their unsuccessful defence of Delhi and was subsequently captured. Again spared summary execution, his eventual trial was abandoned for lack of evidence and he was discharged and returned to Britain. Gordon’s motivation seems to have been survival but others may have turned renegade through the influence of Indian wives.110 108 Stranks, John Shipp, 47 and 136; Holmes, Sahib, 11, 62 and 317; and Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 11, 202, 351 and 360–61. 109 Brown, Narrative of Private Buck Adams, 70, 73, 99 and 103. 110 Edgerton, Death or Glory, 239; John Fraser, ‘More Europeans who Sided with the

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A few more renegade soldiers can be located in the imperial wars. Private John Hargreaves deserted from the 31st Foot stationed at Shanghai in March 1863. Two months later he was captured, wounded whilst fighting for the Taiping rebels, by Chinese levies under the command of Charles Gordon. He was lucky to be merely tried for desertion and discharged as a bad character. A few deserters even served with the Maoris in their wars against British settlers. The most prominent was Kimble Bent – a much-flogged Nova Scotian private of the 57th – who deserted in 1865 and ‘went native’. He became a gunsmith within his adopted tribe and disappeared, but was rediscovered in the bush in the Edwardian period to authorise a sensational biography. In the South African War, several colonial troopers changed sides and in 1901 a private of the 1st Loyals was tried and shot after having been found fighting for the Boers. The Boer Republics also raised a small Irish Legion in which several ex-British soldiers also served. Whilst few of these renegades left any record from which their motivations can be deduced, it is likely that discontent with their working lives in the British army and its prevailing class system were prime motivators and that foreign service was a way of taking control of their lives and perhaps fighting back.111 Feigned illness and self-harm Another method of subversion traditionally resorted to by soldiers was feigning illness to avoid unpleasant tasks – ‘acting the old soldier’ – a term used as early as the French Wars. Recipes for noxious substances to be applied to vulnerable parts of the body or ingested were shared and implemented. A standard work for regimental surgeons, Henry Marshall’s Hints to Young Medical Officers (1828), contained a long section on detecting malingerers. Some dodges were known to unwilling victims of the militia ballot, a tradition that continued with later conscripts in the Great War and beyond. Eating soap to increase the rate of heart beats, which medical officers might mistake for palpitations, is recorded in 1918 and in the 1950s.112 Mutineers in India, 1857–9’, JSAHR, 80 (2002), 119–22; and Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, India 1857 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 421; Llewellyn-Jones, Great Uprising, 62–63. 111 Philip Stigger, ‘Desertion: Some Implications of the 1863 Case Involving Private James Hargreaves of the 31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment’, JSAHR, 73 (1995), 201–07 (www.teara. govt.nz/en/biographies/1b19/bent-kimble) and Stigger, ‘Desertion’, 201. The LIM can find no record of this soldier. 112 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 65 has a list of such substances and their supposed outcomes. See also Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 18; Rumsby, ‘Making Choices’, 32; and Mansfield, English Farmworkers, xi.

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The prospect of dangerous service, such as being posted to the West Indies in the 1790s with its 50 per cent mortality rate, as well as potential mutinies, could also result in self-harm. Troops destined for the Caribbean were assembled on Spike Island in Cork Cove in February 1796 to prevent desertion. Of the 3,000 mustered, over 400 became afflicted by (self-administered) sores on the leg and were deemed unfit for service abroad and most of the 8th Foot reported ill when orders came for the region.113 Prevalence of non-European diseases in the Egyptian campaign of 1801 made troops particularly susceptible to feigning illness, though this could have unforeseen consequences. One wounded soldier, who after treatment was told to report back to his regiment, ‘scratched his shin with a stone … cowardice was the cause of his injuring his leg, that he might remain in hospital until danger was over … In three or four days his leg became so much inflamed, that amputation was necessary … He died before the next day’.114 Sometimes such feigned illness could be on a spectacular scale: A most wicked and diabolical conspiracy has lately been discovered in 28th Foot stationed at Malden [sic] in Essex, consisting chiefly of Irishmen. The conspirators having heard that many of our soldiers on their return from Egypt were afflicted with a disorder called the Opthlamia which occasioned blindness, originated a report that the complaint was infectious and that about 300 of that Regiment had experienced its dreadful effects. Many of the men exhibited every appearance of the alarming malady. Some were totally blind and others had suffered the loss of one eye … Some of the men were discharged and others were pensioned and sent to Chelsea … At length it appears from the confession of one of the Irishmen, who gave evidence against the rest, that the blindness was temporary, and caused by the application of a certain ointment to the eyes … Every man using the ointment was bound by a particular oath devised for the occasion … several examinations of the culprits at Maldon … took place on Friday when the witness deposed, that the ointment was used by nearly 300 men … The oath was proved against 23 Irishmen who were committed to Chelmsford gaol and will take their trials on Tuesday next for a conspiracy under the Mutiny Act … either by maiming himself, or causing himself to be maimed for the purpose of obtaining his discharge, is liable to be tried by the Civil Power and transported for life.

Such reporting meant that the trick was evidently known in other units, with the 50th Foot becoming known as the ‘Blind Half-Hundred’. Such accounts do not appear in regimental histories, which stress soldiers’ bravery. 113 Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 278 and Duffy, ‘The British Army and the Caribbean Expeditions’, 67. 114 Narrative of a Private Soldier, 105.

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The 28th had been the heroes of the Egyptian campaign of 1801, earning their unique ‘back badge’, for fighting on though surrounded and they were to soldier on throughout the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns.115 Some of the elite soldiers of the 95th Rifles tried to avoid the Walcheren expedition in 1809 by rubbing snuff into their eyes. Private Reginauld of the 7th Fusiliers remained undetected applying corrosive substances to a persistent ulcerated leg for over three years, until a wily surgeon locked the limb into an iron box. On healing, he received 500 lashes. In the same regiment on campaign in Portugal in 1810, ‘Two Irishmen of our company went a short distance into a wood and fired balls or slugs through their hands … stating that they had been attacked by peasants. The Colonel … saw though their deceit.’ Other maiming in 1813, included cutting tendons (undertaken by Private Thomas Beckwith of the 45th Foot) and chopping off a finger (achieved by Private Gilbert Kane of the 3rd Foot) for which both men got a flogging rather than the expected discharge. As Wellington’s Peninsular army became established in its seven-year campaign, its base hospital near Lisbon spawned a long-term group of the sick and injured. These ‘Belem Rangers’ were treated with a mixture of scorn and envy and feature in many memoirs of the war.116 Feigned illness continued into the Victorian army. Rigidity of the knee was an occasional dodge, as tried by a private of the 5th Fusiliers at Colchester in 1863, where chloroform administered by a doctor unbent the joint. Flogging was by then reserved for more serious crimes, so the soldier was imprisoned for six months and then drummed out of the army. Another Victorian trick was counteracted by the Medical Corps with ‘the home made coin catcher from the Boer War used to extract halfpenny coins from the gullets of soldiers who had swallowed them in an attempt to avoid the firing line’. Pretended madness was another long-running ruse. This occurred in the French Wars, with a corporal of the 51st Foot ‘acting the old soldier’, and in 1863, with a man being drummed out of the 76th Foot at Aldershot when unmasked. In Edwardian India, a comrade of Frank Richards in the Royal Welch Fusiliers paraded naked, claiming to be a general in the Emperor of Abyssinia’s army, and was actually sent to an asylum in the UK. He later wrote to Richards revealing the ruse.117 115 Norfolk Museums Service, Gressenhall, undated newspaper cutting (but c.1803) in Common Place Book, G.27.977.4. 116 Christopher Hibbert (ed.), The Recollections of Rifleman Harris (London: Leo Cooper, 1970), 64; Cooper, Rough Notes, 15; Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 65; and James, Life in Wellington’s Army, 8. 117 Neuburg, Gone for a Soldier, 56; Thwaites, Presenting Arms, 128 (The RAMC Museum has a collection of these implements); Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 18; and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 155–60.

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Suicide Poor diet, crowded barracks, constant threat of disease, brutal discipline, hard liquor, homesickness, miserable pay and boredom caused mental instability and illness in many nineteenth-century soldiers, especially those posted in unfamiliar foreign outposts. One outcome, made easier by the availability of firearms, was suicide. In the 1860s and 1870s, soldiers had treble the suicide rate of UK civilians, the highest of any occupational group. This does not include the large numbers of ex-soldiers who today might be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. Less-extreme options might involve self-harm to obtain discharge, or deliberate crime (including attempting suicide) to obtain transportation to Australia as a preferred location. Guns were used in over half of army suicides, but not until 1887 was ammunition held centrally and not by soldiers themselves. Though this led to a decrease, the incidence of suicide still remained three times that of civilians in 1904.118 Rumsby suggests that suicide was highest amongst skilled working-class recruits, especially in the cavalry, whose aspirations were thwarted by the realities of the military system and lack of promotion, and especially by ‘good soldiers pulled up for minor offences’. He gives the example of a private of the 31st Foot who on a hot day blew his brains out after his Colonel had told him to put on a leather neck stock. Joseph Sloane of the 9th Lancers, when punished for missing a cuff button, killed himself with a pistol loaded with his buttons. Soldiers’ suicide rate in India and other hot stations was even higher, prompted by climate, dust, boredom and home-sickness. This was later diagnosed by French colonial army doctors as ‘Soudanism’. An example of a suicide was given by Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He described a melancholy corporal in India, whose time was nearly expired, who killed himself by diving head first into a well late at night. The classic military suicide method was the firearm shot in the mouth. This became easier with the introduction of modern rifles, which were shorter in length. Prior to that, longer muskets had to be fired with a bayonet or – for the more agile – a soldier’s toes (see Illustration 6).119 Gibraltar was a dismal posting, especially under Spanish blockade. Benjamin Miller records deserters there being shot whilst trying to escape and numerous suicides. In 1802, ‘a man of the Artillery drowned himself … a number of soldiers made away with themselves, by shooting, hanging and 118 Colley, Captives, 332–3 and John H. Rumsby, ‘Suicide in the British Army, c.1815 to c.1860’, JSAHR, 84 (2006), 151 and 349 and French, Military Identities, 16 and 195. 119 Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 280, 349 and 353–55; John H. Rumsby (ed.), The Life of a Lancer in the Wars of the Punjaub (Solihull: Helion, 2014 [1855]), 62; Mansfield, ‘Exploited Workers or Agents of Imperialism?’, 15; and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 227.

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6  ‘Suicide of the Soldier’, c.1840. A lurid woodcut of the traditional military suicide method, from The Memoirs of Serjeant Paul Swanston. Though sometimes taken as a genuine ranker’s memoir of the French Wars, it was the creation of radical hack writer, Alexander Somerville (1811–85). Somerville had served in the Scots Greys and was a Sergeant in the British Auxiliary Legion in Spain in 1835.

cutting their throats … a serjeant whose wife had lately died … sat down on her grave, and blew out his brains with a pistol’. Even in the drama of the Peninsular War in the 43rd Light Infantry, ‘one of our men who had been a good soldier, after a sad debauch, relapsed into a fit of despondency … he then deserted; and when taken, seized an opportunity of placing a muzzle of a musket to his mouth, and setting his foot upon the trigger, blew his head to atoms.’ In the same regiment there were two suicides during a successful but incredibly hot march to Talavera in 1809. Other long Spanish marches which overtaxed young or sickly soldiers also resulted in suicides: ‘When he was left behind he crawled off the road into a field, and, tired of a world in which he had met with such cruel treatment, loaded his musket, and taking off his stocking, put his toe on the trigger, and blew out his brains.’ After appalling battle experiences some soldiers killed themselves, like the two men of the 95th Rifles after the bloody storm of Badajoz.120 120 Adventures of Serjeant Benjamin Miller, 6, 13, and 30; anon., Memoirs of a Sergeant, 103; Costello, The Adventures of a Soldier, 30; Donaldson, Recollections, 256; and Urban, Rifles, 184.

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Well-behaved soldiers could commit suicide through fear of corporal punishment. Thomas Morris of the 73rd Foot described the actions of a smart comrade, already singled out for promotion in 1814: For some slight crime, he was confined and tried by court martial, and sentenced to receive three hundred lashes. When the morning of the punishment came, he contrived, unseen by the guard, to take one of the firelocks, from the rack (they were all loaded) and placing the muzzle to his head, and putting his toe in the loop of a string, which was fastened to the trigger, he blew his brains out. Poor fellow! He was much esteemed by his comrades.121

Some hapless soldiers were flogged for attempted suicide: Privates Jeremiah Cox and John Sharpe of the 30th Foot, receiving 500 and 300 lashes; the latter for ‘unsoldierlike conduct in trying to hang himself ’. Even in the UK, ennui could result in unexplained suicides, like Sergeant Walsh of the 77th who paid his company at Winchester in 1809 and then shot himself through the head in his office.122 In nineteenth-century wars appalling living conditions, hunger and remorselessly savage Carlists, who refused to take prisoners, caused many suicides in the BAL in Northern Spain in 1836 and 1837. In the miserable trenches before Sebastopol, British soldiers are recorded holding their left hands above the parapets in the hope of attracting a ‘Blighty one’, whilst some employed the time-honoured suicide technique with a toe against the musket trigger, as the ultimate act of resistance.123 Drink Always available to relieve the stress which could lead to suicide was alcohol, reinforced by a dominant British army culture of hard drinking. Though an official blind eye was often turned to binge drinking, alcohol consumption encouraged crime and especially desertion, the perennial problems of army life. Miserable lifestyles, fuelled by alcohol, fostered conflict of all sorts in which pre-enlistment working-class attitudes were displayed. Drink was even part of the basic soldiers’ rations along with a daily allowance of bread and meat. In Britain this would mostly be two pints of beer, which might be safer than available water. But the appalling living and working conditions of soldiers, with few pleasures, led to a common culture of heavy drinking, supplied by more canteen beer and illicit local spirits from outside. 121 Selby, Thomas Morris, 38. 122 Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 66 and Divall, Inside the Regiment, 137. 123 Brett, The British Auxiliary Legion, 66 and Edgerton, Death or Glory, 107 and 214.

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One Hanoverian officer serving with the British in Spain in 1807, gave an outsider’s verdict: ‘I incline more and more to the conviction that excessive drinking among the English soldiers and sailors is the result of despair proceeding from the situation in which they are subjected to a discipline indisputably the most severe to be found in any European army.’124 Drunken violence was widespread and Regimental standing orders suggested that officers and NCOs let it die down naturally overnight and dealt with it in the morning rather than interfere. ‘Officers should avoid altercations with drunken soldiers; a reply might be made which could not be overlooked, and would not have been given under other circumstances’ and ‘The Lieutenant Colonel positively forbids any NCOs to have any altercation with a drunken soldier; a file of the Guard should be called to take him to the Guard House, or if possible, his own comrades should be called upon to perform this duty.’125 The effects of alcohol consumption undoubtedly hindered the army’s operations. In the 1830s, around 20 per cent of rank and file were imprisoned each year from offences committed whilst drunk. It also contributed to appalling rates of ill health. Mortality rates in Hulme barracks, for example, were double those of the surrounding Manchester slums. Drinking was worse still as remote and boring imperial garrisons became the norm for the Victorian army. Ration beer became two pints of wine daily in the Mediterranean and up to a pint of rum in the West Indies, or arrack in India, easily supplemented by canteens open six hours a day or illegal ‘country lycour’. In India, Colour Sergeant David Haslock of the 41st Foot, an ex-Kidderminster carpet maker, tells us, ‘At seven o’clock each morning and four o’clock in the afternoon each soldier is served out with a dram of Arrack, about one fifth of a pint’. Huge quantities were consumed. In India during 1833, 710 men of the 26th Foot, the Cameronians – a regiment with a strong Calvinist tradition – drank 5,320 gallons of arrack, 209 gallons of brandy, 249 gallons of gin and 207 hogsheads (i.e., 11,178 gallons) of beer. Such hard drinking in extreme climates caused unhealthy soldiers, but reform took decades.126 The horrendous environment and infections in the Caribbean campaigns of the 1790s were compounded by drinking rum in ‘a degree of desperation that is scarcely credible’ wrote one surgeon. Consumption of moonshine or new rum was even thought to counteract sickness, leading to dreadful downward 124 Quoted in a review of the memoirs of Baron Ompteda, JASHR, 66 (1988), 49. 125 LIM, Standing Orders of the Fourth (Duke of Lancaster’s Own Light Infantry Regiment, Royal Lancashire Militia) (Warrington: Mackie, 1857), 1 and 4. 126 NAM 1981-09-39, Haslock Memoirs and Wood, ‘Thomas Carter and a Manuscript History’, 261–63.

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spirals of health which amounted to alcoholism. The two battalions of the 68th Foot lost 1,588 of its men out of a strength of 2,330.127 In the Peninsular War dangerous retreats before the French in bad weather resulted in binge drinking of looted wine which incapacitated huge numbers of soldiers. In the retreat from Burgos in 1812, ‘it is said that twelve thousand men were seen at one time in a state of helpless inebriety’. Sergeant Wheeler of the 51st Foot wrote: It is impossible for any army to have given themselves up to more dissipation and everything that is as bad as did our army. The conduct of some men would have disgraced savages, drunkenness had prevailed to such a frightful extent that I have often wondered how it was that a great part of our army was not cut off.

Far from controlling such behaviour, the hard drinking culture was often shared by officers. After Waterloo, only one officer of the 2/30th was fit to command a route march in Ireland, whilst the rest travelled on with their hangovers in coaches. Particularly in hot foreign stations officers could descend into alcoholism.128 By the 1840s, some Colonels attempted to control drinking outside the strict hours of the canteens. This proved almost impossible as liquor was available outside and could be smuggled into barracks. John Pearman described dodges such as bladders concealed down trousers and imitation babies carried into canteens by wives, into which liquor could be poured for later after-hours sale. Containment was encouraged and often heavy drinking sessions were allowed to run their course without official interference. Military crime caused by drink peaked in 1868, with 13.7 per cent of British soldiers being court-martialled, with 25,612 convictions out of a total strength of 186,508. The late-Victorian period saw a marked decline in drinking, dropping to only 50 convictions per 1,000 soldiers per year by the Edwardian period, as the Cardwell system of short-term soldiering took effect.129 Running a public house seems to have been the epitome of many ex-rankers’ post-army careers. This is not surprising given the army culture of drinking and wartime opportunities for prize money and looting. Pub names often reveal an association with ex-soldiers of the past. The Marquis of Granby was named after a valiant and paternalistic cavalry commander of 127 Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 282–94 and Roger N. Buckley, ‘The Destruction of the British Army in the West Indies, 1793–1815’, JSAHR, 56 (1978), 79–92. 128 Divall, Redcoats against Napoleon, 109–10 and 190 and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 105–06. 129 Steedman, Radical Soldier’s Tale, 143–44; Rumsby, ‘The Sixteenth Lancers’, 235; Holmes, Soldiers, 536; Holmes, Redcoat, 153; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 146; and French, Military Identities, 183.

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the Seven Years War in Germany, who apparently gave grants to deserving wounded ex-soldiers, many of whom invested in licensed premises. The once common pub name, ‘The King of Prussia’ (mostly changed abruptly in 1914) dates from the same conflict as a salute to Frederick the Great, the Protestant allied hero. The occasional pub name The Case is Altered is said to be a corruption of Casa Alta (High House) a frequent name for Spanish inns which would have been familiar to British troops in the Peninsular War. Such pubs may have been bought with part of the 5 million francs from King Joseph’s treasure which ended up in their back pockets after the battle of Vitoria.130 Assassination of officers As we have seen, battlefield protests could result in violence towards officers by their own soldiers. The premeditated settling of old scores by rankers is unsurprisingly not much mentioned in archives or literature but it clearly went on in campaigns and occasionally in barracks and is the clearest indication of conflict based on class. The linear tactics employed by the British army meant that the killing of unpopular officers deployed in front of the firing line was comparatively easy. The loss of discipline after storming fortified towns gave particular opportunities for shooting officers. Lieutenant Gleig of the 85th Light Infantry witnessed this at the sack of San Sebastian in 1813: ‘All order and discipline were abandoned. The officers had no control over their men, who, on the contrary, controlled the officers; nor is it certain that several of the latter did not fall by the hands of the former, when they vainly attempted to bring them back to a sense of subordination.’131 Also in the Peninsular War, Major Pearson, an unpopular flogger in the 23rd Foot, was deliberately left by his men to be captured when trapped under his stricken horse. Sergeant Andrew Pearson of the 61st Foot complained of an unpopular flogging Colonel: ‘I am convinced that the feeling of the regiment was such that had he gone into battle, he would have been found amongst the slain.’ In the course of the war, two soldiers (of the 3rd Foot and the 42nd Highlanders) were convicted and hanged for killing their officers. In the Waterloo campaign John Cameron, the CO of the 92nd Highlanders, 130 Lewis Winstock, Songs and Music of the Redcoats (London: Leo Cooper, 1970), 55–57; Palmer, Rambling Soldier, 21–23; Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, English Inn Signs (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951 [1866]), 43 and 269; Holmes, Soldiers, 500; and Hathaway, Dorset Soldier, 130. 131 Duffy, Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 163 and 220 and G.R. Gleig, The Subaltern (London: Cadell, 1825), 56.

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was killed by one of his own men whom he recently flogged, who seems to have got away with the crime in the chaos of the campaign.132 The shooting of officers, or its threat, continued into the Victorian wars. The 22nd Foot featured in a similar incident during the battle of Meanee against the Sikhs in 1843. When their Lieutenant McMurdo urged a dangerous attack against a strong enemy position, his soldiers called out: ‘Mr McMurdo if you don’t leave it off, we’ll shoot you.’ Whilst willing to fire at the enemy, they refused to undertake a bayonet charge. In the same war, the Colonel of the 10th Foot, prior to the battle of Sobraon, declared to his men: ‘I understand you mean to shoot me to-day, but I want you to do me a favour; don’t shoot me until the battle is over.’ The BAL rankers seemed to be particularly prone to shooting their officers in their savage Spanish campaign of the 1830s. One example was Lieutenant Disney, Adjutant of the 1st Lancers (and ex-regular NCO), who was wounded in May 1837 by Trooper Steinson, who had been flogged and transferred to the infantry in disgrace. Another assistant Commandant of the BAL depot was thrown overboard by returning invalids in the passage between Spain and the UK.133 Even after their heroic performance in the Crimea, described by William Howard Russell as the original ‘thin red line’, some of the Calvinist 93rd Highlanders drank excessively on their voyage to India in 1857. When reprimanded by a subaltern, he testified that one of these men: ‘“threatened to be even with me” the first time we were under fire together’. The threat was still there in the Boer War, according to Private Burrows of the Leicesters: All this shows that a spirit of discontent pervades the whole Regt. & if their complaints are not attended to there will be something that happen I know what these things mean, & a man does not take chances of being shot by a file of his own men for nothing, depend on that.134

In barracks, the availability of firearms, as well as facilitating suicides, could occasionally result in petty disputes becoming tragedies. The most celebrated example is the murder of two senior officers of the 32nd Foot at Fulwood Barracks, Preston by Patrick M’Caffrey in 1861. M’Caffrey’s violent protest was against unfair punishment by his adjutant and he apologised at his trial for accidentally shooting his CO. The M’Caffery story became a rebel ballad, 132 Crook, Very Thing, 65; Haley, Soldier Who Walked Away, 83; and Charles Oman, Wellington’s Army, 1809–1814 (London: Arnold, 1913), 244; and Richard Holmes, Firing Line (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), 331. 133 Gilby, Britain at Arms, 251–52; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 12, 290; Brett, British Auxiliary Legion, 30; anon., ‘Autobiography of a Soldier’, 563; and Somerville, History of the British Legion, 299–300 and 396. 134 Holmes, Soldier Sahib, 101 and Robin Jenkins, ‘“One of the Human Atoms”: A Soldier’s View of the South African War, 1899–1902’, JSAHR, 85 (2007), 11.

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with associated legends over several generations, well into the twentieth century.135 Deliberate crime and penal corps Whilst crime is not the main consideration of this study, certain crimes are informative in revealing a spirit of resistance. The colonisation of Australia with transported felons from the 1780s was widely known amongst soldiers, and the possibility of committing crime deliberately to secure a new life in a temperate climate was appealing. Private Forbes deserted seven times in 1820s India before achieving transportation, whilst Private Ryder in Calcutta struck his sergeant in the face: ‘it was intended to effect his transportation to New South Wales’. By 1847, Private John Binkley of the 61st Foot wrote to his sister from India in the hot season: [T]he regiment for the last month has been in rather a mutinous state, the private soldiers are all for striking and knocking down sergeants without the least fault, with the intention of getting out of the country. Last week we had 3 men under sentence of death for it, but 2 of them have their punishment mitigated to transportation for life.

Similar attacks were triggered by a rumour that the normal death penalty for striking a superior officer would be commuted to transportation: ‘The very thing that these scoundrels want under a delusion that they will be able to get a ticket of leave and le[a]d a jolly life’, according to one officer. Three exemplary executions for the offence quietened the outbreak.136 The wily Indian Commander in Chief, Lord Hardinge, introduced a new effective punishment regime in the 1850s: When men maim themselves or commit crimes as they have done in some instances to obtain their discharge, and even to become convicts in New South Wales a few years ago, the men were ordered to remain to perform the duties of scavengers to the rest of the Regiment, according to the old custom of the service … to keep them as long as they live in the sight of the Regiment as a warning to others to avoid the same fate.137

Some deliberate crime continued even in the UK and still after transportation ended. In 1876, Private James Little of the Royal Artillery broke a jeweller’s window in Greenwich and stole two watches because he ‘would 135 Palmer, Rambling Soldier, 119–26 and Dallas, Cruel Wars, 170–76. 136 Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 11, 495; Colley, Another Making of the English Working Class, 5; Beattie, ‘Letters of John Curtis Binkley’, 33; and Rumsby, ‘Making Choices’, 32. 137 Clode, Military Forces of the Crown, vol. 2, 290.

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sooner be hanged than remain any longer in the Army’. As late as 1900, Fusilier Richards reported: ‘At home I have known men steal something costly out of a shop, or smash a window, in the hope of a civil conviction which would lead to their getting discharged.’138 Habitual military criminals, serial deserters or commuted capital prisoners could be sent to penal units or ‘condemned corps’. These existed, under a variety of names, in the late eighteenth century, to garrison slaving ports in West Africa until brought together in 1804 in the Royal African Corps. After 1807, they were active against the slave trade, together with local black levies. Their key feature was their very high mortality rate because of sickness, with some sources claiming that service amounted to a death sentence: ‘In West Africa, where a penal battalion annually buried about eighty per cent of its strength.’ Unsurprisingly, these units experienced mutinies themselves. In 1782, the notorious Joseph Wall, Governor of Goree, had three mutineers flogged to death without trial, for which offence he was later hanged at Newgate in 1802. The Royal African Corps had two mutinies in 1810 (with two ringleaders shot) and one in 1816.139 Typical of those posted to ‘condemned corps’ were Privates John Goodship and Michael Reynolds of the 30th Foot, who deserted and remained at large for several months in 1807–08. Waterloo was the first campaign for which the rank and file received medals, which were distributed on the first anniversary of the battle in 1816. In the 73rd Foot, when William Hadley, a regimental shoemaker, tried to claim his medal, his comrades objected, accusing him of running away from the battle. The shame caused him to desert and he was ‘eventually sent to a condemned regiment in Africa for life’. As late as 1823, incorrigible culprits in the British garrison on Cephalonia were being sent to Sierra Leone to the ‘Royal African Colonial Battalion’. This unit was not disbanded until 1830, after which West African garrisons were provided by black West Indian regiments.140 At the turn of the nineteenth century, over 50 per cent of troops sent to the West Indies died, mainly of disease. With the huge forces mobilised during the French Wars, more potential military criminals were available for service in new ‘condemned corps’ there. Between 1799 to 1802, nearly 1,700 culprits were transported for life to the West Indies, along with difficult soldiers from the Royal African Corps. They were assembled eventually 138 French, Military Identities, 198 and Richards, Old Soldier Sahib, 154. 139 Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 100–01; J.J. Crooks, Historical Records of the Royal African Corps (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1925), 80; R.L. Yarpole, ‘The Auxiliaries, 1802–1817’, JSAHR, 50 (1972), 10–28; Fortescue, Last Post, 33–34; and Colley, Captives, 328–33. 140 Divall, Inside the Regiment, 57; Selby, Thomas Morris, 105; and Hart, Letters of Private Wheeler, 212.

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into three regiments tasked specifically for garrisoning the islands, as the Royal West Indian Rangers, the Royal York Rangers and, later in 1813, the York Chasseurs. These units also developed reputations for mutinies, with outbreaks occurring on Martinique and Tobago in 1811. Fortunately, with fewer expeditions being sent to the region, the death rate declined for these penal corps. The Royal York Rangers have the distinction of the first war memorial, located at their base on Barbados, on which the names of the 50 rank and file were recorded who had died in their 1809–10 campaigns. These three battalions were disbanded in 1819, with some soldiers becoming military settlers in Nova Scotia.141 The penal colony in Australia was first garrisoned with Royal Marines, but a small New South Wales Corps was raised in 1789, partly from military prisoners. As outlined earlier, their scheming officers obtained a monopoly of liquor in the colony. Nicknamed the ‘Rum Corps’, they made fortunes in land and initiated a coup against Governor Bligh (of ‘Bounty’ fame) in 1810. The rank and file proved unsuitable for supervising convicts (which included many ex-soldiers). Despite the good behaviour of some during a revolt by transported United Irishmen, the ‘Rum Corps’ was replaced with a regular line regiment.142 Conclusion Service life for nineteenth-century soldiers was arguably improving by the late-Victorian period, but it still remained hard, with low incomes, rigid and unfair codes of conduct and an often miserable lifestyle, tempered by a dominant culture of hard drinking. This could foster conflict of all sorts in which pre-enlistment working-class attitudes were displayed. At times, there was a classic conflict over wages. A contract culture existed with customary rates of pay and self-defined outputs, virtually identical to that of contemporary civilian workers. This was adhered to and defended by regimental tradesmen or skilled artificers with the same vigour as members of trade societies while adapting to the demands of the Industrial Revolution, resulting in go-slows and work-to-rules. Sometimes this robust and slightly old-fashioned contract culture was embraced by all rankers when faced with official demands deemed unacceptable to customary practice, in a combination of Thompsonian ‘moral economy’ and modern class conflict. 141 Buckley, British Army in the West Indies, 87 and 100–01; Buckley, ‘The Destruction of the British Army’, 89; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. 7, 26; and Haythornthwaite, Redcoats, 177. 142 Oman, Wellington’s Army, 238; Yarpole, ‘The Auxiliaries, 1802–1817’, 12; and Hughes, Fatal Shore, chap. 9.

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The results could be spectacular, as demands for popular rights overcame fear of fierce retributive punishment. Large-scale strikes could erupt such as the ‘White Mutiny’ of EIC troops in 1858–59, when thousands of soldiers left work and occupied their barracks over enforced transfer to Crown service with worse conditions. Equally effective were the hundreds of smaller forgotten disputes, a few of which are recorded here. Even strikes on the battlefield were not unknown. Unofficial go-slows and passive resistance sometimes took place when keen officers expected too long a ‘stint’ from the labour of their men. Unpopular officers who persisted in what were seen as unreasonable demands could find it impossible to enforce discipline and even risked being shot during the heat of battle. By contrast, wise commanding officers would accept that soldiers had been pushed too far, concede their arguments and on occasion tacitly condone their actions. Other low-level conflict such as drunkenness, looting, desertion, fraternisation with the enemy or service with a foreign or even an enemy power could also have a class element. Some features declined throughout the century, with the gradual civilisation of manners, while others were enhanced through long imperial postings, especially in India. Extreme boredom could cause mental health problems or the deliberate committing of crimes to achieve discharge or transportation. Other conflict centred on feigning illness to avoid duty or actual self-harm, with the availability of firearms contributing to an army suicide rate three times that of civilians: the ultimate resistance. Soldiers’ class identification continued in life post-demobilisation, although in the late-Victorian period preferred access for ex-servicemen to some junior public service and quasi-military jobs did lead to more subdued and conservative feelings. As will be explored in the companion volume, soldiers often shared strong loyalty to their regiment (less to the army or Crown). But, as recently propounded by Hurl-Eamon and Rumsby, this was often overshadowed by durable family allegiances and ties to their home localities where they planned to return. Their shared social and economic backgrounds were defined and maintained in the army, despite its rigid codes, and could indeed heighten the soldier’s identity in his society, and ultimately increase his class consciousness.

5 Conclusion Conclusion

As outlined in this book, the nuances in working lives, governing the structures and day-to-day attitudes of soldiers, provide conclusive evidence that these attitudes mirrored the emerging class system in British society and that class is the key tool for an analysis of the British army in nineteenthcentury society. It fundamentally challenges the ‘ruffians officered by gentlemen’ theory of most military histories. The simplistic narrative of loyal, cheerful (preferable Irish) toughs, led by ‘proper’ gentlemen whom they adored, and who would beat any foreign enemy, is also widespread in popular culture – from the broadsides of the French Wars to the writings of Rudyard Kipling. But just as, contrary to myth, the nineteenth-century British army did not win all its battles, so in reality, rank and file could be subversive, miserable and hostile to its officers. This research uncovers the shared hidden world of the nineteenth-century soldier and (to paraphrase Edward Thompson) rescues him from the enormous condescension of most military and labour history. The book’s main objective – to define a labour history of soldiers – is presented in Chapter 1, along with an outline for the non-specialist reader of the technicalities of the varieties of nineteenth-century British military service. It identifies potential problems with current literature on the military, including the complexities of using contemporary rank-and-file memoirs. It argues, controversially, that quasi-conscription existed for much of the century as the major forces of industrialisation and imperialism acted upon British working-class men and women. Chapter 2 covers the class structure of the nineteenth-century British army. It investigates the background of common soldiers and demonstrates that service in the ranks was not confined to ‘the scum of the earth’ but included a cross section of working-class men, who retained their former civilian culture. Soldiers were fundamentally working men in uniform, whose working lives, like many of their civilian counterparts, were governed

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by formal or informal contracts. The contractual nature of soldiering as evidenced here, indicates that the army allowed its soldiers to maintain more of the late-eighteenth-century moral economy mind-set than survived in civilian working-class mentalities, coping with abrupt changes in the nineteenth-century labour market. In this way class was a defining aspect of soldiers’ identity. Class was also reinforced by rankers’ treatment being consistently worse than that of officers. The chapter outlines how class affected officers, and argues that supposed paternalism was generally weak or lacking and that an amateur officer tradition, with a high degree of anti-intellectualism, was prevalent. In order for the army to function, NCOs shouldered most of the day-to-day management responsibility. The continuation of the purchase of commissions and the deliberate denial of promotion to talented NCOs to officer rank, was widely resented. This related to an ongoing debate over whether men preferred to be led by gentlemen or whether the rank and file were critical of officers. The chapter concludes that the latter view generally prevailed and that this contributed to NCOs often becoming part of that opaque military world of passive resistance which was impenetrable to the higher ranks. Soldiers were a huge occupational group in nineteenth-century Britain, which in Chapter 3 is studied from a labour history viewpoint for the first time. Most soldiers, uniquely amongst the British working class, had free time on their hands and many of the more enterprising worked to supplement their meagre army pay. This situation seems to have been tolerated by officers, though many of them were probably unaware of this shadow employment. The chapter surveys regimental tradesmen who were recruited to carry out official duties as armourers, blacksmiths, butchers, cooks, farriers, harness makers, musicians, schoolmasters, shoemakers, tailors and wheelwrights, and finds evidence of civilian trades culture with negotiations, and go-slows. This ethos extended to skilled engineers and artificers of all sorts, who were of growing importance as war became more scientific and based away from the UK. These jobs generally required pre-enlistment skills, but others, like the large numbers of officers’ servants and clerks who manned the growing army bureaucracy, were open to all ambitious soldiers with common sense, tact or literacy. Other soldiers worked informally using handicraft or ‘penny capitalist’ skills to undertake paid tasks for their comrades or outside civilians: as victuallers, letter writers or souvenir makers, and to cater for the needs of modern civilisation, as the army developed into an imperial gendarmerie. The Empire also later provided a large number of responsible administrative postings for steady soldiers. These opportunities in public service or utilities grew for ex-servicemen, alongside a new uniformed working class in the UK.

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Soldiers employed part time in other fields generally found their identity as workers enhanced. The tensions inherent in army life inevitably drew them into conflict with their officers. Sometimes, the evidence shows that soldiers resisted the military system in which they found themselves, through actions which were primarily based on class. The nuances of this opposition are explored in Chapter 4. Held in a fiercely rigid legal code, with harsh punishments for any infringement, it is no surprise that most soldiers’ resistance was covert, and this is explored at mainly low and local levels. Nonetheless, at times, discernible disputes, protests and strikes, some of substantial size and based on pre-enlistment working-class attitudes, attempted to enforce contracts or stand up for customary rights, and could even take place on the battlefield. All were classed as mutiny according to military law, but many were identical to civilian workplace practice and were readily transposed from that source, and, remarkably, if skilfully led and timed, could attract sympathy from some officers and avoid punishment. Passive resistance and personal acts of opposition were always present, with backchat, drinking, deliberate crime, desertion, looting, feigned illness, self-harm and even, in extreme cases, suicide. Taken together, given that the British army was dominated by class, it does not seem excessive to view all acts of resistance as a form of collective class conflict. However, soldiers were not in the main political subversives and the overwhelming majority would obey orders to break civilian strikes or to disperse protestors. Such activities do not mean that they agreed with the outcomes of their own roles in this process. Historians of disempowered groups, like servants or farmworkers, already know this and a labour history for these unorganised groups is emerging into which this study belongs. The very existence of such varied resistance amongst workers least able to voice their own opinions confirms the potency of class divisions in studying the era of Victorian Empire. Above all, soldiering was only one part of an individual’s career. Contrary to most military histories, which portray soldiers as a special caste separate from society, it is argued in this study that soldiers were, and remained, primarily working class. Other historians – like Jennine Hurl-Eamon and John Rumsby – are currently arguing that soldiers’ loyalties to family, friends and localities were more powerful than those to regiment, army or crown. Though these latter allegiances could be well-developed, most soldiers took working-class attitudes with them into the army and retained them after discharge. Such attitudes were varied and multiple identities could exist in one individual. Post-enlistment employment could be the result of officers’ paternalism. Loyalty to regiment could be transposed to railway company or police force, but the overwhelming attitude of the majority remained working class.

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Though soldiers’ political views were mixed, they were often surprisingly radical and invariably class based, even if they were conservative in their leanings. Though they often exhibited pride in regiment and nation – usually combined with anti-foreigner sentiment – they could also demonstrate growing class consciousness and support for political change. These issues will be explored further in the companion volume, which will uncover the forgotten milieu of the political soldier. These include the involvement of both officers and men in early-nineteenth-century political activities, especially focusing on the large number of soldiers and ex-soldiers involved in radicalism. These activities existed hand in hand with loyalty to regiment and nation and a growing popular imperialism by the end of the century. This book will challenge assumptions that the British army was overtly politically neutral, if privately conservative, by uncovering a rich vein of Liberal and radical political thinking by soldiers and officers. This ranges from the old Whig ‘militia’ theory through radical military ideas on tactics and army reform to attempted ultra-radical subversion amongst troops, and the involvement of soldiers in riots and risings. A special study is made of nineteenth-century ‘military radicals’ – soldiers or ex-soldiers who were radical and later socialist activists. In contrast, the popular anti-French feeling of the French Wars will be examined alongside examples of extraordinary rank-and-file bravery which fostered a widespread loyalist and patriotic narrative. Thus, mid-nineteenthcentury soldiers could be successfully employed in strike breaking and deployed against rioters or Chartist revolts. By the late-Victorian period, popular imperialism was an important component of working-class support for Conservatism and the book gauges what impact this had on rank-andfile soldiers. Both volumes aim to illuminate a heretofore absent but now well-rounded story of the nineteenth-century ranker.

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Index Index

Acland, J.E. 151 Adams, Buck 146 Allez, John 101 Amalgamated Musicians’ Union (AMU) 109–110 Armstrong, John 145 Artis, Nathaniel 89 Astley, Philip 129 Atwood, Samuel 131–2 Aytoun, James 62–3, 84–5, 91 balloting 2, 18–19, 191 Bamford, Samuel 19 Bancroft, Sergeant N.W. 140 Bankes, W.J. 123 Barlow, Helen 105 Barnes, Samuel 121 batta (campaign pay) 13, 14, 60, 156, 185–6 Beal, Lance Corporal William 118 Beckwith, Private Thomas 198 Bennett, Private John 118 Bennett, Thomas 82–3 Benson, John 5, 126 Bent, Kimble 196 Bentinck, Richard 192–3 Bevan, William 110 Binkley, Private John 206 Bircham, Samuel 52 Blatchford, Robert 61, 65, 130, 153

Bodell, James 96, 130, 133–4, 150, 152, 162–3, 179, 191 Boer War 7, 56 Bourne, Frank 126 Brand, Jack 123 British army promotion process 26 see also class structure; military structure British Auxiliary Legion (BAL) 15n25, 61–2, 73 Brown, John 84, 130 Buckley, Roger Norman 4, 29, 39 bullying for the line 19–20 Burrows, Private Alfred 174 Burton, Wheeler 82 Bussell, Peter 193 Butts, Charles 123 By, Colonel John 111–12 Calladine, George 93 Cameron, John 204–5 Camfield, Herbert 99 Campbell, Sir Colin 57 Cardwell reforms 9, 12, 21, 31, 40, 108, 127, 141, 147 accommodation 35, 124 length of service 191, 203 Carter, Sergeant George 134 Castaldini, Paolo 105

234

Soldiers as Workers

Catlin, Thomas 145 cavalry regiments 9 Childers reforms 107–8, 141 Church, James F. 135 Clare, John 19 class structure 1 conflict 25, 155–209 military history 5–6 Cobbett, William 31, 50, 62, 67, 72–3, 96, 103, 123, 170, 174 Colley, Linda 3, 22 Collins, Sergeant Charles 150–51 conscription 2 contract culture 1, 17, 60, 100, 155–64, 208 Conway, Stephen 158 Cookson, John 30, 83–4, 121, 136, 158, 165, 178–9 Coss, Edward 30, 102 Costello, Edward 89, 144, 159, 172, 180–81 Cotton, Sergeant Major Edward 153 county militia 1, 11–13 class structure 58–9 Courts, William 142 Cowtan, Edwin 146 Cox, Private Jeremiah 201 Cozens, Joseph 18, 186 Crane, Tom 99 Crimean War 7, 12, 56, 91 crimping 2, 189 Crosby, Anne 147 Cunningham, John 146 Daily, James 144 Davenport, Allen 87, 160 De Lacy Evans, General George 15, 55 Dean, Charles 133 Dean, George 57 desertion rates 18, 20, 73, 186–91 Dickenson, Private William 152 Donaldson, Sergeant Joseph 66, 94, 153, 176, 178, 182

Duffin, Jacalyn 4, 111 Duffy, Christopher 81 Dynon, Patrick 52–3 Dziennik, Matthew 17, 165 East India Company (EIC) 1, 7, 13–14, 22, 24 class structure 59–61 ‘White Mutiny’ (1858–59) 156, 159, 170–71, 209 Edmondson, Robert 32 employment opportunities 70–154 adventurers and settlers 135–7 armourers 89–90 artificers and sappers 114–18 ‘batmen’ 96–7 butchers, food and drink 90–92 career progression 151–4 cavalry and artillery trades 87–9 clerks 96 effect on parade strengths 150–51 engineers 119–20 entertainers 129–31 foreign service 149–50 gardening 92 Guards 120–24 handicrafts 131–5, 211 huntsmen 99 labouring 111–13, 124–6 medical services 92–3 military police 93–4 miners and diggers 110–113 musicians 104–110 ‘penny capitalists’ 126–9, 211 pensioners, instructors and administrators 137–44 policemen 144–6 postmen 103–4 printing trades 102–4 railway officials 148–9 schoolmasters 100–102 servants 96–9 tailors and shoemakers 84–7 telegraph men 95

Index

transport 94–5 uniformed public service jobs 146–9, 211 see also batta; prize money Etty, William 122 Evans, John 139 Ewart, Sergeant Charles 53 Fairfoot, Robert 20 ‘fencibles’ 1, 8, 9–10 Fennerty, Private Michael 134 Fisher, John 192 Floud, Roderick 29 Flowers, James 123 Foot, Captain Richard 99 Forbes, Archibald 153 Forbes-Mitchell, Lieutenant William 44 Ford, John 143 Fortescue, J.W. 40, 66–7, 120–21, 144–5 A History of the British Army 6 Fraser, Charles 136 French, David 40, 73 French Revolutionary Wars (1793–1802) 7 French Wars recruitment drives 10, 41 see also French Revolutionary Wars (1793–1802); Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) Frey, Sylvia 83, 121, 130 Galvin, Thomas 145 Gardener, Private Thomas 142 Garnham, Neil 30 George, Dorothy 121 Gillies, John 57 Glass, William 136 Glover, Michael 28, 54 Goodship, Private John 207 Gordon, Sergeant Major Robert 195 Gould, William 152–3

235

Gowing, Sergeant Timothy 51 Green, John 36–7 Gregory, Annabel 29 Grey, Charles 2, 31–2, 172–3 Guards 8 Hadley, William 207 Haig, Field Marshal Douglas 89 Haldane reforms 12–13, 107–8, 164 Hargreaves, Private John 196 Harris, Benjamin 65–6, 86 Haslock, Sergeant David 202 Hawker, Corporal James 163–4 Hay, Robert 130 Haydon, Benjamin 122 Healey, John 83 Herbert, Trevor 105 Highland levies 17–18 Hill, John 97 Hill, Private Paul 123 Hill, Robert 195 Hoggart, Richard 5 Holmes, Richard 40 Hook, Private Henry 147 Hope, Private William 129 Horton, Lance Corporal James 127 Houlbrook, Daniel 122 Houlding, J.A. 150–51 Howkins, Alun 4–5 Hurl-Eamon, Jennine 4, 121, 124, 209, 212 Huskins, Bonnie 127 Hutchinson, Private Charles 95 Hutchinson, Corporal James 134 imperialism 2, 22–3 impressment 16 Ince, Henry 115 India central role in overseas service 23, 139–40 Indian Mutiny (1857–1859) 7, 12, 56, 60–61, 67, 91, 183 industrialisation 23–4, 72, 155

236

Soldiers as Workers

Jackson, Thomas 30 Jenkinson, William 106 Johnson, Major Thomas 142 Kane, Private Gilbert 198 Kelly, Joe 129 King, Thomas 98 Knight, Corporal Thomas 15, 125, 162, 171, 175 Lacy, John 73–4 Laing, Patrick 183 Lane, Joseph 146 Lapping, James 195 Lawrence, William 161, 180 Lawson, Andrew 118 Layton, Aaron 170 Leeves, Edward 123 Lindau, George 179 Little, Private James 206–7 Longford, Elizabeth 28–9 Lyons, John 140 McAllister, Sergeant Peter 113 McCarthy, Daniel 192 MacDonald, George 137 MacDonald, Hector 57 McGregor, Brice 143 McMurdy, Edward 129 Macquire, J. 135 Maguire, Sergeant Thomas 127–8 Mason, William 187 Masson, Private Charles 136 Masterson, Sergeant Pat 53 Mayett, Private Joseph 20, 51, 83, 96, 97 Metropolitan Police 144–5, 151 military structure class conflict 155–209, 210–211 free time 72–4 nationalities 10–11, 210 types of 6–15, 210 women 20–21, 68 see also employment opportunities;

(NCOs) non-commissioned officers; officer corps; rank and file; regulars Millais, John Everett 122 Miller, Gunner Benjamin 68, 97, 125, 168, 199–200 Miller, James 184 Miller, General William 110 Mitchell, Sergeant Albert 145 Mitchell, Private George 116 Mole, Edwin 142, 163 Moore, Sir John 9, 40, 46, 100, 180 Morgan, Thomas 93 Morley, Corporal Thomas 149 Morris, Thomas 19–20, 83, 86, 93–4, 161, 175, 201 Morris, William 83 Morton, Sam 125 Moverley, Private John 122–3 Mustard, Private Robert 118 Myerly, Scott Hughes 34, 68 Napier, Sir William 51–2, 113 Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) 7 (NCOs) non-commissioned officers 28 class structure 48, 69 management role 50–51 promotion from rank and file 51–7, 69 separation from rank and file 48–9 Neuberg, Victor 3, 71–2 Newell, James 170 Newman, Sergeant William 53 officer corps 26 amateurism 26, 46–8, 69 aristocracy 45–6 assassination by rank and file 204–6 changing class structure during war times 40–41 hard drinking culture 201–4

Index

leniency of discipline 39, 46–7, 64 paternalism 67–9, 211 promotion from rank and file 41, 69 purchase of commissions 26, 41–2, 46, 47, 56, 211 rowdy officer culture 46–8 trading culture 43–5, 69 O’Hare, Peter 66 overseas military adventurers 14–15 class structure 61–2 Pakenham, General Edward 92 Palmer, Arthur 36, 80 parade strengths, effect of outside employment 150–51 Parkinson, John Smith 145 Parry, John 109 Parry, William 90 Parsons, Sergeant Harry 105 Partridge, Private Stephen 139 Pearman, John 3, 23–4, 67, 73, 128, 132, 145–6, 183, 185, 203 Pearson, Andrew 17, 159–60, 168–9, 187, 204 Peninsular War (1808–1814) 6, 35–6, 38, 91 Pickard, Joseph 17 pioneers 78–9 Prichard, Sue 131 prize money 13–14, 178–86 rank and file assassination of officers 204–6, 209 challenges to class unfairness 27 comparative treatment 24, 32–9, 211 accommodation 34–5 dress 33–4 leave 37–8 military justice 38–9 pay 32–3 sick and wounded 36–7 criticism of officers 24, 62–5

237

deliberate crime and penal corps 206–8 desertion 186–91, 209 feigned illness and self-harm 196–8, 209 hard drinking culture 201–4, 208 labour disputes 156–7, 208, 212 literacy levels 31, 100–102 looting and prize money 178–86 memoirs 6–7 passive resistance 174–8, 211 pre-recruitment occupations 29–30 preferred being officered by gentlemen 65–7, 211 serving with the enemy 191–6, 209 strikes and mutinies 164–74, 209 battlefield 173–4 suicide 199–201, 209 working lives 24 recruitment predominance of working-class recruits 70 quasi-conscription 16–20 see also balloting; bullying for the line; crimping; Highland levies; impressment regional variations 30 Rees, John 149 regimental structure 8–9 custom of proprietor Colonels 26–7, 42–3, 211 see also employment opportunities regulars 8–11 see also ‘fencibles’ Reid, Robert 125 Reynolds, Private Michael 207 Richards, Private Frank 36, 90, 134–5, 184, 198, 207 Riley, Private John 187–8, 194 Robertson, William 57 Roderick, Andrew 103 Rowe, Harry 144 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) 93

238

Soldiers as Workers

Royal Marines 9 Rumsby, John 23, 30, 52–3, 82, 145, 152, 158, 199, 209, 212 Russell, Gillian 130 Russell, William Howard 205 Ryder, Corporal John 145–6, 182–3 Scovell, George 53–4 Septon, Private Peter 190 Sharpe, Private John 201 Shaw, Private Andrew 103 Shaw, Charles 171 Shaw, Corporal John 122 Shea, Maurice 149 Shepperd, William 108 Shipp, John 49, 53, 126, 130, 139, 146, 169, 182, 185, 194–5 Sim, Sergeant Thomas 135 Sloane, Joseph 199 Smith, Sir Harry 137 Snape, Michael 47 Snell, Keith 4–5 soldiers see rank and file Somerville, Alexander 15, 50, 61–2, 78, 80, 171–2, 200 Soyer, Alexis 91 Spence, Thomas 136 Spiers, Edward 29–30 Stanley, Peter 4, 60, 67, 171, 177 Steedman, Carolyn 3, 145 Stent, George 140 Stevens, Anne Crosby 68 Stevenson, John 72 Tatum III, William P. 158 Taylor, John 89 Thacker, Thomas 135 Thompson, E.P. 25, 210 The Making of the English Working Class 2–3, 5 Thompson, Sergeant James 138

Todd, Major Alexander 53 Toole, Thomas 190 tradesmen regimental 70–72, 74–81 trade disputes 157–8 trades culture 81–4, 155–6 see also pioneers Trustram, Myna 68 Vincent, David 6 Voss, Private Thomas 121 Wachter, Kenneth 29 Waddy, Sergeant George 139 Wall, Joseph 207 Walsh, John 148 Ward, John 93 Wardell, Thomas 134 wartime compulsion 2 Watts, Private Henry 133 Way, Peter 4, 70, 111, 157–8, 164 Webster, William 88 Wellington, Duke of 28–9, 53–4, 55, 72, 143, 188 Wells, Charles 130 Wells, Roger 121 Whale, Captain John 45 Wheeler, William 20, 97, 101, 113, 180, 181–2 Whitlocke, General John 66 Wickins, Private Charles 183 Wild, Lieutenant John 44 Williams, Richard Hall 142 Williams, William 143 Wilson, General Sir Robert 135 Wily, Sergeant Thomas 143 Windsor, Private William 104 Wolseley, Garnet 139 Wyndham, Horace 65 York, Duke of, military reforms 43, 45, 57, 100, 126