months, and the government ordered his assailants to be prosecuted,
but on trial they were acquitted. Fitzgerald himself was tried the
same day (June 8, 1786), the chief witnesses against him being his own
man, Andrew Craig, and Andrew Gallagher, the latter of whom deposed
that when he, Hipson, and MacDonnell, were confined in Fitzgerald’s
house, there was a pane broken in the window, and ‘At day he saw a
number of men regularly drawn up, to the number of twenty or thirty.
He saw Andrew Craig and James Foy settling them. Mr. Fitzgerald and
Mr. Brecknock came to the flag of the hall-door; through the broken
pane he heard them conversing; they spoke in French for some time, and
afterwards in English, but he could not hear what they said, but the
names of himself, MacDonnell, and Hipson were severally mentioned. He
heard at that time nothing more than their names. Mr. Fitzgerald called
over James Foy and Andrew Craig, who were settling the guard, and
ordered them to move a little higher, about ten or twelve yards above
the house. There was some other conversation which he did not hear.
As soon as the guard were settled, Mr. Fitzgerald gave them--Foy and
Craig--orders “If they saw any rescue, or colour of a rescue, be sure
they shot the prisoners, and take care of them.”
‘When these orders were given, Mr. Fitzgerald said to Mr. Brecknock,
‘“Ha! we shall soon get rid of them now.”
‘Mr. Brecknock replied: “Oh, then we shall be easy indeed.”
‘After the guard was settled, Mr. Fitzgerald called back Andrew Craig,
and when Craig came within ten yards of him, he, Mr. Fitzgerald, said,
‘“Andrew, be sure you kill them. Do not let one of the villains escape.”
‘Andrew answered: “Oh, never fear, please your honour.”’
At his trial he had a bitter enemy both in the judge, Yelverton, and
the prosecuting counsel, Fitzgibbon. Nor could he reckon the high
sheriff, Denis Browne, among his friends, so that it was scarcely
possible that it should have but one issue, and the jury returned
a verdict of guilty against both him and Brecknock, and the judge
sentenced them to immediate execution. Fitzgerald begged for a little
delay, so that he might settle his worldly affairs; it was denied him,
and, at six in the evening, he walked forth to his doom. Brecknock had
already suffered. Fitzgerald dreaded the scene of the scaffold and the
journey thither along the high road, in a cart, and asked, as a last
favour from the sheriff, to be allowed to walk and go by a by-way. It
was granted, and he went to his doom preceded by the hangman, who wore
a large mask. He walked very fast, and was dressed in a ragged coat of
the Castletown hunt, a dirty flannel waistcoat and drawers, both of
which were without buttons, brown worsted or yarn stockings, a pair of
coarse shoes without buckles, and an old round hat, tied round with a
pack-thread band.
When he jumped off the ladder the rope broke, although he was but
a slightly-built man and a light weight, and he had to wait until
another, and a stronger, one was procured. After forty minutes’ hanging
his body was cut down, and was waked by the light of a few candles in
a barn at Turlough; it was interred, the next morning, in the family
tomb, situated in a ruined chapel adjoining a round tower, but his
remains were disturbed some years afterwards at the burial of his
brother in the same tomb. He was thirty-eight years of age.
His daughter had a portion of £10,000 left her by him, and she was a
very gentle and interesting girl. She mostly resided with her uncle at
Castletown, and was unaware, for a long time, of her father’s fate. But
it so happened that, being one day alone in the library, and looking
over the upper shelves, she lit upon a copy of his trial. She read it,
and from that time never lifted up her head, nor smiled--she could not
bear her position as the daughter of a felon, and she gradually pined
away, and died at an early age.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMAZONS.
Pugnacity is not confined to the male sex, as everyone well knows, and
none better than the police-force, but in these latter and, presumably,
degenerate days, the efforts, in this direction, of the softer sex
are confined to social exhibitions, there being, as far as is known,
no woman serving in Her Majesty’s force either by land or by sea.
Indeed, with the present medical examination, it would be impossible;
and so it would have been in the old days, only then all was fish that
came to the net. His, or Her Majesty, as the case might be, never had
enough men, and ‘food for powder’ was ever acceptable, and its quality
never closely scrutinised. It is incredible, were it not true, that
these women, whose stories I am about to relate, were not discovered
to be such--they were wounded, they were flogged, and yet there was no
suspicion as to their sex.
We get the particulars of the life of the first of that century’s
Amazons in a book of one hundred and eighty-one pages, published
(second edition) in 1744, entitled, ‘The British Heroine: or, an
Abridgment of the Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davis, commonly
called Mother Ross.’ She was born in Dublin, A.D. 1667, and was the
daughter of a maltster and brewer, named Cavanagh, who occupied a
small farm about two miles from Dublin. Here Miss Christian resided
with her mother, and, although her education was not neglected, for
she learned to read and sew, yet the charms of physical exertion were
more attractive, and she took greater delight in using the flail, or
following the plough, than in sedentary occupations. She was a regular
tomboy, bestriding bare-backed horses and, without saddle or bridle,
scampering about, taking hedges and ditches whenever they came in her
way.
After the abdication of James II. her father sold all his standing
corn, &c., and with the produce, and the money he had by him, he raised
a troop of horse and joined the king’s army. He was wounded at the
battle of Aghrim, and soon afterwards died of fever. His wife had very
prudently negotiated a pardon for him, but, as soon as he was dead, the
government confiscated all his goods; yet still the mother and daughter
managed to get along somehow or other.
She grew up to be a buxom and sprightly lass, when it was her
misfortune to meet with her cousin, the Reverend Thomas Howell, a
Fellow of Dublin University, who first seduced and then abandoned
her. Her grief at this told upon her health, and her mother sent her
for a change of air to Dublin, there to stop with an aunt, who kept a
public-house. With her she lived for four years, when her aunt died and
left her all she had, including the business. She afterwards married
a servant of her aunt’s, one Richard Welch, and lived very happily
with him for four years, when her husband one day went out, with fifty
pounds in his pocket, to pay his brewer, and never returned.
For nearly twelve months she heard no tidings of him, but one day came
a letter, in which he told her he had met a friend, and with him had
too much drink, went on board ship, and had more drink; and when he
recovered from the effects of his debauch, found himself classed as a
recruit for his Majesty’s army, sailing for Helvoetsluys. The receipt
of this letter completely upset his wife, but only for a short time,
when she took the extraordinary resolution of entering the army as a
recruit, in order that she might be sent to Flanders, and there might
possibly meet with her husband. She let her house, left her furniture
in charge of her neighbours, sent one child to her mother’s, and put
the other out to nurse. She then cut her hair short, put on a suit of
her husband’s clothes, hat and wig, and buckled on a silver-hilted
sword. There was a law then in existence by which it was an offence to
carry out of the kingdom any sum exceeding five pounds, but this she
evaded by quilting fifty guineas in the waistband of her breeches.
She then enlisted in a foot regiment under the name of Christopher
Welch, and was soon shipped, with other recruits, and sent to Holland.
She was, with the others, put through some sort of drill, but much
time could not then be wasted on drill, and then they were sent to the
grand army, and incorporated in different regiments. Almost directly
after joining, she was wounded by a musket-ball in the leg, at the
battle of Landen, and had to quit the field. This wound laid her up for
two months, and when she rejoined her regiment they were ordered into
winter quarters. Here she, in common with the other British soldiers,
helped the Dutch to repair their dykes.
In the following campaign she had the ill-luck to be taken prisoner by
the French, and was sent to St. Germains en Laye, where Mary of Modena,
the wife of James II. paid particular attention to the wants of the
English prisoners, having them separated from the Dutch, and allowing
each man five farthings for tobacco, a pound of bread, and a pint of
wine daily. She was imprisoned for nine days, when an exchange of
prisoners took place, and she was released.
Once more the troops went into winter quarters, and Mrs. Welch must
needs ape the gallantry of her comrades. She made fierce love to
the daughter of a rich burgher, and succeeded so well that the girl
would fain have married her. Now it so happened that a sergeant of
the same regiment loved the same girl, but with other than honourable
intentions, and one day he endeavoured to gain her compliance by force.
The girl resisted and in the scuffle got nearly all the clothes torn
off her back. When Mrs. Welch heard of this affair she ‘went for’ that
sergeant, and the result was a duel with swords. Mrs. Welch received
two wounds in her right arm, but she nearly killed the sergeant, and
afterwards, dreading his animosity when he should have recovered, she
exchanged into a dragoon regiment (Lord John Hayes) and was present at
the taking of Namur.
When the troops again went into winter quarters a curious adventure
befell her, which goes to prove how completely masculine was her
appearance. She resisted the advances of a woman, who thereby was so
angered that she swore she would be revenged, and accordingly, when a
child was born to her, she swore that the trooper, Christopher Welch,
was its father. This, of course, could have been easily disproved,
but then good-bye to her hopes of meeting with her husband; so, after
mature deliberation, she accepted the paternity of the child, who,
however, did not trouble her for long, as it died in a month.
After the peace of Ryswick in 1697, the army was partially disbanded,
and Mrs. Welch returned home to Dublin. She found her mother, children,
and friends all well, but finding that she was unrecognized, owing to
her dress and the hardships of campaigning, she did not make herself
known, but re-enlisted in 1701 in her old regiment of dragoons, on the
breaking out of the War of Succession. She went through the campaigns
of 1702 and 1703, and was present at many of the engagements therein,
receiving a wound in the hip, at Donawert, and, although attended
by three surgeons, her sex was not discovered. She never forgot her
quest, but all her inquiries after her husband were in vain. Yet
she unexpectedly came upon him, after the battle of Hochstadt in
1704, caressing and toying with a Dutch camp-follower. A little time
afterwards she discovered herself to him. Having seen what she had, she
would not return to her husband as his wife, but passed as a long-lost
brother, and they met frequently.
At the battle of Ramilies, in 1705, a piece of a shell struck the back
of her head, and fractured her skull, for which she underwent the
operation of trepanning, and then it was, whilst unconscious, that her
sex was discovered, and her husband came forward and claimed her as his
wife. Her pay went on until she was cured, when the officers of the
regiment, who, naturally, were interested in this very romantic affair,
made up a new wardrobe for her, and she was re-married to her husband
with great solemnity, and many and valuable were her marriage-presents.
She could not be idle, so she turned sutler, and, by the indulgence of
the officers, she was allowed to pitch her tent in the front, whilst
all the others were sent to the rear, but she was virtually unsexed by
the rough ways of the camp, although a child was born to her amongst
the din and confusion of the campaign.
Her husband was killed at the battle of Malplaquet, in 1709, and then
this rough woman could not help showing that she possessed some of the
softer feelings of her sex. Her grief was overpowering. She bit a great
piece out of her arm, tore her hair, and then threw herself upon the
corpse in an ecstasy of passion, and, had any weapon been handy, she
would, undoubtedly, have killed herself. With her own hands she dug his
grave, and with her own hands would she have scraped the earth away,
in order to get one more glimpse of her husband’s face, had she not
been prevented. She refused food; she became absolutely ill from grief,
and yet, within eleven weeks from her husband’s death, she married a
grenadier named Hugh Jones! Her second married life was brief--for her
husband was mortally wounded at the siege of St. Venant.
After her husband’s death, she got a living by cooking for the
officers, and went through the whole campaign, till 1712, when she
applied to the Duke of Ormond for a pass to England--which he not only
gave her, but also money enough to defray her expenses on the way. On
her arrival in England, she called on the Duke of Marlborough, to see
whether he could not get some provision made for her; but he was not
in power, and, however good his will towards her might have been, he
had not the means. She then tried the Duke of Argyle, who advised her
to have a petition to the Queen drawn up, and take it to the Duke of
Hamilton, and he himself would back it up.
She did so, and took it to the duke, who, when he was assured she was
no impostor, advised her to get a new petition drawn up, and present
herself to the Queen. So, the next day, she dressed herself in her
best, and went to Court, waiting patiently at the foot of the great
staircase, and when Queen Anne, supported by the Duke of Argyle, came
down, she dropped on one knee, and presented her petition to the Queen,
who received it with a smile, and bade her rise and be of good cheer,
for that she would provide for her; and, perceiving her to be with
child, she added, ‘If you are delivered of a boy, I will give him a
commission as soon as he is born.’ Her Majesty also ordered her fifty
pounds, to defray the expenses of her lying-in. She lived some little
time in London, being helped very materially by the officers to whom
she was known; and it was during this time, on Saturday morning, the
15th of November, 1712, she was going through Hyde Park, and was an
eye-witness of the historical duel between Lord Mohun and the Duke of
Hamilton.
A natural longing came upon her to see her mother and her children, and
she wrote to her to say she would be in Dublin by a certain date. The
old woman, although over a hundred years of age, trudged the whole ten
miles to Dublin, to see this daughter whom she had so long given up as
dead; and the meeting was very affecting. When she came to inquire
after her children, she found one had died at the age of eighteen, and
the other was in the workhouse, where it had very speedily been placed
by the nurse in whose charge it had been left. She went to look after
the furniture and goods which she had housed with her neighbours; but
there was only one who would give any account of them. A man had taken
possession of her freehold house, and refused to give it up; and,
having lost the title-deeds, she could not force him, besides which she
had no money to carry on a lawsuit.
These misfortunes did not dishearten her; she always had been used to
victualling. So she took a public-house, and stocked it, and made pies,
and altogether was doing very well, when she must needs go and marry
a soldier named Davies, whose discharge she bought, but he afterwards
enlisted in the Guards.
Queen Anne, besides her gift of fifty pounds, ordered Mrs. Davies a
shilling a day for life, which Harley, Earl of Oxford, for some reason
or other, cut down to fivepence, with which she was fain to be content
until a change of ministry took place. Then she applied to Mr. Craggs,
and she got her original pension restored.
She did not do very well in her business, but she found plenty of
friends in the officers of the Army who knew her. She once more bought
her husband’s discharge, and got him into Chelsea Hospital, with the
rank of sergeant. She also was received into that institution; and
there she died on the 7th of July, 1739, and was interred in the
burying-ground attached to Chelsea Hospital, with military honours.
HANNAH SNELL’S grandfather entered the Army in the reign of William
III. as a volunteer, and, by his personal bravery, he earned a
commission as lieutenant, with the rank of captain. He was wounded at
Blenheim, and mortally wounded at Malplaquet. Her brother was also a
soldier, and was killed at Fontenoy; so that she may be said to have
come of a martial race. Her father was a hosier and dyer, and she was
born at Worcester on St. George’s Day, 23rd of April, 1723.
According to a contemporary biography of her,[35] ‘Hannah, when
she was scarce Ten Years of Age, had the seeds of Heroinism, as it
were, implanted in her nature, and she used often to declare to
her Companions that she would be a Soldier, if she lived; and, as
a preceding Testimony of the Truth, she formed a Company of young
Soldiers among her Playfellows, and of which she was chief Commander,
at the Head of whom she often appeared, and was used to parade the
whole City of Worcester. This Body of young Volunteers were admired all
over the Town, and they were styled young “Amazon Snell’s Company”; and
this Martial Spirit grew up with her, until it carried her through the
many Scenes and Vicissitudes she encountered for nigh five Years.’
Her father and mother being dead, she, in 1740, moved to London, where
she arrived on Christmas Day, and took up her abode with one of her
sisters, who had married a carpenter named Gray, and was living at
Wapping. Two years afterwards she was married, at the Fleet, to a
German or Dutch sailor named James Summs, on the 6th of January, 1743;
but he was a worthless fellow, and as soon as he found she was with
child by him, having spent all her money, he deserted her. She heard of
his death subsequently; he was at Genoa, and, in a quarrel, he killed a
Genoese. For this he was condemned to death, sewn up in a sack with a
quantity of stones, and sunk in the sea. Her child survived its birth
but seven months, and she was left a free woman.
Up to this time her story presents nothing of particular interest;
but, like ‘Long Meg of Westminster,’ she was a _virago_, more man
than woman, and, with the hope of some day meeting with her husband,
she donned male attire, and set forth on her quest. She soon fell in
with a recruiting party at Coventry, whither she had walked, and where
she found her funds exhausted. A little drink, the acceptance of a
shilling, a visit to a magistrate, were the slight preliminaries to her
military career, and the 27th of November, 1743, found her a private
in the army of King George II. The guinea, and five shillings, her
little ‘bounty money,’ had to follow the fate of all similar sums, in
treating her comrades. There was scant time for drills, and she was,
after about three weeks’ preparation, drafted off to Carlisle to join
her regiment. There were no railway passes in those days, so the weary
march northward took twenty-two days.
She had not been long in Carlisle before her sergeant, named Davis,
requested her aid in an intrigue he was endeavouring to establish with
a young woman of that town; but, instead of helping him, she warned the
young person of his intentions, and absolutely won the girl’s heart.
Davis’s jealousy was excited, and to punish Jemmy Gray (which was the
name under which Hannah Snell had enlisted), he reported her for some
neglect of duty, and, as commanding officers then were rather severe
than lenient in their punishments, she was sentenced to receive six
hundred lashes, five hundred of which she absolutely received, and
would have taken the whole had not some officers interfered. It seems
marvellous that her sex, when she was tied up and partially stripped,
was not discovered, and in a romance it would be a weak spot; but, as a
matter-of-fact, no one suspected she was a woman, and when her back was
healed she returned to her duty. Flogging was common enough in those
days.
But a worse danger of exposure threatened her, for a fellow-townsman
from Worcester enlisted in the same regiment, and so she determined to
desert. The female friend on whose account she had suffered such severe
punishment, found some money, and Hannah Snell fled towards Portsmouth,
surreptitiously changing coats in a field by the way. She stopped but
little time in Portsmouth, and then she enlisted in the Marines, in
which corps she was certain to be sent abroad on service, and might
have greater opportunities of meeting with her husband.
Scarce three weeks after her enlistment had elapsed when a draft was
made to join Admiral Boscawen’s fleet for the East Indies, and she was
sent on board the sloop of war, the _Swallow_. Here she soon became
very popular with her mess-mates, her skill in cooking, washing, and
mending their shirts made her a general favourite, and she did her
duty with the best of her comrades, being especially noted for her
smartness, so much so, indeed, that she was made an officer’s servant.
Those old ships were not very good sailors in a gale. The French beat
us hollow at ship-building, and we much improved by studying the make
of the prizes we were constantly taking, so it is not to be wondered
at if that rolling old tub, the _Swallow_, came to grief. The marvel
would have been had it not occurred. Twice, before the Cape was made,
they had to repair and refit. They were then ordered to the Mauritius,
and eventually they went to the Coromandel coast, where they landed and
laid siege to and took Areacopong. They then besieged Pondicherry (in
September, 1748); but that town was not fated to fall into the hands of
the British until 1760. In all the hardships of the siege Hannah Snell
bore her full part, fording rivers breast high, sleeping in and working
at the trenches, &c., until at last she was desperately wounded,
receiving six shots in her right leg, five in her left, and a bullet in
her groin. Anyone would think that thus wounded, and in hospital, her
sex would have been discovered; but it was not. She managed to extract
the ball from her groin, and with the connivance of an old black nurse,
she always dressed the wound herself, so that the surgeons did not know
of its existence.
Three months she lay in hospital, going back to her duty as a Marine on
her discharge. But her comrades bantered her on her somewhat feminine
appearance, her smooth cheeks not being in accordance with her age.
Besides, she was somewhat quiet, and different from the rollicking
Jack Tars by whom she was surrounded, and so she earned the name of
Miss Molly Gray. A continuance of this quiet _rôle_ might have led to
discovery, so when they came to Lisbon, and the ‘liberty men’ went on
shore, she was as racketty as any of them, and ‘Miss Molly’ was soon
lost, and in her place was ‘Hearty Jemmy.’ From Lisbon they sailed for
home, and on her arrival at Spithead, she was either discharged, or
sent on furlough; at all events, there ended her military and naval
career, for she went straight to her sister at Wapping, and was at once
recognized.
Campaigning had made her restless, and, although many of the officers
who had known her assisted her pecuniarily, it was light come, light
go, and the money was soon spent. So her friends advised her to
petition the Duke of Cumberland, pointing out her services, and also
dilating upon her wounds. On the 16th of June, 1750, she found a very
favourable opportunity of presenting her memorandum to the duke, and,
after full inquiry, she was awarded a pension of a shilling a day.
This, however, would not keep her, and finding that, as an Amazon, she
had a market value, she engaged with the proprietor of the New Wells in
Goodman’s Fields (the Royalty Theatre, Wellclose Square) to appear on
the stage as a soldier. In this character she sang several songs, and
‘She appears regularly dress’d in her Regimentals from Top to Toe, with
all the Accoutrements requisite for the due Performance of her Military
Exercises. Here she and her Attendants fill up the Stage in a very
agreeable Manner. The tabor and Drum give Life to her March, and she
traverses the stage two or three times over, Step by Step, in the same
Manner as our Soldiers march on the Parade in St. James’s Park.