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Did Soldiers Really Enlist to Desert Their Wives? Revisiting the Martial Character of Marital Desertion in Eighteenth-Century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2014

Jennine Hurl-Eamon
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Abstract

Many historians of plebeian marriage have accepted David Kent's findings that married men in eighteenth-century London enlisted to desert their wives. This article argues that this was far from always the case. Enlistment could serve as a family survival strategy for pauper husbands, particularly during mobilization periods. Bounties, shorter terms of service, and pensions could entice responsible providers. The militia or guards regiments appealed to family men because of their stable income and low risk of foreign deployment. Accounts of agonized quayside partings indicate that some married recruits who left British soil had expected the army to allow their wives to accompany them. Kent considered every army wife who sought parish relief as abandoned, yet resort to the parish might form part of a complex family survival strategy that included wives’ begging and soldiers’ taking on extra work and sending home their pay. Some men used military service as a way to fulfill husbandly duties, not to avoid them.

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Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 356 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

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References

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40 Sir Jerome Fitzpatrick acknowledged the “Legislative Number being Six Women to every Sixty Men in time of Peace, or to every Hundred Men in time of War.” Draft Act of 1801, 1801, The National Archives (hereafter TNA) War Office (hereafter WO), 43/269, UKNA, f. 160.

41 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 30, 48–52.

42 Court martial of Andrew McQueen for desertion, n.d., TNA WO 71/41, f. 59. I am grateful to Peter Way for directing me to this record.

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55 The nuances of this policy and its enforcement are discussed in Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 32–37, 59–60, 154–61.

56 Standing orders, regulations, exercise, evolutions, &c. of the Twenty-Second regiment of light dragoons. Raised in the year MDCCLXXIX, and commanded by the Right Honourable John, Lord Sheffield (London, 1780)Google Scholar, 16. See also Standing orders, for the eleventh regiment of Light Dragoons (Dorchester, 1799)Google Scholar, 70, and The standing orders for the Norwich; or, Hundred and Sixth Regiment (Waterford, 1795)Google Scholar, 36.

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69 See, for example, 3 W & M c. 11 s. 4, which prohibited military men from gaining a settlement while still in service to ensure that garrison parishes would not be disproportionately burdened with military wives. “A Bill, intituled, An Act for punishing Mutiny and Desertion; and for the better Payment of the Army and their Quarters,” 1746–47, Harper Collection, 357.d.3, BS Ref. 2, 15, British Library, added a clause requiring justices to obtain the oath of “the Place of their last legal Settlement” from all married soldiers and noncommissioned officers, create an affidavit, and then “give an attested Copy . . . to the person . . . to be by him delivered to his Commanding Officer, in order to be produced when required.” This was likely prompted by garrison towns’ desire not to be burdened with the cost of providing for soldiers’ dependents because they had unclear settlements.

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75 See, for example, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5024, f. 46, 53, 111, 184, 215–16; F5032, f.297, 302, 309, 325; F5033, f.55, 99, 114, 131–32, 162, 218, 265; F5040, f.169; F5051, f.214–15; F5066, f.288–89, CWAC.

76 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 13, 16.

77 See, for example, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5066, f. 277, 308; F5067, f. 41, 66, CWAC.

78 Western, J. R., The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of A Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965)Google Scholar, 269, 287–89.

79 In addition to the St. Martin's records cited above, there is an extant set of records from St. Peter's Parish, Cambridgeshire, that list orders to pay weekly sums to militiamen's wives. See those relating to Sarah Harman, 14 July 1803; Mary Sole, 16 January 1803/4; Ann Stocker, 2 March 1803; Mary Robson, 27 July 1807; Rosa Thulborn, 30 July 1808; and Sarah Poole, 16 July 1810, Records of St. Peter's Parish, MS Doc 3971, Cambridge University Library. I am grateful to Matthew McCormack for directing me to this collection.

80 Examination of Mary Stone, 13 July 1780, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5066, f. 288–89, CWAC.

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82 Note that 1770–71, though peacetime, did see a rise in recruiting when Parliament approved an additional 12,000 on the establishment. Its impact on St. Martin's Parish, however, would have been minimal. Much of the recruiting took place in Ireland. Rogers, Colonel H. C. B., The British Army of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1977)Google Scholar, 29.

83 Marshall, Dorothy, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (New York, 1926)Google Scholar, 252, says that when “men ran away, leaving their wives and children behind,” they could be “secure in the knowledge that the parish was bound to provide for them.”

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85 There were fifty-six wives claiming that their husbands were soldiers in the regular forces. Of these, twenty-seven had no living children; an additional four had no children under the age of three. Only four had more than two living children; the rest had only one or two.

86 Boulton, “Extreme Necessity,” 51.

87 Ferriar, John MD, Medical Histories and Reflections, 4 vols. (Manchester, 1794)Google Scholar, 2:192–93.

88 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 189–207, provides examples of each of these survival strategies.

89 OBP, September 1797, Helena Welsh (t17970920-71).

90 Examination of Hannah Matthews widow of John Matthews, 25 July 1753, WQ/SR/238/14-16, Cumbria Record Office, Kendal.

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94 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 58–59, gives examples of charity offered to military wives throughout the period.

95 OBP, February 1795, trial of John Green (t17950218-3).

96 An Account of the society for the Encouragement of British Troops in Germany and North America (London, 1760)Google Scholar, 63.

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98 OBP, September 1797, Helena Welsh (t17970920-71). Hegerty's husband had been “drafted into the Old Buffs” after serving as a soldier for eight years, according to her testimony. His veteran status still made him entitled to bounty money upon entering a regiment destined for the West Indies under certain circumstances. Gilbert, “An Analysis,” 43–44, also accorded it a popular practice for men to join one regiment and then desert and reenlist in another regiment in order to double their bounty money.

99 For jobs in colonial garrisons, see Way, Peter, “Class and the Common Soldier in the Seven Years' War,” Labor History 44, no. 4 (2003): 469–71Google Scholar. The range of soldiers’ nonmilitary employment in London is described at length in Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 189–91.

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103 Cobbett, William, Cobbett's Advice to Young Men (London, 1906)Google Scholar, 97. Emphasis in original. For more examples of soldiers who accrued savings from service, see Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 185–86.

104 Aside from John Cookson, “Regimental Worlds,” 31, no other historian has recognized these informal allotment schemes. Lin emphasized the unprecedented nature of the navy's allotment system (Lin, “Citizenship,” 15), and Neuberg, Victor, Gone for a Soldier: A History of Life in the British Ranks from 1642 (London, 1989)Google Scholar, 87, could find “no administrative mechanism by which a soldier serving abroad could have a proportion of his wage paid to a wife or dependants at home.”

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106 Letters from Sir Hew Dalrymple to Lady Dalrymple, September to November 1793, NAM 1994-03-129 -19, -20, and -41, National Army Museum, Chelsea.

107 OBP, July 1801, James Walton (t18010701-67).

108 “Vestry Records of Garstang,” November 1815, DDX386/3, Lancashire Record Office, quoted in King, Steven, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700–1850 (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar, 102.

109 Clark, Anna, “The New Poor Law and the Breadwinner Wage: Contrasting Assumptions,” Journal of Social History 34, no. 2 (2000): 266Google Scholar, n39, offers evidence from “PRO MH4/5 f. 450 21 July 1842, Market Bosworth” and “MH4/4 f. 349, 20 Oct. 1842” that “commissioners suspected that deserted wives secretly received money from distant husbands.”

110 Rogers, The British, 61.

111 Scouller, The Armies of Queen Anne, 113. 30 Geo. II c 8 s. v–vi asked as little as a three-year commitment of volunteers in 1756–57. In that same period, impressed men were freed from service after five years. Middleton, “The Recruitment of the British Army,” 230.

112 Linch, Britain and Wellington's Army, 92.

113 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 176–77, contains accounts of soldiers’ happy reunions with their wives.

114 Costello, Edward, The Adventures of a Soldier (London, 1841)Google Scholar, 278.

115 Gleig, The Subaltern, 19.

116 Candler, Poeticall Attempts, 9. Her husband did not ultimately change his colors; she followed him to London, but he proved “cool and indifferent” (10) upon her arrival, yet when she eventually decided to return to Suffolk, “he seemed almost frantic,” accompanying her to the boat that was to carry her and their children back “and wept most bitterly at parting” (11).