Tag: Royal Artillery

Little help (and no sympathy) for Heroes

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In October 2007 the charity Help for Heroes was launched. On its front page its makes this powerful statement:

‘Today, seven people will be medically discharged from the Armed Forces and their lives will change forever. In an instant, these highly-trained individuals will lose the camaraderie, purpose and career which has been their life’.

This is not a new phenomenon of course, but has perhaps been given greater focus and attention since the Gulf War and growing number of related experiences of men and women who have served in the armed forces and come home with both physical and mental injuries. This has permeated all levels of society, and become a topic for film and TV dramas (such as the most recent BBC series, The Bodyguard ).

Between October 1853 and March 1856 Britain was at war in the Crimea, battling with France and Turkey against the Russian Empire and its allies. Ultimately Britain and France prevailed but there was a high cost in lives lost and others altered forever. This war is often remembered as one in which more soldiers died of disease than of wounds sustained by enemy action; its symbolic ‘hero’ is Florence Nightingale, the ‘lady with the lamp’ and not Lord cardigan, the officer that led the doomed charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

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During the Crimean War the island of Malta served as a hospital base for British casualties returning from the front. Given the huge numbers of men needing care the Valletta Station Hospital (one of four military hospitals on Malta) was quickly overrun and deemed inadequate. Sadly the necessary reform and rebuilding required to upgrade Malta’s institutions to cope with the numbers wounded in ‘modern’ conflicts  didn’t open until after the Crimean war was over.

Nor was there adequate support for veterans who returned from the Crimean carrying the scars of their involvement with them. When Henry Arlett was discharged from the Royal Artillery at Christmas 1857 he had been given a sovereign and sent on his way. Henry had served in the Crimea and had been invalided home after spending  time at a military base on Malta  recuperating.

Back in Lambeth he had struggled to find work as his back pain continued to make manual work all but impossible. Without an obvious trade and deprived of the support of his regiment all Henry could rely on for money was his wife. She took in laundry, one of the lowest paid domestic trades, and in the summer of 1858 even that work was scarce.

Faced with grinding poverty Henry donned his uniform (which he’d kept in pristine condition) and went out on to the streets to beg. He did quite well by comparison to the usual run of vagrants that infested the capital. According to an officer of the Mendicity Society (which campaigned against begging and brought private prosecutions against  those that practised it) ‘in a short time he got as much as half-a-crown in coppers’.

The officer had him arrested and brought before Mr Norton at Lambeth Police court where the magistrate asked the former artilleryman to explain himself. Henry told him of his service and his discharge, of his family’s troubles and his reasons for begging but instead of sympathy or charity he received only the scorn of the man on the bench.

Mr Norton told him that if he was unable to support himself through work then he should go to the workhouse to be relieved. On discovering that Arlett was born in the City and had no settlement elsewhere he instructed him to return there with his wife; in effect washing Lambeth’s hands of any responsibility for his care.

‘You must be a mean-spirited person to disgrace the uniform of the finest corps in her Majesty’s service by begging in it’, he told him. ‘I shall give you a light sentence of seven days and on the termination of your imprisonment you must go to your parish, and if you are caught begging again your punishment will be much more severe’.

Arlett was unfazed by the magistrate’s condemnation of him:

‘This uniform suit is mine, and while there is a single shred of it together I shall not cease to beg’,

he declared before he was led away.

Just over 100,000 British and Imperial troops went to the Crimea. Of these 2,755 were killed in action and a further 1,847 died of their wounds. A staggering 17,580 died of disease. Henry Arlett was one of 18,280 British troops wounded in the conflict. In total then, of the 107,865 on the British strength 22,182 didn’t come home (around 22%) and another 18% were directly wounded in some way. That means that 40% of those sent to fight the Russians were casualties in some way or another.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, September 10, 1858]

A ‘murderous affray’ at the Arsenal

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Sometimes the newspaper ‘headlines’ above a story have a tendency to exaggerate. Now I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone reading the modern newspapers. But they presence of sensational headings in reports from the Police Courts suggest to me that the late nineteenth-century press was still evolving ways in which to present news to their readers. Newspapers had reacted to the rise of the serialised novel, and of ever more ‘sensational’ theatre productions, the ‘penny dreadful’ and other cheap prints that competed for the Victorian public’s attention and hard earned cash.

In an article entitled ‘the murderous affray at Woolwich Barracks’ The Standard reported a fight between three members of the Royal Artillery and  a civilian working at the barracks. The case came up before the Woolwich Police Court magistrate and ultimately ended in a  trial at the Old Bailey. No one was badly hurt and all parties were eventually acquitted of any crime.

Two gunners, Francis Murphy and William Dewdney, were attacked by Jeremiah Maher (a fellow gunner) at the barracks. Maher was deep in conversation with William Baldwin who worked there but was not a soldier. A quarrel broke, possibly because Murphy and Dewdney were both a little the worse for drink. and Maher took down and drew a sword. In the resulting skirmish both gunners were stabbed and ended up in hospital, although none of their wounds were deemed life threatening.

The magistrate quickly dismissed Baldwin as he was clearly just an innocent bystander, he’d taken no part in the assault. The wounds, whilst not likely to result in serious long term injury, were at first considered ‘dangerous’ however and so Maher was remanded and later committed for trial.

The only evidence presented in defence of Maher came from Baldwin who supported his allegation that the two gunners had started the row and he was only acting in self-defence. Apparently Baldwin had heard the pair say: ‘Don’t stab them; but shoot them’. The case was no clearer in the report from the Old Bailey a week later. There Maher was found not guilty after a handful of persons gave evidence, most of which would seemingly have supported the case for the prosecution. The surgeon, for example, didn’t think the wounds the men had sustained were commensurate with self-defence.

It didn’t matter because Maher was given a good character but someone unnamed by the court reporter, and walked free. In the end then, it was a much less ‘murderous’ affair than the paper suggested. A few years later they could all have simply taken their aggression out on the football pitch, watching the Woolwich works’ team, the Royal Arsenal.

[from The Standard, Thursday, January 08, 1880]

You can use this site to search for specific crimes or use the Themes link in the menu on the left to look for areas or topics that interest you. If you are interested in a particular court (such as Bow Street or Marylebone) you can also limit your search to one court in particular. Please feel free to comment on anything you read and if something in particular interests you then please get in touch. You can email me at drew.gray@northampton.ac.uk

A ‘suspicious person’ at Woolwich, but ‘not clever enough’ to be a terrorist.

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In the 1880s Woolwich was home to the Royal Arsenal, as it had been since the 17th century (and in fact earlier as there had been used for gun storage from the mid 1500s). After 1886 it was also home to what was to become one of London’s most successful football clubs, Arsenal FC.

Given that artillery and shells were manufactured at Woolwich in the 1800s the site was an important one for the Victorian military, but also a target for the enemies of the state. Security, then, as now, was an issue of national importance and the Victorian state was concerned about internal threats just as much as it was about  those posed by rival imperial powers.

In the 1880s there were  a series of terrorist incidents in London, all part of a long running campaign by Irish nationalists in the cause of independence. It is a subject I have looked at as part of my research into late Victorian London and I drew heavily on the capital’s newspapers and the work of K. M. Short, whose study of Fenian terrorism remains the most comprehensive one out there, despite its age.

So, given the background, we might expect the authorities at Woolwich to be on the look out for potential terrorists, and in April 1881 they thought they might have caught one.

Two constables from the Arsenal were patrolling by the river front when they saw a man rowing up and down, seemingly watching the shoreline. It was particularly suspicious because this was at just after one o’clock int he morning and they could not see what legitimate purpose he had for being there so late (or early). At three he was still there so they called to him and asked him what he was about.

He replied that he was lost and was it possible for him to land. The constables directed him to a pier, and when he docked and climbed the steps they arrested him. The police were called and they questioned him. It was soon discovered that the boat he was in had been stolen from an MP who lived at North Woolwich, Mr (later Sir) Thomas Brassey the member for Hastings.

The man’s name was Michael Sullivan and his peculiar behaviour and Irish background raised concerns that he was a Fenian bent on mischief at the Arsenal. However, when Inspector McElligot was called to give evidence he ‘repudiated any supposition that Fenianism had anything to do with the case, and complained that the most extravagant and unfounded rumours had been circulated’.

The magistrate agreed, he commented: ‘I agree with you that he is not a Fenian. I doesn’t look clever enough’, which was met with much laughter in the Woolwich Police Court, before his worship (Mr Balgey) sent him to prison for a for a month at hard labour.

1884 saw a number of terrorist outrages in London. A bomb was placed at Victoria Railway Station and other London termini, and a fairly inept attempt to blow up London Bridge resulted in the death of the bombers. In May 1884 two boys kicking an abandoned briefcase attracted the attention of a policeman who found they were playing with a case containing dynamite, fuses and a detonator! These incidents followed attacks in 1882 (at the Lord Mayor’s residence, Mansion House) and at the offices of The Times newspaper in 1883. In January 1885 the Houses of Parliament were targeted  along with he Tower of London, and the new underground railway was also subject to a bomb attack, as the Hammersmith train left Aldgate station.

There were few deaths and nothing like the serious level of injury that modern terrorists have inflicted recently, but it still reminded Victorian society that as long as Britain insisted on claiming Ireland as a colony Victoria’s subjects would not be safe in their homes or their streets. It also contributed to wider prejudice and the stereotyping of Irish immigrants in London and elsewhere, something that we see repeated in the demonisation of moslems today.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, April 20, 1881]

A Militiaman’s enthusiasm is rewarded with hard labour of a different kind

Yesterday’s post concerned the antics of two members of the Royal Artillery who apparently used the Police Court to get themselves a free trip back to their barracks in Woolwich. Today’s post also shows the variety in caseloads at these London summary courts and again relates to the military of the Victorian period.

This time, however, it was the civil defence force that predated the Home Guard (immortalised as Dad’s Army on television), the militia.

Perhaps because of the excellent work of my Northampton colleague Matthew McCormack, I have always associated the militia with the eighteenth century, but they existed right up until the early years of the twentieth century. While the eighteenth-century force had been recruited by ballot (and so was something men were compelled or at least obliged to join) by the Victorian period it was an entirely voluntary force.

After 1881 (and the Childers reforms) militia units were reorganized ‘as numbered battalions of regiments of the line, ranking after the two regular battalions’. After Haldane’s reforms (in 1905) they became the official ‘reserves’.

In the 1880s anyone joining the militia was entitled to a bounty – a one off payment of cash and a uniform and equipment. This was probably an attractive offer given that joining up was relatively risk free in terms of actual fighting. In the 1700s members of the militia risked real engagement with a potential invader (Bonaparte’s French) or being used to quell civil unrest; by the late 1800s the risk of a foreign invasion had long gone and the New Police were well established and able to deal with problems from rioters and other domestic revolutionaries. There had been a brief spell in the late 1850s when the chance of invasion (by a different Napoleon this time) was heightened but this produced a flurry of men signing up for the Volunteer Force not the traditional Militia.

So when Thomas Moore, a labourer from Camberwell, signed on the dotted line to join the Middlesex Militia at the St George’s Street barracks, he must have been confident that he would get his 20s and ‘a free kit’ without much effort.

However, something about Thomas raised suspicions in the mind of Captain Crutchley when he asked him the ‘usual questions’ and the officer called for Sergeant Major Morgan to interrogate him a little more closely outside.

Now it transpired that ‘Thomas Moore’ was actually Martin Headley of Stockwell Street, Old Kent Road and that he had already served in the Surrey Militia and so was not entitled to the money or the ‘kit’. Headley claimed that he had tried to sign up to the ‘regulars’ (the ‘proper’ army) but had been refused. Perhaps he was too old, or not up to scratch, or they simply didn’t need troops in 1887 (although they soon would, as the South African – or Boer War – loomed).

Headley was brought before the Marlborough Street Police magistrate on a day when the reporter noted that the court was at its least busy ‘for thirty years’. The lack of business didn’t help the ex-militiaman, not did his previous history of volunteering; the justice sent him to prison for three months at hard labour.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, January 05, 1887]

Too lazy to go (back) to the Arsenal

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On the 3rd January 1877 two ‘young men’ appeared at Marylebone Police Court in front of Mr D’Eyncourt, the sitting magistrate. There they freely confessed to being deserters from the Royal Artillery.

The pair were stationed at Woolwich Arsenal, in south east London. They had been walking in Bayswater earlier that morning when they had stopped a passing policeman and had given themselves up.

The PC (from X Division) was convinced the soldiers were shamming and instead of deserting he suggested they were just ‘too lazy to walk to Woolwich’. He searched them and the ‘informations’ about deserters but could find nothing that suggested they had absconded or were not simply on leave.

The pair laughed about it in court, saying they were tired and hungry and hadn’t eaten in 24 hours. The magistrate, perhaps frustrated that they had broken no civil law, was forced to issue an order for them to be transported to the barracks at Woolwich to be dealt with ‘by the military authorities’. One imagines they might have got short shrift from their sergeant but little else.

Perhaps when they got back (and finished whatever menial task the sergeant set for them) they enjoyed a kick-about football match with their colleagues and local workers. After all the barracks was close to the armaments factory which had existed since the late 17th century. In 1886 the workers formed themselves into a football team and began to compete with rival squads. Eventually, from small beginnings, there emerged the professional club side that still delight (and frustrate) their supporters at a new venue, in North London.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, January 04, 1877]