CHAPTER XXVI. EFFECTS OF ENLISTMENT—MARTIAL TENDENCIES—THE SHE BARRACKS—THE DUBLIN GARRISON—AN ARTILLERY AMAZON—A COLONEL OF DRAGOONS—DONNYBROOK FAIR—THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
In one of the preceding pages I stated that "the military enrolments relieved our district of a great number of loose characters, whose abstraction was very salutary to our community." I subsequently expressed an intention to submit to my readers "some remarks that might be considered interesting, and perhaps important."
It is unnecessary to particularise the numerous varieties of objectionable tendencies and habits, any of which will be considered sufficient to constitute the person exhibiting them "an undoubted scamp." In Dublin and its suburban districts, society has never been free from the evils incident to the existence of such disreputable characters; but I fully believe that we are not more tainted by them than any other part of the United Kingdom of equal extent and population. The three regiments of militia embodied at the commencement of the Crimean war relieved us of some hundreds of loose, disorderly, or dishonest fellows, the riddance of whom produced a very desirable decrease in the custody cases of our police-courts. However, at the termination of the war, those regiments were brought back, and disembodied in the locality where they had been raised; and many persons might reasonably expect very disagreeable and injurious results from the return of those whose departure was regarded as a happy riddance by the community from which they had been abstracted. But very few instances occurred of the discharged militia-men relapsing into disreputable habits and criminal practices. Military service had produced a great and most desirable reformatory effect. Supervision, strict without unnecessary severity, with the adjuncts of regular and wholesome diet, comfortable clothing and personal cleanliness, emulation in the efficient discharge of duty, and the incitements arising from the preference accorded in various minor appointments and employments to the well-conducted soldier—all these, together with a change from the scene of previous improprieties and disreputable associations, strongly tended to generate a desire for improvement, and the acquisition of a new character. Similar results were observable in reference to the last enrolment and subsequent disembodiment of those regiments consequent on the outbreak and suppression of the Indian mutiny. I wrote to the late Lord Herbert of Lea, then Mr. Sydney Herbert, and Secretary of State for War, in reference to the reformatory results, which I attributed to military influence. He read my letter in the House of Commons when moving the army estimates, and excited much laughter by stating that he did not think it expedient to mention the name of the writer or the regiments to which the communication referred.
My eldest son was a lieutenant in the County of Dublin Militia, which, soon after being embodied, was stationed at Waterford. One morning he was crossing the barrack yard from his quarters, to serve on a regimental court-martial, before which some disorderly or insubordinate characters were to be brought, when he was accosted by the wife of one of the delinquents. She earnestly besought him not to be very severe on "poor Larry," and that it would be a hardship if he got worse treatment in Waterford than he'd get in Dublin for a little spree. She added, "The owld gentleman, your father, long life to him, never put the poor fellow up for more than a week at a time."