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.