Eighteenth Century Waifs

by John Ashton

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.