Queen Anne, besides her gift of fifty pounds, ordered Mrs. Davies a shilling a day for life, which Harley, Earl of Oxford, for some reason or other, cut down to fivepence, with which she was fain to be content until a change of ministry took place. Then she applied to Mr. Craggs, and she got her original pension restored.
She did not do very well in her business, but she found plenty of friends in the officers of the Army who knew her. She once more bought her husband’s discharge, and got him into Chelsea Hospital, with the rank of sergeant. She also was received into that institution; and there she died on the 7th of July, 1739, and was interred in the burying-ground attached to Chelsea Hospital, with military honours.
Hannah Snell’s grandfather entered the Army in the reign of William III. as a volunteer, and, by his personal bravery, he earned a commission as lieutenant, with the rank of captain. He was wounded at Blenheim, and mortally wounded at Malplaquet. Her brother was also a soldier, and was killed at Fontenoy; so that she may be said to have come of a martial race. Her father was a hosier and dyer, and she was born at Worcester on St. George’s Day, 23rd of April, 1723.
According to a contemporary biography of her,[35] ‘Hannah, when she was scarce Ten Years of Age, had the seeds of Heroinism, as it were, implanted in her nature, and she used often to declare to her Companions that she would be a Soldier, if she lived; and, as a preceding Testimony of the Truth, she formed a Company of young Soldiers among her Playfellows, and of which she was chief Commander, at the Head of whom she often appeared, and was used to parade the whole City of Worcester. This Body of young Volunteers were admired all over the Town, and they were styled young “Amazon Snell’s Company”; and this Martial Spirit grew up with her, until it carried her through the many Scenes and Vicissitudes she encountered for nigh five Years.’
Her father and mother being dead, she, in 1740, moved to London, where she arrived on Christmas Day, and took up her abode with one of her sisters, who had married a carpenter named Gray, and was living at Wapping. Two years afterwards she was married, at the Fleet, to a German or Dutch sailor named James Summs, on the 6th of January, 1743; but he was a worthless fellow, and as soon as he found she was with child by him, having spent all her money, he deserted her. She heard of his death subsequently; he was at Genoa, and, in a quarrel, he killed a Genoese. For this he was condemned to death, sewn up in a sack with a quantity of stones, and sunk in the sea. Her child survived its birth but seven months, and she was left a free woman.
Up to this time her story presents nothing of particular interest; but, like ‘Long Meg of Westminster,’ she was a virago, more man than woman, and, with the hope of some day meeting with her husband, she donned male attire, and set forth on her quest. She soon fell in with a recruiting party at Coventry, whither she had walked, and where she found her funds exhausted. A little drink, the acceptance of a shilling, a visit to a magistrate, were the slight preliminaries to her military career, and the 27th of November, 1743, found her a private in the army of King George II. The guinea, and five shillings, her little ‘bounty money,’ had to follow the fate of all similar sums, in treating her comrades. There was scant time for drills, and she was, after about three weeks’ preparation, drafted off to Carlisle to join her regiment. There were no railway passes in those days, so the weary march northward took twenty-two days.
She had not been long in Carlisle before her sergeant, named Davis, requested her aid in an intrigue he was endeavouring to establish with a young woman of that town; but, instead of helping him, she warned the young person of his intentions, and absolutely won the girl’s heart. Davis’s jealousy was excited, and to punish Jemmy Gray (which was the name under which Hannah Snell had enlisted), he reported her for some neglect of duty, and, as commanding officers then were rather severe than lenient in their punishments, she was sentenced to receive six hundred lashes, five hundred of which she absolutely received, and would have taken the whole had not some officers interfered. It seems marvellous that her sex, when she was tied up and partially stripped, was not discovered, and in a romance it would be a weak spot; but, as a matter-of-fact, no one suspected she was a woman, and when her back was healed she returned to her duty. Flogging was common enough in those days.
But a worse danger of exposure threatened her, for a fellow-townsman from Worcester enlisted in the same regiment, and so she determined to desert. The female friend on whose account she had suffered such severe punishment, found some money, and Hannah Snell fled towards Portsmouth, surreptitiously changing coats in a field by the way. She stopped but little time in Portsmouth, and then she enlisted in the Marines, in which corps she was certain to be sent abroad on service, and might have greater opportunities of meeting with her husband.
Scarce three weeks after her enlistment had elapsed when a draft was made to join Admiral Boscawen’s fleet for the East Indies, and she was sent on board the sloop of war, the Swallow. Here she soon became very popular with her mess-mates, her skill in cooking, washing, and mending their shirts made her a general favourite, and she did her duty with the best of her comrades, being especially noted for her smartness, so much so, indeed, that she was made an officer’s servant.
Those old ships were not very good sailors in a gale. The French beat us hollow at ship-building, and we much improved by studying the make of the prizes we were constantly taking, so it is not to be wondered at if that rolling old tub, the Swallow, came to grief. The marvel would have been had it not occurred. Twice, before the Cape was made, they had to repair and refit. They were then ordered to the Mauritius, and eventually they went to the Coromandel coast, where they landed and laid siege to and took Areacopong. They then besieged Pondicherry (in September, 1748); but that town was not fated to fall into the hands of the British until 1760. In all the hardships of the siege Hannah Snell bore her full part, fording rivers breast high, sleeping in and working at the trenches, &c., until at last she was desperately wounded, receiving six shots in her right leg, five in her left, and a bullet in her groin. Anyone would think that thus wounded, and in hospital, her sex would have been discovered; but it was not. She managed to extract the ball from her groin, and with the connivance of an old black nurse, she always dressed the wound herself, so that the surgeons did not know of its existence.