Three months she lay in hospital, going back to her duty as a Marine on her discharge. But her comrades bantered her on her somewhat feminine appearance, her smooth cheeks not being in accordance with her age. Besides, she was somewhat quiet, and different from the rollicking Jack Tars by whom she was surrounded, and so she earned the name of Miss Molly Gray. A continuance of this quiet rôle might have led to discovery, so when they came to Lisbon, and the ‘liberty men’ went on shore, she was as racketty as any of them, and ‘Miss Molly’ was soon lost, and in her place was ‘Hearty Jemmy.’ From Lisbon they sailed for home, and on her arrival at Spithead, she was either discharged, or sent on furlough; at all events, there ended her military and naval career, for she went straight to her sister at Wapping, and was at once recognized.
Campaigning had made her restless, and, although many of the officers who had known her assisted her pecuniarily, it was light come, light go, and the money was soon spent. So her friends advised her to petition the Duke of Cumberland, pointing out her services, and also dilating upon her wounds. On the 16th of June, 1750, she found a very favourable opportunity of presenting her memorandum to the duke, and, after full inquiry, she was awarded a pension of a shilling a day. This, however, would not keep her, and finding that, as an Amazon, she had a market value, she engaged with the proprietor of the New Wells in Goodman’s Fields (the Royalty Theatre, Wellclose Square) to appear on the stage as a soldier. In this character she sang several songs, and ‘She appears regularly dress’d in her Regimentals from Top to Toe, with all the Accoutrements requisite for the due Performance of her Military Exercises. Here she and her Attendants fill up the Stage in a very agreeable Manner. The tabor and Drum give Life to her March, and she traverses the stage two or three times over, Step by Step, in the same Manner as our Soldiers march on the Parade in St. James’s Park.
‘After the Spectators have been sufficiently amused with this formal Procession, she begins her Military exercises, and goes through the whole Catechism (if I may be allowed the Expression) with so much Dexterity and Address, and with so little Hesitation or Default, that great Numbers even of Veteran Soldiers, who have resorted to the Wells out of mere curiosity only, have frankly acknowledged that she executes what she undertakes to Admiration, and that the universal Applause which she meets with is by no means the Result of Partiality to her in Consideration of her Sex, but is due to her, without Favour or Affection, as the Effect of her extraordinary Merit.
‘As our Readers may be desirous of being informed in what Dress she now appears, we think it proper to inform them that she wears Men’s Cloaths, being, as she says, determined so to do, and having bought new Cloathing for that Purpose.’
This theatrical performance, of course, could not last long; so, with her savings, she took a public-house at Wapping, which she christened ‘The Widow in Masquerade,’ and on one side of the sign she was delineated in her full regimentals, on the other in plain clothes.
She afterwards married, for in the Universal Chronicle (November 3/10, 1759, p. 359, col. 3) may be read: ‘Marriages. At Newbury, in the county of Berks, the famous Hannah Snell, who served as a marine in the last war, and was wounded at the siege of Pondicherry, to a carpenter of that place.’ His name was Eyles. In 1789 she became insane, and was taken to Bethlehem, where she died on the 8th of February, 1792, aged sixty-nine.
The examples quoted of women joining the army are by no means singular, for in 1761 a lynx-eyed sergeant detected a woman who wished to enlist under the name of Paul Daniel, in the hope that she might be sent to Germany, where her husband was then serving in the army. And in the same year a woman named Hannah Witney was masquerading at Plymouth in man’s attire, and was laid hold of by a press-gang and lodged in Plymouth gaol. She was so disgusted at the treatment she received that she disclosed her sex, at the same time telling the astonished authorities that she had served as a marine for five years.
There is a curious little chap-book, now very rare, of the ‘Life and Adventures of Maria Knowles ... by William Fairbank, Sergeant-major of the 66th Regiment of Foot,’ and, as it is very short, it may be as well to give its ipsissima verba.
‘The heroine of the following story is the only daughter of Mr. John Knowles, a reputed farmer,[36] of the parish of Bridworth, in the county of Cheshire, where Maria was born, and was her father’s only daughter. At an early age she lost her mother, and was brought up under the care of a mother-in-law, who treated her with more kindness than is usually done to motherless children. Her father having no other child, his house might have proved a comfortable home for one of a more sober disposition. At the age of nineteen she was so very tall that she was styled the ‘Tall Girl.’ She had a very handsome face, which gained her plenty of sweethearts. Many young men felt the weight of her fists for giving her offences. She refused many offers of marriage, and that from persons of fortune.
‘Being one day at the market in Warrington, she saw one Cliff, a sergeant of the Guards on the recruiting service, with whom she fell deeply in love; he in a short time was called to join the regiment, and she, not being able to bear her love-sick passion, eloped from her father’s house, immediately went up to London, disguised in man’s apparel, and enlisted in the same regiment with her sweetheart, in which she made a most martial appearance in her regimentals; her height covered the deception. As a red coat captivates the fair sex, our female soldier made great advances, being a lover of mirth and a smart girl....