“Very little, but if you find the rest of the battalion, speak to Colonel Stevens, tell him that the ensign is under arrest and has absconded from lawful custody. Cowardice in the face of armed rioters, so you understand.”
“Right, Sergeant Muldoon. Arrest was made by Captain Weightman and further charges added by Lieutenant Oxford afterwards.”
Harry checked his musket and ran off to the alley, worked his way cautiously down one side, as close to the blind, side walls as he could get so as to be less visible. Less than a hundred yards brought him to the church and he turned left-handed, away from the square and along the hopefully empty main street. The troublemakers were in and immediately around the square and he hoped that any man not involved would be tucked away indoors, bolts drawn and shutters firmly closed.
He trotted one hundred yards, walked the next, half as fast again as march pace and sustainable for the better part of an hour before he would have to take a breather. He should have reached the camp by then.
On his third jogtrot he saw a moving figure ahead, in the middle of the road, avoiding the frightening shadows to the sides. There was mud at the side of the carriageway, messy on his shining boots, but almost silent. He caught up rapidly on the panting walker. A rare lantern alight outside a big house showed Ensign Turner’s face. Harry dropped back a few yards, watching and thinking his way through his next moves.
If Turner was cashiered, formally by a court-martial, then he would have every opportunity to make damaging accusations. The officers might well come out of the affair unscathed, but a corporal would be lucky to keep his stripe and avoid a flogging. Sergeant Muldoon’s chance of a commission would certainly disappear. The reputation of the regiment as a whole would be smirched and they would quickly find themselves posted out of sight and mind, to India very likely and for a full seven years.
“No thank you,” Harry muttered to himself. He stopped and emptied the powder out of the firing-pan, ensuring that the musket could not misfire, then walked rapidly along the road behind Turner until he reached the point on the outskirts where the houses thinned out. A quick run then, calling the man’s name when close to.
“Mr Turner!”
The ensign turned round taken by surprise and fell as the musket butt connected with his temple.
Harry felt the dent in the man’s skull and was fairly sure he would never come round again; the butt ended in a heavy brass plate, designed to protect the wood and enabling it to be used as an effective bludgeon. They were nearly half a mile from the church, and Turner was, had been, overweight, but there was no choice. Harry caught hold of the body and heaved it over his shoulder, then made a slow walk, more than fifteen minutes back to the church and then cautiously into the alley leading back to the tailor’s. He dropped the body into a patch of shadow and searched around for a granite sett. He levered up a stone block from the roadway by the church and returned to the body.
A quick, carefully positioned blow over the bruising from the musket butt, skin broken, flesh and blood on the stone which he laid carefully down by the now unarguably dead body.
“Silly boy! Got lost and was caught by a rioter. Leave it to the officers to fill in the details. That’s their job, not mine. Check his pockets – a rioter would have grabbed everything he’d got.”
Harry came up with a few coins, which went into his own pockets; a watch which was engraved with Turner’s name and was dropped a few yards away; a fob and chain, thrown out of sight into a nearby midden for being possibly recognisable as Turner’s.
Harry made his way back up the alley, reported to Lieutenant Oxford.
“Found him, sir. Head bashed in, down at the bottom of the alley. I spotted a couple of blokes hanging about and challenged them and ran after ‘em. Lost ‘em in the dark and came back and had a look about, sir, found Ensign Turner in a patch of shadows.”
“Dead?”
“Half his head caved in, sir. They had hit him with one of them setts, sir.”
“Good enough. Sergeant Muldoon! Take some men and bring the body in. Collect any evidence you see.”
“Sir! Where is the body, Corporal Belper?”
“Bottom of the alley, on the right-hand side, next to a big shit-heap, Sergeant Muldoon.”
“Right. You stay here, then I can report on what I see independently-like. Better that way.”
“Sit by the light, Corporal Belper, and write your report. Dead officers have to be accounted for, I fear.”
The tailor, shocked that an officer and a gentleman should have been murdered almost on his doorstep, provided pen and paper and, a few minutes later, a cup of tea.
It took an hour, for Harry wrote only slowly, but the story was eventually produced in acceptable form. Two men had assaulted and killed Ensign Turner and had then robbed him and had run away, pursued unavailingly by Harry; a search had then disclosed the body.
“Very clear, Corporal Belper. Well done. Go back to your platoon now.”
The remainder of the battalion appeared an hour later, having circled round the town and entered the square from the opposite side, to the dismay of the remaining rioters, who had fled incontinent.
Colonel Stevens was told the whole story, Captain Weightman making it clear that the death had averted a major scandal.
“A coward, you say, sir?”
“Yellow through and through, colonel! Unbelievable!”
“Panicked and fired his pistol, you say?”
“Fired into the mob, sir. The Riot Act certainly not read!”
“The young bastard! That would have been my neck on the block! I would have been held responsible for the act of one of my officers.”
“Exactly, sir. Corporal Belper first, and then Sergeant Muldoon, tried to reason with him and the sole result, sir? He struck out at Corporal Belper with the empty pistol!”
It was impossible to imagine a more disgraceful act; irrespective of provocation, an officer must never assault a ranker.
“Good God, sir!”
“I placed him under arrest, sir, on his word of honour to remain out of harm’s way, and he ran.”
“Then we can only thank Divine Providence that he was struck down before he could shame himself and the regiment further.”
“Amen, sir.”
Colonel Stevens stared piercingly at Captain Weightman, shook his head and tore up the documents laid in front of him.
“Write me a brief statement that the boy was leading a platoon when a road-sett was thrown and struck him on the head. His men valiantly brought the body in after a struggle with a large and armed gang, driving them off but not before they rifled the ensign’s pockets. Mention the devotion to duty displayed by Corporal Belper who refused to leave his officer’s body in the hands of the mob. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Do you think Belper killed him?”
“I’m damned certain he did, sir. Loyal to the regiment, Corporal Belper, and knowing just how much harm that little shit could have done us.”
“Don’t mention your suspicions elsewhere, Captain Weightman. Bring him to me next week and I shall find him ten guineas to put in his pocket. Too little experience to make him a sergeant yet?”
“Two more years, sir. I shall do my possible to bring him on. Sergeant Muldoon did well, I submit, sir.”
“He will fill a vacancy just as soon as we go overseas. Now, off you go, Captain Weightman, and I shall speak to Major Barrington and discuss exactly why he was not present to deal with this damned affair before it started. Covered in horse dung, forsooth!”
Horse Guards was appalled – assistance to the civil power was not expected to lead to the death of an officer, particularly one with connections to the aristocracy. A formal complaint was taken to the Duke of York who, in his turn, buttonholed the Prime Minister.
There was an agreement that it was a shocking eventuality, but one that justified the government in deploying the army onto the civilian streets. It was obvious that the Mob was dange
rous, and must be properly subdued.
“The regiment must be rewarded, Your Grace, for its devotion to duty!”
Horse Guards gave thought to this question of rewarding soldiers, decided that the best way was to give the colonel a knighthood and then post the battalion to a desirable location; a place secure from riot and with a balmy climate seemed ideal, but very difficult to identify.
The Isle of Wight was finally picked upon; the battalion should be sent to the new-built barracks near Cowes where they could enjoy a quiet life and be usefully available in time of war, barely two hours distant from Portsmouth.
They marched back to the South Coast and then boarded small ships in Portsmouth for the journey across Spithead, settled into their routine in the dullest backwater in the whole of England. The soldiers were unanimous in their delight and the battalion made it clear to Harry that he was a favourite; they nicknamed him Basher Belper and the men of his platoon took pains to be the smartest and most noticeable on their rare parades, all to help him on his way to his sergeant’s stripes.
Harry was content – he was fed sufficiently, the hunger years a distant memory, he was paid a little and had to do almost no work in exchange. The soldier’s life would do for him, he thought, unless those daft buggers of Frogs should go to start a war, but, having just cut their King’s head off, they could hardly be in the way of organising anything in the way of fighting.
# # #
Endnote
Life for the foundling in the Eighteenth Century was inevitably hard and commonly short.
It is impossible to give meaningful figures – we do not know how many orphans were clothed and fed by the parishes and can only guess at the numbers who survived on the streets. The government took no count of any sort before 1801 and the parishes varied in their efficiency and in their willingness to take any action and keep even rudimentary records.
The number of paupers’ burials gives an indication and the Bills of Mortality published in London suggest how many of the young died, but there is no certainty as we do not know how many were born.
We know that many children were sent from the parishes to work in mines and factories from an early age. They were not slaves, but it was effectively impossible for them to leave their places, through ignorance and poverty – running away was hardly practical for a child who knew nothing of what might exist outside of the factory gate and had no money at all.
Probably the sole escape for the factory or mine child was into the Army or the Navy and it is interesting to see that the records show many recruits to both with a surname taken from a town.
My own name, Wareham, is that of a small town in Dorset and I suspect a several times great grandfather may have been given the surname when he swore himself into the Dorsets or perhaps into the Navy. I do not know – but there is a probability.
Harry’s story is likely enough – the Army was a way of escape for the poorest, and provided regular meals which the streets did not. Smuggling was probably the largest single employer along the South Coast from about 1760 until the end of the Wars in 1815 and groups such as the Hawkhurst Gang rivalled the American Mafia for influence and brutality. It would be interesting to discover the English equivalent of Al Capone – almost certainly a younger son of the aristocracy or County and with sufficient influence to remain anonymous – but that is another story.
Wellington pointed out that the Army recruited the ‘scum of the earth’, and turned them into the best of soldiers, although the second part of his comment is generally ignored. It might be interesting to discover what happened to Harry, one day.
Thank you for reading Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks. Please take look the author’s other novels listed on the following pages. If you get a spare minute please consider leaving a short review for ‘Harry’ wherever you can.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Endnote
By the Same Author
Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks Page 22