Female Soldier, The.
Scarce Narrative
Of An Eighteenth Century Female Soldier
Snell, Hannah (and R. Walker). The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell… London: Printed for, and sold by R. Walker…, 1750.
12mo.; bound in half-calf boards. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of the redacted edition; Walker published the full-length narrative, with plates, that same year. In 1845 Snell, recently bereaved of a new-born baby, donned her brother-in-law’s attire—and took his name—and set off on a journey to find the husband who had abandoned her in her pregnancy. She returned home to England in 1850 to a celebrity’s welcome and a reader’s market eager for her tale.
Able to read just a little and write even less, she dictated he story to newspaper publisher Robert Walker—or, perhaps, to one of his lackeys—who got two editions out with the year: this one, of 42 pages and without images; and a fuller version, of 187 pages, including plates.
The book begins with a note “To the Publick,” with a statement confirming the validity of Snell’s story as well as a copy of an affidavit, “in order to prevent the Publick from being imposed upon by fictitious Accounts,” and giving exclusive rights of the story to the publisher Robert Walker. At the end of the book, the following is printed:
As this Treatise was done in a Hurry from Hannah Snell’s own Mouth, and directly committed to the press, occasioned by the Impatience of the Town to have it published, it is not doubted but that such Part of it as appears somewhat incorrect, will be candidly overlook’d, that, being made up in the Veracity and Fullness of her surprising Adventures; the like not to be met with in Records of Time.
Despite this affirmation, it is believed Walker took great liberties with her tale, rendering it still more sensational than the truth. Facts which can be confirmed through official records are these:
Snell was born in 1723, one of several children, “none of whom miscarried for want either of sufficient Learning from Masters, or Salutary Advices and virtuous Examples from their Parents.” Her father worked as a hosier and a dyer; he was able to send his children to school and Hannah, while she learned how to read, never learned how to write. In 1743 she married James Summs, a sailor, a disloyal, thieving man who left Snell when she was seven months pregnant. The baby died in infancy and Snell, anxious to see her husband again, dressed in her brother-in-law’s clothes, used his name – James Grey – and enlisted in General John Guise’s Sixth Regiment of Foot. In 1747, she deserted Guise’s Regiment at Portsmouth and enlisted in Col. Fraser’s Regiment of Marines. She was assigned to the Swallow sloop, which sailed for the east coast of India with Boscawen’s fleet; once on shore she was sent to join the long siege of the French fortifications at Pondicherry. She was injured in battle and spent a full year recovering in a hospital at Cuddalore. After revealing her sex to her shipmates, she was honorably discharged at Wapping on the orders of Admiral Hawke.
Although her sex was never discovered during her military service, her shipmates were not completely ignorant of her femininity. They nicknamed her Miss Molly Grey – to which she replied she was “as good a Man as any Seaman on board” – and, as Walker writes, the sailors swore she was a woman. “This Expression, however indifferently they meant it, gave her abundance of Trouble…she with masculine but modest Assurance, told them, if they would lay any Wager, she would give them ocular Demonstration of her being as much a Man as the best in the ship.” After she returned to England in 1750 and revealed her identity, she continued to dress as a man and often appeared on stage in full military uniform. She was married twice more: to Samuel Eyles, with whom she had two sons, and later, to Richard Habgood. She died in an asylum in Bedlam in 1792.
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