When the Duke of Gordon was raising his regiment (eventually numbered as the 92nd) in 1794 his exceptionally beautiful wife, ‘Bonnie Jean’, and their daughters accompanied recruiting parties dressed in uniform. It was said that the duchess placed the King’s shilling between her teeth and offered a kiss to any man who would take it. One man duly kissed her and immediately paid his smart money, saying that it was a bargain for a kiss from a duchess, and another flung the coin into the crowd to show that it was the kiss, not the money, that had persuaded him to enlist.5
By 1914 officers were empowered to act as justices for the purpose of administering the oath taken by recruits on attestation; the form currently in use requires signature by a ‘justice of the peace or commissioned officer’, although in practice it is always signed by an officer. Enlistment was traditionally a two-part process. A man ‘offering to enlist’ was told of the ‘general conditions of service in the army’, verbally – often very unreliably – until the 1880s, and in writing thereafter. At this time he was given a shilling, which was taken to signify his agreement ‘either to complete his enlistment before a justice or, in default, to pay smart money’. The 1913 Army Act changed this so that a man who failed to enlist after accepting his shilling ‘has merely broken his bargain’, and could neither be arrested as a criminal nor compelled to take the oath before a justice. Even if he did enlist, he was still able to buy his discharge within three months for £10.6 The ageless lament, best delivered in a fruity regional accent, describes a recruit’s efforts to get the money to buy himself out of the army:
Dear Mother. Army’s a bugger. Sell the pig and buy me out.
Dear John. Pig gone. Soldier on.
Although it is now much easier for a soldier to leave the army than it was at any time in the past, there are financial penalties to breaking a ‘notice engagement’, and ‘discharge as of right’ enables a soldier to leave the army without any penalty only during the first six months of his or her service. There was traditionally very high wastage in the early months of a soldier’s service, before the habit of soldiering had set hard. From 1880 to 1882, 5,500 men under twenty-one were discharged, and 7,177 with less than a year’s service deserted. One-third of the men who enlisted in the cavalry over an eight-year period in the 1870s had left it before the end of their first year, and another two-fifths had gone before the end of the following year.7
In 1758 Corporal Todd watched the marine recruiters hard at work:
They had begun drinking very freely … and they gave liquor away to any one in the street or that would come in that I soon saw they were all upon the sharp and desired trepanning anyone they could … therefore I cautioned several of my townsmen to avoid their company. But William Kerby of this town, being intoxicated with liquor, would enlist, so I enlisted him to hinder the sergeant from getting the smart money from him, as he was but a poor labouring man and [I intended to] set him at liberty when he was sober for nothing.
When Kerby’s wife appeared, Corporal Todd told her that her husband could go home with her if he chose, provided he returned the shilling he had taken. Although he was anxious to find recruits, ‘I would not offer to trap anyone, especially here in my own country’.8 In 1812, Sergeant Thomas Jackson, a Staffordshire man who had enlisted into the Coldstream Guards from the militia, had moments of self-doubt but did not let them stand in his way:
I was ordered to attend the several militia stations … to induce men to join our regiment. I succeeded in bringing to the Guards some thirty or forty men, many of whom never found their way home again. Some of them, after sober reflection, repented, and said by the way, ‘Sergeant, you are leading us to the slaughter-house.’ I laughed them out of it, but perhaps they were about right. I said I disliked the recruiting service; however, another tour of that kind was worked out for me and another young sergeant, rather of a whimsical nature. It was to take a drum and fife, and attend all the wakes, races and revels, within twenty miles of London. There we had to strut about in best coats, and swaggering, sword in hand, drumming our way through the masses, commingled with gazing clodpolls, gingerbread mechanics, and thimbleprig sharpers. These pranks ended with the summer.9
A century before, Captain John Blackadder, a devout Scot serving in the Cameronians, sent back home to recruit, had complained that
This vexing trade of recruiting depresses my mind. I am the unfit-test for it of any man in the army, and have the least talent that way. Sobriety itself is here a bar to success. I see the greatest rakes are the best recruiters. I cannot ramble and rove, and drink and tell stories, and wheedle, and insinuate, if my life were lying at stake. I saw all this before I came home, and could have avoided coming, but it was in the hopes of enjoying the blessings of the gospel that I brought me to Scotland, more than recruiting; though I do not deny that I had an eye to that also.10
Recruiting by beat of drum disappeared after the Napoleonic wars, and instead recruiting sergeants, tricked out in their best uniforms enhanced by bunches of ribbon, positioned themselves at spots likely to be frequented by young men. Horace Wyndham described their appearance around London’s Charing Cross in the 1890s:
Tall, smart, and well set-up, with perfectly-fitting uniforms, adorned with plenty of gold lace, glowing buttons and spotless boots, they present an attractive picture to the eye and, from the crown of their circular caps – set jauntily on the side of their close-cropped heads – to the top of their brilliantly polished boots, they comprise a body of men of which any army would be justly proud.
Sometimes their approach was just the same as it would have been a century or so earlier. Fred Milton was a farm worker at South Brent in Devon, and one Saturday he went off with a friend to see the bright lights of Newton Abbot … ‘About four o’clock we were spied by a recruiting sergeant,’ he recalled, ‘and within a couple of hours we found ourselves in the Devons. And I stayed there for twenty-two years.’11
In 1782 infantry regiments were given regional titles in addition to their numbers, a process that became much more specific with the arrival of county regiments in 1881. Sometimes soldiers were indeed motivated by a desire to serve with their local unit. In 1847 James Bodell had it in mind to join the artillery, marines or cavalry, but eventually plumped for the 59th (2nd Nottinghamshire) Regiment because he was a Nottinghamshire man. Recruiting sergeants were anxious to find soldiers for their own regiments, and it did not matter to them where a man had actually been born: ‘It is all one to Sergeant Kite, as he expatiates on “the advantages of the army” to every one whom fate may chance to throw across his path.’12 It was widely agreed that the recruiting sergeant’s uniform was a major factor in drawing recruits. One recruiter thought ‘the more attractive the head-dress, the better class of men you get as a recruit, and I think that applies to uniform generally.’13 In 1891 Colonel John Russell, commanding the cavalry depot at Canterbury, thought that ‘the colour of the trousers of the 11th Hussars is a great attraction.’ The 11th wore dark red trousers, and their nickname ‘Cherry Bums’ was politely bowdlerised into ‘Cherubims’.14
By the end of the nineteenth century several infantry regiments with distinctive uniforms were actually filled with soldiers who hailed from outside the regiment’s recruiting area. In 1883–1900 the sixteen regiments that drew less than 25 per cent of their soldiers from their own areas included the gorgeously kilted Gordon, Seaforth, Argyll and Sutherland, and Cameron Highlanders. Men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers wore a natty fusilier cap in full dress rather than the more mundane infantry helmet. This proved so attractive to Birmingham men, who should by rights have joined the Royal Warwicks, that it was known as the Brummagem Fusiliers, and drew just 18.9 per cent of its recruits from North Wales.15 Indeed, the wider pattern of recruitment shows that this was now an urban army: the Hampshires typically drew most of their recruits from teeming Portsmouth rather than the farming communities in the north of the county.
Many of those who joined the 95th Rifles were attracted by its dar
k green uniform. William Surtees had served in the 56th Foot, known as the Pompadours because the purple of their facings was allegedly Madame de Pompadour’s favourite – or, more salaciously, the hue of her knickers. In 1802 he joined the 95th and took ‘great delight’ in the regiment’s snappy drill.16 In 1906 Thomas Painter enlisted at the Royal Warwickshire Regiment’s depot, and came under pressure to join it. He refused, as it wore a red uniform for parade and walking out:
Well, I didn’t want to be a pillar-box, you see, red coat. All due respect to the red coat regiments. But I didn’t want a red coat. I said ‘What’s that regiment that has a green jacket?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, four battalions, plenty of foreign service.’ I said ‘That’s the regiment for me.’17
On the eve of the First World War R. G. Garrod was working as a clerk when he saw ‘a gorgeous figure in blue with yellow braid and clinking spurs’ and before he knew quite what had happened he was in the 20th Hussars. Recruiters whose uniforms were not quite as dashing would do their best to deter youngsters from making their decisions simply on the basis of elegant uniforms. ‘I suppose you think yourselves too smart for the infantry,’ said a recruiting corporal to three young men who were dead set on joining the dragoons in about 1900. ‘Perhaps you’re fond of riding though. Well, I hope you’re fond of grooming dirty horses. That’s what you’ll do most of.’18
Until well into the nineteenth century, recruiters often wore officer-style dress to enhance the visual impact of their uniform. In 1814 a sergeant of the Royal Sappers and Miners sported gold bullion epaulettes, white breeches, a shako with a gilt plate ‘as big as a sundial, and brazen [chin] scales, surmounted by a long slashing feather. He looked like a prince among savages.’ The sergeant’s crimson shoulder sash was overlaid with ribbons, and on his breast was the ‘bang-up’, the recruiter’s ribbon cockade.19 Private soldiers accompanying recruiting parties were allowed some latitude in their own plumage, for they were essentially decoys designed to lure the gullible: they too were ‘banged-up’ with cockades and wore long ribbons trailing from their caps. When Rifleman Benjamin Harris went off to induce men of the East Kent Militia to join the Rifles his sergeant carried his sword low-slung like an officer, an officer’s sash and pelisse, and had ‘a tremendous green feather’ in his shako. Harris dressed ‘as smart as I dared appear’, and by the end of the day the party had persuaded two officers and 125 men to volunteer for the Rifles – despite their previous pledges to the 7th Royal Fusiliers.20
The recruiter’s appeal was always much the same. First came ready cash. Until the introduction of short service enlistments in 1870 (twelve years in all, with six with the colours, and six on the reserve) men received a bounty when they signed on. This varied in size from the 5s. paid under Charles II to the ‘twenty shillings on the drum/For him that with us freely comes’ described by Farquhar, and on to the larger sums paid to Napoleonic recruits. Edward Costello, born in Ireland in 1788, joined the Dublin Militia in 1807 and was in Londonderry, already embodied for full-time service, when he decided to join the 95th Rifles. He wrote:
After receiving my bounty of the eighteen guineas (£4 of which were deducted for my kit, which I was to have on joining), the sum allowed at that time to those who volunteered from the militia, I took the mail coach to Dublin, where I found a recruiting party of my regiment consisting of one sergeant, a corporal and six privates.21
Enlistment bounty was subject to immediate official deductions: ‘All recruits to be furnished with necessaries out of their bounty money,’ ordered the 93rd Foot, ‘that they may join the Regiment as free from debt as possible.’ There were also unofficial erosions. Wily NCOs assured recruits that it was customary for them to buy ribbons for sergeants’ wives, to reward the drummer of beating the points of war, and to buy drinks for the whole recruiting party. Private Joseph Donaldson unwittingly caused much merriment when he asked for the money back at his first payday. Benjamin Harris, a Dorset shepherd called up into the Army of Reserve in 1802 and thence drafted into the 66th Foot, admitted that there was a three-day ‘drunken riot’ and the bounty ‘was spent in every sort of excess till it was gone’. When he moved from the 66th to the 95th Rifles (attracted by the uniform) the whole party, recruiters and recruits alike, got roaring drunk in the Royal Oak at Cashel:
When we paraded before the door of the Royal Oak, the landlord and landlady of the inn, who were quite as lively, came reeling forth with two decanters of whisky which they thrust into the hands of the sergeants, making them a present of the decanters and all to carry along with them, and refresh themselves on the march. The piper then struck up, the sergeants flourished the decanters, and the whole commenced a terrific yell. We then all began to dance, and danced through the town, every now and then stopping for another pull at the whisky decanters. Thus we kept it up until we had danced, drank, shouted and piped thirteen Irish miles from Cashel to Clonmel.
In 1799 Winchester, a substantial military centre within easy distance of the key ports of Southampton and Portsmouth, was
a scene of riot, dissipation and absurd extravagance. It is supposed that nine-tenths of the bounties … amounting to at least £20,000 were all spent on the spot among the public houses, milliners, watch-makers, hatters &c. In mere wantonness, bank notes were actually eaten between slices of bread and butter.22
The latter practice paralleled that of frying gold watches on the Hard at Portsmouth by discharged sailors awash with prize money and eager to show just how little they cared for moderation.
The bounty was so substantial that a good living was to be made by enlisting, pocketing the money, deserting at once, and then reenlisting. Harris found that one of his first duties was to form part of the firing party designated to shoot a serial deserter:
A private of the 70th Regiment had deserted from that Corps, and afterwards enlisted into several other regiments; indeed I was told at the time … that sixteen different times he had received the bounty and then stolen off. Being, however, caught at last, he was brought to trial at Portsmouth, and sentenced by general court-martial to be shot.
Brought out for execution before all the troops in Portsmouth, then about 15,000, the man ‘made a short speech to the parade, acknowledging the justice of his sentence, and that drinking and evil company had brought the punishment upon him’. He was not killed outright by the volley, and four men were detailed to shoot him through the head at point-blank range. The entire parade then marched past in slow time, and ‘when each company came in line with the body the word was given to “mark time” and then “eyes left” in order that we might observe the terrible example.’23 This culprit’s desertion was as nothing when compared to that of Thomas Hodgson, executed for robbery in 1787, who admitted enlisting under a variety of assumed names no less than forty-nine times, netting the sum of 387 guineas, more than a busy working man could expect to make in ten years.
The bounty had an irresistible appeal even for those who had been legitimately discharged. The great military surgeon George Guthrie took a keen interest in the management of bladder stones. Not long after Waterloo, he experimented with a patent three-pronged instrument designed to be inserted up the urethra into the bladder, where it would be extended to catch and then break up such stones. Duly inserted into a soldier’s bladder the machine jammed open, and although Guthrie, with characteristic presence of mind, managed to free and extract it, the soldier declared ‘You may cut out the stone, Sir, whenever you please, but you shall never put that three pronged thing into me again.’ Guthrie duly cut into the bladder via the perineum and removed the stone. The Duke of York immediately granted the man his discharge ‘as an especial favour,’ but he ‘a few days afterwards, enlisted again, for the sake of the bounty.’ The surgeon who carried out his routine recruit’s examination did not think of looking to see whether the man had been cut for the stone.24 As far as badly conducted medicals are concerned, however, this was nothing compared with the less than searching insp
ection in 1745 of John Metcalf, who was allowed to enlist as a musician. He had actually lost his sight after an attack of smallpox at the age of 6, and is known to us as the road-maker Blind Jack of Knaresborough.
George Farquhar’s character Sergeant Kite summed up the other advantages of enlistment:
If any gentleman soldiers, or others, have a mind to serve Her Majesty and pull down the French king; if any prentices have severe masters, any children have unnatural parents; if any servants have too little wages, or any husband too much wife; let them repair to the noble Sergeant Kite, at the Sign of the Raven, in this good town of Shrewsbury, and they shall receive present relief and entertainment.
‘Over the Hills’ makes much the same points. Recruits ‘shall live more happy lives/Free of squalling brats and wives/Who nag and vex us every day,’ and ‘Prentice Tom may well refuse/To wipe his angry master’s shoes/For now he’s free to run and play/Over the hills and far away.’ Recruiting parties used posters as ground-bait to attract the gullible. A poster for the 14th Light Dragoons came dangerously close to infringing Farquhar’s copyright, appealing to ‘all you … with too little wages, and a pinch-gut master … too much wife … or obstinate and unfeeling parents.’25 In 1813 a recruiting party of the 73rd Foot offered recruits ‘Five Shillings a Day and a Black Servant’, while the 7th and 14th Light Dragoons, tongues firmly in cheek, warned potential recruits that ‘the men will not be allowed to hunt during the next season, more than once a week.’26