Alas! It is the 202nd anniversary of the demise of Phoebe Hessel. Mind you, she was 108, and had
served for many years as a private Soldier in the 5th Regiment of Foot in different parts of Europe, and .. received a Bayonet wound in her Arm,
so she’d packed a lot in. Allegedly.
This is one of those stories with… a number of different versions, let’s say. She may have
accompanied her father to Flanders when her mother died, learned to play the fife, and enlisted,
or she followed one Samuel Golding because they’d
formed a strong attachment.
She and Samuel fought side by side in the West Indies and Gibraltar, but when she was wounded fighting the French at Fontenoy, her real identity was discovered and she… was, er, honourably discharged.
Yes, as plot twists go, that’s not really up there with Keyser Söze, is it?
Which is probably why another version of her story has her being stripped to the waist for a flogging, as Linda Grant De Pauw’s Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present puts it:
But it’s worth pointing out that while she cites a source, she doesn’t say this was true. (A halbert, or halberd, is a long pole with an axe head and a spike. For floggings, three were fastened together in a triangle, apparently, with a fourth across them, and the soldier tied to them.)
Phoebe may have fought in 1775’s Battle of Bunker Hill. But, then, she may have married Samuel Golding (who may have been called William), and lived in Plymouth with him for 20 years from 1749, so she may not have been involved in the American Revolutionary War at all.
When William (or Samuel) died, she moved to Brighton, bought a donkey, and pottered about what was then a coastal village, selling fish and vegetables. And it may have been around this time that she overheard a conversation in a pub involving highwayman James Rooke.
He was discussing a mail robbery, and she either appeared as a witness for the prosecution, or apprehended him herself. Either way, he and his accomplice were hanged in 1793 in front of a crowd of 1,400. Unless it was 14,000. Maybe one’s a misprint. Maybe both are complete balls. It might have been 14, for all I know.
(Apparently, both men were tarred and gibbeted after death, and Rooke’s mother would visit on stormy nights, when bits of body were dislodged, and bury her son piece by piece. Or someone made that up, too. Anyway…)
Basically, Phoebe was the kind of remarkable figure around whom legends would develop. One of the best accounts I’ve found is by art historian James Mulraine.
By now 87 years old, Phoebe was a famous local character, selling gingerbread and oranges on the corner of Old Steine and Marine Parade, and telling stories of her life in the Army. The Prince of Wales had met her and was impressed by her, so when she fell on hard times — she was briefly committed to the workhouse in 1807 before swiftly discharging herself — he gave her a pension of half a guinea a week in 1808. She was invited to the celebrations for King George’s Coronation on July 19th 1821, and as Brighton’s oldest resident, was guest of honour at the Town Banquet.
…although for strict accuracy, you have to go to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Hessel probably did serve in the military, like many other women, and attained a great age. However, stories of her soldiering are contradictory and legendary, conforming more to conventions of the eighteenth-century preoccupation with cross-dressing women in popular songs and prose accounts than to the official records of military history. At the same time, legends about the masquerading Hessel supply an important, if partially fanciful, glimpse of a noteworthy individual from the lowest social ranks for whom by definition more substantial documentation was not created or preserved.
When she died, a local businessman paid for her gravestone, which was restored in the 1970s, apparently, by the Northumberland Fusiliers, successors to the 5th Regiment of Foot.
Oh, and she has a bus named after her.
Which is nice.
