A WOMAN SOLDIER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19829, 2 May 1927, Page 10

A WOMAN SOLDIER

SERVES WITH MARINES LIFE OF HANNAH SNELL Complete verification has been discovered for Air Baldwin’s claim in his Worcester speech that the country possessed the only female pensioner at Chelsea Hospital. She served four years m a regiment of the line before it was discovered that she was a woman. The records of Chelsea Hospital contain the following entry:— • —Hannah Snell, the female soldier. Born in Fryer Street, Worcester, April 23, 1723. Died in BethIcm Hospital, Moorfields, London, Feb. 8, 1792. Buried. in the Burial Ground, Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Hannah is not forgotten, nor likely to be, so long as the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, stand’s. Here is the copy ef a tablet which hangs with her portrait in the Great Hall:— “Female Out-Pensioner Hannah Snell. “Chelsea Admission Roll, 2. Nov. 1750. “Regiment, 2nd Alarines, Frasers. Age 27. “Timo of service, 4| years in this and Guise’s Regiment. Wounded at Pondicherry in the thigh and both legs. “Born at Worcester, her father a dyer (her pension 5d).” On June 9, 1785, it was ordered by the board of the hospital that “Hannah Snell, in compassion to her infirm state of health, be allowed 7d per diem.” Later Hannah became a “Letter-Man,” which meant that her pension was raised to a shilling per day by authority of the King’s Letter. According to Faulkner’s History of Chelsea, she went to live at Wapping with a sister who had married a carpenter. Then, in 1743, Hannah married a Dutch sailor namer Simms who treated her very brutally and left her almost destitute. Dressed in a suit of her brother-in-law’s she made her way to Coventry, in search of her worthless husband. Not finding him, she enlisted in Guise’s Regiment of Foot. Forced to desert through the professional jealousy of a sergeant, she next enlisted in the Alarines. She sailed on the Swallow with Admiral Boscawen’s Squadron, and was not known to be a woman while in the service. Hannah livetl for many years in Walsall, Staffs, and wore the Chelsea Hospital uniform. When she came to London she occasionally showed herself at the Goodyman Fields Theatre, sang regimental songs and went through military exercises. In addition to her daily allowance from the Chelsea Hospital, the Duke of Cumberland granted her an annual pension of £3O.