PHOEBE HESSEL |
Born Phoebe Smith at Limehouse in 1713, she was baptised at St
Dunstan’s Church in Stepney on 13 April 1713. Some sources indicate that her
father was a soldier who disguised his young daughter as a boy after the death
of her mother and smuggled her into the British army, where she became a fife and
drum player.
Other accounts say that aged 15, in 1728 Phoebe fell in love
with a soldier called William Golding and subsequently enlisted in the Fifth
Foot Regiment to remain with him when he was posted to the West Indies and
Gibraltar. In 1745 she was wounded in the arm by a bayonet at the Battle of
Fontenoy, but when Golding was wounded and invalided home too, Phoebe was said
to have revealed her true sex to the commanding officer's wife after which both
she and Golding were honourably discharged. She was given no punishment, but had her
salary paid out as any other soldier who was discharged from the army.
Linda Grant de Pauw tells a slightly different story in Battlecries and Lullabies: Women in War from
Prehistory to the Present (University of Oklahoma 1998). She believes on
the evidence of a sergeant of the 13th Light Dragoons, that Phoebe was
sentenced to the lash for some breach of discipline. Her sex was initially
revealed when she was undressed to be whipped, upon which she only commented:
"Strike and be damned!" The
flogging story may or may not be true. It feels like a stock element of the
woman-soldier-in-disguise story that was so popular in Georgian plays and
ballads but, as evidence shows, these ballads were often based on real facts.
Phoebe and William Golding were married for about twenty
years and after their discharge they lived in Plymouth where they had nine
children, eight of whom died in infancy - sadly their only surviving son died
later at sea.
After Golding's death Phoebe settled in Brighton and married
fisherman Thomas Hessel. He died when she was aged 80. After Hessel’s death,
she was given three guineas from the parish, so Phoebe bought a donkey and
hawked fish and other goods in nearby villages to make a living.
After overhearing a conversation in a Shoreham inn one day,
she provided key evidence resulting in the conviction and execution at
Goldstone Bottom of one Mr James Rooke for robbery. Highwayman Rook and Howell
his accomplice stole a horse and robbed the post boy of half a guinea. Horse
stealing and robbing the mail were both capital offences, so the two were hanged
at Horsham where their execution was watched by 1400 spectators. Their corpses were
tarred and placed in a gibbet that hung at Hangleton bottom. Rook's mother, was said to have waited beneath
the gibbet for her son's bones to drop and then collected them in her apron so she could bury him piece by piece. Nearly 100 years
later, Alfred Lord Tennyson found this story so
moving, that he wrote the poem 'Rispah' to tell the world about it.
In about 1800, when she was eighty-seven years old, Phoebe was selling ginger-bread, oranges and apples at the corner of Old
Steine and Marine Parade near the Brighton Pavilion. Clad in a brown serge dress,
with a spotless white apron and a hooded black cloak, her only concession to
her increasingly great age was a stout oak walking stick. She became very well known
in Brighton, due to her great age and unusual experiences but not long after this
she was taken into the workhouse.
Phoebe Hessel died on 12
December 1821 at the grand age of 108 and a local pawnbroker Hyam Lewis paid
for the large gravestone to be placed in her honour.
Research has often revealed conflicting evidence with
Phoebe's story; and it was only later in her life that she recalled all her
military exploits. It has been suggested by sceptics that the army tale
was merely a good story designed to encourage listeners to open their
purses to her and help her stave off poverty
PHOEBE HESSEL'S GRAVESTONE |
Her gravestone reads:
In memory of Phoebe
Hessel who was born at Stepney in the year 1713. She served for many Years as a
private Soldier in the 5th Regt of Foot in different parts of Europe and in the
Year 1745 fought under the command of the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of
Fontenoy where she received a Bayonet wound in her Arm. Her long life which
commenced in the time of Queen Anne extended to the reign of George IV by whose
munificence she received and support in her latter years. Died at Brighton
where she had long resided, 12 December, 1821. Aged 108 years.
Amazon Street and Hessel Street (both named in her honour)
still exist today in Stepney in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Phoebe is
also immortalized on one of Brighton’s buses, all of which are named after famous
residents.
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