Scandal in the Guards: Lt. Colonel Dury confesses to his Wife regarding his Second Family

A Detail from George II at Dettingen

Dear Reader,

Today, I want to examine a document I recently examined in the United Kingdom. In it, we find a British officer in a rather awkward situation. Lt. Col. Alexander Dury of the Guards, fearing he might be killed in action, wrote a letter to his wife, Isabella, telling her about his other family. In this letter, we see a fascinating bundle of eighteenth-century ideas regarding marriage, sex, religion, death, and family obligations. Without further adieu, here is the letter:

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My Dear Bell,
 Before I left London, I took care to make a proper
disposition of my worldly concerns, and in such a manner as
I hope you are satisfied with, but one thing remains which I
cannot now avoid mentioning as I am going upon Service, and
for the concealment of which, I ask pardon of God and of yourself
and indeed my inducement for concealing it from you, was to
avoid giving you uneasiness of any kind, especially as
the case was without Remedy. Indeed at the time I was
solliciting you to marry I ought then to have acquainted you
with it, but my fears of losing you prevailed over reason
and I was also by a friend of both to conceal it,
which I listened to the sooner, as I did not entail any charge
on you having a little income from my Company (which
I never mentioned to you) over and above the 1000 a year
which I declared to you my income consisted of vis. 500
from H.R.H. the Duke, and 500 as a Lt. Colonel to the Regiment
so that the balance of the accounts of my company, amounting
to 70 or 80 pounds I applied for the maintenance of one Mrs.
Barbara Moncrieffe, and her two Children. The said Barbara
goes by the name of Thompson and lives at one Mrs. Walton
two doors beyond the white houses in Marsham Street
Westminister. She was formerly a servant in my Mothers'
Family, and I was so wicked, as by frequently importunity and
opportunity to seduce her, and she was with Child by me.
From that time I thought myself bound, from principle
to take care of her and of her Child, which I did; the Child
died, but continuing to go to her from time to time, she was
delivered of another son, the latter end of December 1746
who was christened Henry, two years after that she lay in of
a Daughter who was christened Barbara, and they both go by
the name of Thompson as well as the mother. I never
gave the least hope of expectation to the mother of her ever
becoming my wife, but as I have great reason to think
she has always been honest to me, and that she has taken
great and proper care of her Children, I cannot help
recommending her and them to your protection, and if
as they grow up, you would be so good as to put them out apprentices to some
business, to prevent their ruin by being idea and destitute,
it will be a great act of charity, and of Regard to me.
The boy, who is now between 11 and 12 years of age, writes a good
hand, has been educated at a school at Stanmore where
he is now, and my design was to procure an Ensigns
Commission for him in a marching Regiment, but I now fear
that cannot be done. I can solemnly assure you my Dear
Bell, since the time of our marriage and from some weeks
before I have not seen her, nor her Children; I have received
Letters from her, and have wrote to her, to direct her in the
management of her family, but never anything more.
I could wish my Dear you would allow her 30 or 40 pounds
a year, viz. 20 for the boy, ten for her self, and ten for the
Girl, till such time as they are able to procure a livelihood
for themselves, and may God reward you for such an Act of
Charity...
Mr. Davies, Surgeon to the
Regiment, knows where she lives, the last time she received
any money from me, she came to him for it. I had never
before paid it to her, and did it then at my Request, He
may (and will very readily, I am persuaded out of regard
for me) carry any message to her...

Once more forgive my deceit, in concealing this circumstance
of my Life from your knowledge, consider the
motive for it, and pardon it not only pardon, but pray
to the almighty for my forgiveness, from this, and many
other Crimes I have been guilty off, both of Omission
and commission and may the same Merciful Father of
us all ever watch over you and our Child, Guard and
protect you both,  Amen.

Alex Dury.

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Tragically, Lt. Colonel Dury was killed in action at St. Malo in September of 1758, only months after he had written this letter. No record of what happened to his second family survives. This letter is preserved in the British National Army Museum at Chelsea.

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Thanks for Reading, 

Alex Burns

Was the Average Eighteenth-Century Soldier Married?

Reenactors portray British Army soldiers and a laundress  during the 1781 Carolina Campaign
Photo Credit: Joe Bemis 

Dear Reader,

Today, we are going to look at a subject more difficult to pin down than soldiers' average age or height. Obviously, eighteenth-century soldiers were real individuals with deep emotional and thought lives. Many of these men carried on relations of various formal and informal types with women in the area they were stationed. However, the question before us today is, did the average eighteenth-century soldier have a wife?

That women accompanied eighteenth-armies is not in question, and has been well documented by historians. As with most of these posts, I am standing on the soldiers of intellectual giants as I write. Don Hagist, David Christiansen, Paul Kopperman, and Jennine Hurl-Eamon have all contributed greatly to this subject with regards to the British Army.[1] Holly Mayer has provided a mass of useful data on the Continental Army in the American Revolution.[2] Finally, in English, Christopher Duffy remains our guiding star for the armies of central and eastern Europe, even if better data exists in other languages.[3] Wherever possible, I have attempted to collate data from situations when soldiers were in garrison, as many few wives accompanied men on campaign, even if some did.

So, without further adieu, was the average eighteenth-century soldier married?

Reenactors portray British soldiers and a camp follower during a Valley Raid in Upstate NY
Photo Credit: Tommy Tringale

Using data from reliable sources only, not estimates, it seems that the average soldier was not married. Indeed, data from three armies suggests that perhaps as few as 20.9%, or just over 1/5th of all soldiers, were married during the eighteenth century.


Scanty data for the continental army leads us to believe that regardless of how many soldiers were actually married, only 2-4% of the total number of men were accompanied by women on campaign.[4] This figure is unhelpful as it is not clear how many of these were married to soldiers or performed work for the army. Even assuming this number was a smaller fraction of married soldiers as a whole, it would seem that majority of soldiers were not married. Hopefully, with the work of American genealogists, we can someday expand this data.

A British Grenadier from the 31st works his magic circa 1748, Morier

In during the later-eighteenth-century, roughly 12.5% of  British soldiers were accompanied by their wives on voyages outside Britain.[5] This matches up rather well with the data from troops stationed at New York during 1779-1780 when there were roughly 17 women per 100 men with the army.[6] British military administration treated marriage in the army with a sort of aloof indifference, which Jennine Hurl-Eamon has compared to the "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" policy of the U.S. Army at the turn of the twenty-first century.[7]

The Austrian Grenadier on the right has found something intensely funny.
Perhaps it is the fact that he isn't married. (Morier, circa 1748)

Oddly enough, the best-kept records for this type of question come from Austria (possibly because the lack of success of Austrian armies after the eighteenth century) so we will first turn to that data. Thanks to the enterprising work of Christopher Duffy, we have muster roll data from 122,435 Austrian privates, NCOs, and invalids.[8] Of those men, some 14.03% of soldiers were married. As might be expected, the number is higher, on average, for NCOs and invalids, and lower for enlisted men. Of all the armies for which data is readily available, the Austrian sample is the lowest and the largest: which is perhaps telling.

An artist's imagining of a Prussian soldier's widow after the Seven Years' War

Beate Engelen asserts that in the Prussian army after the Seven Years' War, some 29.65% of soldiers stationed in Berlin and Potsdam were married.[9] Christopher Duffy puts the Potsdam figure for 1776 a bit higher: at about 32.3 percent of NCOs and men.[10] Thus, the data from the post- Seven Years' War Prussian army might be skewed compared to the average, even if it does come from an army of the period. Why is this?

Thanks to the movement of Russian and Austrian armies, Prussia had lost some 500,000 of its civilian population in the Seven Years' War.[11] Frederick II possessed no illusions about the state of Prussia's economy. Taking drastic and severe measures, he forcibly abducted teenagers (boys and girls) from neighboring states under Prussian control (Saxony and portions of Poland). The boys were placed into the army, and the girls were married to Prussian soldiers. This act was understandably later viewed with some embarrassment in Prussia, even if contemporary foreign observers did not find it shocking. Frederick was willing to take whatever steps necessary to rebuild Prussia, regardless of lives affected.

Whatever their policy towards soldiers' wives, states felt a deep responsibility to soldiers' children. In Prussia, compulsory public education (much like we have in the United States today) was instituted in 1763, and former soldiers were often the teachers. In both Russia and Austria, schools for military children sprang up throughout the eighteenth century. In Russian, they appeared as early as the 1730s, in Austria, they appeared after the Seven Years' War.

Soldiers' wives could be a headache of the first order for military administrators

Many military observers held firm opinions on soldiers' marriage. Prussian cavalry general Warnery, who possessed no great love for women, had this to say regarding soldiers' wives:

"when a German army is on the march, there is no more hideous sight than a whole pack of those stinking Amazons, proceeding on foot or on horseback. They act like raiding parties, and you find them with the advance guard, the rearguard, and on the flanks of the army. No village, no hut is spared their attentions. They comb through the cellars, the rooms, hidden recesses and chests, and make off with whatever they pleace. They put to shame the Cossacks, who are amateurs in comparison."[12]

On the other hand, Frederick II firmly agreed with the practice of marriage for soldiers but preferred his officers remain perpetual bachelors.[13] British Army chaplain William Agar published a series of sermons in 1758, where he called for the total number of recognized wives per battalion to 200 (approx. 1/5 of the paper strength) and defended the virtues of married soldiers.[14]

On average, then, the vast majority eighteenth-century soldiers remained unmarried, even if women and marriage played a vital if limited role in the military system in which they worked.

Feel free to share this post if you know individuals who might be interested.

Thanks for Reading,



Alex Burns

[1] Hagist, "The Women of the British Army in North America," The Brigade Dispatch, (1994-1995); Kopperman, "The British High Command and Soldiers' Wives in America 1755-1783," JSAHR no. 60, (1982); Christiansen, From the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolutionary Wars: Civil-Military Relations in North-East England during the Eighteenth-Century, (Dissertation, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2005) and Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth-Century, (2014).
[2] Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution, (1990).
[3] Duffy, Russia's Military Way to the West, (1981), Army of Frederick the Great, (2nd Ed, 1996) Instrument of War: The Austrian Army in the Seven Years' War, (Vol 1, 2000); Beate Engelen, Soldatenfrauen in Preussen: Eine Strukturanalyse der Garnisonsgesellschaft im späten 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, (2005).
[4] Mayer, Belonging to the Army, 133.
[5] Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 23.
[6] Hagist, "The Women of the British Army in North America,"
[7] Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 24.
[8] Duffy, Instrument of War, 208.
[9] Engelen, Soldatenfrauen in Preussen, 88-89.
[10] Duffy, Army of Frederick the Great, 81.
[11] Schumann, "The end of the Seven Years' War in Europe," in The Seven Years War: Global Views, 514.
[12]  Duffy's translation, Warnery, Saemtliche Schriften, Vol 2, 26-27.
[13]  Duffy, Army of Frederick the Great, 81.
[14]  Agar, Military Devotion: or the soldier's duty to God, xxix.