Who was Hannah Snell?

On 8 February 1792, Hannah Snell, one of Britain’s best-known female soldiers, died in the notorious lunatic asylum, Bedlam. Five months earlier a newspaper had reported on her deteriorating condition:

This veteran heroine, who distinguished herself very highly many years ago, by repeated acts of valour, and who served in the navy under the virile habit, is still alive; but it is with regret we inform our readers that she was last week admitted into Bethlehem Hospital, being at present a victim of the most deplorable infirmity that can afflict human nature.1

The illness that sent Hannah to Bedlam is unknown, but it was an inauspicious end to the life of a woman who had once strutted the London stage dressed as a marine, thrilling audiences with her adventures on the battlefield.

The story Hannah told her audience was truly extraordinary. Born into a large Worcester family in 1723, she travelled to London to live with her half-sister, Susannah Gray. In 1744, at the age of twenty-one, Hannah married a Dutch sailor, James Summs, and soon fell pregnant. However, in mid-1745, Hannah's husband abandoned her while she was seven months pregnant. After the baby’s premature death, Hannah decided to pursue her deceitful lover, disguising herself in a suit belonging to her brother-in-law, James Gray. A victim of her success at masquerade, Hannah says she was pressed into the English army and forced to march in pursuit of the fleeing troops of Bonnie Prince Charlie. She then joined the marines and was sent to India, where she fought against the French at Pondicherry. She claims to have been severely injured at Pondicherry, but managed to conceal her sex by treating her wounds in secret. After a further ten months of service she returned home with the fleet in late 1749.

After four and a half years of dressing as a man, she arrived back in London and quickly revealed her secret to an excited public. She presented a petition to the head of the British army, the Duke of Cumberland, requesting financial recognition for her service. While the military was examining the truth of her claims, Hannah became the toast of London - her story was a best seller and her portrait was sold on every street corner. Finally, the army accepted Hannah’s version of events and she was granted a lifelong pension. By the end of 1750, word of this twenty-seven-year-old’s adventures had spread across the whole of Britain.

For over two centuries people have been fascinated by Hannah’s life, and her story has appeared in a great variety of forms, including newspaper articles, biographies, a Prime Ministerial speech and even a rock opera. Yet despite all this attention, much of this woman’s life remains a mystery. Hannah’s shadowy history is an inevitable result of her lowly beginnings. There is no grand house bursting with family papers, no ancient family tree with a royal lineage - instead we are left with the musters of common soldiers and a scattering of records tracing the everyday lives of labourers, shopkeepers and servants. In addition to these simple sources, however, is a document that has proved invaluable in recreating Hannah’s life. In June 1750, the printer and publisher Robert Walker made an agreement with Hannah to publish her biography, The Female Soldier; or The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell.2 The book was a runaway success and Walker published a much longer serialised edition barely a fortnight later which was to ensure Hannah’s place in history.

The retelling of Hannah’s story has been subject to many inaccuracies. While our contemporaries can challenge such defamation through the courts, historical figures have no recourse against the misinformation propagated by succeeding generations. The inconsistent treatment of Hannah’s story, while perhaps not malicious, reflects an age when biographers were little concerned with establishing a factually based "truth". The original biography by Robert Walker has been used by many writers as their only source of information. Inevitably some of these have misreported the story and their errors have been copied by others at a later date. Like an ancient game of Chinese whispers the tale has become riddled with mistakes. After reading many of these different versions, the student of Hannah’s life is left utterly confused as to where the truth really lies.

The greatest challenge for anyone exploring Hannah’s life is to discover whether the celebrity appearing on stage under the name of Hannah Snell was actually the same individual who went by the name of James Gray in India. Not one eighteenth-century account questions Hannah’s honesty. However, less than a decade into the 1800s, commentators were beginning to raise doubts about her story and by the early 1890s the periodical Notes and Queries had printed a series of letters debating the veracity of her adventures.3

The folk tradition of the female soldier was already well-established by the time Hannah began treading the boards in 1750. The stories of these women were a common subject of the ballads of the day. While these songs were particularly popular among the lower classes, Walker’s biography is significant because it is actually directed towards wealthier, novel-buying readers.4 The notion of disguise would have been familiar to this audience, as it was common for Londoners during this period to attend the many masquerade balls held at pleasure gardens dotted around the city. The gritty detail of Hannah’s story, however, would have been less familiar to this middlebrow audience, and Walker battles with this material - even rearranging it - as he tries to present it in a way that makes sense to his readers.

It is inevitable that the exploration of an eighteenth-century life (or any life for that matter) will never be complete - even more so if the subject is impoverished and a woman, let alone a woman whose infamy is based upon her ability to keep a secret. Yet surviving records provide us with a unique opportunity to explore the world of the female cross-dresser in the eighteenth century as well as contemporary attitudes towards her.

Notes:

1. From an unknown publication, 14 September 1791. Cutting from Add. Man. 5723 Biographical Adversaria. British Library.

2 Although the author of the biography is unknown, Robert Walker was closely involved in its production and may well have been the author. For convenience I have identified Walker as the creator.

3. R.S. Kirby, Kirby’s Wonderful or Scientific Museum…, London, 1804, Vol II, p. 430. Notes and Queries, 8th S. II. July 30, ‘92, p. 88; 8th S. II. Aug. 27,’92, p. 171; 8th S. II. Dec. 3,’92, p. 455; 8th S. III. Jan. 28, ‘93, p. 77.

4. See Dianne Dugaw’s introduction to The Female Soldier; Or, The surprising Adventures of Hannah Snell (1st edition), The Augustan Reprint Society, publ. No. 257, Los Angeles, 1989. Also see Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850, C.U.P., Cambridge, 1989.

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This is an edited extract from my new book Hannah Snell: The Secret Life of a Female Marine, 1723-1792. Ship Street Press. London, 1997.

Copyright © 1998-2005 Matthew Stephens