The death of an old soldier

There is a saying among servicemen that old soldiers never die but only fade away and such a description was a fitting epitaph for John Robinson who ended his life in obscurity at an indeterminate age almost 200 years ago after a remarkable military career.

He spent his final years in poverty, an inmate of the poor house at Morton, near Bourne, a village too small to have an established workhouse and so those without means would have been looked after by the parish in a cottage or some other basic accommodation allocated for that purpose and totally dependent on charity for his survival.

John had been born in the highlands of Scotland during the mid-18th century but joined the army as a lad and we have a detailed account of his military history because during his final years at Morton he had talked of his life to someone educated enough to take it down in writing, the schoolmaster perhaps, or the vicar, and it is these scanty notes that were passed on to the local newspaper when he died.

He enlisted in the celebrated 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot, also known as the Black Watch, shortly before the American Revolutionary War and sailed for the New World to begin his active service when the British forces were attacked by the peasantry at Lexington in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, on 19th April 1775, a battle which, together with a similar confrontation at Concord, marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between Great Britain and thirteen of its colonies on the mainland of British America.

He was present at the memorable battle of Bunker Hill two months later on June 17th when the British suffered heavy losses with over 800 wounded and 226 killed, and then took part in several other conflicts until the final capitulation at York Town, Virginia, when the Americans and their allied troops led by General George Washington scored a decisive victory over the British army.

The regiment returned to Britain for a short spell and then left for the Middle East to share in the distinguished victory over the French on the sands of Egypt in 1801 where after a successful assault landing, the 42nd fought with great distinction at the Battle of Alexandria, capturing the colours of Napoleon's supposedly invincible legion.

Still on active service on 30th July 1809, he was among a British armed force of 39,000 men who landed on Walcheren, a former island in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary, with a view to assisting the Austrians in their war against Napoleon, and attacking the French fleet moored at Flushing. But the expedition was a disaster and the British troops were withdrawn the following December.

Throughout these dangerous campaigns John was never wounded but on leaving the army was granted a military pension on account of his long and meritorious service in three quarters of the globe although he did not enjoy the army’s generosity for long. As the revolutionary struggles continued in America, the government needed more men and called upon their old soldiers, invalids and all, to re-join the ranks for garrison duties but by then the veteran felt himself unequal to the exigencies of military life and declined with the result that his pension was subsequently forfeited.

He took casual jobs around the country to earn a crust and soon found the fens to his liking, subsisting comfortably by manual labour and often sleeping rough but reckoned without the elements and during a period of unexampled severity in the winter of 1814 he was found almost starved to death in a ditch on the northern outskirts of Morton where kindly villagers took him in and gave him food and shelter and where he remained as a casual pauper.

There is no record of John Robinson’s exact age but he was believed to be in his early seventies. His death on Saturday 6th August 1831 was mourned throughout the village and the Stamford Mercury paid him a fond tribute in their columns when they recalled his adventurous career on behalf of king and country.

“Though his life was preserved by the humane action of the parish”, said the report, “his limbs were so contracted and his corporal strength so impaired by the frost, that he was never after able to pass the limits of the workhouse, nor to move even into the air without the aid of crutches, but his mental faculties continued unimpaired to the last.

"It is fair to infer, from the uniform tenor of his conduct throughout 17 years of residence, that he was a most excellent man from the beginning of a life exposed continually to perilous exertion. So respectfully did he demean himself towards all, so kindly to the inmates, so tenderly to the children, that he obtained the appellation of ‘the good old gentleman’.”

NOTE: Top picture shows a stylized engraving depicting the Battle of Lexington
on 19 April 1775, reproduced from Wikipedia.