John Jackson of the 31st Regiment of Foot

By Cheryl Butler

On the 25^th April 1805 John Jackson enlisted in the 31^st Regiment of Foot^[1]TNA WO 25/390 findmypast.co.uk. With thanks to John Ellis., by February 1807 he had deserted. Little would be known about Jackson were it not for his subsequent arrest and the bureaucracy that resulted from his being apprehended in Southampton.

Jackson had joined the army at a critical time in the long running war with France which in the years 1804 and 1805 was not going so well for Britain. Fear of a French invasion was rife, particularly if you lived on the coast as the local resident and former East India Company merchant Thomas Lewin wrote in March 1804:

What do you say of M. Bonaparte’s visit? It must either be near or not at all – so at least one would suppose from the vast amount of preparatives that we hear of.^[2]Thomas Herbert Lewin The Lewin Letters London 1909 p. 102

It was in 1805 that Bonaparte was crowned Emperor, and in response the Rev Mears, troop chaplain to the Yeoman Calvary, preached a sermon in St Lawrence Church:

Put on the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil.^[3]The Journal of John Sturdy 1803-1809, private collection, Colin Hyde Harrison Family.

However, in October 1805 there was a great naval victory when Nelson had defeated the French and Spanish Fleet at Trafalgar, but at the loss of his own life. The Nation’s Hero was given a state funeral and the 31^st Regiment of Foot provided a guard of honour.

Although Bonaparte had suffered a crushing defeat at sea, his armies were still all conquering. The 31^st had been stationed in the West Indies where numbers were depleted more by sickness than warfare and recruits were raised locally from both the free and enslaved inhabitants. John Jackson was a black soldier, but whether he was originally from the West Indies or lived in England is not known. If his background had been one of slavery, enlistment in the army was one way out of captivity, but in 1807 there was another momentous change when slavery was abolished in Great Britain but it was not abolished across the Empire. Perhaps this was a reason for Jackson deciding it was time to desert. Or it may have just been that he had had enough of the harsh and brutal life of a soldier. There was a second battalion  set up in 1805 in Ireland which went on to fight in the Peninsula War, it may have been that this was Jackson’s route into the army. We simply can’t be sure.^[4]The National Army Museum www.nam.ac.uk/explore/31st-huntingdonshire-regiment-foot.

It was not clear how he came to be in Southampton, the town was a military port, and there were often regiments in the town en route to various theatres of war, but in 1807 Southampton was also a very fashionable and popular watering place and spa. Visitors ranged from the nobility to wealthy gentry, its population had grown as it attracted families made rich from the exploits of the East India Company or from West Indian plantations. Its proximity to the naval port of Portsmouth also saw it becoming home to many admirals and naval officers, including Captain Frank Austen and his sister the aspiring novelist Jane Austen. Their garden wall looked over the shore line where the Cross Guns pub was situated adjacent to the bathing establishment and Long Rooms so enjoyed by visitors and residents alike and whose sedan chairs would be carried past the pub’s door on their way to bathe or dance.

It was in the Cross Guns that John Jackson was drinking in February 1807 when his enjoyment was interrupted by his sergeant. Jackson appears to have been only one of a number of deserters that the sergeant was charged with trying to apprehend and this gave the sergeant a logistical problem. He needed to travel onto Bristol where more were thought to be but he still wanted to ensure he received his reward for Jackson’s arrest and to make sure he was held safely in custody pending his return to his regiment. The sergeant sought out Mr John Dickins who then had to record for the benefit of Mr William Curry, the Town Clerk,^[6]William Curry listed as a solicitor at 59 High Street in the Cunningham Guide 1803. Appointed town clerk in 1804 Rev J S Davies A History of Southampton p. 189. how he had managed the situation. It is this brief note which gives us the limited details of John Jackson:

John Jackson, a black was apprehended as a Deserter belonging to the 31st Regiment of foot, by a sergeant in that same regiment. He was apprehended at the Cross Guns in the parish of St Michael and I at the time the sergeant called being much engaged had not time to make out the order, and the man being going to Bristol after deserters, I wrote the annexed note to Mr Ralph Stevens the collector of the land tax.

The sergeant was given a note, signed by Dickens, authorising Stephens^[7]Ralph Stevens was styled a gentleman of Canal Walk in the 1811 Cunningham Guide. Land tax was a national tax at this point 4s in the pound. The National Archives Q/RPI. to make the payment of 20s, although it also included an order to keep back 2s for the Town Clerk. What Dickens had not done was to follow the correct procedure and to have an order issued by Mr Hammond.^[8]Arthur Hammond esq of 25 High Street, Cunningham’s Directory 1803  Dickens blamed this oversight on how busy Curry’s office was at the time, but he was able to supply Curry with a note signed by the mayor. Were it not for this neglect of protocol John Jackson would be unknown.

As to his ultimate fate, that is also currently a mystery. It is likely that he would initially be sent to the local gaol in the medieval God’s House Tower which was being used as a bridewell, debtors’ prison and felons’ prison at the time, and is where other deserters were kept, often in shackles, until they were able to be sent back to their regiment and the military punishment that awaited them.^[10]Southampton Archives SC9/4/785

It would not have been unusual to see black people in Southampton at this time, many of the regiments and Royal Navy ships which used the port had black recruits. The West Indian plantation owners had black servants working in their houses, as did people like Walter Taylor a block manufacturer with a contract to supply the navy, his servant Antony de Sourze, is portrayed in a painting by Taylor’s daughter-in-law Maria Spilsbury. The local church records show the baptisms of African adults and children and a few years after Jackson’s time in Southampton the Theatre Royal headlined the young black actor Ira Aldridge performing the twin roles of Othello and Mungo.

Jackson was also not the only deserter who spent time in God’s House Gaol. His punishment for desertion would have been harsh. As he was not on the front line at the time he absconded it would likely be 800 lashes, and possibly to be branded with the letter D. It is unlikely that he would have been transported or executed, although that was a punishment that could be imposed.