Category Archives: Military

1862: Vermont captain invites colonel to kiss his “touch-hole”

William Cronan was born in Burlington, Vermont in 1838. At the age of 22 he enlisted in the Union Army as a lieutenant and quickly rose to the rank of captain. By early 1862 he was a company commander in the 7th Vermont Infantry. Cronan’s regiment was deployed to Louisiana and saw action in the Battle of Baton Rouge (August 1862). Cronan had been a good organiser but combat seemed to bring out the worst in him. He was sent for court martial for having quarrelled with superior officers, saying of one:

“The colonel can kiss my royal majestic brown military touch-hole.”

Captain Cronan was formally reprimanded but continued to serve. He later returned home to be honorably discharged. According to an obituary in Vermont, he died in August 1910.

Source: General Court Martial Orders, 1862, f.83. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1866: Gordon Ramsay uses indecent language to newspaperman

In late 1866, a newspaper in colonial Jamaica reported an incident in its own offices. The incident involved Gordon Ramsay, a high-ranking British military officer.

This Gordon Ramsay had a well earned reputation for heavy handedness and brutality. During his tenure as provost-marshall of Morant Bay, hundreds of civilians were tortured or executed by troops under Ramsay’s command. Ramsay was later sent to court martial for murder but was eventually acquitted on a technicality.

According to the newspaper report, Ramsay entered its offices objecting to its coverage of his military service:

“He thereupon became violent, both in manner and speech, and used language both offensive and indecent to Mr Robert Jordan… He was ordered out of the place but positively refused to go, and shortly after assaulted Mr Jordan who, in return, struck him with a ruler…”

Ramsay was eventually escorted from the premises but continued his tirade:

“He swears to murder someone in our office. It would, perhaps, not be the first murder that he has committed…”

Source: Morning Journal, Kingston, Jamaica, November 10th 1866. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1664: Yorkshire gent rides cheeky worker around Rotherham

The Copleys were a wealthy Yorkshire family boasting military officers, Members of Parliament and a lineage dating back to the Norman invasion.

Lionel Copley (1607-75) served as a colonel with the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. Evidence suggests that Copley was an erratic, autocratic and often brutal figure who was both feared and despised by his neighbours.

In 1664, Copley was accused of cruelly mistreating a local artisan who failed to show him due respect:

“At Rotherham on the 25th of September 1664 [he] beat Richard Firth, put a bridle into his mouth, got on his back and rode him about for half an hour, kicking him to make him move.”

Copley’s son, also named Lionel, seems to have inherited his violent streak. The junior Lionel Copley was commissioned in the Foot Guards and in 1681 was appointed lieutenant-governor of Hull. Copley ruled Hull with an iron fist, dispensing corporal punishment, confiscating private property and seizing and opening personal mail.

When the deputy-postmaster of Hull complained, Hull had him arrested and hog-tied:

“..neck and heels, with extreme violence that the blood gushed out of his nose and mouth, and kept him in that intolerable posture for two hours and a half, till [he] was utterly deprived of sense and put in extreme hazard of his life, and remains to this day miserably crippled, disabled in his limbs and impaired in his sight.”

Copley’s behaviour in Hull triggered so much protest that he was shipped off to the American colonies, where he served as the royal governor of Maryland (1692-93).

Source: Depositions from the Castle of York, relating to Offences in the Northern Counties, v.40. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1755: Connecticut town sentences a letter to 40 lashes

In late 1755 the Connecticut Gazette reported a minor scandal: the circulation of a “false and scurrilous” letter in the colony. The author of this offensive missive was Edward Cole, an officer in the Rhode Island militia, who was described elsewhere as “a fellow of no reputation”. Much of the vitriol in Edward Cole’s letter was aimed at Connecticut-born Major-General Phineas Lyman, in particular Lyman’s conduct during the Battle of Lake George. Cole’s attack on local hero Lyman caused such a ruckus in Milford, Connecticut that the town elders there resolved to take stern action:

“…it was thought proper that [the letter] should be publicly whipped, as tending to beget ill will… Accordingly it was here at 4 o’clock this afternoon, after proper notice by beat of drum, [the letter was] publicly whipped… 40 stripes save one, by the common whipper, and then burnt.”

Source: Connecticut Gazette, November 29th 1755. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1750: Royal Marine stripped and flogged; nobody spots ‘his’ breasts

Hannah Snell (1723-1792) was a British woman who served in the Royal Marines as a man. Snell was born in Worcester, married in her late teens and gave birth to a daughter. When her daughter died and her husband absconded, Snell borrowed some men’s clothing and enlisted in the Marines using the name ‘James Gray’. In 1748 Snell was deployed to India where she saw heavy combat and:

“…received twelve wounds, six in her right arm and five in her left and the other in her groin, from the last of which she extracted the ball and herself perfected the cure, in order to prevent her sex being discovered…”

Snell’s gender concealment is even more remarkable considering that she was flogged twice during her three years in the Marines – and both times was stripped to the waist. In 1748 Snell was charged with dereliction of duty and publicly whipped in Carlisle. Snell later told biographers she avoided detection because her “breasts were but small” and:

“…her arms [were] drawn up, the protuberance of her breasts was inconsiderable and they were hid by her standing close to the gate.”

Snell received a second whipping onboard a Royal Navy ship, where she prevented the:

“…discovery of her sex by tying a handkerchief round her neck and spreading it over her breasts.”

During this second flogging Snell’s breasts were spotted by the ship’s bosun, who “said they were the most like a woman’s he ever saw” – however he was not concerned enough to raise the alarm. On her return to England in 1750 Snell confessed her true gender. She was given an honourable discharge and, later, a military pension. Snell later ran a pub until her mental health deteriorated. She spent her final months in the notorious Bedlam hospital.

Source: Various inc. Boston Weekly Newsletter, December 6th 1750. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1790: Russian admiral rewarded with a peasant shoot

In July 1790, Russia’s Black Sea fleet, commanded by Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, defeated an Ottoman naval force in Kerch Strait, near the Crimea.

In October a Boston newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, informed its readers of the Russian victory. The outraged Centinel also reported that Catherine the Great had rewarded Admiral Ushakov by allowing him to shoot 2,417 peasants. “It is not [only] in Africa where the horrors of slavery are to be commiserated”, the Centinel bemoaned.

Days later, however, the Centinel ran this brief and somewhat unapologetic correction:

“By a subsequent English paragraph the above is found to be a mistake. The Empress gave her Admiral leave to shoot 2,417 pheasants.”

Source: Columbian Centinel, Boston, October 20th 1790. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1903: Army officer confesses to fornicating with fruit

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was a London-born physician and author who specialised in research into human sexuality, particularly sexual behaviours that departed from what was considered normal, at least in Ellis’ time. His interest and specialisation in sexuality was ironic, given that Ellis’ own marriage (to suffragist and women’s rights campaigner Edith Lees, an open lesbian) was largely sexless.

Writing in 1903, Ellis detailed his interviews with “GR”, an unnamed officer who had served with the Indian colonial army. “GR” admitted to an active bisexual sex life: from interaction with other boys at school, to encounters with a host of foreign prostitutes, to affairs with his fellow military officers.

Much more peculiarly, when partners were unavailable and “GR” turned to self pleasure, he confessed to making “carnal use” of fruit, specifically, melons and papaya. According to “GR”, masturbating with tropical fruit was “most satisfactory”.

In the same work, Ellis also details his discussions with Captain Kenneth Searight, a notorious pederast who was also stationed in India. Searight kept a diary listing his sexual liaisons with no less than 129 local boys, describing their ages, appearance and the number of orgasms with each.

Source: Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1903. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.