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Fighting for Wellington

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Fighting for Wellington Fighting for Wellington The extraordinary life of Thomas Bradshaw 1783 - 1856 Max Carrick 2013 Frontispiece: "14th Light Dragoons Engaged with French Hussars. About 1813." by Denis Dighton (1791-1827), Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. *************************************************************************** In researching my family history over the past twenty years, I have come across many stories involving hardship, shame, resourcefulness and luck but the story of Thomas Bradshaw, my GGG Grandfather has captured my imagination. Thomas must have been a daring and successful cavalryman escaping death and major injury over the course of eighteen and a half years in the British Army. But in a way, his story only starts there; he married twice and after his first wife died, travelled with second wife and children on the long and perilous journey to the end of the earth, literally, by travelling from the north of England to Van Diemen's Land at the bottom of the world. Thomas made a fascinating life for himself and I wish I could have met him and talked to him about all of his adventures. In April/May 2013, my wife Karen and I visited Spain and Portugal and we were able to visit many of the places where Thomas and his regiment had been. Re-enactors engage in a mounted cavalry charge, in the uniform of the 14th Light Dragoons Regiment of the British Army, c1812. © Max Carrick 2013, 2014 Page | 2 INDEX Chapter 1 Manchester 4 Chapter 2 Joining the Army 7 Chapter 3 The Peninsula War 18 Chapter 4 The War of 1812 51 Chapter 5 With the Army in Ireland 54 Chapter 6 Leaving the Army 59 Chapter 7 The Regiment today 61 Chapter 8 A civilian again 64 Chapter 9 To Van Diemen's Land 67 Chapter 10 Jonathan Whiting 75 Chapter 11 To Sydney Town 84 Chapter 12 The end of the long road 93 Addendum That Medal 95 References 102 Page | 3 MANCHESTER Thomas Bradshaw was born early in 1783 in the township of Eccles, Lancashire now part of the City of Greater Manchester. He was christened on 2 March 1783 1 in the same town. His parents are recorded as George Bradshaw and Alice, nee Lingard both aged 26 and both of the Parish of St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, Eccles in which they were married on 26 October 1779 2. 4 George and Alice had five children; Margaret born 1780, then Thomas 1783, the next being James baptised at the same church on 26 February 1786 3, Alice in 1794 and Ann in 1802. All christenings are recorded in the Church of Latter Day Saints FamilySearch website. It is clear that Bradshaw is a very common name in this area and the church's website indicates that in 1800 a James Bradshaw made a bequest of £8-8-0 (Eight pounds, eight shillings or eight guineas) per annum for upkeep of the church. The church records have many recordings of this name.4 After what was probably some rudimentary schooling, Thomas trained as a weaver, an occupation that was common in Manchester and which was the occupation of his father, as shown in Thomas' baptism record. Manchester in the late 1700s was a major world centre for the cotton spinning trade, an outcome of the Industrial Revolution. Page | 4 Britain had been importing raw cotton from her colonies in the American south and the West Indies since the 16th century but it really became an enormous industry in the 18th century. Three main centres were spinning the cotton yarn; the Clyde Valley in Scotland, around Nottingham in the Midlands and around the great city of Manchester. By 1790 the vast quantity of imported raw cotton totalled over 31 million pounds weight. Even now, over two hundred years later, cotton linen for bedclothes and tableware is known as "Manchester". With this progress, cotton cloth became a major export earner for Britain and in the early 19th century it represented over 4% of the British National Income. The ever increasing use of mechanisation, particularly stationary steam engines, meant however that there was a reduction in the hand weaving of cloth which had supported so many weavers up until the late 1790s. At that time it is estimated there had been over 100,000 hand loom weavers in Britain and many of these lived and worked in Manchester. As recorded on the website of the Cotton Times, 5: "Handloom weavers were the high-rollers of the textile industry in the final decade of the 18th century. While spinning was now a mechanised operation, making thread cheaper and more plentiful, no-one had yet come up with a satisfactory power loom - so there was a production bottleneck which the weavers were happy to exploit. A Bolton handloom weaver could earn a princely £1- 10-0 a week in the mid 1790s. But this very fact - and the invention and development of the power loom - sowed the seeds of the trade's destruction. Good pay and an increasing demand for cloth brought workers, particularly Irish immigrants, flooding in to the relatively easily-learned handloom weaving trade. So even before power looms made any real impact, wages had begun to fall as a result of an imbalance of supply over demand. There were just too many people chasing what was seen as easy money. By 1807, because of Britain's war with France, trade was in deep recession and manufacturers were taking advantage of the situation by putting out work to handloom weavers at breadline prices. They then stockpiled the completed pieces so they could cash in at higher rates when better times returned. For the cottage weaver, it was the first real hint of the troubles ahead. Things were no better for those who had opted for factory employment on the new, steam- powered looms. In May, 1808, the Weavers' Minimum Wage Bill was rejected by the House of Commons. Five days later, 6,000 weavers gathered on St George's Fields in Manchester to protest and call for a 33 per cent wage increase - the average pay for an 84-hour week was now down to about 8 shillings (40p). Page | 5 The protestors were dispersed by dragoons but the following day, 15,000 gathered in the same spot and one man was killed when the dragoons opened fire. The soldiers later apologised and took up a collection for the man's family. " "A handloom weaver at work. The picking stick in his right hand operates Kay's flying shuttle" 5 The involvement of army dragoons (mounted cavalry) in suppressing the weavers' protest was a common practice of the times as there were no formal police forces - the Metropolitan Police was not formed until 1829. It is also eerily coincidental with Thomas Bradshaw's actions in 1803. It appears likely that Thomas or his father could see the writing on the wall for their trade and as the prospect of retraining in another skill was highly unlikely, Thomas decided on a different course of action altogether. §§§§§§§§§§§§ Page | 6 JOINING THE ARMY In May 1803 at the age of 20, Thomas Bradshaw travelled to Kingston 1 in Lancaster County, which is probably the site of the then existing cavalry barracks at what is now Barracks Park just on the outskirts of Manchester City proper. Travelling just a short way down the road from his home in Eccles, Thomas applied for enlistment in the 14th (Duchess of York's Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons in the British Army which was one of the cavalry units based there. He was accepted for "Unlimited Service" on 11th May. 2 His height is recorded as 5' 8¼", hair brown, and eyes blue. "Private, 14th Dragoons" by David Morier, c1751-61 probably painted for William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. RCIN 401506 The Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II It is difficult for us now to imagine how it was that Thomas, who had probably never before ridden a horse in his urban, working life, applied to join a horse regiment in the Army. It may have been just a coincidence that the Dragoons were recruiting in the area when Thomas was looking for a way out of his fading career or perhaps the look of the sabre-wielding mounted soldiers was just too attractive. Either way, Thomas was joining a Regiment of distinction and more glory was to come. Page | 7 Map from The Probert Encyclopaedia - http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/ The 14th Light Dragoons was formed in 1715 by Brigadier-General James Dormer and recruited mainly in the south of Britain. 3 The General appointed six Captains, six Lieutenants, six Cornets (today usually a Sub-Lieutenant) and typically six hundred other ranks, including sergeants, corporals, trumpeters and privates. There were generally eight troops of cavalry in the Regiment. From the book "Historical Record of the Fourteenth, or The King's, Regiment of Light Dragoons" 3 is this passage concerning the 14th's immediate deployment to action after formation, a time when supporters of the Catholic King James VIII of Scotland (Jacobites) were trying to wrest the throne of England from King George the First: "His Majesty's protestant subjects arrayed themselves under the royal standard with great cheerfulness, but before the regiment was complete in men and horses, the arrangements of the Jacobites were in such a state of forwardness, that the Pretender's standard was raised in Scotland by the Earl of Mar, who was at the head of ten thousand men. A body of rebels having penetrated into Lancashire, Dormer's dragoons were among the corps directed to advance, under Major-General Wills, and fight the insurgent bands." The 14th was involved in gallant actions in and around the County town of Lancaster and accepted the surrender of the rebels and saw them locked up in Lancaster Gaol.
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