October 29, 2025 by judeknight

Courtship in WIP Wednesday

In this excerpt, taken from my novella Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, Maggie is talking about what happened after her sergeant father died, when the officer said she must marry or go back to England

“The soldiers who didn’t have a wife began to bring me presents and ask me to marry them. All except the one I wanted. Corporal Will Parker watched me from afar, and I waited for him, but he didn’t come. Then our officer told me that I had to choose or I had to leave, for half of the bachelors were squabbling over who had my favor, and the other half were writing poetry or picking flowers, and not a single one of them was remembering we were meant to be fighting the French.”

She chuckled, and the ladies giggled with her. “I was still waiting for Corporal Parker, but my time had run out. So, I picked a bunch of wildflowers and took it to him. I told him I was a good cook, an excellent seamstress, a competent laundress and would make him a faithful wife, but he need not count on me for any poetry, for I was a practical soldier’s daughter.”

Her hands stilled as she remembered his shocked expression and how it changed to dawning delight. Half lost in the dream of that day, she finished her story. “He said he had always wanted to marry me, but he never thought he had a chance. We went to find the chaplain, and were married that very day. And we had more than a year together before we were separated. Happy, even if there was a war on, because we were together. I loved him, and he loved me.”

For more, preorder Merry Belles, due for publication on December 20th.

June 19, 2025 by judeknight

Journeying in WIP Wednesday

I’m rewriting Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, a newsletter subscriber short story, into a Christmas tale for the next Bluestocking Belles Christmas collection. Here’s a snippet with Maggie and her children, poor as church mice, trying to make their way through England to find Maggie’s mother-in-law.

Maggie shook her head. Ma and Pa had been all the family she had. Both were orphans and both were gone, Ma of a fever in Portugal four years ago and Pa at Salamanca the following year. She and Will had been courting when Pa died, but he’d not received permission to marry. With Pa’s death, they went ahead without permission.

“If Will’s family don’t want me, at least I’ll know,” she said, more to herself than to the other woman. “I can make a life for myself and the children, but I need to know what happened to their Daddy.”

The baker stood up. “Wait here.” She bustled off along the street and disappeared into another shop. A few minutes later, she came back, smiling. “You and the children will sleep here tonight, Mrs. Parker. You can have my brother’s room.” Her eyes filled with tears, which she blinked away. “He died at Talavera, he did, and I know he’d want me to help a fellow soldier’s wife.”

She gave a decisive nod. “And then, in the morning, the carter will take you on your journey. He is not going far, but he’ll save a days walking, I reckon.”

Maggie accepted, and tried to offer money for bed and board, but the baker said that Will had fought to save England, and the least she could do was help out his little family. The carter said the same. “I was in the Peninsula, ma’am. If I cannot help the family of one of our own, what is the world coming to?”

Furthermore, when their ways parted, he left her with an innkeeper’s son who had been in his company in the army, and the son insisted that his family would be glad to have her and the two little ones to stay for the night.

In the morning, a friend of his drove her north, but he proved to be not quite so charitable, and in the end Maggie had to produce the pistol that her father had given her long ago. It was not loaded, of course. Loaded guns could not be carried in pockets and were, in any case, not safe around children. Maggie judged that the man would not know the difference, and she was right. He unloaded her wheelbarrow and her possessions from his cart, called her some unpleasant names, and went on his way.

And so it went through the following weeks. Maggie and her children found safe refuge some nights and on others slept outside under the stars. Sometimes they were offered lifts and sometimes they walked. Twice more, Maggie had to use her pistol to discourage someone with quite the wrong idea about camp followers.

October 25, 2024 by judeknight

The lady with the wheelbarrow

My next newsletter subscriber story is in part inspired by a true story that I read many years ago. A man emigrated from England to New Zealand, and then sent for his wife and children to join him. However, when his wife arrived in Dunedin, New Zealand, her husband was not there to meet the ship.

The place he had settled was 120 or more miles away, through rough country trails, in Southland. Our intrepid wife was not defeated, however. She purchased a wheelbarrow, loaded her luggage and the younger children into it, and set off.

History records that she joined him on the farm he was carving out of the wilderness, went on to have more children, and lived to a ripe old age, matriarch of a clan of children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

The enduring memory I have of her, though, is of the woman who did not allow a small matter of four (or was it five) children and 120 miles to stop her, but simply looked for a solution and put it into action. They were tough women, those pioneers.

Maggie’s wheelbarrow tells the story not of a pioneer but of another type of woman, equally tough–a soldier’s wife who followed the drum with her husband. When my Maggie arrives in Southhampton with two children and a long way to go, she buys a wheelbarrow. I hope my subscribers enjoy her story as much as I enjoyed the original.

June 2, 2023 by judeknight

Civilians and the army

To our modern minds, it seems strange to think of civilians, including women and children, travelling into combat zones. Yet until the second half of the nineteenth century, civilians were an essential part of how armies worked. Collectively, anyone who followed the army that was not a soldier was called a camp follower. And every army had all kinds of followers.

All non-military supplies came from the commissariat, a civilian service, funded by Treasury. They searched for supplies, found a depot in which to store them, and staffed the depot and those who drove the mule carts that brought supplies in and out. Each local group of soldiers probably had a sutler, either semi-official or unsanctioned.

Sutlers negotiated with locals and sold goods that were not supplied by the commissariat: tobacco, coffee, sugar, and other supplies. A sutler was usually authorised at brigade level, and the role in each brigade often went to the wife of one of the soldiers.

Saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, and farriers might be soldiers (if someone with the right skills could be found) or civilians, but they were all essential to the operation of the army.

So were medical staff. The Army Medical Department employed around one surgeon for every 250 soldiers. Military surgeons were not commissioned into the army, so were technically civilians, but they were on the payroll. They were assisted by soldiers with more or less medical training, gained on the job, and by camp followers, usually wives of soldiers.

Wives and families formed the largest group of camp followers. In England, soldiers’ families lived around the barracks, as military families do today. When the regiment travelled overseas, regulations stated how many wives they’d take with them (one for every six soldiers was common). To be in the ballot, a woman had to be a wife of good reputation. Mostly, women with children were excluded. On long overseas postings, babies arrived anyway, often on the march or even during battles.

Those not selected could seldom afford to follow their menfolk. They stayed in England and survived the best they could, often in a garrison city far from family, lacking work opportunities and not recognised as part of the local parish for poor relief.

Those selected faced hard work and unknown risks, but—though they might not be an official part of the army—they were on the books. Yes, they had to have an officer’s approval to follow the army and they were subject to military discipline, but they received rations (a half ration for a wife and a quarter ration for a child) and they were paid for the work they did.

Wives were not only sutlers and nurses. They were also responsible for many other important jobs that kept the army operating: laundering clothes, cooking food, sewing and mending, watching the baggage, looking after sheep and cattle (food on the hoof), and acting as servants to officers and their families.

And, of course, they provided sexual services to their husbands. The rest of the soldiers in the unit would have to make other arrangements or go without. Wives who followed the army were, as I said before, women of good reputation.

Local women filled the gap, either on a temporary basis, as prostitutes, or longer term as mistresses or even wives. Locally acquired wives and families provided the same wide range of services as those brought overseas with the regiment, but the army didn’t hold itself accountable for paying them or for transporting women and their children to England when the war was over, or when the soldier died, unless the woman could produce proof of a legal marriage, recognised by the Church of England.

As to the marriage of officers, the army discouraged young officers from taking a wife. Not only was it likely to ruin them financially, given the cost of being an officer—commission, uniforms, equipment, subscription, and the officers’ mess. Marriage was thought to disturb the camaraderie of the mess, as it took the officer out of the all-male brotherhood of warriors.

A young officer who married without permission risked ruining his chances of promotion.

That changed as he went up through the ranks. An old rhyme said: