A Most Rascally Corps? Duelling and Disorder in the 55th Foot

I was recently asked to write a short article about the 55th Regiment of Foot for The Lion & the Dragon, the magazine of Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life. Located in Carlisle Castle in northern England, this excellent regimental museum interprets the history of the 55th Foot and other regiments of the British Army from the 18th century to the present day. My article, which appears on page 7 of the Spring 2026 issue and is reproduced below, chronicles colourful episodes of officer misconduct during the Napoleonic Wars. The piece is more descriptive than analytical, but I hope it provides revealing insight into the interpersonal problems that could arise during spells of otherwise uneventful garrison duty.

Harbour Street, Kingston, Jamaica, in the early 1820s (ASK Brown Collection)

The 55th Regiment cannot boast of an especially glorious or action-packed record during the Napoleonic Wars, but courts-martial documents preserved in The National Archives reveal that its officers had ample opportunity to pick fights with each other.

While on garrison duty in Jamaica in 1808, Captain Hamilton Clune was shunned by his mess‑mates for suggesting that Ensign Davis’s wife had loose morals. Although Clune requested a court of enquiry to clear his name, officers of the regiment pressed the principals to resolve their quarrel in a manner ‘totally different from that of a public investigation’, especially after Davis boasted of calling Clune a scoundrel. Lieutenant‑Colonel Douglass extracted promises from both men to avoid a duel, but once he departed for England the pledges were widely regarded as void. Even the regiment’s second‑in‑command, Major Heyliger, tacitly endorsed an exchange of pistol shots, noting that other officers were ‘in hopes’ the pair would ‘settle their dispute as gentlemen commonly do, and give the regiment no further trouble.’

Douglass was obliged to intervene in another affair of honour several years later. Denouncing an 1811 duel in which Lieutenant Blake wounded Lieutenant Adams, he insisted that ‘the world does not contain a more detestable character than that of a professed duellist.’ While Douglass refrained from pressing charges, he extracted written undertakings from the participants to refrain from such quarrels in future. Blake’s declaration would later be used against him when he was court‑martialled and cashiered in 1814 for caning Captain Clune in the streets of Windsor and telling him to ‘kiss my arse’ after parade.

In the 55th Foot, as in other regiments, officers met collectively to deliberate on the misbehaviour of their peers without recourse to potentially career-ending courts-martial. In 1808, for example, the captains of the corps recommended ostracizing both Clune and Davis for slanderous language. Clune rejected this judgment, accusing his comrades of arrogating judicial authority, only to later demand that Lieutenant Blake be shunned for calling the 55th ‘a most rascally corps.’

Clune was known for his ‘unhappy temper’, and Richard Blake was clearly an impetuous rogue, but the pair were by no means the only troublesome officers in the regiment. In 1806, for example, the 55th’s paymaster was court‑martialled and cashiered for ‘highly unbecoming conduct’ after exchanging blows with a lieutenant in a Jamaican mess room; his social disgrace was compounded by the fact that a private soldier had been forced to separate the brawling duo. Another subaltern, Alexander Proudfoot, was expelled from the mess for failing to pay his bills and prosecuted on a variety of charges in 1808. Proudfoot contrived to relocate his lodgings to the room beneath his court-martial so he could eavesdrop on the supposedly confidential sentencing proceedings through the floorboards.

Such antics may amuse us today, but they caused no little consternation at the time. Military men fretted about declining standards and the erosion of social exclusivity, complaining that incessant wartime demand for manpower made it all too easy for uncouth candidates to secure commissions. Major‑General Hugh Carmichael, for example, noted the extreme youth of many officers in the 55th Foot and blamed the frequency of courts‑martial in Jamaica on an influx of ‘persons…insensible to those feelings that should actuate British officers and gentlemen’. Captain Clune put matters more bluntly when casting aspersions on Mrs Davis, allegedly asserting that even ‘highwaymen might get commissions’ in return for marrying ‘the cast-off mistresses’ of influential philanderers.

An officer of the 55th Foot in 1790 (ASK Brown Collection)

New Article: From Amputee to Author

Edward Bird, The Old Soldier’s Story, 1808 (Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

My research on Shadrack Byfield – an English War of 1812 veteran who buried his own severed arm, designed a custom prosthesis, and went on to write multiple memoirs – has recently been published in the Journal of British Studies. The article, “From Amputee to Author”, is freely available on the JBS website. This publication marks the culmination of a decade of intermittent detective work into the colourful life of a remarkable and very strong-willed man, and uses Byfield’s experiences as a means of thinking more broadly about the history of disability, veterans, and military autobiography.

It has been gratifying to see Byfield’s story resonate beyond academic circles. The University of Cambridge, where I was based when I completed the article, shared a news bulletin summarizing my findings. In the days leading up to the article’s release, my research was featured in Popular Science, Ars Technica, and the French-language publication Sciences et Avenir, as well as in several national and regional newspapers in Britain.

Article abstract
The memoir of Shadrack Byfield, an English weaver and war amputee, occupies a privileged place in the historiography and public memory of the Anglo‑American War of 1812. Yet relatively little is known about the author of this rare rank-and-file account. Drawing on extensive archival research and a newly discovered second autobiography, this article challenges the familiar image of Byfield as a plainspoken exemplar of military stoicism. It reveals how war in North America transformed the former private soldier both physically and psychologically. Examining Byfield’s return to civilian life, the article highlights his tenacious pursuit of veterans’ benefits, his cultivation of influential patrons, and his invention of a prosthetic device to enable a resumption of weaving work. It also traces the ex‑serviceman’s path to publication and explores his shifting self‑presentation in print—first as a dutiful soldier and later as a redeemed sinner. Integrating scholarship on disability, memoirs, military welfare, and the history of emotions, the article argues that Byfield’s exceptionally well‑documented life offers a window into the wider experiences of Britain’s homecoming soldiers after the Napoleonic Wars.

Click here to read more.

Article about Byfield in The Daily Express (UK), 15 January 2026

Winning and Losing in North America, 1775-1783

Ever wonder why the British lost the American Revolutionary War? And how the United States managed to win its independence? The triumph of a colonial insurgency over a mighty European empire is understandably seen as an astonishing upset. Yet re-imposing royal authority over the rebellious colonies was perhaps always going to be a tall order, given the vast distances involved. Was former prime minister Lord Chatham correct to assess, as he did in 1777, that Britain had committed itself to an unwinnable war?

I convened an international panel of experts to ponder these questions as part of the UK National Army Museum’s commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the American War of Independence. My enlightening discussion with Friederike Baer, Kevin Weddle and Mark Urban, which was recorded earlier this year, goes live on Sunday, 19 October.

New job at Memorial University in Newfoundland

I’ve recently relocated from Cambridge, England, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to start a new role as the Ewart A. Pratt Fellow in Military, Naval, and Maritime History at Memorial University. It is wonderful to be back in Canada after many years abroad, and I’m eager to explore this beautiful part of the country.

During my two-year tenure, I will be researching duelling, honour, and courts-martial among British Army officers during the era of the Napoleonic Wars. The project seeks to get at the heart of what it meant to be an officer and a gentleman at the time, and I’m really looking forward to digging into the archives.

To mark the move, I wanted to share something that connects directly to both the place and the period: a watercolour of St. John’s painted around 1796 by a Royal Artillery officer named George Bulteel Fisher. This beguiling view from Fort Townshend also depicts an artilleryman and a soldier of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Currently housed in the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University, the artwork was the subject of an informative 2022 article by the late historian René Chartrand.

I also look forward to teaching students at Memorial; I’m set to run a third-year course on the history of the British Empire in Winter 2026.

Upcoming talk at the National Army Museum

I look forward to delivering a lunchtime talk tomorrow at the National Army Museum in London, England (12 noon). The lecture will explore the life of Shadrack Byfield, a War of 1812 veteran who lost an arm, wrote multiple memoirs, and designed his own prosthesis.

Please visit the museum’s website to register to attend either in person or online. A recording of the talk will be also made available afterwards on the museum’s YouTube channel.

‘Chelsea Pensioners’. Aquatint by J.C. Stadler after Charles Hamilton Smith, 1812. NAM 1950-11-33-48.

Talk Synopsis

Join Dr Eamonn O’Keeffe as he explores the War of 1812 through the eyewitness account of a disabled British veteran of the conflict.

The military memoirs of Shadrack Byfield, a Wiltshire weaver and war amputee, have long enjoyed a prominent place in the story of the Anglo-American War of 1812. As one of the few eyewitness accounts of the conflict from a rank-and-file British soldier, his autobiography has been widely quoted in books, documentaries and museum displays. Yet very little is known about the man behind the memoir.

Drawing on original research, including a newly discovered second autobiography, this talk investigates Byfield’s efforts to navigate civilian life, secure veterans’ benefits and publish accounts of his experiences. It chronicles the ex-soldier’s invention of a prosthesis to enable a return to work and analyses his shifting and sometimes contradictory self-presentation in print.

O’Keeffe uses Byfield’s lively and often moving story as a case study through which to explore the broader experiences of British veterans returning home after the Napoleonic Wars.

American Revolution, Global War

In recent months, I have had the pleasure of collaborating with the UK National Army Museum on a range of public programming focused on the American War of Independence (1775–1783). Besides hosting roundtable discussions and planning weekly talks to mark the conflict’s 250th anniversary, I presented a series of short films exploring contrasting and often unfamiliar perspectives on this transformative event.

These concise videos aim to synthesize the latest historical research on the American Revolution for a broad audience while also highlighting the range of the National Army Museum’s collections. The first instalment explores the origins of the breach between Britain and the nascent United States. Subsequent videos explain how a colonial rebellion morphed into a worldwide conflict and highlight some of the myriad ways the war impacted life in Britain and Ireland.

🎥 Watch the full series on YouTube:

Visit the National Army Museum’s YouTube channel to discover further recordings of recent expert talks on the American Revolutionary War, including analyses of the Saratoga campaign, British strategy and tactics, Patriot political mobilization, and mutinies in the Continental Army.

Was the American War of Independence a civil war?

This Easter weekend marked the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord – the opening engagements of the American War of Independence. I recently had the pleasure of convening a roundtable discussion at the National Army Museum to commemorate the occasion. Over the course of a ninety-minute conversation, Professor David Armitage, Dr Megan King, and Professor Steve Pincus offered wide-ranging insight into the debates over rights, allegiance, and imperial governance that set the stage for the American Revolution.

A recording of this thought-provoking anniversary event is now available on the National Army Museum’s YouTube channel.

From the Deep South to Southampton

Over the past week and a half, I had the opportunity of presenting at two major conferences: the Society for Military History annual meeting in Mobile, Alabama, and the Wellington Congress in Southampton, England. The itinerary, which was scheduled many months ago, was intense and rather exhausting. Nonetheless, I greatly enjoyed reconnecting with longtime friends and meeting an impressive array of researchers and scholars.

Between conferences, I took some time to explore the rich culture and cuisine of the Gulf Coast. Highlights included touring the massive battleship USS Alabama and exploring the French Quarter and National WWII Museum in New Orleans. I also made my way to the Chalmette battlefield, the site of a disastrous British assault on Andrew Jackson’s lines at the close of the War of 1812.

‘We never saw him again’: Remembering a Scottish Highland Soldier

Plate from Percy Groves, *History of the 91st Princess Louise’s Argyllshire Highlanders* (1894)

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars exacted an awful human toll. As one British publication asserted thirteen years after Waterloo: ‘There are few families in the land who have not one or more relatives sleeping in a soldier’s grave’.

While the letters of officers and their families provide voluminous documentation of the pain of separation and bereavement, accessing the experiences of rank-and-file soldiers and their kin is altogether more difficult. The autobiography of John MacKinnon, a clerk and weaver who grew up in wartime Glasgow, provides a moving description of the last time he saw his uncle, James Moodie, an unmarried grenadier in the 91st Highland Regiment, in 1806 or 1807. Moodie had enlisted in the army, much to the disappointment of his mother, after an unsatisfactory stint as an apprentice stocking weaver. Continuing to make hose as a regimental tradesman, he survived the gruelling retreat to Corunna in 1809 but died of illness during the disastrous Walcheren expedition later that year.

MacKinnon’s account underscores the length of time servicemen spent apart from their families, but also hints at the importance of the exchange of letters for maintaining connections with home. Moodie’s attempt to test whether his sister, John MacKinnon’s mother, would recognize him after a dozen years’ separation echoes similar tricks recounted by veteran soldiers in their memoirs. It is also fascinating to learn that the soldier’s arrears of pay were later used to purchase a mourning ring. Born in 1802, MacKinnon would have been very young at the time of Moodie’s furlough; his recollections likely reflect family stories repeated after the grenadier’s death as much as the first-hand memories of a four or five-year-old boy.

[A]n uncle of mine, James Moodie, a soldier in the Grenadier Company of the 91st Regiment, got a furlough, and came to see us. My parents had not mentioned the change of residence in their letters, and he came to the house in Cheapside [Street, Glasgow]; one of the neighbours called me from among the children, and told me to take the soldier home to my father’s. The 91st at that time wore the kilt, and my uncle was a tall good looking man, but I did not at the time know that he was any relation to me; he took me by the hand, and I led him away round to the house. He thought that my mother would not know him, as she had not seen him for twelve years, and he meant to pass himself off for an acquaintance of her brother from the regiment; but as soon as he entered, and took off his bonnet, she knew him, and seized him by the hand. He had been seen by Young’s people going up the street leading me by the hand, and he being tall, his bonnet and feathers were seen over the kirkyard wall going down towards the house. James Young’s father immediately came round to see who it was, and during the time that his furlough lasted, they made his stay as pleasant as possible.

We never saw him again. He had enlisted in the Argyleshire Regiment [later renumbered as the 91st] in 1794, and was through all the campaigns till 1809. He got his furlough in 1807. He was with the army during the retreat to Corunna, and wrote an account of the retreat in a series of letters after the regiment returned to Britain. His regiment was sent out to Walcheren in Holland in 1809; he was attacked with fever & ague, but got better, he went to his duty too soon, had a relapse and died there; a great portion of the Army died in that unwholesome place. There was a guinea of arrears due to him when he died, and it was sent home. Half a guinea was sent to my aunt in Lanark, and my father put as much to the other half guinea, as bought a fine gold ring to [sic] my mother, with my uncle’s name engraved on it.

MacKinnon provides further information on Moodie’s visit in another handwritten account, entitled ‘My Schools and School Masters: or The Story of My Education’. This version contains a fuller description of the soldier’s warm welcome in Glasgow, his emotional final parting with MacKinnon’s mother, and a less enjoyable sojourn with his other sister in Lanark.

Towards the end of that year [1806], we had a visit from my uncle James Moodie. The 91st Regiment had returned to Britain, and when furloughs were being granted to the men, it came to his turn, and he thought he would go north, and see how his sisters were. [Moodie’s parents had both died by this time.]

He knew that my mother was married, and he had heard of my father from some of the Fencible men who had entered the 91st Regiment after the Fencibles were broke [i.e. disbanded]. My parents had not mentioned to my uncle their removal from Cheapside to Piccadilly Street [in Glasgow], lest he might think the one place distant from the other, whereas they were next streets to each other, and the post man knew our new residence and brought the letters quite regularly. When my uncle came to Cheapside Street… he was informed that my parents had removed to the next street, but as I happened at the time to be in Cheapside Street engaged with my former play fellows, I was called forward, and told to take the soldier round to my father’s. I got hold of the soldier’s hand, and took him round to my father’s. He wanted to pass himself off as a soldier of the regiment who had called at her brother’s request, but he had not spoken many words when my mother recognised him, and seized his hand, exclaiming “You are Jamie Moodie my brother.” They had not seen each other for twelve years. My father was sent for, and he gave him a hearty welcome, and we were all delighted that Uncle James had come. When it became known that a brother of my mother’s had come home on furlough from the army, the neighbours and our acquaintances were all anxious to see him and hear of his adventures during the twelve years that he had been a soldier. My uncle was treated with the greatest kindness during the time that he stopt with us, not only by ourselves, but by our acquaintances. He was shewn [sic] every place about the town that was thought worth seeing, and on all these occasions he was not allowed to be at any expense, so as that he might reserve the pay that he had to carry him back to the regiment. My uncle was well liked in the regiment, for he was of an open, frank disposition.

He passed the most time of his furlough with us, and as the town of Lanark lay between Glasgow and the place where the regiment lay, he went to pass the remainder of the time with my aunt, as he would be so far on the way. Before leaving he made one request of my mother, and that was that if she had another son, she would call him by his name; this was promised at once.

When he went away, my parents accompanied him to the end of Glasgow Green, and they bade each other farewell. He had only gone a few steps, when he came back, and took mother’s hand, and kissed her, saying perhaps they might never again see each other, and then parted.

They never met again; he died of fever and ague at Walcheren in Holland.

During his stay in Lanark, my aunt’s husband John Watson died, and she was left a widow with one son about my own age. He had not the same pleasure in Lanark as he had with us: my aunt’s disagreeable temper caused words between them, and my uncle wrote to us after he had rejoined the regiment, regretting that he had left us to go to Lanark.

Source: Glasgow City Archives, TD743, John MacKinnon papers, autobiography, pp. 10-11, 26, and ‘My Schools and School Masters: or The Story of My Education’, pp. 8-10, 27-30.

Instrument of War: book talk with historian David Suisman

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hosting an online talk by David Suisman, associate professor of history at the University of Delaware and author of Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

As someone with a research interest in military music myself, I found Instrument of War to be a fascinating, deeply researched, and remarkably empathetic book. Suisman explores the role of music in the lives of American soldiers from the Civil War of the 1860s to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. He lays bare the US military’s intense and longstanding interest in music, but also shows how performing and listening habits have evolved over time, from the rise of radio to the era of the iPod. We learn about extensive official efforts to sponsor musical activity, from funding military bands to shipping song books, live performers, and olive-green pianos to war zones. The book casts music as a top-down tool used to manage soldiers’ behaviour and emotions but also remains admirably attuned to the actual preferences and priorities of enlisted men. Music, it turns out, has much to tell us about the character of the US military and its social and political context, from questions of discipline and morale to race, imperialism and much else besides.

A recording of Professor Suisman’s engaging and enlightening talk is now available on the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics YouTube channel. The book is available from the publisher here.