Born: 23 April 1723, United Kingdom
Died: 8 February 1792
Country most active: United Kingdom, International
Also known as: James Gray, Hannah Summs, Hannah Eyles, Hannah Habgood
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Englishwoman Hannah Snell assumed the identity of her brother-in-law, James Gray, after her child died and her husband deserted her. For four years, she served in the British Royal Marines. In 1748, she fought in the Siege of Pondicherry where the British attempted to seize a French colony in India. Hannah was wounded several times during her naval service, including suffering a musket shot to the groin. She purportedly operated on herself to remove the musket ball to ensure her gender remained concealed. In 1750, she revealed her true identity to her shipmates and she was granted an honorable discharge and even a military pension. Snell later sold her story to a London publisher and eventually opened a pub in London named “The Female Warrior.”
The following is excerpted from “Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in 1879 and shared online by Project Gutenberg.
Hannah Snell, another British heroine, was born in Fryer-street, Winchester, on the 23rd of April, 1723. Military predilections ran in the family; her grandfather served under King William and the Duke of Marlborough, and was slain in the battle of Malplaquet. Her father, however, was a simple dyer and hosier. Hannah was the youngest but one of a family of three sons and six daughters.
On the death of her father and mother in 1740, Hannah came to London, and lived for some time in Ship-street, Wapping, in the house of one of her sisters, Mrs. Gray, whose husband was a carpenter. She had not resided in the house very long before she became acquainted with James Summs, a Dutch sailor, whom she married, Jan. 6th, 1743, after a courtship of about two years. Her marriage was not a happy one. After squandering the little property belonging to his wife, spending it in the lowest debauchery, James became heavily involved in debt, and deserted her altogether. Hannah, left without the means of support, was obliged to return to the house of her sister, where, two months after, her child, a girl, was born.
Notwithstanding his vile conduct, Mrs. Summs still dearly loved her husband; and on the death of her child, she resolved to set out in search of the truant. Dressing herself in a suit of clothes belonging to her brother-in-law, which, together with his name, she borrowed, Hannah left London, Nov. 23rd, 1743, and reached Coventry without hearing any news of her missing husband. On the 27th of the same month she enlisted, under the name of James Gray, in General Guise’s regiment of Foot (the 6th, or Royal First Warwickshire). After remaining about three weeks in the town, during which she made numberless inquiries about James Summs, Hannah was sent with seventeen comrades to join her regiment at Carlisle.
She was soon very proficient in the drill; but at the same time she had the misfortune to incur the enmity of Davis, a sergeant in her company, who wished to employ the new recruit in a somewhat dishonourable affair with a girl who lived in Carlisle. Hannah, however, disclosed the real intentions of the sergeant to the intended victim, and gained the love of the girl, while she made a bitter enemy of Davis. The latter, from seeing Hannah and the other very frequently together, grew terribly jealous; he seized the first opportunity to charge his supposed rival with neglect of duty. Hannah was sentenced to receive six hundred lashes. After five hundred had been administered, the officers interceded, and obtained for her the remission of the other hundred.
The tyranny of Davis soon became unbearable; and, to make matters worse, a carpenter from Worcester, who had lodged in the house of Hannah’s brother-in-law, enlisted in the regiment, and she was in constant terror lest he should recognise and betray her. To get away without the discovery of her sex was now the great object of her thoughts. She borrowed a small sum of money from the girl in Carlisle, deserted, and set off on foot for Portsmouth. About a mile from Carlisle she saw several men and women picking peas; their clothes lay about, at a short distance, and Hannah very speedily exchanged her soldier’s coat for an old jacket.
At Liverpool she entered a small public-house; and, by affecting to make love to the landlady, made the landlord so jealous that a match of “fisticuffs” ensued. Boniface, however, got the worst of it, and was compelled to keep his bed all next day. Hannah borrowed some money of the landlady, and made the best of her way to Chester, where she took genteel lodgings in a private house.
It chanced that a pretty young mantua-maker lodged in the same house. Hannah contrived to make the acquaintance of the girl, and speedily won her heart, together with five guineas. The handsome young suitor levanted to Winchester, where, in an attempt on the heart of a widow, she met her match. She speedily quitted the town, with only a few shillings in her pocket.
In about a month from the day she left Carlisle, Hannah reached Portsmouth, where she enlisted in Colonel Fraser’s Regiment of Marines. With others of her regiment, she embarked, three weeks later, for the East Indies. The “Swallow” formed part of Admiral Boscawen’s fleet. Hannah soon earned the praises of the officers for her dexterity in washing, mending, and cooking. Mr. Wyegate, Lieutenant of Marines, was so greatly interested in the young private, that he invited her to become one at the officers’ mess.
The “Swallow” suffered from some terrible storms, which destroyed almost all her rigging, and reduced the vessel almost to the condition of a wreck. It was refitted at Gibraltar; proceeding thence by the Cape of Good Hope to the Mauritius, which Admiral Boscawen unsuccessfully attacked. Thence the fleet sailed to Fort St. David on the Coromandel coast; where the marines being disbanded, joined the British force encamped before Areacoping. The place surrendered after a siege of ten days. During the siege Hannah displayed so much courage that she received the commendations of all her officers.
The British next laid siege to Pondicherry; but after suffering terrible hardships, they were forced by the rainy season to raise the siege in eleven weeks. Hannah was one of the first body of British soldiers who forded the river, breast high, under an incessant fire from the French batteries. She was also for seven nights successively on duty in the picket-ground, and worked exceedingly hard for upwards of fourteen days in the trenches.
She was dangerously wounded in one of the attacks. During this action she fired thirty-seven rounds, and received in return six shots in her right leg, five in the left leg, and a dangerous wound in the abdomen; the last-named being excessively painful. She was terrified lest these wounds would lead to the discovery of her sex; so in place of letting the army-surgeons dress all her wounds, she kept silence about the most dangerous of them, though it was at the risk of her life. Entrusting the secret to no one but a black woman who waited on her, Hannah extracted the bullet with her finger and thumb; the negress obtained lint, salve, and other necessaries for dressing, and the wound was soon perfectly cured.
Hannah was removed for the cure of her other wounds to the hospital at Cuddalore; and before her recovery, the greater part of the fleet had sailed. She was sent on board the “Tartar Pink,” and performed all the regular duties of a sailor, till the return of the fleet from Madras, when she was turned over to the “Eltham” man-of-war. On board this ship she sailed to Bombay. The vessel sprang a leak, and they were obliged to stop here five weeks to repair.
One night the Lieutenant of the “Eltham,” who commanded in the absence of Captain Lloyd, wishing to pass the time agreeably, asked Hannah for a song. She declined, on the plea of being unwell; but the officer would take no denial. Hannah became obstinate, but soon she had cause to regret her folly. Shortly after, she was accused of stealing a shirt belonging to one of her comrades. The Lieutenant, having a grudge against Hannah, ordered her to be put in irons; and after five days’ confinement, ordered her to the gangway, where she received five lashes. The shirt was afterwards found in the box of the very man who had complained of losing it.
Returning to Fort St. David, the “Eltham” rejoined the squadron, which departed soon after on its homeward voyage. Hannah was terribly “chaffed” during the voyage because she had no beard; and she became known among the sailors by the name of Miss Molly Gray. But in place of resenting this, Hannah, to show she was as good a man as any of them, plunged headlong into all the amusements and enjoyments of the others, and they soon forgot the old nickname, for which they substituted that of “Hearty Jemmy.”
One night, in a house of entertainment at Lisbon, she learned, from an English sailor who had been in a Dutch ship at Genoa, that James Summs, her husband, was dead. He had murdered a gentleman of high position in Genoa, and for this crime he was put into a bag full of stones, and flung into the sea.
The British fleet arrived at Spithead in 1750. Hannah left the “Eltham,” and came to London, where she was cordially welcomed by her sister. The strange story of Hannah Snell soon became generally known; and as she had a good voice, the managers of the Royalty Theatre, Wellclose Square, engaged her to appear before the footlights as Bill Bobstay, Firelock, and other military and naval heroes, and to go through the manual and platoon exercises with a musket. But she did not long remain on the stage, as, in consideration of the wounds she received during the siege of Pondicherry, she was put on the out-pensioners’ list at Chelsea Hospital. Her pension was increased by a special grant to twenty pounds a year, and paid regularly to the day of her death. With the assistance of some friends she set up a public-house at Wapping, by which she realized a very good income. On one side of the sign-board there was painted the figure of a jovial British tar, on the other a portrait of herself in her marine’s uniform. Underneath the last was inscribed, “The Widow in Masquerade, or the Female Warrior.”
Hannah preferred masculine attire, and continued to wear men’s clothes for the rest of her life. She lived long to enjoy her prosperity; but during the latter years of her life she became a lunatic, and died, at the age of sixty-nine, in Bedlam.