Mary Anne Talbot
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Mary Anne Talbot
(1778–1808), known as the ‘British Amazon’, the youngest of sixteen illegitimate children of Lord William Talbot, later Earl Talbot, all by the same mother. As a young girl Mary Anne was seduced by a captain in the army and, suitably disguised, she accompanied him, first as a servant and then as a member of his regiment. She was twice wounded, deserted after her lover was killed, and signed on to a French lugger which she subsequently found to be operating as a privateer. After four months the lugger was captured by warships of the British Navy's Channel Fleet commanded by Lord Howe, and Mary Anne was taken aboard the flagship for questioning as a renegade. She convinced Lord Howe of her bona fides and was sent by him to serve aboard one of the fleet's warships, first as a powder monkey and later as the captain's principal cabin boy, and in 1794 took part in the battle of the Glorious First of June in which she was wounded. She then served, according to her own account, as a midshipman in a bomb vessel, but was captured and imprisoned at Dunkirk for sixteen months. On being released, she served as second mate on an American merchant ship but this, too, ended in disaster when, after a voyage to New York and back, she was taken by a press gang. Her only means of escaping their clutches was to reveal her sex, and from then on she seems to have had an even more chequered career: she worked as a goldsmith's assistant before becoming an actress, was in and out of prison for debt, and was even a prostitute on the side. She wrote an account of her adventures which was first published in the second volume of Kirby's Wonderful Museum of Remarkable Characters, and in 1809 was published separately as a pamphlet called The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot.
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Mary Anne Talbot
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Mary Anne Talbot
Mary Anne Talbot (February 2, 1778[1] – February 4, 1808) was an Englishwoman who wore male dress and became a sailor during the Napoleonic wars.
Mary Anne Talbot was born in London. Later she claimed that she was one of the sixteen illegitimate children of Lord William Talbot, Baron of Hensol. Her mother died in childbirth and she spent her childhood in the care of different guardians and boarding schools until she fell in the hands of a man she called Mr. Sucker who was also in charge of her inheritance from her sister.
In 1792 Talbot ended up as a mistress of captain Essex Bowen who enlisted her as his footboy under the name "John Taylor" for a voyage to Santo Domingo. She served as a drummer-boy in the battle for Valenciennes, where captain Bowen was killed. She was also wounded and treated the wound herself. From Bowen's letters Talbot found out that Sucker had squandered what was left of her inheritance. She decided to go on working as a male sailor.
She deserted and became a cabin boy for a French ship. When the British captured the ship she was transferred to the Brunswick where she served as a powder monkey.
Talbot was wounded for the second time in June 1794 during a battle against the French fleet when grapeshot almost severed her leg. She never recovered the full use of it but later rejoined the crew. Later the French captured her and she spent the following 18 months in Dunkirk dungeon. She managed to return to London in 1796.
In 1797 she was seized by a press-gang and was forced to reveal her gender.
She went to the Navy to get the money due to her because of her service and wounds and finally found a sympathetic magistrate. At the same time her leg wound got worse and she continued to wear male clothing. She also visited Mr. Sucker who told her that all her inheritance was lost. Sucker apparently died of heart attack the same day.
Talbot continued to use sailor's clothes, worked in menial jobs and even tried her luck on stage at Drury Lane but eventually was arrested and taken to debtor's prison at Newgate. When she was released she became a household servant for publisher Robert S. Kirby who included her tale in his book Wonderful Museum,[2] and (following her 1808-02-04 death) in The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot (1809).[3]
Talbot's tale aroused some sympathy and even a case of imposture when a woman in a Light Horseman's uniform tried to use a name John Taylor to solicit money in London.
References
- ^ Cordingly, D. (1997). Under the Black Flag- the romance and the reality of life among the pirates. New York: Random House. p. 67. ISBN 0-15-600549-2.
- ^ R. S., Kirby (1804). "The Intrepid Female or Surprising Life and Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot, Otherwise John Taylor". Wonderful and Scientific Museum; Or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters. II. London. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-154-24086-3.
- ^ Talbot, M. A. (May 2006). "The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Ann Talbot, in the Name of John Taylor". In Royster, P.. University of Nebraska - Lincoln. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/32/.
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