Napoleonic wars

The following source list was originally available only on paper in one of the West Yorkshire Archive Service offices. It may have been compiled many years ago and could be out of date. It was designed to act as a signpost to records of interest on a particular historical subject, but may relate only to one West Yorkshire district, or be an incomplete list of sources available.

Fisher family, Almondbury, papers WYK1263

This collection contains correspondence and deeds relating to the Fisher family of Almondbury. It covers the period 1719-c1844.

The letters contained in this collection are particularly interesting because they give information about life during the Napoleonic wars (1799-1815), and hint at a family scandal that caused two young men to be sent away from home – one to the army and another to the plantations in Jamaica.

Joseph Fisher was one of seventeen proprietors of Birks Mill, Almondbury. Joseph had 4 sons: James, William, Thomas, and Joseph. Two of these sons, William and Thomas, were sent away from Almondbury by their father after committing an unnamed misdemeanour.

In one letter (2 Aug 1805) Thomas assures his father that:

‘I will promise you I will never do what I have done again ...I wish you would give no hear to what you are told in Almondbury about me and M Scott for I assure you there is nothing in that but what I am willin to drop at your pleasure...for I am willin to drop all acquaintance at that house any time.'

Thomas became a soldier in the 51st Regiment of Foot in 1805 at which time the regiment was in the East Indies. The 51st regiment became a Light Infantry Corps in 1809, and fought in the great battles of the Peninsula War, and the Napoleonic wars including the Battle of Waterloo. The regiment returned to England in January 1816, and in 1821 became the 51st (2nd Yorkshire West Riding) or "The King's Own" Light Infantry.

Thomas Fisher describes his war service in a letter to his father (22 Aug 1810). He comments that:

'I have suffered one of the hardest campaigns [possibly the Corunna Campaign 1809-1810] that any British soldiers before experienced where I may safely say that I was one out of ten that escaped the Hand of Death ...'

Thomas disliked army life and frequently implored his father to discharge him from the army. An undated letter begs his father

‘if you don't get my discharge I am ruined for ever for this state of life I had better be shot imediately that contine it for I am so much imbittered against it that I cannot think of doing my duty in it tho I have done so far...' In another letter Thomas notes (March 1806) 'I think from the letter my Brother has send me you mean me to remain where I am as long as I live...'

However repentant Thomas may have been for the deed that had got him in the army, his behaviour does not appear to have been exemplary from thereon, for in a letter to his brother William asking for his help to get out of the army (5 Jun 1807) he tells him that he has been flogged and that he was tried by a Garrison Court Marshall.

Although like his brother William was repentant of his past deeds he mentions in one of his letters to his father (undated) that there is a 'serious sum of money owing & though it is in my name, yet, not one penny of it my debt, nor will ever be paid by me'. He also adds that if his father won't help him he will be under ' immediate necesity of quiting the Country'.

By 1810 William was in Jamaica, perhaps because of his initial misdemeanour, or perhaps because of his money problems. His letter of 20 July 1810 graphically describes the conditions he is working under as a planter's clerk on a plantation. He also describes the treatment of the negroes and the conditions they work under. He comments that:

'I was sick when I first came here and say [saw] the negroes flogged every day, they are divided into gangs & every gang has two drivers...who stand over them all day with a large whip in their hands, if they loose a moment or give the least offence the Driver calls four negroes & seizes the offender, lays her or he naked on the ground & flogs their backsides...'

The letters in this collection to Joseph from his sons end in 1818, and we do not know what became of Thomas or William. (James died in 1820 on the Isle of Man, Joseph Junior died in 1836 in London from typhus fever.)

On 11 Nov 1810 Thomas wrote to his parents from Steyning Barracks saying that he had heard from his brother William who had arrived safely home again from the West Indies. He again asks his parents to continue to try and obtain his discharge from the army.

In July 1818 Thomas writes from the Royal Military Hospital, Plymouth to his father where he has been for two months 'labouring under a severe fit of sickness my complaint principally originated from wet and cold I endured on our march from Portsmouth.'