MARRIAGE OF SOLDIERS DURING THE VICTORIAN PERIOD
The following information is quoted from Grierson (1899):
"Marriage is allowed to all the staff-sergeants, to 50% of the other sergeants, 4% of the corporals and privates in the cavalry, artillery and engineers, and 3% in the infantry.+ Corporals and men have this concession made them on condition of their having served seven years, and that they have two good conduct badges, and prove that they have 5 Pounds in the savings bank. Married soldiers may receive rations separately, and uncooked, and if the man is engaged on duty away from his family, he is paid 4.d. a day for his wife and 1-1/2d a day for each child."
The following information is quoted from Farwell (1981):**
"A man who married without permission++ had a hard time indeed, for his wife and children were denied quarters of any sort and were given no extra rations; the wife had to work or starve."
Women on the strength had (to use the official language) ‘the privilege of washing for their respective companies.’ They might thereby earn a halfpenny per day per customer. Some worked as cooks or did needlework; the more respectable were selected to be maids or nursemaids in officers’ homes. Until the last half of the Victorian era, they usually lived in the barracks with the men, their home a corner screened off with blankets or canvas sheets. It was a hard life, and many of the women were rough. Certainly they needed to be tough."
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
* GRIERSON, J.M. Scarlet Into Khaki: The British Army on the Eve of the Boer War. Greenhill Books, London, 1988, p. 241.
+ Marriage with the approval of the soldier’s commanding officer is what is referred to as "with leave" in the soldier’s papers.
** FARWELL, B. Mr. Kipling’s Army: All the Queen’s Men. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1981, p.228.