Women of the Regiment

Women of the Regiment

The experience of a 19th-century soldier’s spouse would have been very different to that of a modern day Army wife.

Until the 1850s, women held various unofficial roles in the Army. Wives, cooks, nurses, midwives, seamstresses, laundresses, prostitutes, as well as ‘sutlers’, who traded in food and drink, all lived with and around a regiment and even travelled abroad with it. They played a significant role in caring for the physical and emotional wellbeing of the men.

With the increasing professionalisation of the Army during the second half of the 19th century, however, women found themselves increasingly excluded.

The Victorian Army saw itself as a large family. Officers were encouraged to marry and to settle down; they played a paternal role within the regiment, and their wives an important maternal one.

Marriage for other ranks, however, was positively discouraged; a man’s regiment demanded his loyalty before a wife and child. A Victorian soldier needed permission from his commanding officer to get married, and this was only granted to a small percentage of men in each regiment.

A caricature of soldiers of the 3rd (East Kent - The Buffs) Regiment of Foot on the march with their wives and families, 1811

NAM. 1974-03-6