Newbridge 1868 - view of an English soldier

The garrison town of Newbridge, as seen by a soldier of the King's Hussars when he arrived there from England for the drill season of 1868, was 'chiefly occupied by public houses, and low kinds of music and singing halls, for the special recreation of the military.

There was one hotel, frequented entirely by non-commissioned officers, its chief attraction being a billiard table. A wonderful one it was, the bed being made of wood and the balls of stone. There were no billiard tables in sergeants’ messes in those days, so this one was considered a discovery. But while many of our non coms. enjoyed themselves with the cue, I found a far pleasanter source of amusement fishing in the Liffey. The sport is one of which I am passionately fond, and nothing to interfere with my catching them, except themselves.’

The memoirs of Sgt. Major Male were subsequently recorded by Herbert Compton in A King’s Hussar: Memoirs of Troop Sgt. Major Male (London 1893); including a few pages on Male’s short stay in this country. Within an hour of the steamer docking in Dublin in May 1868, the Hussars “were ashore, saddled, mounted and ready for the long march of twenty-five Irish miles to Newbridge. This was the station where the regiment had been re-mounted after its return from India, and I had heard a good deal about it from old hands.”

The barracks, they found, “occupied an enormous extent of ground, in fact, the whole side of the principal street of the town, and were surrounded by a high stone wall, loop holed for defence, and with a strong tower at each corner. Two sides of the barracks were flanked by the river Liffey, on the third side was the main street of Newbridge, on the fourth and open space of waste land, colonised by a number of unfortunate women, who were tolerated by the authorities, and lived in thatched straw huts known as ‘wrens’ nests.”

The prostitutes were at that time being much discussed as a pamphlet had just been published entitled The Wren of The Curragh by London journalist who had heard “mysterious little stories which were wafted to England, hints and glimpses of a certain colony of poor wretches there as nobody else in the tree kingdom lived, and died like most people who do come within the bills of morality, tramps and others, when they happened to perish of cold, want, and whiskey upon the vast common.”

The newly arrived Hussars were soon introduced to the Curragh “a beautiful and broad expanse of the loveliest turf that horses’ hooves ever pressed. No matter whether it rained in torrents overnight, the next morning regiments of calvary and batteries of artillery might manoeuvre or gallop over it without leaving mark, the turf being short and elastic from the nibbling of thousands of sheep. Along the centre of the extensive stretch of down, and running from east to west, was a line of infantry huts, and in the summer a large contingent of cavalry was encamped under canvas at a place called Donnelly’s Hollow”.

Recalling many fine field days on the plain, there was one involving five regiments of cavalry, double that number of infantry and about forty field guns, which Male “would never forget”. It occurred when two small bodies of cavalry approached each other through the excitement of the men and their horses, or though the impetus of their gallop, instead of wheeling so as to come into the line they rode ‘bash’ into one another, almost front to front at the point of contact ... for a moment it seemed like a regular battlefield, many of the horses being bowled over, and others with empty saddles, dashing madly about. As far as I myself was concerned, the feeling I had when I saw a smash inevitable was “look out for Phil Garlic” (a well known military mind yourself expression), and warding off a thrust from a gallant Lancer, he received a whack from my sword, and the next moment I came full tile against one of his comrades, and we both rolled on the turf. This untoward business occurred through the men being allowed to go too fast, and getting out of hand and was the fault of the officers. The general and all the infantry, who had crested the ridge, were looking at us, as well as thousands of spectators, and the former came down with his staff, and when he arrived within shouting distance of our officers, it was about the only time in my life that I felt no ambition to be a captain.”

At the end of the season the Hussars proceeded to Dublin, and were quartered in the Royal Barracks.

Courtesy of the Leinster Leader 12 July 2004