Drink and the recruiting system.

Date:
[1867?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drink and the recruiting system. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1402. And even though you wish it, you cannot be very particular as to the place in which you recruit ?—No; I do not think that you can help that. As the army-purchase system, and the absence of any proper regulation of the army administrative departments, precludes us from appealing to the higher motives and better feelings, by the usual professional inducements, we are obliged to seek our recruits in low public-houses and other haunts of vice, and to keep them in a half-intoxicated state until they can be brought under the articles of war. Of course it is extremely difficult to keep together an army so composed. In 1858 twenty-nine per cent, of the army at home had their names inserted in the Hue and Cry as deserters, or 20,360 men out of 70,000! To prevent the army from disbanding, pro¬ vision was made in the Mutiny Act of 1859 for punishing desertion by flogging, and for marking deserters on the breast with the letter D, “ such letter not to be less than an inch long, and to be marked upon the skin with some ink or gunpowder or other preparation, so as to be visible and conspicuous, and not to be liable to be oblite¬ rated.” Every trained soldier who deserts costs the country at least .£100, and the expense of recovering and punishing deserters amounts to a large annual sum besides ; but the pecuniary loss is hardly deserving of mention compared with the sanction given by this evil official system to what foreigners justly regard as our national vice. The utterly immoral character of the system will be apparent to anybody who will take the trouble to read the evidence published with the reports of the Eoyal Commissions of 1860 and 1866 on the recruiting of the army, or even to cast his eye over the index; but some idea of it may be obtained from the following statement ab¬ stracted from that evidence. The recruiting of the army is conducted entirely in public-houses, to which the recruits are inveigled by a class of persons called “ bringers,” who are crimps of the very worst character, touting about in the lowest haunts in every town. The sergeants tipple with the recruits, who are generally under the influence of liquor when they are enlisted, and are always detained in the public-houses until they can be sent to the depot battalions. The recruits are also deceived by false expectations, and are in¬ duced to make false representations as to their age, unmarried state, &c.,—it being the interest of the recruiter, for the sake of the head-money, to encourage these deceptions. As soon as the recruits receive the bounty money their comrades get round them and it is drunk away. The men not only get drunk themselves, but make all the men of their companies drunk too. The recruiting parties, being lodged in thd lowest houses in a town, where they meet only with the worst characters of the place, become depraved; and even good non-commissioned officers, after having been employed on the recruiting service, frequently return to their regiments dissipated in habits and appearance and greatly in debt. In a recently published pamphlet on our army system, Sir Charles Trevelyan says:—“Further improvements will now, no doubt, be