Born: Unknown (1700s), United Kingdom (assumed)
Died: Unknown (1700s)
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Unknown
The following is excerpted from “Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in 1879 and shared online by Project Gutenberg.
In August, 1761, as a sergeant was exercising some recruits on board a transport at Portsmouth, he noticed that one of them, who had enlisted under the name of Paul Daniel, had a more prominent breast than the others. When the firing was over, the sergeant sent for Daniel to the cabin, and told him his suspicion that he was a woman. After some evasions the recruit confessed her sex; and said that she had a husband, to whom she was devotedly attached, who, after squandering a plentiful fortune, had reduced himself and her to beggary, and had then enlisted. His regiment had been ordered to Germany in 1759 to serve against the French, and had remained abroad ever since. Not having heard from him for two years, she had resolved to roam the world in search of him. She heard that the British Government were sending more troops to Germany, so she enlisted in one of the regiments ordered thither, thinking to meet her husband. When the discovery of her sex frustrated this design, she declared herself to be inconsolable.