Hi Norm,
Thanks for sharing your story. Did you ever serve with Guy Brennan while in the 48th? Anyhow, you inspired me to do a search and I found the following from the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyon...7_prog8b.shtml
Making History
Taking the King's shilling
Richard Callaghan, Curator of the Redoubt Fortress Museum at Eastbourne, Sussex, told Making History of the origins of an old tradition of enlisting in the services.
Taking the King's shilling was like the handshake before an official contract. It was the way the army got men to join and probably goes back to the end of the English Civil War and the creation of the British Standing Army. By the time of Wellington a daily wage was still only 2p, so a shilling would be a useful bounty for joining the army. When a man actually joined up he was given a substantially larger bounty although the cost of his uniform was taken out of it.
Some incentive to join up was necessary because the army was not liked - it was often said that the red uniform attracted only whores and lice. In some parts of the country it was better paid than the main occupation - for instance, the weavers in the north and north-west were very lowly paid - so the recruiting parties concentrated on poorer communities.
The navy had a different system. Men were impressed for the service, though only rarely. Enlistment would be voluntary, then if numbers were low, each county was asked to provide a certain number of men. If that failed to yield the quota, men between 15 and 55 were regarded as fair game for the Press Gang.
The bounty for joining the army for life was £23.17s.6d, and it turned into quite a lucrative business for recruits. One man was hanged in 1787 for enlisting, taking the bounty, escaping and re-enlisting no less than 47 times.
Sometimes the King's shilling was hidden in the bottom of a pewter tankard, which led to the tradition of some tankards having glass bottoms. But there were other ways of recruiting men. For example, Lady Jane Gordon, the wife of the Colonel of one of the Scottish regiments, toured Scotland putting the shilling between her lips. Any young lad who wanted to join could have a shilling and a kiss.
Officially the practice of taking the King's shilling ended in 1879, but there are some instances where the charming old tradition was continued as recently as the 1940s.
Further reading
David Ascoli, Companion to the British Army (Harrap, 1983)
David Chandler and Ian Beckett, editors, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford University Press, 1994)
Correlli Barnett, Britain and Her Army (Cassell Military, 2000)
Antony Makepeace-Warne, Brassey's Companion to the British Army (Brassey's UK, 1995)
Place to visit
The Military Museum of Sussex
Redoubt Fortress, Royal Parade, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN22 7AQ
Tel: 01323 410300
Website:
www.eastbournemuseums.co.uk/redoubt