ABSTRACT
While the reputation of soldiers and their wives was largely pejorative during this period, newspaper coverage and memoir depictions indicate a wide variance of behaviour ranging from highly respectable to criminal. Clearly, in spite of middle- and upper-class assumptions, soldiers and their families did not form a wholly homogenous class. While some wives did drink and brawl, others saved and invested in stock. Nor were soldiers and their wives uncaring parents, in spite of often shocking death rates for their children (even within the British Isles).
