ABSTRACT
On Wednesday, a woman, named Charlotte Lever, was admitted into this establishment [Westminster Hospital] to have her right leg amputated, in consequence of a musket-ball having severely injured it at Vittoria, on the night of the 9th of January, 1836. There are some incidents in connection with the life of this unfortunate woman, which, perhaps, would furnish a fair episode for a romance. She followed her husband, who was a private in the 1st lancers (British auxiliary) to Spain, and, on the night in question, although very late, was compelled to take some linen home for an officer stationed at some distance. It raining very fast she hastily threw her husband’s military cloak over her, and on her way was obliged to pass a Spanish sentry (in alliance with the British troops) of one of the exterior piquet guards, who mistook her in the dusk for an enemy. She did not distinctly hear the challenge given by the sentry from the boisterous state of the weather. He fired, and lodged the bullet in her leg. The Spanish officers evinced the greatest regret and sympathy at her suffering this misfortune by a shot from one of their soldiers, and caused her to be carefully conveyed to their own hospital (Salvatera), where she received the greatest attention, but a cure was not effected, although the ball was extracted, and not being fired in “an engagement” was deemed "an accidental” one, so that no provision could then be made for her by the Spanish Government, as had been the case with other soldiers’ wives wounded in the war. On her departure from the hospital of Salvatera she proceeded to St. Sebastian, and being then far advanced in a state of domestic solicitude, she was, in the day time, suddenly taken ill, in one of the public streets of that town, and immediately gave birth to a male child, which, at the request of one of the Spanish functionaries, was christened “Sebastian.” General Sir De Lacy Evans, Sir Duncan M’Dougall, and Rutherford Alcock, Esq., who obtained for her all the comfort they could, amidst the horrors of a civil commotion in the Peninsula, have, at length, interested themselves, and a memorial, accompanied by a certificate, has been presented to the foreign department here, and also for the gracious consideration of the ambassador of her Catholic Majesty. A conjecture has been hazarded, as to whether her son “Sebastian,” born in the heat of war, and under circumstances so very peculiar, can be readily admitted for maintenance, as well as education, into any of the charitable asylums in the metropolis, he not being invested with an “actual right.”
