ABSTRACT
Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing was born in 1841 in Ecclesfield, a village north of Sheffield in Yorkshire. Her father was a Church of England vicar, and she grew up in a comfortable, literary family. In 1867 she married Captain Alexander Ewing of the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment, and they sailed almost immediately for Fredericton, New Brunswick. Ewing gained great success as an author of children’s stories. Her work sold well, and was admired by Ruskin, Kipling, and Henry James among others. Ewing’s health was always frail, and in 1885, after a series of illnesses, she died at age 44. The excerpt below comes from an edited collection of the 101 letters she sent home from Fredericton. It illuminates the often smouldering resentments of local people for the British army, which could explode into violent behaviour on both sides. Frederictonians saw the army as “an unwelcome reminder of irresponsible colonial government”, and they also believed that “a miasma of immorality seeped from the barracks to poison local youth”. 9
