ABSTRACT
The wretched condition of the soldiers’ wives at the Colchester camp has led to some correspondence between the War Department and Major-General Gascoigne, which was published yesterday. It appears that in the middle of last month the scenes of destitution as to the wives and children of soldiers in Colchester, from causes connected with the army regulations and the dearness of food, were truly deplorable, and “there were not so few as 250 wives and 350 children next to houseless.” The wives of soldiers married without the commanding officer's leave and who had no children received 2d., and many only a penny a day to live on, and it was feared that they would fall into habits of prostitution. The Secretary of State for War wrote to Major-General Gascoigne on the 2d. inst. to the effect that he (Lord Panmure) could not sanction the application to the cases of those women who had married soldiers without the consent of the commanding officer, of the Circular, No. 1,235 (July 15, 1856), inasmuch as it contemplated the cases of women who had been left behind at the stations at which their husbands were serving previous to their removal to a camp, and not to women above the regulated number who belong to corps situated as the depôts at Colchester are. Lord Panmure, however, agreed to grant free passages or travelling expenses back to their parishes to the wives and families of soldiers who had married without consent, or whose wives were in excess of the regulated numbers, provided they were willing to return. Lord Panmure at the same time expressed his surprise that soldiers who had married without consent, and whose wives and families had been allowed to accompany them from Ireland to Colchester, had been placed under stoppage of pay to refund the expense of transit, and his Lordship gave orders that such stoppages should be for the future discontinued.
