Kit Cavanagh was born into a family of maltsters in Dublin. Soldiering was in Kit’s blood: her father was a Protestant, but he fought and was wounded on the Catholic King James II’s side in the Jacobite wars of 1689.
Kit was a capable girl who enjoyed spending her time on the family farm in Leixlip, County Kildare. But when she was a teenager a relative of her mother’s seduced her at the farm, and Kit subsequently fled to her aunt’s pub in Dublin. She lived with her aunt for four years, helping out and learning the pub business, which she inherited when her aunt died. Shortly afterwards, Kit fell in love with and married one of the servants, Richard Walsh. They lived happily together for four years until one day, in 1692, Richard disappeared without warning or explanation.
Kit was pregnant with their third child and was distraught by her husband’s disappearance. She searched for him everywhere, but for a whole year she heard nothing. Then she received a letter from the Netherlands. It was from Richard, describing how he’d got blind drunk on that last day in Dublin City and had woken up in Holland – he had been forcibly conscripted to fight for King William III against the French. Kit immediately put her children in her mother’s care, cut her hair, dressed in one of Richard’s suits and enlisted in the Duke of Marlborough’s infantry under the name of Christian Walsh. She was twenty-six years old.
Immediately nicknamed the ‘pretty dragoon’ by her comrades, Kit heard what she called the ‘rough music’ of cannon fire almost immediately and she was wounded in her first action, at the disastrous Battle of Landen (1693). She recovered and the following year was back in action, but was quickly taken prisoner by the French. She was exchanged after nine days, and returned to the front. All the time she continued to enquire after her ‘brother’, Richard Walsh, but no information was forthcoming.
This disappointment did not impede what Kit calls in her autobiography her ‘natural gaiety of temper’, and she admits she ‘lived very merrily’ with her comrades in their winter quarters. Amazingly, she managed to do this without being discovered: she ate with them, drank with them, slept with them, played cards with them, even urinated alongside them by using what she describes as a ‘silver tube with leather straps’. No one was ever the wiser.
So convincing was Kit as a dragoon that when a young girl was attacked by a sergeant in the regiment, Kit fought for the girl’s honour and wounded the sergeant in a duel, whereupon the grateful girl fell in love with Kit. She ‘got off from this amour without loss of credit’ when she cited her inferior rank as an impediment to marriage. On another occasion, a prostitute claimed that Kit was the father of her baby. Rather than prove the mother a liar and give away her own secret, Kit admitted paternity and paid for the child’s maintenance.
Things continued in this manner until the end of the war in 1697. Kit returned to Dublin, still having had no news of Richard. By now she had grown resigned to the loss of her dear husband, but upon the renewal of hostilities in 1702, she discovered that her ‘martial inclinations’ had been awakened and she promptly reenlisted. She spent the next two years fighting under the Duke of Marlborough’s command, enjoying the marauding and looting that followed every battle, and intermittently enquiring after Richard. She was wounded in the hip at Schellenberg, but managed to get through Blenheim unscathed – and with her secret still safe.
In the autumn of 1704, as she was guarding prisoners after the Battle of Hochstat, Kit was idly gazing at a soldier from another regiment being embraced by a Dutch woman. The soldier turned – and Kit recognised her husband, Richard. Perhaps a touch unreasonably – it had been twelve years after all – she immediately felt herself ‘divided between rage and love, resentment and compassion’. She secretly made herself known to him, but as a punishment for his infidelity and because she still had a ‘strong inclination for the army’, she demanded they live apart so she could continue her military career. Richard kept her secret and they carried on with the war in separate regiments.
In 1706 Kit was wounded again, and this time, to the general amazement of all, it was finally discovered that she was a woman. On regaining consciousness and realising her secret was out, her main worry seems to have been financial: she feared she might be ‘prevented in [her] marauding, which was very beneficial’. However, instead of being drummed out of the army, Kit became a celebrity across the ranks for her quick-wittedness and ‘indomitable courage’. She remarried her husband, on the battlefield this time, and was allowed to continue in his regiment as a ‘sutler’ – a kind of black marketeer, thief and cook combined.
But Kit’s ‘martial inclinations’ were not entirely laid to rest. When she discovered her husband’s Dutch ex-mistress had followed his regiment, she attacked the poor woman and cut off her nose. She then had her placed on a ‘turning stool’ – a charming local punishment for minor misdemeanours, whereby the victim was spun around at high speed until he or she vomited. ‘The violence of my temper, which was a very jealous one,’ an abashed Kit afterwards admitted, ‘pushed me on too far in this business.’ The Dutch woman had her nose stitched back on and retired, defeated. Sadly, Kit was destined to lose Richard one way or another. Six months after their remarriage, Richard was killed at the Battle of Malplaquet. A heartbroken Kit trawled the battlefield and turned over more than 200 dead bodies before she found her husband’s corpse.
Within three months of Richard’s death, Kit had married again, to a soldier by the name of Hugh Jones. It is possible this was a hasty match that she repented soon afterwards because when Jones was killed in action only one year later, she admitted she felt nothing like the grief which had seized her when she found her ‘dear Richard Welsh [sic] among the dead’.
Two years later the war was over and Kit went to London, where she found her fame had preceded her. Living on pensions from Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough, she travelled back to Dublin. Two of the children she had left ten years earlier were dead, and the third was in the workhouse. She started another pub, but then her ‘evil genius’ for penniless soldiers entangled her in a third marriage with one named Davies, who, she said bitterly, always ‘spent more than he got’, mostly on drink.
The years that Kit had spent on the move with her regiment left her unsuited for settled living, and she spent the next twenty-seven years moving between Ireland and England. She lived on charity from her admirers among the top army brass and other members of ‘the quality’ who knew her story. She started and lost several pub businesses, and eventually managed to get her husband a job in the Chelsea Hospital, where she herself became an out-pensioner. She ended her days there and was buried with full military honours at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster.