PHOEBE HESSEL
The Amazon of Stepney
1713 – 1821 (aged 108)
Phoebe Hessel was born in Stepney in March 1713. Stepney was a village to the east of London, near the Tower of London. The village church was called St Dunstan’s.
Phoebe was baptised in St Dunstan’s Church on 13 April 1713.
We do not know all the facts about Phoebe’s life. Here are two ways the story is told:
One story about her says that her mother died when Phoebe was a young child. Her father was a soldier. He wanted to look after Phoebe, but he had to go away with the army.
At that time women and girls were not allowed in the army, so Phoebe’s father disguised her as a boy, so that she could go with him.
He taught her to play the fife and drum and, as she grew up, Phoebe became a soldier. She fought many battles dressed as a man.
Another story about Phoebe says that when she was fifteen years old she fell in love with a soldier named Samuel Golding. When he went away with the army, Phoebe dressed herself as a man and joined the army to be with him. The other soldiers did not know that Phoebe was really a woman.
Both stories say that Phoebe was a soldier in the Caribbean and Europe. After many years she was badly injured in her arm at the battle of Fontenoy in Belgium in 1745. Later that year she left the army.
She went to live in Plymouth where she married Samuel Golding and had nine children.
After Samuel died she went to live in Brighton where she married Thomas Hessel, who made a living by fishing. When Thomas died, Phoebe bought a donkey and sold fish and vegetables in the villages around Brighton to make enough money to live on.
She wore a brown serge dress, a white apron, always clean, a black cloth cloak with a hood, and a large red handkerchief with white spots. Her head-dress was a black bonnet, which she wore over a mob cap. Her shoes were plain and simple, and she wore long woollen mittens on her hands. She used a strong walking stick made of oak.
Phoebe became well known in Brighton because of her unusual life and her great age. When she got very old she sold toys, oranges and gingerbread near Brighton Pavilion to make money.
Phoebe used to tell people stories about her life as a soldier, and they got to know her very well. As she grew old, she became sick and blind and she had to go to the workhouse for some time. When she was aged 95 in 1808, Prince George, the Prince Regent, gave her a pension of half a guinea a week (about 52 ˝pence today)
When Phoebe was aged 106, she was asked how she was able to keep her secret for so long. She said that she told it to no man, woman or child during the time she was in the army: “for you know sir, a drunken man and a child always tell the truth. But I told my story to the ground. I dug a hole that would hold a gallon and whispered it there.”
Phoebe Hessel died in 1821. She was aged 108. She was buried in St Nicholas’s Churchyard in Brighton, where you can still see her grave.
The inscription on Phoebe’s gravestone reads:
In Memeory of
PHOEBE HESSEL
who was born at Stepney in the Year 1713
She served for many Years
as a private soldier in the 5th Reg. of foot
in different parts of Europe
and in the year 1745 fought under the
command
of the DUKE of CUMBERLAND
at the Battle of Fontenoy
where she received a Bayonet wound in her
Arm
Her long life which commenced in the time
of
QUEEN ANNE
extended to the reign of
GEORGE IV
by whose munificence she received comfort
and support in her latter Years
she died at Brighton where she had long
resided
December 12th 1821 Aged 108 Years
This gravestone was paid for by the local pawnbroker, Hyam Lewis, shortly after her burial, and was later restored by the Northumberland Fusiliers, who considered Phoebe a member of their regiment.
