Drummer boys

It seems shocking now, but not only did their wives and children once accompany British Army soldiers abroad on active service, but very young boys might themselves be enlisted in the army if their fathers were killed. Two such boys are mentioned by correspondents on TACA’s ‘History matters’ page as having done just that during the eighteenth century, John Murray being only five when he enlisted in the 50th Foot, and James Wade being seven when he joined the 9th Foot. Both boys began military careers in this way as drummers.


Fictional they may be, but perhaps the most famous drummer boys of the British Army are the young heroes of Rudyard Kipling’s short story, ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’ (1888). Jakin and Lew are introduced by Kipling as:

… a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew—Piggy Lew—and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.

Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age. When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung from some London gutter, and may or may not have passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regiment and the delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years.

Both of Kipling's drummer boys are orphans. Jakin tells the India-based regiment’s colonel that he has ‘worn the Queen’s uniform for two years’, which means that he enlisted aged twelve, the age that Lew says he also was when he joined the army, which, as Kipling notes, was ‘two years before the regulation boy's age—fourteen’. From Kipling’s description, it is likely that Lew is the son of a deceased soldier, and a ‘line boy’ through and through, another army child in the story being his thirteen-year-old girlfriend, Cris Delighan, the black-haired daughter of the Colour-Sergeant, who lives with her parents in married quarters, and who is pictured in the nineteenth-century illustration at right with Lew.


When the regiment is ordered on active service, to fight in ‘The War of the Lost Tribes’ against the Afghans on the North-West Frontier, Kipling relates how Jakin and Lew persuade the colonel to let them accompany the regiment to the front. If you’re not familiar with the story and want to know what happened there, how about reading ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’? You can do so online: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Soldier Stories, by Rudyard Kipling, for example, includes ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’ (and is the source of the illustrations reproduced here).


If you’re interested in discovering more about the historical background to ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’, the Kipling Society’s website, http://www.kipling.org.uk/, is well worth a visit, and includes an interesting page: ‘Kipling for men and women on active service’.