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You are here: Experts > Homework Help > Military History > Military History > British 39th Regiment
Expert: Keith H. Patton - 10/23/2009
Question
QUESTION: I'd like some information on a term I came across in an 1820s diary. The writer is worried about losing command of a company of 39th Regiment Grenadiers ("flankers" in army slang of the time)and he says..."the fall is very great from a flanker to a graiber." The term "graiber" is my problem. It presumably refers to a less distinguished company than the grenadiers and is derogatory. "Greybeards" perhaps?
ANSWER: Doug:
Each Regiment had a company of Grenadiers - their chosen men, to use a term from Napoleonic times. They were the biggest, most able and most intelligent of the men in the Regiment. Just as with the Rifles, the Prussian Jagers, and French Voltigeurs, they were more motivated as they had to be. They were sent out as flankers as you say and as skirmishers, roles ideal for skulkers and shirkers if they had a mind to be since they had to be more independent. This also got them free of marching in column with the rest of the line companies, free of the dust and heat of the tightly packed moving columns.
From the officer's persepective, which would you prefer? Leading a company of chosen men, picked for their intelligence, apptitute, initiative and motivation, or a company of as Wellington put it, "The scum of the earth"?
I think the 39th was in Australia was it not? I found a term, "grafter" which at the time -the 1800's - meant, "One who toils hard unwillingly." Was the diary hand written and oculd you have mis read the script? This was the same term that ultimately evolved from grafter to grifter meaning active criminal or swindler and con man.
Source: I got this candidate from The dictionary of slang and unconventional english:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tvRp1whVFUsC&pg=PA310&lpg=PA310&dq=British+army...
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Thanks for that information on flankers and the link. The word I'm researching was handwritten
and other spellings are possible but not "grafters" unfortunately. I tried a variety of spellings
using the link you provided but with no success. I'm afraid the term is too old and obscure.
Another term which gave me trouble was "stocks", used in a specialised sense. It appears twice
in these contexts:
"...watch mounting without stocks.." and "..watch commencing stocks again.." The watch are the
soldiers mounting guard at night over a shipload of convicts bound for NSW. "Stocks" is the problem.
It seems to be an item of equipment or clothing. Certainly not the musket stocks; they'd hardly stand
guard with dismantled firelocks. Sometimes they are allowed to dispense with shoes and stockings, but
the word "stockings" is used in full when this is mentioned, not abbreviated. The wooden stocks
for restraint and punishment were not used on board ship. Sorry to hit you with another obscure one
but any help would be much appreciated.
Answer
Doug:
"Stocks" were the stiff stand up collar worn with the uniform of the day.
Not too much different from the leather collar used for protection from sword cuts by our US Marines from which they acquired the sobriquet "leathernecks", but a more ornamental collar, or a stiffener that went inside the conventional collar to make it circle the neck and go up under the chin. Probably to affect better posture and a heads up look. It might even have choked you if your head were to slump forward, something useful if mounting a night time watch...eh?
The most vivid image of one I can remember is in Quigley Down Under, Major Pitt wore a stock collar on his short red hussar style jacket.
The Marine dress unifor still sports a stock collar, unlike any of the other US services, but not quite as high as during the 1800's when even the US Army sported stock collars.
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