From Waterloo hero, to villain, to lunatic

Robert Badcock of Ducklington, a private in the 1st or Grenadier Foot Guards at the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815, lost his arm for his country. Who would dare to be so superior as to criticise the sensible measures he took to compensate for this catastrophe by marrying an heiress? So how could it all have gone so wrong?

Robert Badcock was baptised in Ducklington in 1794, son of Robert and Anne Badcock. He enlisted in the 1st Foot Guards in November 1803 giving his age as 20 and his trade as a labourer. At Waterloo in June 1815 the 1st Foot Guards were part of Wellington's battle-hardened elite and were in the forefront of the action. Badcock lost his left forearm and was discharged in October 1815.

Around six months later, in April 1816, and perhaps aware that a companion with expectations of an inheritance might be beneficial to a labourer with only one arm, Badcock married Sarah Fortey at St Martin in the Fields in Westminster. The bride was already expecting the couple’s only child, and William was born in November; the family was living in Broadway and Robert was working as a labourer; his army pension of one shilling a week must ideally be augmented somehow.

Sarah’s mother Mary Fortey formerly kept the Ship Inn in Millbank, Westminster, but the compulsory purchase of the Ship to make way for the new Millbank prison in 1800 resulted in her receiving compensation for the unexpired portion of the lease on what was evidently a substantial property which included a garden and tea rooms on the river’s edge; her loss was put at over four hundred pounds. She died in May 1821; her own inheritance of that same year from her uncle Thomas Forty, a Gloucester tailor, was presumably shared between Robert’s wife Sarah and Sarah’s two siblings.

In 1827 Robert appeared as a witness in a case of horse theft, and gave his residence as Brompton, revealing that he had a stable there. Another witness in the case was a servant to “Mr Forty (sic), a horsedealer”; Robert’s only brother-in-law was James Fortey, by this time a wealthy corn factor living in Belgravia.

Sarah Badcock died in January 1834 aged 39. At that time, any money that Sarah inherited would have passed under Robert’s control, and it looks as if he decided to invest in property. In 1835, the electoral register showed that, while living at 2 College Street, Chelsea, Badcock held the leases on houses in “Sloane Street, Lower Sloane Street, Sloane Square, etc”.

With his financial situation apparently secure, Robert was still in need of a second wife, but this time she did not need to be an heiress. He married Rachel Lindsey, daughter of a humble St Ebbe’s labourer, in March 1837. But something changed because by 1841, Robert and Rachel had moved out of London to Remenham near Henley, where Robert’s status plummeted from “landed proprietor” to “labourer”. Work cannot have been easy to find for a one-armed labourer. Also in the household was Robert’s four-year-old niece Sarah Scroggins, the daughter of his sister Frances who was perhaps contributing to the domestic expenses in return. Assistance from Robert’s son William was unlikely because he had emigrated to New Zealand and started a family there.

And yet by 1847 Robert Badcock claimed the qualification “Esquire” at his Remenham Hill address in the post office directory for Berkshire. And sure enough, in the 1851 census he had bounced back (at least according to his own estimate) to “landed proprietor; formerly in Army”; he was living in Remenham Hill with Rachel and a female servant. But was this return to the gentry class genuine, or was it just in Robert’s frustrated head? Perhaps it was a sham to mollify a disappointed Rachel?

Because money was still a problem. In May 1858 Badcock was charged in court with failing to pay three years’ worth of poor rates totalling one pound. Clearly something had gone awry in Robert’s affairs which had affected his mind; a few weeks later he was back in court where he “went on in the same incoherent way as he did before the Bench at the last meeting, saying that he had no money, and that he had been so ill-used, he had no opportunity of paying”.

Matters continued to deteriorate. In 1861 Robert was committed to gaol for seven days’ hard labour having been found “drunk and riotous in the streets” in Henley. The situation reached a head twelve months later when the same charge was once again levelled at Robert, but this time he was “ordered to be removed to Littlemore asylum as a lunatic”. His wife Rachel died in 1863, so perhaps she was already ill during recent years, further piling pressure on Robert.

Littlemore Asylum removed Robert to Fair Mile in 1872 and this is where he died in April 1875; probate was granted to his son “William Badcock of Lochinvar, New South Wales, book-keeper”; Badcock’s effects were valued at less than £450.

A final hint at the mental disorder Robert Badcock was under in his last years is provided by means of his son’s death certificate in 1890; himself by this time a railway employee, William Badcock describes his father as a “colonel in the army”, though in reality Robert never rose above the rank of private. Who was kidding whom, we will probably never know.