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On the morning of Tuesday 6 December 1803 Stephen Carroll, a private soldier of the 70th Regiment, was marched under armed guard from Hilsea Barracks to Portsdown Common, on the outskirts of Portsmouth. Carroll was reportedly guilty of multiple counts of desertion and had been sentenced to the death penalty. At just twenty years old, he was dressed in white flannel and was accompanied on the three mile journey by a Catholic priest and an artillery waggon containing his coffin. Twelve thousand military personnel were drawn out to witness the ‘awful scene’. Additionally, crowds of civilian spectators were reported as being ‘exceedingly numerous’. The condemned soldier was blindfolded and made to kneel on a truss of hay as the firing-party loaded their weapons. Several eye-witness accounts describe how the doomed soldier survived the first round of rifle fire, only to be dispatched by a second volley from extremely close range. The assembled regiments were then given orders to march past the deceased ‘in slow time … in order that we all might observe the terrible example’. Finally, for the benefit of those troops stationed too distantly to attend in person, the Commander-in-Chief ordered that the sentence of Stephen Carroll be read aloud at the head of every British corps so that the army in general ‘may be aware of the fatal consequences attending desertion’.
— Cozens, Joseph Thomas (2016) The Experience of Soldiering: Civil-Military Relations and Popular Protest in England, 1790-1805. PhD thesis, University of Essex. source
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Nevertheless, by the winter of 1803, with desertion showing no signs of abating, military authorities believed that a further public show of force was required. Stephen Carroll, who was tried for desertion in late October 1803, and was sentenced to death by a court martial assembled in Kent, proved to be a convenient object for this exemplary justice. Compounding his situation was the fact that his regiment had recently embarked without him for the West Indies. Additionally, newspaper reports claimed that Carroll was ‘a proper object to be made example of’ because he had taken multiple enlistment bounties in return for service in the Army of Reserve. These claims are impossible to verify from the exceedingly brief proceedings of his court martial. Regardless of the foundation of these reports, it was principally the scale of the desertion problem experienced at this time, which led the king and Judge Advocate General to decide that it was ‘indispensably necessary for the sake of example’, that Carroll should be executed. Furthermore, if there was to be an execution, the king demanded that it be conducted in a manner which was ‘as public as may be’.
— Cozens, Joseph Thomas (2016) The Experience of Soldiering: Civil-Military Relations and Popular Protest in England, 1790-1805. PhD thesis, University of Essex. source
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Shooting a Deserter—This day, about nine o’clock, a soldier, belonging to the 70th regiment, was escorted from the Provost, at Hilsea Barracks, Portsea, to Portsdown, for the purpose of undergoing the sentence of death, as passed on him at a recent Court-Martial, for repeated desertion. This unfortunate man was only twenty years of age. He had received repeated sums of money from different parishes and individuals, for the Army of Reserve; after which he always deserted on the first opportunity. On his arrival at the fatal spot, he shewed every mark of penitence, and prayed fervently with the Clergyman for a considerable time. Then kneeling on a truss of hay, the soldiers appointed for the execution marched in a solemn manner till they arrived within ten yards of him, and then proceeded to do their duty. The first fire wounded him in the thigh; and the second it was supposed missed him, and the third deprived him of his feelings, though it did not entirely kill him; when three file marched close to him, and instantly dispatched him.
— Philological Society of London (1803) The European Magazine and London Review, Volume 44, From July to Dec 1803. James Asperne, Cornhill. source
Question
Where was Portsdown Common?