INCREDIBLE TALE OF AN IRISH WARRIOR
Born female, Albert Cashier lived as a man and died as a military hero
The Curious Case Of Albert Cashier: Lincoln’s Lady Soldier
The tombstone reads: Albert D. J. Cashier Co.G 95 Ill INF. Civil War Born Jennie Hodgers In Clogher Head, Ireland 1843 - 1915.
The story of this soldier is told in the play, The Curious Case of Albert Cashier: Lincoln’s Lady Soldier, by Quintessence Theatre, that has been touring nationally since mid-September and runs at Smock Alley this week.
Cashier, an American Civil war veteran, born a girl, in Ireland, enlisted in the Union army in 1862 as a man, aged 19. Jennie/Albert lived as a man most of his life without it being discovered. Even after he returned to civilian life, he remained Albert Cashier, getting various jobs including farm work.
He died a decorated hero as a man, and was entitled to a war pension under his assumed name, so I’ll refer to him as a man throughout this preview. There’s no record of him ever referring to himself as a transgender man, a term he certainly wouldn’t have known anyway.
It’s difficult to be precise about his early life, because of conflicting stories he told over the years, especially when he had dementia. One of his relatives, either a stepfather or uncle, apparently dressed the young girl as a boy so she could get work in a factory or in other manual work: his mother had died when he was very young.
He possibly got to America as a stowaway, and by 1862 was working in Illinois as a farmhand.
It was probably easier, and safer, to get work as a man than as a woman. In 1862 he enlisted in the army.
One soldier later reported that it wouldn’t have been difficult to pass the medical test, because recruits weren’t obliged to strip, and inspections were cursory – in the middle of a savage civil war – when increased numbers were vital.
Another recruit is recorded as saying the main requisites were to be reasonably tall, to have teeth to bite open a powder cartridge, and to have a good trigger-finger.
Precise documentation, required nowadays, wasn’t necessary at a time when birth certificates didn’t always exist.
Another factor helping Cashier was that a lot of young recruits hadn’t started growing facial hair or still had undeveloped voices. As a bonus, Cashier had pockmarks on his face from early illnesses.
By keeping as much as possible to himself, his sex never became an issue. After the war, he did a wide range of manual work, but in 1913 he was hit by a car and suffered a broken leg.
During his treatment, it was discovered he was physically a woman and an official investigation was carried out to see if he was entitled to keep his war pension. But many of his colleagues testified about his outstanding courage, and he was allowed keep his pension.
‘It’s been calculated that hundreds of women joined the army as men’
In 1913, suffering from dementia, he was moved to a state hospital for the insane, where he was forced to wear a skirt. Being used to trousers, he tripped, fell, and broke his hip, leading to an infection that finally killed him. He was buried in full military uniform.
Albert was not alone in being a woman-turned-man in the army. It’s been calculated that hundreds of women joined up as men, including married women who did it so they could join their husbands.
An obvious problem would have been how to disguise menstruation. It’s considered possible that it wasn’t necessarily a problem: strenuous active service, with poor diet, exhaustion and physical and psychological strain, could inhibit menstruation. n The Curious Case of Albert
Cashier stars Ceara Carney, Fiona Keenan O’Brien, Anthony Kinahan, Mark O’Reilly and Leah Rossiter.