{{Short description|British infantryman (1789–1874)}} {{Use British English|date=December 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2017}} {{Infobox military person |name= Shadrack Byfield |birth_date= 16 September 1789 |death_date= 17 January 1874 (aged 84) |birth_place= Woolley, near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire |death_place= Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire |image= Shadrack Byfield Narrative Title Page.png |caption=Title page of ''A Narrative of a Light Company Soldier's Service'' (1840) |nickname= |allegiance= {{flagicon|United Kingdom}} United Kingdom |service_years= 1807 - 1815 |rank= Private |branch= British Army |commands= |unit= Wiltshire Militia<br>41st Regiment of Foot |battles= {{tree list}} * '''War of 1812''' ** Siege of Detroit ** Battle of Frenchtown{{WIA}} ** Siege of Fort Meigs ** Battle of the Thames ** Capture of Fort Niagara ** Battle of Lundy's Lane ** Battle of Conjocta Creek{{WIA}} {{tree list/end}} |awards= Military General Service Medal for Fort Detroit<ref name="Dix Noonan MGSM Medal Roll">{{cite web|title=Dix Noonan MGSM Medal Roll|url=https://www.dnw.co.uk/resources/medal-rolls/entry.php?medalroll_id=1&entry_id=3261}}</ref> |other_work= Weaver, Monument keeper }}
'''Shadrack Byfield''' (sometimes '''Shadrach''', 1789–1874) was a British infantryman who served in the 41st Regiment of Foot during the War of 1812. He is best known as the author of a memoir of his wartime experiences, ''A Narrative of a Light Company Soldier's Service'', published in his hometown of Bradford-on-Avon in England in 1840. This work is notable as one of the few accounts of the conflict penned by a rank-and-file British soldier.<ref name="O'Keeffe">{{Cite journal |last=O'Keeffe |first=Eamonn |date=2026 |title=From Amputee to Author: Shadrack Byfield and the Making of a War of 1812 Veteran |url=https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10169 |journal=Journal of British Studies |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=1–22}}</ref>
==Early life and military service== Born in Woolley, a suburb of Bradford-on-Avon to a family of weavers in 1789, Byfield enlisted in the Wiltshire Militia in 1807 at the age of eighteen. Two years later, he volunteered to join the 41st Regiment of Foot and was sent to join the regiment in British North America, serving in Lower Canada and at Fort George in modern-day Niagara-on-the-Lake prior to the outbreak of war.
As a private in the 41st, Byfield saw action during the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom and the United States. In the conflict's western theatre, he served at the Siege of Detroit and the Battle of Frenchtown, where he was wounded in the shoulder, as well as at the Siege of Fort Meigs and the Battle of Fort Stephenson. Byfield narrowly escaped capture after the British defeat at the Battle of the Thames and later rejoined elements of his regiment in the Niagara Peninsula. Byfield participated in the Capture of Fort Niagara and the Battle of Lundy's Lane, but his left arm was shattered by a musket ball at the Battle of Conjocta Creek, an unsuccessful British raid on 3 August 1814 preceding the Siege of Fort Erie. Byfield's forearm was subsequently amputated and he was invalided back to England, where he was awarded a pension from the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1815.
==Later life== Byfield returned to Bradford on Avon and married but was prevented from working at his trade because he required use of both hands to operate a loom. However, according to his memoirs, a design for an "instrument" came to him one night in a dream. This contraption enabled him to work at a loom with just one arm, allowing him to provide for his family.<ref name="O'Keeffe" /><ref name="Almeroth-Williams">{{cite web |last=Almeroth-Williams |first=Tom |date=2026 |title=The Resilient Redcoat |website=University of Cambridge|url=https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/disabled-redcoat-veterans-lost-autobiography-discovered |access-date=20 January 2026}}</ref> Byfield also campaigned for a higher military pension, eventually succeeding with the aid of William Napier and Lord FitzRoy Somerset.
Byfield published a narrative of his wartime experiences in 1840 and completed another autobiography, entitled ''History and Conversion of a British Soldier'', in 1851. The second memoir details Byfield's post-military life, including his spiritual experiences and struggles with poverty; only one copy is known to exist. No copies of a third and final memoir written by Byfield, ''The Forlorn Hope'', appear to have survived.<ref name="O'Keeffe"/>
Byfield served as the first keeper of the Lord Edward Somerset Monument at Hawkesbury Upton in Gloucestershire, which was completed in 1845. However, the veteran was dismissed from the post in 1853 after becoming embroiled in a bitter feud for control of a local Baptist chapel.<ref name="O'Keeffe"/>
Although some sources claim that Byfield died {{circa|1850}},<ref name="Canadian Encyclopedia">{{cite web|last=Ridler|first=Jason|title=Shadrach Byfield, The Canadian Encyclopedia|url=http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/shadrach-byfield}}</ref> more recent research has revealed that Byfield died on 17 January 1874 in Bradford on Avon, aged 84.<ref>Deaths index (CR) England. Bradford Wilts. 1st Q. 1874. Byfield, Shadrack. http://www.gro.gov.uk {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160401110711/http://www.gro.gov.uk/ |date=1 April 2016 }} : accessed 25 July 2024.</ref>
==Significance== Shadrack Byfield's ''Narrative'' provides a rare common soldier's perspective of the War of 1812, and as such his account is considered to be an important source for studying the conflict.<ref name="Canadian Encyclopedia"/> Byfield has often been portrayed as the archetypical 1812-era British soldier by modern historians. John Gellner, who edited Byfield's memoir in 1963, asserted that his story "could have been told by any one of those humble, patient, iron-hard British regulars who more than made up in discipline, training and bravery for their lack of numbers."<ref name="Gellner">{{cite book|last=Gellner|first=John|title=Recollections of the War of 1812: three eyewitnesses' accounts|year=1963|publisher=Baxter|location=Canada|pages=iii–v}}</ref>
Byfield's 1840 account is frequently referenced in secondary histories of the war, including in Pierre Berton's popular histories ''The Invasion of Canada'' and ''Flames Across the Border''. The veteran's story has also been featured in museum exhibits (for example, at Old Fort Erie) and in documentaries on the War of 1812, including Canada: A People's History (2000) and PBS's The War of 1812 (2011).<ref name="Doc battles ignorance on War of 1812">{{cite journal|title=Doc battles ignorance on War of 1812|journal=Toronto Star|date=6 October 2011 |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2011/10/06/doc_battles_ignorance_on_war_of_1812.html}}</ref>
Byfield was the protagonist in a 1985 children's novel, ''Redcoat'', by Canadian author Gregory Sass, which presents a heavily fictionalised account of his military experiences.
== References == {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t8kd30z7g&seq=1 A scan of Byfield's ''A Narrative of a Light Company Soldier's Service'' (1840), held by the Toronto Public Library] * [http://www.fortyfirst.org/writings/byfield.htm A transcribed version of Byfield's 1840 ''Narrative'', courtesy of the 41st Military Living History Group] * [https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/61f15583-612e-4ea5-aa89-2a57d106877c A digital version of Byfield's ''History and Conversion of a British Soldier'' (1851), transcribed by Dr. Eamonn O'Keeffe] * {{Cite journal |last=O'Keeffe |first=Eamonn |title=From Amputee to Author: Shadrack Byfield and the Making of a War of 1812 Veteran |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=65 |year=2026 |pages=1–22 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/from-amputee-to-author-shadrack-byfield-and-the-making-of-a-war-of-1812-veteran/775AD03CFBCD32F7688A34FAF365EAC5 |doi=10.1017/jbr.2025.10169 |doi-access=free }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Byfield, Shadrack}} Category:1789 births Category:1874 deaths Category:Military personnel from Wiltshire Category:19th-century English memoirists Category:People from Bradford-on-Avon Category:British Army personnel of the Napoleonic Wars Category:British Army personnel of the War of 1812 Category:41st Regiment of Foot soldiers