David "Tiger" Roche | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | c. 1729 Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation(s) | Soldier, idler, duelist, possible murderer |
| Spouse | Miss Pitt (divorced) |
David "Tiger" Roche, (born c. 1729) was an Irish soldier, duellist and adventurer, variously hailed as a hero and damned as a thief and a murderer at many times during his stormy life. Roche was born to a middle-class family in Dublin in 1729 and received a gentleman's education, he was in fact so well turned out that his comportment sufficiently impressed the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to offer him a military commission at sixteen years' old. Roche had fallen in with bad company and was possibly involved in an attack on a night watchman, one of many carried out by gangs of bucks at the time. He fled to North America, where he volunteered during the French and Indian War. There his bravery and intrepidity impressed and he quickly rose to a high rank; until accused of theft from a fellow officer. Roche always denied the allegation, stating he had bought the gun in question, but according to the corporal from whom he claimed to have done so, Roche himself had stolen it. Roche was convicted and disgraced by court martial. Roche later attacked several people involved in the case, including the corporal, after which he earned the nickname "Tiger".
He continued to fight with distinction in the war, and then with money from friends in Ireland, sailed for England where he hoped to buy a commission in the army. However the stain of his conviction followed him, and the other officers refused to serve with him, until the dying corporal confessed that he had in fact stolen the gun. Roche was vindicated overnight and returned to Dublin a hero, where he was offered a lieutenancy in a new regiment. His status was further boosted after he raised a unit to patrol the streets at night against a particularly vicious brand of criminals active at the time. After the Treaty of Paris in 1763 Roche was forced to retire from the army and move to London, where he married the wealthy Miss Pitt, but later squandered her money and she divorced him. Roche ended the affair in debtors' prison, until his own inheritance freed him. Roche idled along in London until friends asked him to stand for Parliament, though he declined the offer. In 1773, though, he accepted a captaincy in an infantry regiment and sailed for India. There were disagreements aboard the ship and Roche fell out with the captain and other gentlemen aboard. When they landed at the Cape of Good Hope Roche called on Captain Ferguson's house, who was later found dead behind it. Roche fled, but was caught, tried and acquitted by the Dutch. He continued to Bombay, where the British arrested him; he opposed the legal grounds of his trial, but he was returned to London to stand trial in the Old Bailey in December 1774. He was again acquitted. The case is the last trace Roche left.
He appeared as the hero in a play by John Masefield[1] and may have been the model for William Makepeace Thackeray's Barry Lyndon.[2]
- ^ The Locked Chest [and] The Sweeps of '98, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1916
- ^ Robert A. Colby (September 1966). "Barry Lyndon and the Irish Hero". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 21 (2): 109–130. doi:10.1525/ncl.1966.21.2.99p0095t.