It was September 8 1781 when Tony Small stumbled across a severely wounded soldier on the battlefield at Eutaw Spring in South Carolina.
The American Revolutionary War was raging and Irishman Edward Fitzgerald, a lieutenant in the 19th Regiment of Foot, was dying.
Hoping that the wounds were not fatal, Small, a former slave, brought the soldier to his nearby home and nursed him back to health.
Thankful for his help, Fitzgerald immediately offered him a job as his personal assistant. Small accepted the offer and returned to Ireland with him.
Tony Small became well-known throughout Dublin and lived in Leinster House with FitzGerald as he served in the Irish Parliament. When Fitzgerald moved to Kildare with his wife Pamela, Small joined the couple and continued to live with them. He even met his future wife Julie at Kildare when she was hired as a nursemaid for Pamela after she gave birth.
CONSPIRACY
By the end of the 1790s, Edward Fitzgerald had joined the United Irishmen and became one of the prominent leaders planning a widespread uprising with help from the French.
When the conspiracy came to light Fitzgerald had the opportunity to flee Ireland but chose instead to stay. He was captured in May 1798 and died the following month from wounds received during the capture.
Despite his passing, Fitzgerald was still posthumously charged with treason meaning his estates and assets were seized. This left his widow with nothing but with help from her late husband’s family she moved to Hamburg to live with a cousin, inviting Tony and his family to travel with her.
This arrangement continued until Pamela remarried in 1801. Still, out of fondness for the Smalls, she organised a passport from them to return to London where they were able to set up their own home and business in Piccadilly.
The family settled in or near Air Street, then a busy, respectable place combining living accommodation with businesses such as silversmiths, engravers, a linen draper, an undertaker, a bookseller, a hair manufacturer and a wine merchant.
Unfortunately the family did not enjoy their independence for very long. By 1803 Tony was seriously ill. Up until his illness, it seems that he and his family were reasonably well off. They clearly had some entitlement to money from Ireland and they had a business. When Tony engaged a doctor to attend him, he did not choose a local apothecary but John Heavisides, who was at the time surgeon-extraordinary to the king. He was unable to help Tony beyond prescribing rest and nourishing food.
Tony Small was 40 years old when he died in 1804, six years after Lord Edward, there ending the fascinating story of a genuine friendship between a member of the Irish aristocracy and the escaped slave who nursed him from a battlefield in South Carolina.
He is buried, most likely, at St Mary’s churchyard in Wimbledon.