It was very common in the 18/19th century for men to hire someone else to take their place in the military. There were a number of draft laws passed in various areas to force men to join up but many men with money or a seemingly good reason to avoid service would pay to get out of the army. There was always somebody willing to take his place for a few shillings. **Another source of substitutes was the shameful practice of having phoney soldiers called "faggots" - (-originally a bundle of sticks - later a Scare Crow used as target practice - this is where we get the vulgar term) take the place of real soldiers when a company was undermanned. The officers would hire any town drunk, boy, wimp or homely looking woman to dress up like a soldier and attempt to pass himself off as a real soldier when the Inspector General's men came to town to review the troops. Military units would lose their status if they didn't have enough troops to fill the ranks and the officers could lose their commissions, it was a serious game. Hopefully these sorry looking "Men" would "Pass the Muster" and the officers would get their commissions renewed for another year. As soon as the inspection was over the "fagots" as they were called would go back to their own lives and the officers would pocket the pay for the missing men for another year. It was a totally illegal practice but unfortunately it was very common. **A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Grose, Hell Fire Dick et al. 1811 A DICTIONARY OF BUCKISH SLANG, UNIVERSITY WIT, AND PICKPOCKET ELOQUENCE. This book is available free online from "Project Gutenburg" A must read by anyone over the age of consent! It is truly vulgar with every 4 letter word carefully described including it's origins. Amazingly most of the slang terms are still in common use today and we don't have a clue as to how vulgar they were 200 years ago.