Shipp's father was a soldier (a marine?), and his mother dying when he was very young, he became an inmate of the parish poorhouse (there were no Union workhouses in those days), whence he passed into the hands of a neighbouring farmer, one of those savage taskmasters only too common in the "good old times."[1] His deliverance came in unexpected fashion. In the early years of the French Revolutionary War the supply of recruits was far less certain than at a later stage. Partly as a recruiting experiment, partly to relieve parishes of the burthen of pauper boys between the ages of ten and sixteen who might be willing to enter for (_un_limited) service in the army, three regiments of foot were ordered to be completed to a thousand rank and file each by the enlisting of boys of this description. One of the regiments was the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment of Foot, which half a century later won much fame under the command of General Sir Charles Napier on the plains of Sind. The 22nd, on return from the West Indies in 1795, had been ordered to Colchester, to recruit; and a Muster Roll, now in the War Office, shows that John Shipp was duly enlisted into that regiment on January 17, 1797. Shipp appears to have been a bright, plucky, intelligent boy. Regimental schools were not in those days; but through the kindness of his captain he picked up some education, and after serving in the Channel Islands, at the Cape, and in India, found himself, in the year 1804, a young sergeant in the Grenadier company, which was detached with the grand army under Lord Lake fighting against the Mahrattas. He was one of the stormers at the capture of Deig, on December 24, 1804, and led the "forlorn-hope" of the storming column in _three_ out of the four desperate, but unsuccessful, assaults on Bhurtpore in January-February, 1805, receiving severe wounds upon each occasion. Lord Lake rewarded his daring with an ensigncy in the 65th Foot. A few weeks later he was promoted to lieutenant in the 76th Foot, both commissions being dated March 10, 1805. With the 76th Shipp returned home in 1807; but he speedily found himself in pecuniary difficulties, and sold out of the army on March 19, 1808. His commissions having been given "without purchase," he was only entitled to L100 for each twelve months of actual commissioned service abroad, and L50 for like periods at home, up to the full value--L700. With the small sum so realized he paid his debts, and soon after found himself alone in London, without a shilling in the world.