David "Tiger" Roche, (1729 – ?) was a celebrated 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 off