George Smart’s Infernal Machine

The brief but startling report below appeared in the Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal for Friday 3 February 1804, appended to reports of storms and so forth from the paper’s correspondent in Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, clearly an enthusiast for italics. It re-appeared in a number of papers for that month – the Chester Courant, the Lancaster Gazette, the Staffordshire Advertiser and probably others, since column-filling copy was freely filched in those days, and soon went viral (or as viral as anything could be in 1804), arriving by April almost word for word in The Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York, and no doubt elsewhere.

INFERNAL MACHINE

A very ingenious young man of the name of Smart, a journeymen taylor in this parish, has invented an infernal machine, which, when placed in any point of contact against an invading force, is capable of destroying a thousand men in a minute. The expence, I am told, will be small when compared with its utility. He leaves this [place] on Monday morning to explain to the Duke of Richmond, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, of[sic] the model of his machine, &c.; it has met the general approbation of all the Gentlemen Volunteer Officers in that neighbourhood; the inventor is a volunteer himself, though a tailor. Should it meet the approbation of the Duke of Richmond, Smart will undertake to conduct it himself into the center of the enemy’s legions; the great merit in the construction of this machine is, that he can remain in perfect safety in the center, while he deals death and destruction to all around him, and he is capable of re-charging in ten minutes; and it can be moved with one horse, with the greatest facility, at the rate of eight miles an hour.

In the British Library copy of this paper the original owner, a compulsive annotator, has noted beneath in wobbly copperplate: “Remark the above”, as well he might.

Leonardo

Sadler

So far, I’ve been unable to discover the Duke’s reaction, on which the papers seem silent. Not very enthusiastic, one suspects. Nor does there seem to be any image of Smart’s model of his invention, but the description may give some clues. “Any point of contact” suggests something circular, on a turret principle, while “a thousand men in a minute” surely implies a primitive machine gun; note that “re-charging” would take a full ten minutes. And for the operator to “remain in perfect safety in the centre” must have required some sort of protective plating. What comes to mind is a one-man, horse-drawn version of Leonardo’s celebrated armoured vehicle of 1487, or maybe a covered version of James Sadler’s “moving battery”, or “curricle flying artillery” discussed in this post. (Though Sadler’s vehicle required one man to load and one to fire, plus a driver.) I’m left wondering how Smart’s machine would have gone on if and when the horse was shot, which seems the obvious weakness.

If we know no more about the infernal machine itself, we know quite a lot about its inventor, although, beyond his time in the Pevensey Legion, this seems to have been his single military moment. The Tunbridge Wells tailor George Smart (1775-1846) has become something of a rediscovered hero of English folk art, on account of his quirky cloth collage portraits, sold from his cottage, branded as “Smart’s Repository”. An 1830 view of Frant, with the tiny figure of Smart outside the Repository (right of the carriage) seems to be the only image we have of him. The “artist in cloth and velvet figures” was a tireless self-publicist, often in verse:

Come here, I say, come here ye quizzers,
Who laugh at Taylors and at scissors,
And see how Smart makes that utensil
Out-do the Chisel, Brush and Pencil.
With Genius Quick, and true to nature,
He makes a suit for every creature;
And fits alike the whole creations,
In newest style the latest Fashion …

And so on. In his later years, Smart cultivated a conspicuously eccentric character, but his notoriety and affluence faded, and on his death in 1846 he was given a pauper’s burial. A useful outline of his life and career by James Gregory is available here, and a full length study by Hector Medora, focused mainly on the folk art, is downloadable here. A Smart blog, promoting the art book by Jonathan Christie, is here.

Finally, my favourite Smart collage, a version of his Earth Stopper. The effect of the “apparition” on the gent on horseback must be akin to that anticipated by Smart of the appearance of his infernal machine among the enemy legions.

The trouble with Cecil

Cecil C P Lawson’s five volumes of A History of the Uniforms of the British Army: it’s where I started, back as a kid in the local reference library, hunched over the vast wooden table before the high, glass fronted shelves on a summer afternoon, carefully studying each page of each volume. So I’m quite fond of the reactionary old buffer.

And yet … Nowadays, when I look at the murky, scratchy drawings of the later volumes, I’m painfully aware of the imperfections in Lawson’s work. But it’s not just the haziness of some of the specifics; sometimes there are odd, unaccountable errors of detail too.

A few previous posts on this blog have looked at the cavalry-influenced styles adopted by some light company officers of volunteers and militia. In a bid to find models for these among the regular regiments, I’ve recently been trawling period images, with near zero success. But I did come across one. In William Loftie’s album of eyewitness images appears an officer of the 21^st Foot or Royal North British Fuziliers in 1801. [Left below. Click to enlarge.] Given the wings and Tarleton (as opposed to a fur cap), this must be an officer of the light company. His jacket bears two rows of closely spaced buttons, extending well towards the shoulders – a good match for that of the Berkeley Volunteers shown here, and a confirmation that such styling was not confined to the auxiliary forces.

Loftie

Lawson

At some point Lawson was commissioned by Anne S K Brown to copy the Loftie watercolours for her own collection, now at Brown University; some of these “copies” were reproduced and described by René Chartrand in 1993-4 in Military Illustrated. Versions also appear in Lawson’s Volume V. Now Loftie’s Fuzilier clearly has at least thirteen buttons showing in each row above his sash, but in the Brown copy Lawson has reduced these to the regulation ten, reverting the jacket to a bog standard officer’s pattern. (If this were so, the buttons would be in twos, this regiment wearing them paired on their regulation coats.)

Look closer and there are other discrepancies: Loftie shows the collar, cuffs and facings edged with a narrow white cord or feathering, but Lawson has changed this to a broad gold lace. The Tarleton has all gilt furniture, but Lawson seems to give it a silver band, and Chartrand describes it thus. Lawson also heightens the shape of the pointed cuffs and adds fringes to the wings. In Loftie the breeches are properly white, but the gloves are buff; Lawson shows buff breeches and white gloves. Why? I’ve no idea.

Similar glitches affect other figures in the album. For example, Loftie shows the light company officer’s cap of the 38^th with a green band around the base, a silver cord and tassels, and a two-part silver plate with a crown over some sort of rayed star. Lawson’s copy for Brown adds a silver band around the top edge, while his version in Volume V of A History of the Uniforms changes cord and tassels to green and omits the plate. (The confusion passes through to the Fostens’ Thin Red Line, where the same cap – “after Loftie” – has a green cord, silver bands top and bottom and a plate with no star.)

Details, details, I hear you say. There are more important things in life to get upset about, and so there are, and no doubt uniformology is not an exact science. But how inexact can we afford to be?

Still more light company style

Tracking back to previous posts (here and here) on the topic of cavalry styled jackets worn by light infantry officers of militia regiments, here’s a rather remarkable jacket (currently for sale online) that confirms the trend, and with a whole lot of braiding as an extra delight. This is for an officer of the light company of Col John Silvester’s 1st Manchester Local Militia of 1808-16. The three rows of 17 buttons are braided and looped with scarlet twist, the top rows ending over the shoulder in whorls. The dark blue collar also has self coloured braid edging and loops. Though the overall cut is orthodox, these details very much give an impression of cavalry or rifles. [Click to enlarge.]

As they accumulate, these examples prompt the question of what exactly the militia was imitating here. Is it possible that officers of some light infantry regiments and companies of the line wore similar jackets? There are the famous red or grey pelisses of the 43rd of course, but the Napier portrait shows a pelisse worn with the regulation jacket. It seems unlikely that militia regiments would have had the temerity to initiate this styling, but at the moment I can’t spot any model among the regulars that they might have been following.

 

More light company style

Some posts back – here’s a link – I dug out my vintage sketch of the multi-buttoned jacket of Captain John Brown of the Sheffield Local Militia post 1808, at one time (still??) in the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield, and compared that little known item with the Royal Collection’s much more familiar Dighton painting of a light infantry officer of the South Gloucestershire Militia circa 1804. Here’s something similar, just because I like it – the light infantry style jacket of Captain John Cornock of the Berkeley Volunteers of Gloucestershire, post 1803. The zig zag wings are styled like the militia jacket, but this garment is double breasted, with two rows of buttons only, so a tad short of the full “cavalry” effect.

The jacket is on show in the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum at Gloucester Docks, where I snapped it recently – well worth a visit, with a good smattering of stuff from other Napoleonic period auxiliary units of the county. Curiously, the jacket is currently on show buttoned in reverse, while on the Museum’s website it’s been shown buttoned correctly, and with a triangle of the inside facing colour thrown open on the lapel. (At present, getting up images on the Museum’s site seems problematic, but that may just be me.)

The jacket has white cord trim throughout. The braid and fringe on the wings looks silverish now, but I’m assuming it’s gold, given the gilt buttons, which show “ByV” in intertwined script. The cuffs are split at the rear, and it’s interesting to see how the lower edges of the sloping false pockets are lined up with the turnbacks, which are in the facing colour, with a tiny loop of cord at the point. The pictures should make things clear – click to enlarge – but please excuse the reflections from the display case. A great item.

A complementary full tailed coat in orthodox style with buttons in pairs, also Cornock’s, is also held by the Museum, but is not on display. The two garments were documented way back in JSAHR Vol XXXIX.

Sadler’s chimerical Sharpshooters

As it happens, this blog takes its title from the dedication page of Loyal Volunteers, Ackermann and Rowlandson’s gigantic 1799 compendium of London armed associations. I’ve always thought one of the more interesting entries to be plate 46, which shows a member of Sadler’s Sharp Shooters – “a Light Infantry Man defending himself with [James] Sadler’s Patent Gun & long cutting Bayonet.” The figure is chic in a Tarleton and dark blue jacket and pantaloons with red trim. The “patent gun” appears rather short, but the bayonet is enormous.

Some copies of Loyal Volunteers also contain an unnumbered and spectacular plate portraying “Sadler’s Flying Artillery” (high res image here) showing the nearest we get to Georgian tank warfare – two guns of Sadler’s own invention mounted on a light carriage drawn by two horses. In the text to the first plate this is described as “the celebrated War Chariot, in which two persons, advancing or retreating, can manage two pieces of Ordnance (three-pounders) with alacrity, and in safety, so as to do execution at the distance of two furlongs.” Options for “advancing or retreating” were enabled by setting the guns on a turret; to reverse their fire the gunners simply switched seats. As James Sadler had not got round to inventing armour plate, I’m uncertain about their “safety”, but you can’t have everything.

The patent gun and the flying artillery were real enough, their virtues detailed by their inventor in his own Account of Various Improvements in Artillery, Fire-Arms, &c of 1798. According to Mark Davies’s biography of Sadler, both “musquet” and “moving battery”, or “curricle flying artillery”, were unveiled on June 4 1798, the King’s birthday. With the backing of Secretary at War William Windham, the latter was demonstrated successfully before royalty in 1798 and 1800, and may possibly have been shipped abroad with the army on the expedition to Holland in 1799 at the behest of the Duke of York and under the care of Sadler’s son, James junior.

James Sadler

Equally real, perhaps even larger than life, was James Sadler himself – aeronaut, inventor, chemist, naval technologist, steam engineer, creator of “philosophical fireworks”, barracks master and confectioner. There is, not surprisingly, a good deal of information available online about this extraordinary man; much more could be said about him than I have space for here, and Google will soon find it for you.

But if the guns and their inventor were real, how actual were the Sharp Shooters? I have to own up to some big doubts. Rowlandson’s fine plate is dated September 1798, but its accompanying text of August 1799 admits tartly that the corps was, even one year on, “but inconsiderable in number” and “in so imperfect a state as not to admit of illustration satisfactory to the Public.” However, it was “intended to extend them to a degree of respectability,” after which they would hopefully “join with the Westminster Associations”. A tad dysfunctional, then!

The text lists no officers (included with every other plate), not even the “ingenious Machinist” himself, but blags quaintly that the corps “is shortly to be officered by the Honourable the Board of Ordnance.” I can find no officers for the Sharp Shooters in the Gazette, members of the Board of Ordnance or not, and according to Mark Davies both the patent rifles and the war chariot were used in 1798 by the Pimlico Volunteers, with whom Sadler had some sort of connection.

There exists, however, a medal for the Sharp Shooters, for “Best Shot at Ball Practice,” awarded to a Corporal William Staples, which was sold a few years back at a prestigious auction house. However, the figure on the medal is dressed in a round hat with a tall feather, while the award is dated September 30 1802 – a time at which the corps might be expected to have stood down, like every other volunteer unit, following the Treaty of Amiens earlier that year, rather than hold a shooting match. I’m no expert on volunteer medals, but I have read that some are known fakes, and it must be simple enough to engrave something feasible on a silver blank. In Irwin’s War Medals and Decorations of 1910 this actual medal is said to be then in the collection of a Colonel Gaskell, so if it’s a fake, it’s a vintage fake.

If genuine, it may be the single surviving piece of evidence to confirm the existence of Sadler’s corps as a functioning military outfit outside the pages of Rowlandson’s Loyal Volunteers. Or were the chimerical Sharp Shooters merely a good intention? Or an ingenious PR fiction created to publicise their director’s inventions?

“… a White Lace both for NCOs and the Privates”

Continuing with the theme of deviations, it’s easy to assume that if an infantry regiment of this era was not granted a distinctive coloured lace, then its coats or jackets would bear none, so that it would be by default an “unlaced” regiment. But it wasn’t necessarily so.

2nd & 4th Battalions, Lancashire Supplementary Militia

3rd Battalion, Lancashire Supplementary Militia

When Supplementary Militia battalions were created in the late 1790s they did not share the lace pattern of their parent county regiment. Drawings in one of the Pearse tailor books show that the lapelled and tailed coats of the 1^st Lancashire Supplementary Battalion (subsequently the 2^nd Regiment) were unlaced, but that the 2^nd and 4^th Supplementaries (later 3^rd and 5^th Regiments) had the singly spaced buttons on their “New Fashion” jackets laced with plain white braid in “bastion” loops. The 3^rd Supplementary (later 4^th Regiment) also wore jackets with white pointed loops to their buttons, set in threes. The jacket patterns are interesting in that they show the early transitional style with proper skirts with double turnbacks.

As these battalions were expanded and renumbered as regiments they borrowed the proper coloured lace of the 1^st Lancashire Militia. But the option of white lace loops remained on the pattern books, and found a new lease of life when offered to the volunteer movement.

When the Shropshire Volunteers (an unwieldy 18 company regiment) were due for new clothing at the start of 1806, it was felt that their unadorned red jackets of 1803 had looked a little plain, so the Committee opted for “Jacket No 2” of those now offered by its clothier. Colonel John Kynaston Powell noted that this had “a White Lace, and consequently a White Button, both for Non-Commission Officers (Staff Sergeants excepted) and the Privates.” This would provide “a sufficient Smartness,” and despite the extra cost of the lace would still be within the government’s allowance. (The unusual artillery pieces of the Shropshire Volunteers are discussed in my post here.)

Leek Volunteers

This was not the only volunteer unit to opt for this style, and such jackets survive. In the Staffordshire Regiment Museum is a fine jacket of the Loyal Leek Volunteers with buttons in five pairs and laced in plain white. In addition the jacket edges, turnbacks, collar, shoulder straps, cuffs and pockets are all edged with the same white braid. The loops show a decent “window” of red, and the buttons here are of yellow metal.

Lancaster Volunteers

Lancaster City Museum has held for many years a jacket of the Lancaster Volunteers, sketched by P W Reynolds and photographed for Volume 2 of Bryan Fosten’s Osprey Wellington’s Infantry. This also has white lace and paired white buttons, but in four pairs and with pointed lace. Here only the collar, straps and turnbacks are edged. (It’s instructive to compare Reynolds’s version with the photo; given the ambiguous spacing on the jacket front he can be forgiven for having seen the buttons as single – but what about the cuffs and pockets?)

The Lancaster Volunteers sketched as drawn by Reynolds. Photo by Ben Townsend

These are just three examples, but there may well be others. The touch of showiness provided by plain white lacing would be calculated to appeal to a committee or commanding officer considering a re-clothing, and the splash of braid across the jacket would have given the volunteers something of the look of regulars.

One weird militia cap

This blog has been grievously neglected for several months. Family stuff; my apologies.

The more you look at the uniforms of a particular regiment in this era, the more you appreciate the deviations from the greater uniformity. Where colonels were allowed licence, such as in the clothing of musicians, this is especially so. Drummers are a particular headache, and faced with the arcane and variant complexities of drummers’ lacing, one begins to doubt the detail of many artists’ reconstructions.

Here’s an extremely weird drummer’s cap of the Royal Lancashire Militia from the notebooks of P W Reynolds in the V&A. (Many thanks to  Ben Townsend for the photo.) It’s a “Belgic”, or at least a sort of Belgic, attributed to the First Regiment of Lancs Militia around 1814, and Reynolds’s sketch is based on a previous sketch by “JCL”, whoever he or she was – Charles Lyall, maybe?

Reynolds’s assumption is that the cap was of black felt. The front is said to be 9 inches high, so about the norm, but the “pole”, which I understand to mean the cap part, though I’ve never seen that term used elsewhere, is just over 5 inches deep, so more shallow than usual – perhaps scaled down to fit a boy. The front is steeply arched – quite different to the squareish front of the standard Belgic, and so more reminiscent of the shape of the pre-1802 drummer’s fur cap. In place of the usual folding flap at rear is a drum badge, as previously used on the rear of drummers’ fur caps, measuring 2⅛ by 1½ inches and presumably in brass.

The circular plate at front is 3 inches in diameter, again presumably of brass, and Reynolds notes correctly that the elements of the design – “LANCASTER”, rose and wreath – correspond to those of the known Belgic cap plates of the regiment, which are of the standard size and shape. The peak is narrower than the norm at 1½ inches, though that is a feature seen on some officers’ and volunteer caps. JCL had noted that a “festoon” had been worn on the cap and that there was a small hole “in upper part of front”, presumably to take a tuft and cockade, but exactly where was not marked in his sketch.

The cap is said to have been seen at Hawkes’s, the military outfitters. Where is it now?  A search of the NAM inventory throws up nothing, though that’s not to be wondered at.

This cap raises all kinds of questions. Why the odd shape, and does it have any relation to drummers’ fur caps or to the tall fronted light infantry caps discussed in this post? Why the small plate when the front was tall enough to take the standard pattern? Does it actually date to circa 1814? Was it a regimental one-off? Or did other regiments adopt similarly mutant forms? And how much can we trust modern illustrations that show drummers of the period wearing the same caps and plates as everyone else?

The Birmingham volunteer prints of Edward Rudge

“The exultation of the Volunteers in their plumes and trappings is, after a century’s interval, positively humiliating to contemplate,” snorted John William Fortescue, historian of the British Army in 1909, in his The County Lieutenancies and the Army, 1803-1814. “Every one of the London corps, whether by its own act or by the enterprise of some print-seller, obtained commemoration at the hands of some limner of fashion-plates, and has been visible in the windows of print-shops ever since.” (Extending his denunciation to the innumerable flattering portrayals of volunteer and yeomanry officers, he excused himself by adding: “I speak as a collector … of engraved portraits of distinguished officers of the Army. To such a collector the portraits of the illustrious obscure … are little short of a curse.”)

London limners may have led the pack, but the great provincial cities were not far behind. To make the point, here are three fine Birmingham prints, all drawn and published by Edward Rudge of that city. (Click to enlarge .) Two show the battalion and flank companies of the Birmingham Loyal Association of 1797, and both were engraved by Samuel William Fores, better known as a publisher of Gillray and others. In April 1799 the Association appeared for the first time “completely regimented” with a grenadier and a light company; “… handsome and military … much admired …,” said the local papers. In September Rudge’s print appeared to memorialise the whole handsome effect. The difference in height between the men of the companies is emphasised in his visualisation. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a copy of this print, and reproductions were published for the Matthew Boulton exhibition of 2009.

A more animated and fluent version, again by Rudge and Fores, appeared in March of the following year, no doubt to satisfy continuing popular clamour. A rather noble house and a small lake appear in the immediate background, with a windmill in the distance on the extreme right, but I can’t say that I’m able to identify the location. This second print is reproduced in Hart’s 1906 history of the 1^st Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Space precludes any analysis of the uniforms here, but it may be worth mentioning that a fine grenadier private’s coat, with waistcoat, breeches and accoutrements, and a light infantry Tarleton are on display at the Royal Warwickshire (Royal Regiment of Fusiliers) Regimental Museum in Warwick.

The third Rudge print dates from April 1801 and was engraved by a C Williams rather than by Fores. This fine piece of aquatinting is dedicated to the Warwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry, raised in 1794, and shows what seems to be the second uniform of the regiment, with a skirted “Austrian” jacket. The print is reproduced in Adderley’s very scarce regimental history, but a good high res version is available at the Anne S K Brown Collection. In his Ogilby Trust pamphlet on the regiment, the late R J Smith lamented that variant colourings of this print obscure the history of the uniform, but it seems clear to me that a French grey jacket with green facings and yellow braid is shown. On the Anne S K Brown copy (alone?) a white over red feather has been added to the helmet.

It’s not easy to get a handle on Edward Rudge, and to date I’ve not come across any other prints, military or otherwise, published by him. He was clearly not the Warwickshire landscape painter of the same name born in 1790 – was that his son? Our Rudge is described as a “stationer and painter” in bankruptcy announcements of the late 1790’s; it seems that there was less profit in limning the illustrious obscure than Fortescue imagined …

Bad tempered shooting matches (2)

A few posts back, I chronicled an acrimonious target match of 1804 between two Gloucestershire volunteer rifle companies. Here, from 1811, is another instance of sharp shooting becoming sharp practice, this time pitting the metrosexual beaux of the Duke of Cumberland’s Sharpshooters and the Yagers of the prestigious Honourable Artillery Company against the stoutly rural Nottinghamshire Riflemen, a volunteer rifle club founded in 1810, and the issuers of an “all England challenge”.

The Cumberlands put in considerable practice for the match. A press report of this (my italics) is significant:

“The Duke of Cumberland’s Sharpshooters having accepted the challenge to all England from the Nottinghamshire Riflemen, to fire with ball at 200 yards, without a rest, have had two days’ practice, when much excellent shooting was exhibited, but none equalled the performance of Adjutant De Berenger, who out of seven successive shots, at 200 yards, without a rest, hit the bull’s eye six times, five of them in succession.”

A Duke of Cumberland’s Sharpshooter [National Army Museum]

By the day of the match, held at Stamford race course, the stipulation to fire without the use of a rest had mysteriously slipped, at least on the part of the Cumberlands. Curiously, Adjutant De Berenger, who was given a handsome medal by the corps for his feat of marksmanship on August 18^th, was not at the competition on the 24^th, on which the Sporting Magazine of 1811 ran a full report:

“The Riflemen of Nottinghamshire having challenged all England to fire at a target, the same was accepted by the Yagers of the Honourable Artillery Company, and the Duke of Cumberland’s Sharp Shooters, for a stake of fifty guineas a side. The stipulations on the part of the Nottinghamshire Riflemen were – to fire from the shoulder, at the distance of two hundred yards.

The contending parties arrived in Stamford on Saturday, the 24^th ult. and some excellent specimens of firing were exhibited during their practice on that day. Soon after ten o’clock on the following Monday morning, the combatants marched to the field (the race-ground near Stamford), in ‘battle array’; and the targets were fixed shortly after their arrival there. The firing (each man fired twelve shots) was not over until nearly six o’clock. The following is a correct statement of it:-

FIRST MATCH

The Nottinghamshire Riflemen.
Colonel Kirke    3 Shots
Mr Sharpe         5 do.
Mr Clarke          6 do.
Mr Habbijam     5 do.
Mr Thornton      2 do.
21 shots

The Artillery Company’s Yagers.
Mr Baumer        6 Shots
Mr Broadhurst   5 Shots
Lieutenant Davis 3 do.
Mr Garth           5 do.
Mr Waller          5 do.
Total                 23 Shots
Majority for the Yagers, 2.

SECOND MATCH

The Nottinghamshire Riflemen.
Colonel Kirke    3 Shots
Mr Sharpe         4 do.
Mr Clark            4 do.
Mr Habbijam     3 do.
Mr Thornton      4 do.
Total                    18 Shots.

The Duke of Cumberland’s Sharp Shooters
Total number of Shots   31
Majority for the Sharp Shooters, 13.

The members of the Duke of Cumberland’s Sharp Shooters who fired, were Messrs. Henderson, Bell, Charlton, Lynch, and Fenton.

The latter match is not to be considered as decided at present, inasmuch as the Duke of Cumberland’s Sharp Shooters made use of a rest from the body, contrary to the signed agreement, which stipulated that each man should ‘stand in an erect position, and fire fairly from the shoulder.’ The decision is to be referred to some persons competent to judge between the parties.”

The post-match booze-up in Stamford seems to have reflected this falling out. The Sharpshooters kept their own company at the Crown Inn, where they “spent the day with conviviality.” Down the road at The George, the Yagers and the Nottinghamshires shared a “sumptuous entertainment” of their own, culminating in the presentation of a silver medal by the former to the latter.

The assumed victory was celebrated in a satirical print, aggressively in support of the “victors”, published the following month by S W Fores, and titled: “The Challengers of All England Chopfallen, or the Cumberland Triumph.” (A copy is in the British Museum collection.)

Here the Sharpshooters look trim and dandyish in full dress, the Nottinghams dumpy and disconsolate in their round hats and trousers. The only appearance of the HAC Yagers seems to be the figure in the foreground who chases away a dog. A superscription notes that “The Notts took 2 hours and 40 minutes to fire their shots, in order to drive the Cumberland into the night, the Cumberland fired theirs in 43 minutes begining [sic] at a 1/4 past Five.”

A spectator comments: “Those queer looking Chaps are Robin Hoods Men, as they call themselves!” His wife replies: “Well I always thought Robin Hood and his Men had been Gentlemen!” A pie vendor cries: “Excellent Sharp Shooters Pyes! and Cumberland Nuts. I can’t recommend the Nottingham Cakes, the company says they are rather sour!” His customer replies: “Why Master Pyeman your a Wag, you had better take care what you say, the Colonels a Magistrate!”

The said Colonel Kirke complains: “It certainly must be oweing to the Belly Ache that I fired so bad. I never had such a belly ache in my life before. Gripe’d all night I assure you.” His companion says: “Why I say Coll! that man’s fireing with a rest damme if thats fair they shant have the stakes.” Rather enigmatically, a Sharpshooter comments: “Twigg the two Slings to their Guns!”

I’ve not been able to discover the nature of the “rest from the body” used by the Cumberlands, nor in what sense the Nottinghams’ guns may have had “two slings”. Can anyone advise?

The sharpshooting Adjutant Berenger of the Cumberlands was, of course, the fantasist and indefatigable self-publicist Charles Random, or “Charles Random de Berenger, Baron de Beaufain”, imprisoned for his part in the notorious Stock Exchange fraud of 1814. That same year the Sharpshooters morphed into a rifle club, resurfacing with the rifle volunteer movement of 1859 as the Victoria Rifles. Despite the Nottinghams’ “Robin Hood” tag, I’ve found nothing to suggest that the Robin Hood Rifles of 1859 traced their lineage to them. By the way, I do feel that “chopfallen” (crestfallen, dejected) is an old English term well worthy of revival.

Whether a “competent person” ever finally settled the dispute does not seem to be recorded.

‘In their best Turbans’: black musicians in the Militia and Volunteers

The presence of black musicians in the British Army of the later 18^th and early 19^th centuries is well documented. The craze for “Turkish” or “Janissary” music brought percussion instruments into regimental bands – bass drum or kettledrum, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, crescent or “Jingling Johnnie” – and black percussionists to play them, perhaps chosen for perceived exotic value as well as for percussive ability. Though band uniforms were already extravagant products of regimental vanity, these musicians were even further distinguished by their fantastical and pseudo-oriental costumes, often involving ornamented turbans and Turkish-style “shells”.

This rather interesting thesis outline notes that 41 line regiments of foot are known to have employed black musicians (the actual number was perhaps much higher), but observes that their novelty and visibility rather eclipsed the honourable record of ordinary black soldiers who served in the ranks, who were often overlooked in contemporary accounts and imagery.

Cymbalist, Buckinghamshire Militia, 1793, Anne S K Brown collection

Tambourine player, Buckinghamshire Militia, 1793, Anne S K Brown collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Less widely recognised, perhaps, are the black musicians who served as frequently with the Militia, so here are a few examples. The watercolours by Captain Sir William Young of the Buckinghamshire Militia of 1793 include a “cymbalist” and a “tamborin”. (The originals, in the British Museum collection, are not available online, but copies are in the Anne S K Brown collection.)

A regimental order of June 1797 of the Staffordshire Militia required “Grenadiers, Light Infantry & Drummers [to parade] in their respective dress caps. Musick in jackets. The Blacks in their best Turbans.”

Service in a regimental band must have been an attractive option for those fallen on hard times. In November 1807 Adjutant Butterfield of the 1^st West Yorkshire Militia wrote to his Colonel that “Major Dearden has this moment directed me to express his wish to have a Black, taken from the Prison here, as a Tamboreen in the Band to complete our number.”

That number might be as many as five percussionists. Among the clothing supplied to the Shropshire Militia for 1811 were five “Cymbol &c dress Jackets, Shells, Pantaloons and Waistcoats”; in 1813 the same five musicians were supplied with “Fancy Caps” with “Ornaments” and “long feathers”.

“Music jacket & Shell” for the North Gloucestershire Militia, 1796, from the Pearse tailor’s books, Canadian War Museum collection

A 1796 tailor’s drawing for the North Gloucestershire Militia gives some idea of the construction of such garments. One element of the many curious and fossilised features of military musicians’ dress of the era was a fringe around the elbow or wrist, and the drawing shows a scarlet long sleeved “waistcoat” (or jacket) worn under an open white “jacket” (or shell) with short, elbow length sleeves to which this fringe was attached.

The Bishop Blaize procession from Walker’s ‘Costume of Yorkshire’

There is some evidence that showier or better heeled volunteer regiments may also have employed black musicians. The print of John Hopkins’ painting of the 1796 “Grand Review of the Gentleman Volunteers” at Wakefield seems to indicate white turbaned percussionists among the bands of the Bradford, Leeds and Royal Wakefield Volunteers. A plate from Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire (1814) shows the Bishop Blaise procession in Bradford, held in 1804 and 1811. If the original sketch was made in 1804 the military in the procession would be the Bradford Volunteers. (If in 1811, their successors in the Morley Local Militia.) Prominent in the relatively small band are a black bass drummer and cymbal player, in red sleeveless shells over yellow jackets, yellow pantaloons, red fezzes and white turbans.

The movements of the cymbal player suggest that, in contrast to the formal composure of the brass and wind players, free expression was the norm. Period accounts of regular infantry bands mention black players’ “contortions and evolutions” – “throwing up a bass drum-stick into the air after the beat, and catching it with the other hand in time for the next, shaking the ‘Jingling Johnnie’ under their arms, over their heads, and even under their legs, and clashing the cymbals at every point they could reach.”