Drum Banner

This cigarette card, no.25 in a series of 50 produced by John Player & Sons shows the drum banner of the Yorkshire Hussars along with a cap badge. The date of this is unclear but as the title of the regiment is given as Alexandra's it must be after 1903. The new title is not on the banner but the crown is a King's crown. Another illustration of the drum banner is on a chart of Yeomanry banners but differs slightly in that the crown is a Queen Victoria crown and the scrolls are in red. We know that the Yorkshire Hussars had a drumhorse in 1848 from the painting by Angelo Hayes but later pictures of a drum horse are not in evidence. However group photos of the band have kettle drums on display but no drum banners. The pictures of the Military Sunday parades in 1908 and 1910 do not provide any proof of the existence of a drum horse. A book published in 1991 by the Ogilby Trusts, entitled Yeomanry Drum Banners and Mounted Bands, no.14 in the series on the Uniforms of the British Yeomanry Force 1794-1914, by R G Harris makes no mention of a drum horse in the later period.