Field Officer’s Dress Jacket c1845

This jacket was worn between 1840 and 1855 but the exact dating is obscure. In his book Crimean Uniforms 2. British Artillery, Robert Wilkinson-Latham states that the RA Dress Regulations of 1833 is the only source for descriptions of the uniform of the 1840-55 period apart from the incomplete information in Kane’s RA List. So there is no proper description of this jacket, as the 1833 regulations mentions only 3 rows of ball buttons. They refer to the gold cord as ‘royal cord loops shewing a quarter of an inch of the blue between each cord’. In the 1840-55 period there were 5 rows of ball buttons and almost no blue showing between the cords. The centre row are larger buttons than the purely decorative outer rows.
The cuffs are scarlet with a cord Austrian knot surrounded by a multitude of braid circles. Perhaps these were intended to imitate piles of canon balls but the effect is less than attractive. The 1833 jacket had similar sleeve decoration, and the regulations of that year say that field officers were distinguished by a ‘binding of flat lace round the collar and cuffs.’ It would seem that the same regulation applied here because the only surviving jackets of this period have similar decoration with a line of gold lace just below the Austrian knot. A portrait of Lieutenant Dennis in 1846 shows a sleeve with the same cord and braid but without the gold lace. This means that the only indication of rank was the inch wide lace for majors and lieutenant-colonels. The collar is so covered with lace and braid that the scarlet barely shows through.

Regimental Details | Uniforms