Undergarments

The Regimental Uniform

The following is an excerpt from The Re-illuminated School of Mars, a website focused on Auxiliary forces from the mid-18th century to the end of the Napoleonic period.

Second embodiment 1778-83

The Second, like the First, was re-embodied in March 1778, during the American War, and disembodied in 1783. Colonel Thornton died in 1769 and the command passed to Col Stanhope Harvey. During this period the West Riding’s militia precedence numbers were – 1778-79: 4. 1779-80: 1. 1780-81: 27. 1781-82: 26. 1782-83: 28.

The regiment was at the Coxheath encampment of 1778, and during the Gordon Riots emergency of 1780, it was camped in London at Montagu House in Bloomsbury, London – the site of the first location of the British Museum – and then at Blackheath. In 1782 it was encamped at Harwich. A plan of the Coxheath camp, and plans by Paterson of the London, Blackheath and Harwich camps all colour the facings as mid to light green, as confirmed by other sources. The Osborn militia book of 1780 (Carman, 1958) shows buttons set in pairs, confirmed in other sources, but also gives yellow facings. Since other sources firmly indicate yellow from 1799 only, this has to be a mis-colouring for light green.

Several views are known of the Montagu House camp, by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm and Paul Sandby, and these provide some useful visual evidence, as analysed below.

Officers

Parkyn cites a Militia List of 1778 as giving green facings and silver lace for officers. Two pen and watercolour drawings by S H Grimm of views of the regiment at Montagu House in June 1780 are in the Royal Collection (RCIN 916601-02, Miller & Dawnay 193-94, plates 137-38); these include small figures of officers. The full drawings are online here and here [links to the Royal Collection Trust]. (A third view by Grimm is held by the British Museum, and is online here, but the figures are too distant to show any detail.)

Officers are shown in scarlet coats with collar, cuffs, lapels and, unusually, turnbacks in a bright light green. Hat lace and epaulettes are silver, but gorgets are gilt. Waistcoats and breeches are white, sashes crimson and the boots have brown tops, though one figure wears stockings and shoes. Officers of the grenadier company, marching past the colours, wear coats and hats (though their men wear fur caps and jackets) and carry half pikes. The green turnbacks have at least to be queried, given that Sandby (see below) shows men of the regiment at the same date in coats with white turnbacks; on the other hand, Grimm was an eye witness, and these are not random “staffage” figures. A related engraving after Sandby by James Fittler (Anne S K Brown collection), though inaccurate in some respects, shows the officers’ silver laced hats with black feather plumes. Judging by the men’s buttons (below) those of officers would also have been in pairs.

Other Ranks

The Osborn book shows the men’s buttons in pairs with white loops. (Some other aspects of the Osborn images are generic and require confirmation.) Images of the Montagu House camp of 1780 by Grimm and Sandby provide other details. Copies of a coloured print by Paul Sandby can be found in the Royal Collection, on the Society of the Cincinnati site and in the Anne S K Brown Collection; two figures at the right represent men of the regiment. The man holding the box is identified as a corporal, and his wings indicate the grenadier company. The coats have buttons and laces in pairs, and full length skirts with white turnbacks. Off-white breeches (perhaps leather) are worn with short gaiters, and the hats have full black plumes. The facing colour here is a bluish shade, but that may be the whim of the colourist.

This is at variance with the numerous small figures in Grimm. It may be that he shows a form of second dress, and Sandby the full dress, or that Sandby’s figures are generic and inaccurate. In the Grimm drawings, jackets with facings and turnbacks in light green are universally shown, worn with breeches and short gaiters.

Drummers

The small figures leading the march past of grenadiers in one of the Grimm images may be the drummers and fifers or a small band – I honestly can’t say from the images available online. They wear fur caps, white jackets and breeches, and short gaiters. The jackets may have red collars, cuffs and turnbacks, as worn by a figure elsewhere who could represent a drummer or bandsman. Lawson’s analysis of Grimm includes a note of drummers in fur caps on parade but hats in camp, white jackets faced red with darts on the sleeves, the lace apparently with a red stripe, but I’m unable myself to make all this out in the online versions.

Colours

Hay records no issue of new colours until 1795. If so, the colours in use would have been those of 1759. Grimm’s drawing of a march past shows the King’s colour as a plain Union flag; the regimental colour is shown in the same light green as the facings, and has a Union canton and an indistinct central device. Three camp colours are visible, their ground in the same green; they hang in folds but have inscriptions in white, apparently in three lines, the upper two beginning “W …” and “Y …”, presumably for “WEST YORK”. They also appear to have spearheads, and possibly cords and tassels.

Source: The Re-illuminated School of Mars

https://thisreilluminatedschoolofmars.wordpress.com/notes-on-the-dress-of-the-militia/west-yorkshire-2nd-west-yorkshire-militia-1759-1816/