The Evolution of British Army Uniforms Through History

the british army is one of the world's most experienced fighting forces from blenheim to waterloo from balaclava to the somme it has played its part in history's most bloody conflicts but as it executed herculean tasks in the world's toughest terrains what were these troops wearing how did epaulets and sashes pantaloons and wellington boots end up clothing british troops on the battlefield sometimes primitive sometimes protective sometimes downright extravagant over the years military clothing has both enabled and inhibited objectives the uniforms we see today is the result of 400 years of spectacular trial and error we're here at the national army museum stores it's a top secret location just north of london and it is a treasure trove an aladdin's cave of military hardware there's trucks there's cannons there's guns and there's even parts of the berlin wall but what i'm here to see today is the astonishing collection of military uniforms this is the story of the uniform of the british army hi sophie how are you good thank you not too bad thank you so much for getting together this amazing collection for us so excited to see it today so what i've done is i've got out a selection of uniforms to kind of look at the development and how they change over time starting with one of the earliest things we have 1640s leather jerking worn by a light cavalryman or jacob's ear a really really amazing thick leather would have been really good at stopping sword cuts much lighter than armor but you could wear a back and breastplate with it one of the things that came in in the civil war was scarves or sashas because some could actually be up to nine foot long and that was to try and really help you work out who was on your side and who wasn't because obviously on a really busy battlefield you need some kind of idea of who is who and who you're supposed to be fighting and so why are we starting at the civil war what was were people not wearing uniforms before then no so you don't really have uniform before then you do have liveries people wearing clothes to deny what household they are fighting alongside or with you also find people putting leaves and things onto their hats and jackets to denote kind of who they are but obviously not very good which is why scarves are really important and that is really the beginning of a kind of uniform coming in or having some kind of recognition so what is it made of exactly so it's made of leather okay uh it would originally have had leather sleeves um but a much more softer pliable leather and you can see some of the the stitch holes from where they would have been in place and the other thing uh that kind of gives us an idea of how expensive uh and uh and well made it is you can it's kind of got remnants of metallic thread you could wear it underneath armor you could wear it with a back and breastplate um but it could be worn on its own um obviously armor is much better at stopping sword slashers and people trying to get at you with their pike but this would also do a good job and also because as a light cavalryman he would have been on a horse as well so he's higher up and off the ground okay great well that's a good start now we're moving on here we're jumping a bit in time to this one yes it's a bit of a jump this one dates to 1773 but just to give you a little fill-in for the gaps that we have when it's the restoration in 1660 the standing army is created and a lot of regiments are disbanded and some are kept but it's only the horse and foot guards so this is an example of the first regiment of foot guards it's an other ranks coat so it would be a lot less flashy than the officers lace is a really really big feature of clothing kind of around this time see it's got a longer wider skirt on the coat i kind of think it probably wasn't the most helpful for marching in it kind of get in the way or fighting do we have any reports of what people thought about wearing this kind of thing yeah i mean it's jumping forward ever so slightly but there's a brilliant open letter to an editor at the time mercury in 1806 of a guy who writes in complaining about how extravagant uniforms are and how difficult uh certain aspects of them are and my favorite part of it he says can we not fight without dying in tinsel because of why were the british army wearing bright red on the battlefield so red is obviously a really really visible colour and at a time when the battlefield is really smoky you need to be able to stand out because you've got to be able to know who is who you don't want to be shooting your friend rather than your enemy but also this material at that point in time is cheap so it's not picked as some people believe to hide the blood but just because it is a cheap material to buy in bulk to be dressing your soldiers with and the other important thing to mention about this as well is facings um so these come in and they're a really really important way of differentiating between different regiments um so facings would usually be found on the collar the lapels at this point in time and the cuffs and that colour would tell you what regiment they belong to and it's also a really important way of distinguishing who is who so when you have loads of different redcoats you need a way of distinguishing between all of that red and working out who is here and that's where we see things like the buttons and epaulettes again it's something that is stipulated in the different warrants that you uh that you have so who is it exactly who's making these decisions and what kind of events are propelling these decisions is it a kind of bottom-up um you know soldiers at the bottom complaining about getting too wet and that's boots not working or is it the generals at the top um you know deciding i want my men to look smarter it is very much top down [Laughter] yes dress regulations come in in 1822 under the reign of george iv who is very well known for his love of clothes his love of fashion but yeah no here we have uh an infantry uh short-tailed coati which dates uh a coati now what is a coat versus a goatee we've been looking at a coat and this is a coati so it's got a higher waist and you can see that he has short tails which kind of go over and cover his bum at the back which is much different from the design we've got here um and it's probably to make it more helpful with marching because they did also actually start to turn back the flaps of their coats um and so this is 1811 this one yes okay this is peak napoleonic yes and and again you can see the uh the facing colours here are very very prominent across the chest and the collar and on his cuffs okay and tell me about these buttons number 77 is that the regiment it is yes it's the 77th east middlesex regiment of foot and were these uniforms visible in civilian society you know i'm thinking about jane austen when she's writing in this kind of period there's always lydia bennett saying you know the officers are coming to merit and that kind of thing and they go to these balls and these dinners and they're always in vegemental dress they are it was the first thing my mind jumped to when you said about that because jane austen writes quite a lot about uh the army the militia yeah and you said when they come to meriton um and there's a line about them dazzling in scarlet as lydia bennett quite rightly said as the battle of waterloo drew the curtains on the napoleonic wars the british army were free to expand their ambitions further afield the 19th century store the steady consolidation of the british empire equipped with the latest weapons transport and equipment forged by the industrial revolution the first major test of victoria's troops came at the outbreak of the crimean war in 1853 this is probably the most um sumptuous along here and what a tiny waist tiny tiny waist absolutely miniature so this is also a coati you can see we've kind of still kept that still got the high waist so we've also got some leg wear that would go with this short coat if you would like some bottom halves how exciting so uh so these are pantaloons they've got this really lovely applique here as you can see they are very tight fitting there would have been little room in them there's no pockets and they would have been worn with boots and you can see the lines on them here oh yeah which i think is where the boots would have come to i see they would really really uh be a very very tight fit on you a bit like skinny jeans or leggings today i think showing off your calves yeah so what's interesting is um we've also got a pair of breeches here as well um so what is the difference between breeches and pantaloons so as you can see these are longer much tighter and these would actually finish around your knee um and would be worn with kind of stockings gators slightly different uh to these but again no pockets um and a bit of a different fit um is it a bit more baggy these ones yeah and then they kind of come in get quite a bum on them okay and i can see the detail here this the seven on the buttons is that the regiment yeah linking into the regiment yeah um and what's interesting is and there's a lot of similarity uh with this period still um between the army and civilian fashion so beau brummel uh his name is a byword for you know fashion and yes dandy supposedly he kind of was one of the reasons that pantaloons came into being because he wanted like a nice clean fit and it to be really nice and slick so what came first civilian clothing or the military clothing or is it a chicken and egg situation it's very much a chicken and egg situation between military clothing and civilian fashion you see a lot of zig zagging really from the very very early days so this is the buffs regiment which is a nickname that they got from their facings so we said a little bit about facings before a lot of regiments would get a nickname for them and some would uh end up getting a title from them um the buff the buff so this is because of uh the color of the facings here so this is it it's called see that color yeah and can you tell me about these buttons as well so we've got the yes the symbol of the dragon i think and there's some sort of latin motto yeah so these are the regimental buttons uh for the buffs regiment and then also has a prussian collar with tight stitches up here they kind of affected fighting on a battlefield i can't think of anything worse than having i know being very restricted i think it's something that you kind of see in these you kind of think would i be able to fight and that would it be restrictive how much movement have you got but there was something else in the clothing warrants from the 1760s as well which was saying about how it needed to be tight but not enough that it would cause restraint so you could fight in it but you needed to still kind of look good and look the part and this was from the crimean war is that right and we actually know exactly who the person was yes it's the captain john lewis of the buffs regiment and he went out to the crimea in 1855 right in the middle of it but it's interesting because 1855 is also a really key date for moving from coates to tunics yeah the crimea seems like they had a lot of things which went quite badly wrong which provoked quite a big changes i'm thinking about florence nightingale and the scootari barracks which apparently were covered in about an inch of feces when france nightingale got there and that sort of changed what we thought about hospitals and i it's interesting that they also changed the uniforms at the same time because of that and this is what we came up with the tunic yeah so this tunic dates to 1856 so literally uh cusp of the the crimean war and the tunic coming in uh and it's in other ranks uh katie you can see we've got cloth epaulettes um much more practical maybe compared to those it's still red still red that's one of the key things here okay so post crimea now how is warfare and warfare technology changing so firearms are starting to change around 1880 we start to see breach loading firearms coming in as opposed to muzzleloading and i've got some examples okay great so here yeah let's see we have a flintlock musket and you can see it's got gr on for georgian um so this one would have to be loaded up here so this is a muzzle loading firearm so you would stick your powder and your shot in here ram it down and then you'd be able to fire it um but you standing up you um you want to be able to see what you're aiming for because the accuracy of these isn't amazingly great over the place yeah and then right so when we have this change we move to this this is a bolt-action rifle i think believe i believe this one is an enfield and this is breech loading so you can see here where we have the bolt just here you would pull that back put your shot in there and then you'd be able to uh to fire it but you can do all of that from lying down or hiding or taking cover and it really changes the way in which the battlefield is used [Music] the disasters of the crimean war provoked a series of investigations and reports to recommend changes to the british army's organization in 1868 william gladstone's liberal government began a process of modernization they set out to centralize the power of the war office create reserve forces stationed in britain and establish short terms of service for enlisted men the army was engaging in conflicts spanning the globe from india to burma egypt to afghanistan and one of the greatest tests for victoria's army was the anglo-boer wars so with the boar war the first one in 1880 to 81 soldiers that are arriving from india to fight there are issued with khaki um so khaki uh is the urdu word for dust um and uh it was potentially first uh worn in 1846 by lumsden's horse in india and they dyed their uniforms um i think there's like records of like tea or you know earth or to kind of give you this natural protection and camouflage you against the terrain that you're fighting in um so soldiers are issued with this when they arrive at the ball to fight and then in 1886 it becomes it's adopted for for active service and then we have the second ball war of 1899 to 1902 and again men are fighting in this it's much better much more camouflaged against their surroundings um and and then in 1902 itself uh the british army formally adopt a universal service dress which this is an example of so how do you how would they have distinguished their regiment so there's still carryovers that we've seen from these previous bits so you would have your epilets obviously for your rank uh collar badges um again buttons still uh reflect the regiment and i noticed there's there's pockets there are pockets yes that's it's they haven't put anything useful on the previous uniforms yeah pockets are such a huge thing um and yeah you you don't really find them uh on other uniforms sometimes there might be the odd one tucked in the little back of a coty tail um but i remember reading somewhere uh pockets aren't necessary for soldiers who have nothing to carry in them and did they notice any significant improvement in their success rate you know not having the bright red on the battlefield i think it would probably help as we said the development of firearms and the way in which you can fight in the terrain that you're fighting on it would certainly help you blend in around this time uniforms then split so you've got this that you're going to fight in but the redcoats that have been worn previously are actually kept and they are worn as full dressy and ceremonial kind of things that you see people uh or see soldiers uh doing today like you know changing of the guard at buckingham palace that kind of thing um so it very much then splits in two and we have a red cove from around this period if you would like to try it on no i'd love to yes so this dates to 1910 uh so it's a really nice example 1910. okay thanks oh yeah this is more like it so so what would this tunic have been used for so this tunic would be uh your full dress so it wouldn't be what you would wear to fighting anymore because it dates to 19010 after khaki comes in for active service um this is a bit of a hangover from the earlier ones isn't it yes it is you see a lot of them with that pattern and it's reflected here and i love these these are austrian knots um and you see them on quite a lot of uniforms and they are absolutely beautiful the the workmanship that goes into uh the embroidery and the applique and the things that you see on uniforms is incredible so this is very much your uh your nice fancy thing that you would wear for a special special occasions and it's funny that so this is an austrian knowlton we've had a prussian collar yeah was there quite a lot of intermixing between these european universes the british army very much if it sees an army that it admires that it likes um and uniform aspects of uniform that it uh that it also appreciates it will um use them um so we find this very much with the hazards and again the cavalry but we take those from the hungarians and copy those and they are absolutely beautiful uniforms um but we also copied the polish lancers as well um so there are definitely aspects where we uh we see things that we really like and of course you know the india taking the the khaki as well what's this one i can't even know how these things the epaulettes that you've got on your shoulders so we've got the rank badges up there so this one it's got three pips so this would have been worn by a captain um and you can see the obviously the epaulettes change over time as well and the color as well it's much brighter it's you know it's really been revolutionized by the industrial revolution and what is produced and how it can be produced um because obviously factories coming in as well you kind of start finding much more um things are much more mass-produced but offices of course as well they would get their things tailored so it would be specifically for them whereas other ranks would just get the thing that fitted closely enough and then potentially a regimenter tailor could uh could work on it for them yeah i mean it's pretty heavy what's what sort of material is this made of i believe this is wool or a lot of the earlier ones are made from wool because you can really see a development in the type of material that things are being made from so you've got walls and linens and cottons and then as we move forward a little bit further down we have like nylon and kevlar and so a proper change but that's a bit further in the future yet for this it feels quite small for me i can imagine you know some men would be much bigger is there is were they particularly tight or is this a just particularly small one that one would have been tailored specifically to the uh the officer so uh i think he must have just been in really good shape anyway yeah okay great so first world war what have we got here so this is the khaki surge obviously carrying on from service dress this is still what we're wearing it dates to 1916 which is the middle of the first world war this would have been worn by other ranks um you can see we have pockets this is still still a trend and it buttons up to the neck so officers would actually have had a different style theirs would be open so you could see a tie and a shirt underneath it's a small distinguishing factor between the two of them we don't really see too much change whether you're in the trench you're wanting to blend into those muddy surroundings but there are kind of innovations that come up so trench coats really took off in popularity during the first world war when they became part of the standard kit for offices and the other thing that is again repopularized during this time is the wellington boot millions were commissioned for men in the trenches uh to prevent them getting trench foot and obviously you know standing in water for a huge amount of time you need some uh decent footwear so it's really a time of in trying to innovate and work out what you need to wear to suit your uh your surroundings so here we have the first world war tunic for you to try on great oh sorry missing they had these problems in the trenches right oh yeah it's pretty scratchy this one it's not quite as um comfortable as the other if does it feel like if you got it where it would uh yeah this feels like if you got wet you'd feel like it would really soak you to the skin okay so it almost feels like a kind of tweety material or it's just wool is it or yeah they are made from wool yeah and what sort of things would people have kept in their pockets i mean it always seems to be pictures of their loved ones or um maybe a few cigarettes so you definitely like to have your letters your cigarettes that kind of thing in there but you also have bits of kit for carrying the other things that you were expected to carry with you you've also got other things that you could wear over it like a cape um and different also your hat as well because hats changing during this time so you've got your field service cap which you would wear behind the lines but then you also have your steel helmet which you would be wearing on the front line in the trenches and is there any writing about this kind of thing you know let all those diaries that people were writing all those letters home that they ever complain about their old tunic you know getting drenched in water getting bitten through by rats or anything like that yeah again in our archive there are probably countless letters talking about the different aspects of serving in the first war it being in the trenches fighting on the front line and and the different parts of uh uniform that didn't always perform well or i don't know you know writing home for socks or a balaclava or wanting them to knit things for them after a brief post-war boom britain faced serious economic woes in the 1920s under the recommendation of sir eric geddes in what became known as the gedi's axe public spending was severely reduced heavy defense cuts were imposed and the government introduced the 10-year rule stating that britain would not enter conflict for at least a decade but by the 1930s hitler's nazi party became increasingly aggressive and expansionist and within 20 years of the treaty of versailles britain prepared herself to fight once again [Music] so here we have an example of battle dress it's the battle dress blouse this is introduced in 1938 so a little while after the end of the first world war carrying on with that practicality trend high waist you've still got pockets the material that's used on this is also really interesting because uh in 1940 obviously once the war is underway we get an austerity pattern where they cut back on the amount of material that's being used so you lose this extra layer here so the buttons are visible and you lose the pleats on the pockets as well and i think that really ties into the socio-economic circumstances at the time and do we know if they were a success they last for quite a while up to the 1960s which is when kind of what we properly think of today as camouflage comes in and so this moves us to this one here it does yeah so this is dpm which is disruptive pattern material a huge jump from battle dress to this so dpm comes in in the 1960s with the end of national service conscription in around 1961 the army is looking for a new uniform and they use the clothing the combat clothing from the korean war as a basis to develop a new kind of uniform um and this is where this comes in this one actually dates to 1980 so 20 years after it's uh it's coming to where but there are also different types of camouflage as well um so you have woodland and then deserts um so that you can blend in in in these different places that you find yourself in yeah so this is pretty similar to today's uniform which is only this step forward so what is this different kind of pattern they've gone for here so this is mtp uh multi-terrain pattern uh so this comes in in 2010 so uh so just over 10 years old now actually as the name would suggest it enables you to fight and be active in different types of terrain so you can see that the colour has changed and the idea is that when men were fighting in afghanistan this would help you whether you uh were fighting in an urban setting or in fields and that you could move seamlessly between kind of desert mountains and kind of wooded areas and i can see it's the first uniform that's got velcro yes it has velcro i'm surprised almost they have velcro because that must be if you're being dead quiet you know that's one of the most loudest things women have always played a part in the british army during the english civil war so many women disguised themselves as soldiers that king charles the first issued a proclamation to stop them there were even women's corpses found on the battlefield of waterloo but it wasn't until the 20th century that women's positions were formally established you see the introduction of i suppose nursing services at the turn of the 20th century so there is queen alexander's imperial military nursing service which begins in 1902 and then of course you've got the first aid nursing yeomanry which starts in 1909 um but interesting uniform-wise then for the fanny they had to provide their own uniforms so it wasn't a case of being provided like with the men but they are still separate to the army but when we get to the first world war that changes in here we have a women's army auxiliary corps an overall dress which they were they were issued with they could also have kind of tunics and skirts as well but i think the main thing about this with women's uniforms is it's very much of its time you're in a skirt or a dress so who was wearing this kind of uniform what sort of work were they doing so it was women that were joining the wac to do war-related tasks that men were no longer there to be able to do so kind of you know postal and transport and that kind of that kind of job okay and then we're moving on to this yeah so then we jump forward to the second world war um so uh this jacket was actually worn by mary churchill who was in the auxiliary territorial service it's the battle dress blouse obviously very very similar to the men's there would still be a skirt that would be worn with this um but uh but we see and with this as well in the color there's a lot of similarity to men's uniforms um but uh i think it was only motorcyclists or people fulfilling that role that would actually be able to wear breaches um for uh for tasks they were doing performing yeah well it's interesting that they've of course got this khaki camouflage kind of style but they're they're in the uk just doing kind of civilian jobs yeah very much imitating the men's but yeah obviously fulfilling very very different roles like women aren't obviously allowed to uh to fight so the women's royal army corps are established in 1941 um but this one actually dates to 1990 um but the women's royal army corps it's the the first time women are kind of officially part of the british army and not an emergency uh corps unit raised uh yeah during an emergency and it's interesting they've got a this kind of teal color yeah they do change in color ever so slightly still in skirts as well um but what we have we can see uh these on the lapels here um denote army staff and again another thing that replicates men's service and their uniforms and and the epilepsy and things here and so during this time the 90s is that when military uniform is the same for women and men so in 1992 the women's royal army corps had disbanded and men's and women's services emerged so then everybody starts wearing the same thing women would wear camouflage if they were out um on service alongside them but yeah there was still this differentiation so yeah 1992 is a really key point when where both services come together um and yeah and then everybody is wearing the same thing but it's also interesting to note that it was only in 2015 that david cameron announced that kind of front line uh close combat roles would be open to women by 2016. and i think at sandhurst at the pass-out parade the women still wear skirts so there is that you know that stick with tradition i suppose yeah very much so there's a lot of um and really lovely tradition as well that carries through throughout uniform in the army in loads of different ways [Music] [Music] welcome to the history hit youtube channel which we are relaunching we've got all the best exclusive content going straight to this history hit youtube channel and you can find out for example what on earth i'm staying at the top of this mast you should probably subscribe

Channel: History Hit

Views: 529,419

Keywords: british army uniforms, national army museum, english civil war uniform, napoleonic wars british redcoat, crimean war uniform, battle of waterloo british uniform, british army uniform wwi, ww2 british army uniform, falklands british army uniform, khaki uniform ww1, khaki uniform ww2, epaulettes uniform, afghanistan british army uniform, english civil war armour, british army gear history, british army history, history of army uniforms, british redcoat, british redcoat uniform

Id: 7e3JlSI9I54

Length: 30min 36sec (1836 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 27 2021