The Forgotten History of the Australian Slouch Hat

hi I'm the history guy and if you didn't know in addition to our YouTube channel we also have a page on patreon or for just three dollars a month you can help support the work of the history guy one of the things you get for sponsoring us on patreon is one exclusive video a month that's exclusive to patrons on patreon which for the last year has been a series of a history guys hat collection and occasionally like today we're able to bring you an older version of one of those to the YouTube audience today I'm going to talk about a hat that's become so iconic that it represents an entire nation a nation whose military sort of with distinction in the great conflicts of the 20th century enjoyed the episode and if you do please consider becoming a patron on patreon this is a hat that is officially called khaki furred felt or kff but it's generally referred to as a slouch hat and characteristic of slouch hats it has a wide brim it's pinned up on one side this one on the left though sometimes they're pinned up on the right and while you would think that the slouch hat is really defined by the characteristic pinned up side is actually named for the other side which slouches down and they had it sometimes worn unpinned and would still be called a slouch hat this particular hat happens to be Australian which is the army that is most associated with the souch hat but the history goes back farther than that the term slouch hat is actually not clearly defined and the south chat can be used to refer to almost any wide brimmed hat especially if it's worn at an angle in fact the familiar hat styles known as tri corns and by corns both types of cocked hat were simply broad brimmed hats purportedly first used by the Spanish during the eighty years war broad brim hats were simple protected against both Sun and rain over time the Styles changed as the sides began to be pinned up usually the facilitates rifle drill a bicorn is pinned on two sides and a tricorn on three in using that noma catcher then a slouch hat could be called a unicorn because it's really nothing more than a bicorn or a tricorn and solely pinned up on one side early examples of a cocked hat pinned on only one side were the Cavaliers of King Charles the first during the English Civil War who preferred a fancy cocked hat pinned on one side a style that was also sometimes used by the famous French Musketeers of the guard so colorfully described by Alexandre Dumas the Napoleonic Wars a high black hat pinned on one side was most popularized by the Austrian army while the design was used by some line regiments it was most commonly used by Yeager's a term which literally means hunter but in the military which referred to light infantry skirmishers Scouts or riflemen the Austrians called they had a corps suit and the Corps suit was usually black with a high crown in the feather cockade there was often a brass plaque with a unit designation in the front it is unclear however where the the course hood inspired the modern such hat in 1852 la whose Kossuth a deposed leader from Hungary visited the United States who are he was greeted with wide acclaim kosis has a complex legacy but American saw him as a fighter for freedom and democratic values he'd hope again us backing for further actions in Europe but was ultimately unsuccessful what he did do was turn the nation with a soft white brim hat that became rather popular the Kossuth had which was also called a slouch hat again because of the soft searching brim was commonly used by soldiers on both sides of the u.s. Civil War although more commonly by the Confederates the Civil War such hat was only rarely wearing worn with a side pin however and the term was used to refer to almost any hat that wasn't the KP or at least any with a brim all around even if the brim was not particularly wide separately the official u.s. infantry dress had at the beginning of the Civil War was a high crowned wide brim black felt hat commonly called a hardy hat after William J hardy who had been commandant of cadets at West Point the hardy hat was pinned on one side to allow rifle drill on the right side for cavalry and artillery and on the left for infantry the Hat had a wool cord whose color denoted branch of service the hardy hat was worn by both sides during the war and Hardy himself served with a Confederate Army however the Hat was considered hot and uncomfortable and not widely worn one notable exception however was the iron brigade comprised of soldiers raised in the western states of Wisconsin Indiana and Michigan the iron Brigade wore uniforms more closely resembling the dress uniform than most other Union regiments that uniform included the hardy hat which by some stories was originally issued in error but adopted as a gave the blade a unique look and the tall crown made the soldiers look taller and more imposing the brigade was in fact sometimes called beat blackhat brigade because the hardy hat although it purportedly was given its more famous name by Major General George McClellan whom after seeing them pushing back Confederate forces at the September 1862 Battle of South Mountain remarked that they must be made of iron the iron Brigade distinguished themselves throughout the war but particularly so that the Battle of Gettysburg although the hardy hat was never apparently called a slouch hat its design was actually much more similar to a modern slouch hat than the had sent were called slow tats during the Civil War the use of the slouch hat continued into the Indian Wars where such hats were regulation wear for both officers and enlisted men although the hat was only very occasionally swing worn with one side pinned up the Hat which in the form of a Stetson cowboy hat is still often seen worn as unofficial headgear for air cavalry units carried over into the war with Spain where the hat was famously worn and the traditional slouch hat style with a less left brim pinned up by the commander of the United States first volunteer cavalry but again it's not clear whether the modern such hat was derived in any way from these other military designs because in fact it's a really simple design that's very practical especially in hot or jungle climates and in fact the hat that is most associated with Australia today was imported from Asia Australia got its iconic hat from an officer named Thomas price who was born in Tasmania and served with the British Indian Army in the 1860s during his service with the Indian Army he was seconded as a police superintendent in Burma where the police used a simple wide brim hat pinned up on one side some police units in India still utilized the slouch hat today price recognized the simple utility of a slouch hat he retired in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and settled in the colony of Victoria in Australia the colony had a small semi-professional Defence Force that was separate from the British Army he was given a commission in the Victorian military force and in 1885 raised a regiment of Mounted Rifles raised from rural areas of Victoria the Victorian Mounted Rifles required recruits to bring their own horse with the Victorian Mounted Rifles Pryce brought the idea of Light Horse quickly mobile infantry well-suited for the defense of a frontier to the military in Australia the Turing forces at the time jelly wore a blue uniform price got permission to uniform the Mounted Rifles in khaki a movement that was gradually being adopted throughout the empire included in that uniform was the souch hat an idea borrowed from his days in burma and a design that would eventually come to characterize the Armed Forces of Australia in December 1890 the military commanders of the then separate Australian colonies prior to the Federation of Australia agreed that all Australian forces with the exception of the artillery would wear the slouch hat was to be looped up on one side Victoria and Tasmania on the right and the other colonies later states on the left the reason for pinning on different sides had to do with the various rifle drills used as the pinning was gently for the purpose of slinging a rifle without noting knocking off the hat in October 1889 long-standing tensions and conflicts over the control of resources and mines boiled over into the second Boer War between the British Empire and the tube or republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State the Boers initially had an advantage in that British troops in South Africa were largely infantry while the Boers were natural horsemen making the port commandos highly effective like cavalry the mobility of the cavalry is there well as their high quality Mauser rifles in their skilled marksmanship contributed to their initial success in the conflict well brig was so to realize how many troops would be needed in the largest and deadliest of the Victorian Wars and quickly recognized the need for mobile units to counter the Boers while many of these units were recruited from South Africa Australia offered an obvious solution as well the climate and terrain of Australia was similar to that of South Africa much like the wars many Australians were recruited from rural areas where they were skilled at horsemanship and thanks to Colonel Tom Price Australia had a regimen of highly skilled like cavalry and also thanks to Tom Price those regiments were largely equipped with slouch hats Pryce himself served in the war committing the second Victorian contingent between 1900 in 1902 at the outbreak of hostilities Britain was already calling for volunteers from Australia including the New South Wales Lancers the winters were actually in training in England when the war started and were among the first troops to arrive in South Africa Australian units and local South African units including Australian volunteer were largely either like cavalry or a mounted infantry they were highly effective in the Boer War where their bushcraft marksmanship and horsemanship made them an effective counter to the Boers Australians played significant roles both on the defeat of the poor armies in the field and the bloody guerrilla war that followed well the second Boer War was a place where the distinctive such hat became associated with Australian forces the style was more widely used for example by units from New Zealand which also fielded almost exclusively mounted rifle units in the conflict canadian mounted infantry like the Canadian Mounted Rifles and the Royal Canadian dragoons and was common for both colonial units such as the British South Africa police and the bushveld Carbineers which was recruited from him in South Africa but was nonetheless made up of about 40% Australians the sachet was also used by British units you either solve the designs utility or were issued South schatz because there was a shortage of standard cork British pith helmets two British units the Royal East Kent Mounted Rifles and the Imperial Yeomanry retain the SAU chap for brief periods following the war although their use have been discontinued by British units before the Great War for their part the Boers who did not typically wear standard uniforms very often were soft white brim hats sometimes pinned on one side and the slouch hat style by the coming of the Great War such hats were a standard part of the Australian uniform for the more than four hundred twenty thousand Australian troops who served new zealand cavalry units also used the sow hat although new zealand infantry was instead issued the similar campaign hat but australia wasn't the only army using the slouch hat the imperial german shoots Troopa or colonial protection force that protected colonies in Africa the Indian Ocean and the Pacific used a pith helmet but also wore slouch hats as an alternative as did German colonial police thus the such hat was common in the Africa theatre the German such hat was pinned relatively high on the right side and was famously worn by the charismatic commander of German forces in the East Africa campaign Paul Emil von lettow-vorbeck popularly called the Lion of Africa in a unique piece of history the slouch hat was favoured by Irish volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising an armed insurrection by Irish Republicans intended to establish an Irish Republic the uprising lasted six days resulted in nearly 500 deaths although the rising itself was put down quickly the British response and subsequent actions shifted public opinion away from home rule the rising was seen as the beginning of the Irish revolutionary period the Hat was again worn by Australian troops as well as other Allied troops in that China Burma India Theatre in the Second World War the Hat was standard issue for soldiers of the Dutch East Indies army and similar Terai hat or Gurkha hat which is not one pinned up but has worn at such an angle that the hat touches the right ear and this is notably slouched is traditionally worn by troops from Nepal called Gurkhas both the Terai hat and the more traditional side chat were used by the long-range penetration group under general orde Wingate in the burma theatre popularly called the Chindits and was also informally used by american troops in the theatre such as OSS detachment 101 and the first air commando group the slouch hat is still worn as a ceremonial headdress for units of the Australian Army Air Force and occasionally navy as well as for general duties for some regiments today the hat is worn pinned up on the left for ceremonial dress but with the brim down for general duties the Hat has a distinctive unit color patch a patch of colored cloth that represents a unit on the right and a Corps or regiment badge placed on the front the Hat has a pug hurry or cloth wrap the puggly originated in Indian has the purpose of insulation historically the color of the pugsy has been used to denote unit identity or branch the current Australian saw hat has seven folds in the puckery six to symbolize the six states and the seventh represents Australia's territories some Australian cavalry units still also wear an emu feather pinned with the fold the feather harkens back to the First World War when light horsemen would chase down an emu on horseback and pluck a feather from them proof of exceptional horsemanship one interesting thing about the Australian Sun Hat is that they have this badge on the side where it's pinned up this is called the Rising Sun badge but it's actually called the general service badge and the general service badge changed over time so by looking at the general service badge you can get a guess on the age of the badge and the age of the hat so for example this general service badge says Australian military forces which means it came after 1949 prior that would have said Australian Commonwealth forces but there's also a crown on the badge right here and this particular crown is the st. Edward's crown not the king's crown which means that this hat was made at least after 1954 because that crown was changed in 1954 to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth which happened in 1952 and all that tells me is that this is a badge I was used somewhere between 1954 and 1969 and that fits with what it says inside the Hat where there's actually a label that says that this was made by the Dunkerley limited company in 1956 size six and seven-eighths which means that this particular hat came into service just a little bit too late to have served in the Korean conflict the such hat has a long and storied history it's treated with great respect in Australia and is a reminder of the distinguished history of the Australian military its iconic design is bored of practical value still used by various police forces usually in tropical climates it is still used by the US military today for a female drill sergeants in the Army and Air Force no collection of military headgear would be complete without an Australian military slouch hat and I am proud to be a steward of this historical artifact I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten the history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring comm and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 297,071

Rating: 4.9607983 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, australia, slouch hat, digger hat, military uniform, Australian bush hat, Kossuth hat

Id: OZ72V_9MF_k

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 20 2019