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  #31  
Old 02-03-17, 09:04 PM
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I have 7 RM (QC/KC/Vic RMLI & RMA) canes and they are all about 26 1/2". So pretty standard.

Regards
Irv
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  #32  
Old 02-03-17, 09:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Irv View Post
I have 7 RM (QC/KC/Vic RMLI & RMA) canes and they are all about 26 1/2". So pretty standard.

Regards
Irv
Thanks, Irv.
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  #33  
Old 14-02-18, 01:38 PM
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From ‘Battalion Orders’ of the 9th Battalion, London Regiment (Nov., Dec. 1922 & Jan 1923):

DA702044-6012-4214-9A37-D7D4B0B973D7.jpg

0ED850C5-6357-4D11-9C44-8E88D71D439E.jpg

Regards to all,

JT
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  #34  
Old 14-02-18, 01:47 PM
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Just to add to this subject, Canes were also carried as a mark of a specific Duty or Appointment in the Coldstream Guards (possibly in the other Foot Guards too) before and throughout my service and possibly still in use.

The Battalion would have a Daily Picquet Officer, Sergeant and Corporal with various Duties and checks to complete throughout their 24 hour duty. Both the Sergeant and Corporal would carry what was referred to as a Picquet Cane for the duration. The Regimental Police Corporals would also carry a cane whilst on duty.

Regards Simon
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  #35  
Old 19-02-18, 07:49 PM
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When I was in combermere barracks in Windsor in the 60s and 70s junior NCOs of The Life Guards would carry a cane whip whilst on duty. Which was a kind of swagger stick.
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  #36  
Old 24-02-18, 05:19 PM
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I've got my Grandad's Church Lads Brigade swagger stick somewhere.
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  #37  
Old 25-02-18, 12:18 PM
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And I have two here belonging to my fathers late & divorced brother in law, Arthur Fenton Bell who was an officer in the Australian Army at Darwin before the start of WW 2 and one is leather covered and has his name on it in gold lettering.

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Phil.
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  #38  
Old 26-02-18, 02:20 AM
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Default canes

Here is a couple of canes with a normal size swagger stick. Cheers Brian
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File Type: jpg canes 002.jpg (28.4 KB, 13 views)
File Type: jpg canes 003.jpg (48.0 KB, 14 views)
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  #39  
Old 26-02-18, 04:10 AM
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Walking Cain 1 type:
Lieutenant John Henry Smith joined the RFC on 29th June 1917 and was posted to 46 Squadron on 3rd March 1918, he scored 8 victories in Camels before being invalided in July 1918

Walking cain 2 type:
Lt Albert Packer 4 Sqd stick made from his crashed plane

Swagger stick with no info apart from what can be seen from the top.
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File Type: jpg DSCN5539.jpg (31.9 KB, 17 views)
File Type: jpg DSCN5537.jpg (47.4 KB, 12 views)
File Type: jpg DSCN5535.jpg (81.0 KB, 21 views)
File Type: jpg DSCN5534.jpg (37.3 KB, 20 views)
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  #40  
Old 26-02-18, 07:54 AM
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I have an RAF black lacquered swagger stick. I believe this was regulation finish?

GTB
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  #41  
Old 26-02-18, 09:42 AM
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This one is Norfolk Regiment measuring 67cm (26 1/2"). Brought back from WW1 by my wife's Grandfather who was in the Royal Irish Rifles!

Tim
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File Type: jpg Norfolk Regt Swagger Stick.jpg (48.8 KB, 17 views)
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Last edited by grey_green_acorn; 26-02-18 at 09:43 AM. Reason: add inches
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  #42  
Old 26-02-18, 12:25 PM
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Durham University OTC and London Rifle Brigade.
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  #43  
Old 26-02-18, 12:26 PM
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Royal Artillery, 21st London (First Surrey Rifles) and 14th London (London Scottish).
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  #44  
Old 26-02-18, 12:27 PM
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Seaforth Highlanders, Herefordshire Regiment and 58th Foot (Rutlandshire).
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Last edited by High Wood; 26-02-18 at 12:35 PM.
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  #45  
Old 27-02-18, 05:24 PM
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What I believe originated from the Victorian era is more properly a "Swagger Cane", albeit that the variation "stick" crept in much later but is now common parlance.

Here is what a museum in the (erstwhile British) Commonwealth (Durban) has to say on the subject of sticks/canes:

Stick or Cane

. The word "cane" had not been applied to the fashionable walking stick up to the sixteenth century. During his period, however, the thick, jointed stems of tropical grasses known as bamboo and cane, and the reed-like stem of several species of palm and rattan were introduced for the stick. These were called "canes." From that day forth, the walking stick of the past merged into the cane of the future. Today the terms are used interchangeable, though the saying. "One strolls with a walking stick and swaggers with a Cane!" is indicative of how the two are perceived. (Source: Accessories of Dress by Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Viola Oerke, The Manual Arts Press, Peoria Illinois, pp 392.).

Rank and Power

. "The final indication of rank was the vitis or vine staff, a short stick about three feet long typically made of grape vine. It is known to have been used for whacking miscreant soldiers!" Ref: Legion XX--The Twentieth Legion, Roman Legion Organization and Officers, Equipment of The Centurion, 1/19/02.
http://www.larp.com/...oxx/orgoff.html
-RWG.

Use by the British Army

. The "leading cane" prescribed for British officers in a General Order of 1702. On parade, this cane was used for leading men. But it was also used administering on-the-spot punishment of up to 12 strokes for minor violations of regulations. Examples of the latter were: sneezing in ranks, scratching the head, or giving an officer a dirty look. Thus officers of Charles II's reign flaunted their aristocratic status by carrying walking-sticks. Lesser ranks such as drum-majors carried some lesser kind of stick, which subsequently developed into the long parade staff or mace. The equestrian (mounted) soldier carried a small cane or whip under his arm when 'walking out' (off-duty, hence the name 'swagger stick' - describing the typical gait of the soldier-on-the-town). Up until the end of World War One the off-duty soldier too was permitted a cane or swagger stick with ornamented head. In the Great War two classes of service stick were carried in the British Army, quite apart from the usual regimental swagger canes (which were lengths of cane or rattan): a light walking cane with a crook handle, carried by officers engaged on duty in static units such as Military Hospitals in the UK; and a Trench Stick - a heavier piece often with a carved handle, carried by officers serving in the field. Ref: Sticks In History: Introduction http:www.durban.gov.za/museums/localhistory/

So much then for the general use of sticks/canes of various kinds. Sticks/Staffs and canes of various lengths have been carried and used by officers and in some cases SNCOs for different purposes since long before Queen Victoria's reign. The "vine" used by a Roman Centurion (clearly an officer) and the "leading cane" carried by British Officers in the early 18th Century are both sticks/canes but neither are, in my view, "swagger canes". For me the swagger cane is inextricably linked with a specific Army policy that began whilst Queen Victoria was on the throne and that policy was intended to improve the lot and standing of the British Army soldier, one "Tommy Atkins". In both the 18th and 19th Centuries the British soldier was considered the "scum of the earth" (vide Wellington's Dispatches) who was invariably drunk, illiterate, ill-fed and often ill-clothed. Wives and families were treated little better and, all-in-all, his lot was so bad that no self respecting parent wanted their son to become a soldier.

Several initiatives were put in hand to begin remedying this state of affairs but in the interests of specific relevance to this thread and brevity I will focus on just one, appearance and standing. Soldiers began to be issued with a "walking out uniform" that was a specific order of dress intended to look smart, improve his pride in himself and look 'dashing' to the public at large. The uniform was intended to be smart, functional and relatively simple when compared with Full Dress. Such items as pill box hats and well fitting trousers or overalls together with close fitted tunics, shiny buttons and regimental titles were intended to help him 'look the part' and, included as an accessory to occupy his hands, was a swagger cane (later stick). These swagger canes were, as mentioned previously, of a reasonably common pattern, thin and tapering from one end with brass or nickel caps and metal ferrules and light in weight. They were not robust like a walking stick and could be swished and gesticulated in the air in a way that would be impossible with a heavy walking stick/cane. They were carried, out of barracks, by Other Ranks (ORs) only and became synonymous in the Public eye with being a smart soldier, so much so that the image of a soldier in walking out uniform, carrying his cane and escorting a pram-pushing Nanny in a public park became iconic in pre-Great War, Edwardian England. This public perception was to become significant when a mass, citizen Army was mobilised in an initial burst of enthusiastic effort in 1914-16. Almost as a rite of passage young men who had never worn a uniform began to have themselves photographed (often for their families as a keepsake). In their drab khaki uniform, they almost invariably are accompanied by that last vestige of perceived military panache, a swagger cane/stick.

After the 'war to end all wars' matters military understandably became unfashionable, as a nation weary with war returned to peacetime occupations. The Full Dress uniform that had been supposedly temporarily withdrawn in 1914, became permanently so, apart from the Sovereign's Household troops and soldiers were no longer given a specific walking out uniform but had to make do with the basic uniforms that they had. Swagger sticks were, for soldiers anyway, accordingly in abeyance for walking out. At the same time a fashion grew for officers to carry a cane rather than a stick when in what might be called barrack dress or undress uniform and these again took up a fairly standard pattern of either plain leather or cane/rattan or in smarter orders of dress, coloured cane and silver ends (this latter type had also been popular for a while in Victorian times when in barracks but not when walking out). Although generally a little shorter than the previous ORs pattern, these too became known as swagger canes/sticks (perhaps by chronological 'association', as officers did not 'swagger') and there were, as previously mentioned, variations with 'whips' and for some, blackthorn sticks.

This then is my 'take' on the swagger stick. I have found no record of an official and special walking out dress before Queen Victoria's reign, nor does there seem to have been a culture of British (and Empire/Commonwealth) soldiers swaggering in quite the same way. As mentioned, the carriage of sticks by soldiers and officers arguably goes back to ancient times. However, the multifarious sticks used over the previous decades and centuries do not seem to have been 'swagger canes' of the design used by soldiers in the very late 19th early and 20th Century and that went on to become synonymous with soldiers ‘walking out’ in the public domain.

Last edited by Toby Purcell; 28-02-18 at 08:54 AM.
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