Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawthorn
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Thanks Simon, that is really helpful, as it’s a much larger image and I can see that the buttons have a Queen Victoria crown with some lettering beneath. The single shoulder piece is much more clearly an unusually shaped arrangement of interwoven chain links similar, but not the exact same to those worn in pairs by some cavalry units to protect against sword cuts in a melee**. He also has a more Anglo-Saxon appearance than the other photo.
“More than 12,000 British and Irish male convicts were transported to the British penal colonies of Bermuda and Gibraltar between 1824-75. During the day convicts worked on the Royal Naval dockyards, mostly quarrying and transporting stone for building projects, and were shut up at night on prison hulks or on-shore barracks. The convict establishment included both transported felons from Britain and Ireland and those convicted locally in Gibraltar: mostly Spaniards, but also sailors, soldiers and sojourners from around the world. The
Convict Prison was finally closed in 1875”
There was also a Detention Barracks run by military prisons warders on Windmill Hill. It was demolished in 1962.
**single or double shoulder chains of similar shape to that shown seem to have been a traditional marker of rank in Victorian era British fire brigades so there is a possibility that the fellows in the photographs are firemen wearing their dress uniform. Fire Brigades too tended to wear buttons with a royal crown insignia as the central feature. However, on the contrary side a double breasted jacket was almost ubiquitous for firemen.
18-08-23, 02:39 PM
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