New antique acquisition: Rare mid-Victorian officer's sword

Hi folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatoria. So here's just a short video to show you one of my newest acquisitions, one of my newest swords, and this is exactly the kind of thing that I get really excited about and kind of gibberish and lose the power of speech, and that is non-regulation British officer's swords of the 19th century. I'm sure all of my regular viewers know that that's my thing, that's my real thing. Yes, I do love medieval swords as well and various, but really, particularly mid-19th century British officer's swords that are different from normal ones are really my absolute thing, and this couldn't be more fitting in that description. It's an utterly non-regulation British officer's sword. I'll just go through the parts of what make it non-regulation in a minute, but just to say it's made by Wilkinson in 1857. Unfortunately, the record of sale still survives for Wilkinson numbered swords. It has a serial number on the back, but unfortunately there's no name on the ledger for this particular sword, so based on the ledger I don't know who purchased this sword or who carried it. However, it does on the blade have two initials there that are GS, and I've been in the process of trying to narrow down who the owner of this sword could have been, and I've got several candidates. It is quite possible, it is fairly likely that the owner of this was serving in India, although it's not 100% certain, but anyway, I won't talk about my kind of theories about who may have owned this. Maybe at a later date when I've pinned it down more I can do another video talking about that, but let's just look at the sword as a sword, ignoring who owned it for a second. So 1857, you have to realise in British sword history is quite an important year because it was the year that the Indian Mutiny broke out. It was only two years after the Crimean War had ended, and the Crimean War saw a lot of use of all sorts of weapons, obviously the new rifles, the newest mini rifles, and also the 1853 Enfield rifle, as far as British forces were concerned anyway, but equally swords and bayonets saw quite a lot of use in the Crimean War as well, and then off the back of that there was a Persian campaign and certain things going on in China at the same time, and then the Indian Mutiny kicked off in 1857, and the mutiny itself went all the way through 1858, and really I suppose there were kind of related activities in 1859 a little bit as well, but really 1857 to 1858 is the main period of the Indian Mutiny, so this sword being ordered in 1857 is interesting, and it's from top to bottom completely non-regulation. For that reason it makes it even more difficult to identify who GS is incidentally, because usually a sword goes with a certain type of service, so for example if we look at this brass hilted sword here, this is an infantry officer's sword, so if that had initials on the blade I would only be looking for infantry officers. This however is not particular to any type of regiment, because it's completely non-regimental, it's non-regulation, so first of all let's look at the blade, that's the biggest and most obvious thing first. It is straight, it is double edged, it's not a sabre, it's double edged and it's straight, and it's what's known as a Toledo pattern blade, so if I just get the light shining off it there, you can see it has a double fuller front and back running all the way up to about, what's that, about 40-45% of the way up the blade. Now Toledo pattern blades, some of them, and I should just mention this section of blade is rectangular, so it's got double fullers, dump dump, and it's utterly blunt all the way up here, so perfect for those of us who parry with the strong of our edge down here, because you've got no edge there to get damaged, so anyone who worries about edge damage, don't worry about it, get one of these sorts, there we go, they're perfect for defending with, because you've essentially got a portion of the blade that is made for parrying with or guarding, defending with. So first up it's got that blunt section, the Toledo pattern blades, some of them, the blunt section goes further up, sometimes they go up to about 60% of the way up, and in fact I own two other Toledo blades in my collection, you can see them from here, and they do generally speaking go a bit further up, this one seems to have been done so that the blunt section is not as long as most Toledo blades I would say, and that it's less than half of the length. Equally most Toledo pattern blades, or certainly in Britain most Toledo pattern blades, and incidentally I should, I'm saying incidentally a lot, I'm sorry for that, but I should also mention that the reason it's called a Toledo pattern blade is because in Spain, in Toledo, they made sword and sabre types that used this cross section of blades, so it was emulated in Britain, okay, and most Toledo blades in Britain are very pointy, this is quite pointy as you can see, some people might go, ah it's a dedicated thrusting sword, but I will tell you that is the same width, breadth in other words, and flatness as a, what the 19th century people call a claymore blade, that is a basket hilted broadsword blade, it's actually not a very dissimilar blade to what you might find on a 16th century side sword, or indeed on an 18th, 19th century Highland basket hilted broadsword, so it's got quite a bit of heft to it, the point of balance is quite far out, it's what's that, about seven inches from the hand, so that doesn't particularly scream thrusting, certainly this has got quite a lot of cutting power to it, and the blade is 36 inches long, that is fairly long I tell you, but certainly by British military sabre standards that's fairly long, you do get longer ones but not that many, 36 is pretty long, and obviously it is good for thrusting, it is straight, it is pointy, so this is what I would call a cut and thrust blade, it's not a dedicated thrusting blade, it's not a rapier, it's something more akin to a side sword I would say, and I would liken this to almost like having a side sword blade on a sabre hilt. Now let's just look at the hilt which is also non-regulation, the actual guard itself, you'll notice it's symmetrical, so for left-handers that's fantastic, and also it just provides more hand protection than some of the sabre guards out there, and it's got this fairly attractive, just try and get as many angles on it as possible, fairly attractive piercing and decoration work, and added engraving on top of that as well, and this is a style of hilt that in Britain was designed or seems to have been associated with the 7th Hussars, and there's one Colonel Haggart who carried a sword with almost an identical hilt to this, owned by a fellow sword collector who in fact Richard Deller, who wrote, I can say his name because he wrote a book, so Richard Deller wrote the book on British cavalry swords, he owns a sword with pretty much almost exactly, or very similar hilt to this, certainly almost the same guard, and Colonel Haggart was in the 7th Hussars, and we know another officer who was in the Bombay artillery I think, or Bengal artillery, I forget now, Bengal artillery, and who had a similar hilt, and in the Wilkinson ledger it says 7th Hussar style hilt, so we don't have a lot of clues to go on, but it seems like this hilt was associated with the 7th Hussars somehow. Unfortunately you think, ah well they're GS incidentally, maybe he's just someone in the 7th Hussars, well no, it's not that simple. First of all there is no GS in the 7th Hussars at this period unfortunately, and secondly the 7th Hussars version of this hilt in that blank shield section there actually says 7th Hussars, and mine is blank, so I would say therefore it's almost definitely not the 7th Hussars, someone else who just liked that style of hilt. And finally the grip, so the first thing to say about the grip is you can see it's got a canted angle on it, which is not very typical for British swords of this period, you actually find it on Prussian swords more commonly, but on British swords it's not very common, but of course having that canted grip it means that certainly if you're using this on horseback it brings the point more in line with the arm, which is a good thing for giving point or thrusting. But lastly I would say is the unusual thing about the grip is it doesn't have a full back strap, so whereas most of the sabres, at least in Britain in this period, have a back strap that goes all the way down the back, this one here does not, it has essentially a pommel cap, and this incidentally is something which is suggested or recommended by John Musgrave Waite, the main source, the main treatise that I teach sabre from, because it just gives it a slightly more secure grip on the sword. So to conclude, whoever ordered this sword really knew what they wanted, they wanted a very particular type of blade and a particular size and a very particular hilt. Cheers folks! Thank you for watching, please subscribe, follow us on Facebook, you can buy t-shirts through Spreadshirt, support us on Patreon or follow us on Pinterest. Thank you.