Officer's undress stable jacket worn by Lieutenant Sir William Gordon, 17th Light Dragoons (Lancers), 1854...

Officer's undress stable jacket worn by Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Sir William Gordon (1830-1906) of the 17th Light Dragoons (Lancers), 1854. Five days after the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) Gordon wrote to his mother saying that ‘I only got a few cracks on the head which are of no consequence’, yet the five sabre cuts he sustained were in fact of such severity that it was remarked at the hospital how he was the only patient ‘with his head off’. Gordon’s stable jacket shows the marks of battle on the left side, right rear shoulder and the centre back towards both the waist and at the neck edge. There are still blood stains on the right collar and down the front. The stains on the jacket indicates that Gordon’s arm must have been raised at the time that the slash on the left side was delivered. In the absence of formal campaign dress for the British Army, the stable jacket, as worn by Gordon during the Charge of the Light Brigade, was often donned by cavalry officers during service overseas in preference to the full dress uniform. This jacket is secured with sixteen hook and eye fastenings and there are 68 studs down the centre left front and domed buttons bearing skull and cross bones, the regimental insignia, at the shoulder and cuffs.