Cap
Maker & role
Unknown, Maker
Production date
circa 1815-1850s
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Object detail
Production place
Collection
Measurements
0 - Whole, L: 29 x W: 13.5cm (L: 290 x W: 135mm)
Credit line
Purchase, with assistance of Members of the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2007
Hyde Park Barracks Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Hyde Park Barracks Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caption
Leather convict cap, worn by Bathurst convicts working on the chain gangs road building and when building the Berrima Gaol, 1837
Description
Along with the cat-o’-nine tails and leg irons, the leather convict cap is one of the most recognizable symbols of convictism in Australia. Folded double and secured into position with tied tapes near the base, the cap had a brim on either side that could be turned down to protect the wearer from both sun and rain. But it didn’t always meet with convict approval. in 1819 Major George Druitt of the 48th Regiment of Foot told Commissioner John Thomas Bigge that they were ‘quite useless, and afford no protection to the head from the sun’. Convicts were said to prefer woollen caps in winter and broad brimmed straw hats in summer and resorted to stealing them when they could not be acquired by other means. Hat theft came with harsh consequences: in 1833 Irishman Robert Reilly received a flogging of 25 lashes at Hyde Park Barracks for stealing a hat from another prisoner; Yorkshireman John Harty received 6 months in leg irons for the same crime. Despite being impractical and unpopular, the leather caps remained part of the convict uniform at least into the 1850s.
Caps like this appear in images of the British Army in the first years of the 19th century. They appear to have been introduced as an off-duty or fatigue cap at the same time the army adopted an all leather ‘stove-pipe’ shako as parade and campaign service headdress. Most of the off-duty British soldiers in W H Pyne’s scenes of camp life, published in 1803, are wearing them. Illustrations of the period show that these caps remained in use until the late 1820s. They were a very popular unofficial item of dress for British soldiers and sailors and even became a fashion statement for some civilians.
Convicts, like the army, were supplied by the Board of Ordnance. Men sentenced to transportation and bound for Botany Bay needed to be clothed. The stockpiles of surplus military clothing produced for the Napoleonic wars must have been a temptation for penny-pinching government bean counters after 1815 and so the convicts found themselves wearing military headdress and other ex-army cast-offs.
When Edward Close sat down to paint in 1817 and created the watercolour 'The costumes of the Australasians' he is unlikely to have realised that he was recording for posterity just how common these leather caps had become. Despite Druitt’s criticism the leather caps remained part of the convict uniform at least into the 1850s. Quaker missionary Frederick Mackie sketched convicts wearing them in 1853 at Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land. These sketches occasionally show them worn in an unorthodox manner, with the fold from side to side, rather than from front to back as was usual, and with one brim folded down to create an eyeshade. Loved or hated, serviceable or useless, the eccentrically shaped leather cap is an evocative reminder of our convict past.
Caps like this appear in images of the British Army in the first years of the 19th century. They appear to have been introduced as an off-duty or fatigue cap at the same time the army adopted an all leather ‘stove-pipe’ shako as parade and campaign service headdress. Most of the off-duty British soldiers in W H Pyne’s scenes of camp life, published in 1803, are wearing them. Illustrations of the period show that these caps remained in use until the late 1820s. They were a very popular unofficial item of dress for British soldiers and sailors and even became a fashion statement for some civilians.
Convicts, like the army, were supplied by the Board of Ordnance. Men sentenced to transportation and bound for Botany Bay needed to be clothed. The stockpiles of surplus military clothing produced for the Napoleonic wars must have been a temptation for penny-pinching government bean counters after 1815 and so the convicts found themselves wearing military headdress and other ex-army cast-offs.
When Edward Close sat down to paint in 1817 and created the watercolour 'The costumes of the Australasians' he is unlikely to have realised that he was recording for posterity just how common these leather caps had become. Despite Druitt’s criticism the leather caps remained part of the convict uniform at least into the 1850s. Quaker missionary Frederick Mackie sketched convicts wearing them in 1853 at Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land. These sketches occasionally show them worn in an unorthodox manner, with the fold from side to side, rather than from front to back as was usual, and with one brim folded down to create an eyeshade. Loved or hated, serviceable or useless, the eccentrically shaped leather cap is an evocative reminder of our convict past.
Accession number
HPB2007/9
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