Figure: 18.5cm (7.2in) x 18cm (7.1in) x 10cm (4in)
Silver. Mess table cigar lighter modelled as a Kettledrummer of the 16th Lancers in review order, with one drum fitted as a lighter with wick rising from a reservoir within, the other fitted with a recess for matches; the Kettledrummer modelled in Review Order and accoutrements comprising lancer czapka secured with cap lines around the body, back across the front and looped up to the left shoulder with acorns hanging down, tunic with full plastron, pouch belt and pouch, gauntlets, pantaloons with double stripe, and knee boots. The drum horse with regulation pattern bridle, throat plume, and sheepskin over regulation saddle. Maker’s mark of Alexander Macrae, supplier to royal warrant holders Hunt & Roskell, Bond Street, London. Hallmarked London 1877. Mounted on period ebonised plinth fitted with ball feet for ease of table top movement. The plinth applied with a silver presentation plaque inscribed ‘Presented by / H.J. Tritton Esq / Middlesex Yeomanry / To HM 16th Lancers / While attached to them / Aldershot 1879. Raised on a velvet covered base. Height overall: base: 38.5cm (15.15in).
In the 1870s the German Empire's stunning victory over the French Second Empire confirmed an overhaul of the Britain’s military system was long overdue. Along the with the abolition of flogging and the purchase of commissions, Yeomanry units were placed in an order of battle of corps, divisions and brigades for the 'Active Army'. The Middlesex Yeomanry in 1879 were thus assigned as 'divisional troops' of 3rd Division of II Corps, and placed alongside the 16th (The Queen's) Lancers, recently returned from India. The present silver figure is thus a testament to this new spirit of co-operation, and evidence of the donor’s extravagance.
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The Middlesex Yeomanry was raised in 1797, disbanded at the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and re-raised as a single squadron in the 1830s to deter civil unrest inspired by the likes of ‘Captain Swing’ amidst the farmsteads of Uxbridge, Middlesex. By the early 1880s it had grown to regiment of four troops, one of which, ‘A’ Troop, was a detachment based at Brighton, Sussex and under the command of an old Etonian banking heir, Captain H.J. Tritton. Regimental headquarters were in Albermarle Street, Piccadilly.
A huge oil painting at the National Trust’s Lanhydrock House in Cornwall by Tritton’s brother officer John E. Chapman Matthews (1842-1927) captures what was perhaps the high point of their yeomanry service. The three metre long canvas shows a carriage procession leaving Brighton Pavilion with a Captain's escort of the Middlesex Yeomanry on the occasion of a visit in 1880. In the carriage are the Prince of Wales (afterward King Edward VII), Princess Alexandra and their three daughters, the Princess Royal, the Princess Maud, Queen of Norway, and Princess Victoria. In the foreground is Tritton, with five members of his family depicted to the left of the royal carriage: his wife Anna, three daughters and his brother-in-law, Colonel James Hornby Buller. Matthews, the artist, is the mounted officer to the left of the carriage.
Major Henry John Tritton (1842-1922) was hopeless with money. In 1878 he under sold his interest in the family bank for £40,000 while drawing a yearly income of £7,000. He then began mortgaging both his property and his annual income to buy small farms, on which he spent heavily. Finally there was his large self-imposed liability in respect of financing the social life of the yeomanry cavalry. The result of all this is that he was made bankrupt in 1888. By 1890 he was living in a farm cottage on the estate of his brother-in-law, Buller, a West Country landowner and magistrate, Colonel in the Regular Army and a member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms.