Diameter: 22cm (8.7in)
Porcelain. Officers’ mess plate, bearing the Tiger badge encircled of RMF title beneath a Queen Victoria crown and motto 'Spectamur Acendo' (Let us be judged by our acts), on a white ground with cobalt blue and gold painted foliate border. The reverse marked 'Cauldon England’
The Madras Fusiliers was manned by Europeans and raised by the East India Company in 1742. It was transferred to the British service in 1862 and given the additional ‘Royal’ title in appreciation of services in suppressing the Indian Mutiny. In 1869, it arrived in Britain for the first time, bringing with it the regimental mascot, a tiger named ‘Plassey’. Plassey had been given as cub by a Captain Thackwell who was himself killed by tiger in 1869. Plassey came to be such a symbol of the regiment that a Bengal tiger was adopted as the regimental badge around 1870. Kept unchained near the garrison, Plassey was walked by his keeper Sergeant Hartopp, and even allowed to roam during mess dinners. Eventually complaints from the terrified townsfolk of Dover, resulted in Plassey’s removal to Regent’s Park Zoo in London where he died in 1877. The Royal Madras Fusiliers were amalgamated with the Royal Bombay Fusiliers in 1881 to become the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Plassey’s preserved skull is in the National Army Museum.
