Monthly Archives: August 2019

The Imperial War Museum are compiling records

Letter on Imperial War Museum letterhead from Charles ffoulkes, curator of the Imperial War Museum, asking for information about uniforms worn during the First World War

In 1919, the Imperial War Museum was beginning to collect artifacts, documents, and information about the First World War.  In this letter, curator and director, Charles ffoulkes, wrote to British officers in an attempt to gather information about the uniforms worn by the men in their battalions.  He was looking for specifics, for details that might have been added or altered during the course of the war.  The appeal is to history and the identity of these military men – what made your battalion unique, what did your men do differently.

The details were to be sketched and painted by Glasgow artist A.E. Haswell Miller.  Miller, a captain in the Highland Light Infantry, studied art in Glasgow and on the continent.  His drawings and paintings are held in the Imperial War Museum and the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.

The letter ends with instructions to fill out an enclosed forms.  Those forms are not among the Peirs papers, so presumable, he filled them out and sent them along.