Surgeons and assistant surgeons wore the uniform of the regiment to which they were attached, differing only in the belts and the hat. This photograph shows an assistant surgeon in full dress in 1866, wearing the scarlet tunic with dark blue facings and gold lace. The tunic is the 1857 pattern with slashed cuffs, a design replaced in 1868 by a tunic with pointed cuffs. The embroidered crown on his collar denotes the rank of lieutenant, the distinction worn by company officers of the period.
The 1864 Dress Regulations authorised the following for Regimental Staff Officers:
‘Paymasters, Quartermasters, Surgeons and Assistant-Surgeons are to wear the uniform of their respective regiments, with the distinctions of their corresponding ranks, excepting that they are to wear cocked hats, black waist-belts with slings, and no sash. The hat to be nine inches deep in the fan or back part, the front seven inches and a half, and each corner five inches, with loop of regimental lace, the same as worn on the coat, and crape fringe tassels; the Paymaster to wear no feather; the Quartermaster to have a cock’s feather five inches long, mushroom-shaped; in Fusilier regiments, all white; in regiments of the Line, white, and red underneath; in Light Infantry regiments, green; the Surgeon and Assistant-Surgeon to wear a feather of black cock’s tail, drooping from a feathered stem five inches in length. The Surgeon and Assistant-Surgeon will also wear a black shoulder-belt, with a small case of instruments, according to pattern, with gilt ornaments.’
The officer in this photograph is Assistant-Surgeon George Joseph Hamilton Evatt, who joined the 25th King’s Own Borderers in 1866. The image was published in Military Modelling in 2004. The caption states that it was taken in Canada, where the 1st Battalion served from 1864 to 1875. However, the 1865 Army List places Evatt in the 2nd Battalion, raised in 1859 and serving in Ceylon from 1863. The precise location of the photograph is therefore uncertain, though the uniform details are entirely consistent with the period.
