Troops from British India, 1866

Still very much in their British uniforms, an illustration from a contemporary French newspaper

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I think the French illustrator may have been working off older material. Didn't the Bengal infantry (don't know about the other presidencies) abolish the native shako some years before the 1857 Mutiny? They were left with just the porkpie cap.

Regards,
MConrad

Yes you are right Mconrad. The high peak-less shakos of theBengal sepoys were replaced by the Kilmarnock cap in November 1847. Even if they were allowed to wear out the older headdress by an economy minded Honorable East India Company it is very unlikely that the shakos were still being worn when the Mutiny broke out ten years later. The Madras Presidency sepoys had a different model of shako though, which they continued to wear until 1858. There are very few photographs of sepoys pre-Mutiny in existence but I posted one on a different thread of this website a couple of years back showing the porkpie caps being worn with white summer covers.