Mail shirt: M.13I-1941

Maker(s)

Unknown

Entities

• Mail shirt

Categories

• Armour

Description

Mail shirt for field use. Formed of fairly small rings of oval-section wire with riveted joints throughout. The rings are of a heavier construction over the chest and back than elsewhere. The shirt opens all the way down the front. It is of mid-thigh length, with a square-cut neck, and sleeves that extend to just below the elbows, and a central division to the crotch at the rear of the skirt. A line of smaller links down the centre of the back suggests that the shirt has been altered or repaired at some time, perhaps during its working life. A number of links are missing throughout the shirt, especially at its edges. The shirt is bright with light patination throughout. Part of the composite Spanish armour M.13A-K-1941.

Notes

History note: From the collection of Dr Bashford Dean, Riverdale, Long Island, New York. According to a manuscript note by F.H. Cripps-Day, dated December 1926, in his grangerised copy of G.F. Laking, A Record of European Armour and Arms, [section on jacks in volume titled 'mail'], now preserved in the library of the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, 'I exchanged [a jack] with Dean for a Gothic Spanish suit made up. I wanted a Gothic suit but parted with a rare piece'. The jack, from a house in Tonbridge, Kent, is now part of the Bashford Dean Memorial Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Mr Francis Henry Cripps-Day.

Legal notes

Given by Mr F.H. Cripps-Day