The cases on
either hand contain weapons, helmets, and armour from most parts of our
Indian Empire, as well as weapons from Cabul, Persia, Africa, America,
and the South Seas. Some of these were presented by the Honourable East
India Company, some were acquired by purchase after the Great Exhibition
of 1851, and others have been added at various times. In the centre of
the room are models showing the Tower buildings in the years 1842 and
1866.
The Large Room is now entered, and on the left is a case containing
firearms, hand grenades, and a series of the _rifled_ arms in use
in the British Army since 1801. These include the two Baker rifles of
1801 and 1807; the Brunswick rifle, 1836; the Minie rifle, 1851; the
Enfield rifle musket, 1855; the Snider, 1865; the Martini-Henry, 1871;
and the Lee-Metford magazine rifle. On the right, between two grotesque
figures, called Gin and Beer, from the entrance to the Buttery of the
old Palace of Greenwich, is a case containing executioners' swords
(foreign), thumb-screws, the Scavenger's Daughter for confining the
neck, hands, and feet, bilboes for ship use, and thumb-screws. Observe
also the so-called "Collar taken from the Spanish Armada," which however
was here in 1547, and has been in later times filled with lead to make
it more terrible. It was only a collar for detention of ordinary
prisoners. A conjectural model of the rack is also shown, but the only
pictorial authority for this instrument (at no time a legal punishment)
is a woodcut in Foxe's Martyrs, the illustrations for which were drawn
from German sources.
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