Plain and sparsely decorated blades were available to buy alongside the more commonly encountered etched blades, of course, and there was no regulation that said you had to have a decorated blade except when regimental colonels insisted on their officers following a specific pattern. Sometimes, plain blades were officers’ second swords, bought as fighting blades with the ‘normal’ more decorated blades being reserved for parades, et cetera.

Rubbings of the blades’ decorations were taken as records of specific designs and these where kept on file so that they could be used to recreate etching patterns in the case of the deterioration of an original sword. Some of these still exist but many have been lost as the rubbings books were stored poorly and badly water-damaged over the years, leaving some of the survivors blurry. Also, the practice of actually taking the rubbings seemed to have declined as those after 1883 were more concerned with presentation inscriptions rather than things like heraldic etching and, even in the 1930s, only large presentation swords and the odd ‘special’ had rubbings taken. There were 103 dated presentation swords listed between 1856 and 1879 and a large number not dated.

“In 1861, a presentation sword was presented to Charles Hugh Lindsay by members of the St George’s Volunteer Rifle Corps. Fast forward 90 years to November 1951 and a relative of Charles Hugh Lindsay walked into to 53 Pall Mall with the sword and asked if it could be refurbished. The showroom assistant Jimmy Naughton removed the sword from the scabbard to be faced with a shower of rust flakes and a seriously rusted blade missing six inches from the tip! Naughton told the customer that only a new blade would rectify this calamity! In December 1951, the owner returned and collected the sword and was overwhelmed with gratitude as it had been restored to its former glory. Thanks to the blade rubs, the original decorative design and presentation inscription was able to be etched into the replacement blade and every detail of the original, including trade marking, name and so on was faithfully copied. In case of further accidents, a new rub was taken!”

Both of the St George’s Rifles rubs: