This civilian headpiece was worn by a convicted criminal and eccentric British general at the Battle of Vitoria during the Peninsular War

A Welshman from Pembrokeshire, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton joined the British Army in the early 1770s and served as the governor of Trinidad during 1797-1803. He administered a brutal regime over the island’s slaves where severe corporal punishments and executions were commonplace. He was forced to resign after being accused of approving the torture of a mixed-race teenage girl and was found guilty by a British court. An 1808 retrial led to his sentence being indefinitely postponed before he was appointed to command the 3rd Division in Iberia in 1810.