A Late Victorian Royal Artillery Officer's Cocked Hat by Hawkes & Co., London, in black silk, the right side with a loop of gold lace and gold half-ball netted button backed by a black silk cockade and flanked by bands of black oak leaf patterned brocade, with gold bullions to each tip, cream leather sweatband and red silk lining stamped with maker's name in gold, in a black japanned tin with brass label engraved Lieut.Colonel N.D. Findlay, Royal Artillery, together with a plume of white and red drooping swan feathers, lacks square fixing post, in a black japanned tin, also with some printed research material relating to Neil Douglas Findlay, later Brigadier General

Neil Douglas Findlay (1859-1914) served with the British Army in action on the Hazara Expedition of 1888 and in the Second Boer War. At the outbreak of the First World War he was promoted to Brigadier General and appointed Commander of the Royal Artillery 1st Infantry Division. He was killed during the First Battle of the Aisne when he was hit by shrapnel from a German shell. He was the first British General to be killed in the war and was known as one of the Army's best artillery officers. He was buried in the churchyard in Courchamps, but later exhumed and moved to Vailly British Cemetery in 1938.