NAM.1958-02-27-1

Stuffed tabby cat popularly called 'Crimean Tom', wearing a leather collar with a silver plaque inscribed ‘T / Sebastopol’, 1855 (c). Associated with the Siege of Sevastopol, Crimean War (1854-1856). Tom was found in the city of Sevastopol and brought home by an unknown British soldier. Written and pictorial sources show that cats were very popular as pets among soldiers in the Crimea. Captain Fred Dallas wrote in a letter home dated 3 December 1855: ‘The town [Sevastopol] was full of very jolly tame cats & all our men have their cats in their huts & very useful they are for the amounts of rats & mice is something awful.’ Tom was originally mounted on a plinth on which was painted ‘Tom/ Taken out of the RUINS of Sebastopol/ Departed this Life DECr. 31st 1856’. This plinth no longer survives. Tom was presented to the National Army Museum by Lady Compton Mackenzie who purchased him in Portobello Road in the 1950s. A photograph of the cat was published in Country Life magazine on 22 April 1954. There is absolutely no evidence that Crimean Tom is the cat in the painting ‘A Welcome Arrival’ and given that cats were so prevalent it is extremely unlikely that they could coincidentally be the same animal.

Sevastopol, Siege of, 1854-55 (Crimean War 1854-1856)