The Royal Military Exhibition was held in 1890 at Gordon House, Chelsea and the grounds of the Royal Hospital to display the work of soldiers of all ranks in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

, Royal Marines and Auxiliary Forces. Profit from the exhibition was to support the Church of England Soldier's Institutes located on Army bases. The exhibition was opened on 7 May 1890 by the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

and featured three themes, the industrial work of the soldier, articles of equipment, collection of pictures and other objects of military interest. The exhibition also had tournament displays of

military bands A military band is a group of personnel that performs musical duties for military functions, usually for the armed forces. A typical military band consists mostly of wind and percussion instruments. The conductor of a band commonly bears the tit ...

, tug-of-war and demonstration ascents of war balloons. The musical division was co-ordinated by Colonel Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier, commandant of the

Royal Military School of Music The Royal Military School of Music (RMSM) trains musicians for the British Army's fourteen regular bands, as part of the Royal Corps of Army Music. Until August 2021, the school was based at Kneller Hall in Twickenham, however it moved to HMS ...

. Over the five-month exhibition, 74 military bands came from all over the country to perform beside the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

in central London. A large collection of musical instruments, particularly

wind instrument A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitc ...

s, was displayed, and a catalogue was issued the following year.
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890
'. Issued under the orders of Colonel Shaw-Hellier and compiled by Captain Charles Russell Day, Oxfordshire Light Infantry. Eyre & Spottiswoode, Government and General Publishers, London. xii, 254pp. 1891. Shaw-Hellier's introduction is transcribe

/ref> The exhibition closed on 1 November 1890 with a firework display, it was announced that £10,000 had been handed over to the Church of England Soldier's Institute.

References

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