The subjoined table shows the strength of the corps at the Exhibition at the beginning of each month from October, 1850, to December, 1851, and also illustrates the divisions of labour in which the several parties were occupied.[[70]]

18501851
RANKS—DISTRIBUTIONSepOctNovDecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Strength:—
Colour-Sergeants 222222222
Sergeants 24646564321
Corporals 171071061010992
Second Corporals1122231013814101310983
Privates6559113114215816015513714414213215417
Buglers 2444444441
Total Strength76711133716719318519116417917215917924
Distribution:—
General superintendence 222222222
Clerks, draughtsmen, autographic press, &c.4348915132517171722221777
Charge of stationery, &c. 2222222222
Testing iron-work2222222
Modellers—workshops11111112101010108721
Lettering and laying out passages 181810
Receiving, arranging, unpacking, and removing goods 44462328 12351214
Custom-house examinations 2424664422102
Charge of gates 22
Charge of fire-engines, &c. 14920202022201233
Ventilation 222211
Class superintendents 21484646495041423
Cleaning British side of building[[66]] 383838383739
Collecting and arranging specimens 13444
On guard 444455555
Cooks and cooks’ mates 111108996688101
Sick 793532112
Absent from various causes[[67]] 1312 433
Tailors 31 122384
On command[[68]] 11
Total76712133716719318519116217917215917924

[66]. Part of day only.

[67]. Duty, furlough, pass, &c.

[68]. Clerk, Royal Engineers’ Department, Glasgow.

A brief but more extended exposition of their duties than the above detail adduces, is here given to show the general nature of the connection of the sappers with the Exhibition, and the availability of the men to discharge onerous duty and varied occupation.[[71]]

One of the colour-sergeants during the arrangements superintended the sappers on the British side, and the other on the foreign side. After the opening of the Exhibition, colour-sergeant Thomas Harding acted as sergeant-major; and colour-sergeant Noah Deary as foreman of works, in the repair of damages which accidents and the pressure of the crowd were continually causing to the railings, counters, &c. On two or three occasions when there was a press for money-takers, colour-sergeant Deary and sergeant Thomas P. Cook and William Jamieson did duty as collectors.

The clerks were employed under the various officers, military and civil, of the Executive Committee; the draughtsmen, partly under Sir W. Cubitt and Mr. M. Digby Wyatt, when they found such assistance necessary in the superintendence and record of the progress of the building; but principally under the Executive Committee, in making the numerous plans which were necessary during the preliminary arrangements. It was from their surveys and drawings that the plans in the Commissioners’ First Report were made. The men employed as clerks and draughtsmen varied at different times from three to forty in number. One of the men, lance-corporal John Pendered, was also employed in working an autographic press, which was useful when a few circulars were required at a short notice. The facility with which he acquired a knowledge of the apparatus was creditable to his aptitude, and the simple method he adopted to throw off the copies with rapidity and clearness proved him to be intelligent and skilful. The most distinguished of the draughtsmen were lance-corporals James Mack, Thomas Baker, and Nicholas Clabby, corporal Archibald Gardner, and lance-corporals Richard R. Lindsay and John Venner. The large plans, both of the ground and galleries, made for the convenience of the visitors, to enable them to find their way more easily to the parts likely most to engage their curiosity, and which were displayed at the south side of the transept during the later months of the Exhibition, were prepared by corporals Mack, Baker, Gardner, and Gabby. Both were considered to be highly-creditable specimens of drawing, combining boldness and skill with perspicuity. A daily journal, after noticing one of the drawings, thus wrote of the sappers, “Indeed that body have rendered invaluable services, not only in the general arrangements of the interior, but more especially in making those nice measurements which were essential with reference to the question of space.” It then concluded its notice by making some flattering allusions to the proficiency of the sappers employed on the national surveys.[[72]] The plans were each twenty-one feet long by six feet wide. Similar drawings on a very reduced scale, from which the plans in the first report were engraved, were executed by corporals Gardner, Mack, Clabby, Venner, and Lindsay, but the principal and most effective part of the work devolved on corporal Mack. The ground plan was drawn by the three first-named non-commissioned officers, and the galleries by corporals Mack and Venner. The interesting coloured diagram to show the fluctuations in the number of visitors, and other characteristic details, was wholly drawn by corporal Mack. The plan of the exhibition building to illustrate the water-supply, and measures for security against fire, was drawn by corporal Lindsay. These four drawings comprised the plans in the First Report.

The chart exhibited in the transept on the 6th October, to show by diagrams the fluctuations in the number of visitors to the building, was prepared by corporals Gardner and Mack, under the direction of Captain Owen. ‘The Times,’[[73]] said it was “a production of great merit and of much public interest, and resembled those scales of mountain elevations which are usually prefixed to atlasses. The shilling days were the Himalayas and Andes of the chart; while the half-crown and five shilling days were represented by heights of much lower altitude.” With the permission of the Executive Committee, these two non-commissioned officers compiled, on the same principle, a similar diagram with more copious general information, for the proprietors of the ‘Weekly Dispatch,’ from which an engraving was made, and copies in immense numbers were thrown off and issued on two stated occasions to the purchasers of that newspaper. Referring to the great chart shown in the Exhibition, the ‘Weekly Dispatch’ thus wrote: “This chart, which is beautifully executed, and is altogether a production of very great merit, reflects the utmost credit upon the authors—corporals Gardner and Mack of the royal sappers and miners, a corps which has rendered most intelligent and valuable service to the Exhibition.”[[74]]