“It is not the black clothes that are trying to the sight—black is the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours make the eyes water after looking at ’em for any long time; but of all colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding, it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful . . . everything seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There’s more military tailors blind than any others.”

—Henry Mayhew, quoting a tailor in London Labor and the London Poor, 1862; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding, 1987.