Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.15802

c10.15802

WHITE JACKET, s. The old custom in the hot weather, in the family or at bachelor parties, was to wear this at dinner; and one or more dozens of white jackets were a regular item in an Indian outfit. They are now, we believe, altogether, and for many years obsolete. [They certainly came again into common use some 20 years ago. But though one reads under every generation of British India that they had gone out of use, they did actually survive to the middle of the last century, for I can remember a white-jacket dinner in Fort William in 1849. [The late Mr. Bridgman of Gorakhpur, whose recollection of India dated from the earlier part of the last century told me that in his younger days the rule at Calcutta was that the guest always arrived at his host's house in the full evening-dress of the time, on which his host meeting him at the door expressed his regret that he had not chosen a cooler dress; on which the guest's Bearer always, as if by accident, appeared from round the corner with a nankeen jacket, which was then and there put on. But it would have been opposed to etiquette for the guest to appear in such a dress without express invitation.]