Essex Yeo beret badge with Turner & Simpson mark - straw poll
 

The EY Queen's crown beret badge can be found with four maker marks (in order of frequency seen): Gaunt, Timings, Dowler and Turner & Simpson. The last one is particularly uncommon as it is also an example of the early manufacture badges with the riveted nickel slider rather than an A/A one.

I have only ever seen two examples of the T&S badge, one on a sealed pattern card and the other posted on the forum some while back.

This leads me to speculate that T&S produced the initial small batch for the sealed patterns but the subsequent manufacture was handled by the other three companies.

Does anyone have an example of this badge? I would be interested to get a sense of how many examples are known and whether that supports my hypothesis (or does anyone have a sealed pattern example with a different maker mark..?)

Hi Expat,

This a valid theory in that when the sealed patterns were made from the original samples the standard patterns were lent out to those badge manufacturers who requested them for the initial tender. It would be more than feasible to find that the maker who won the contract need not be the one who made the samples.

Unfortunately, I am unable to comment on your particular example here.

To find another maker badge on a subsequent pattern would be unusual but if the original badge were retired and subsequently resurrected then this too could occur. Pretty sure though that this did not happen with the badge you have in question.

Regards,

Chris

Many thanks Chris,

That is my view on both points too but wanted to cast the net out to see if there were any other theories, or else disprove my assertion that the T&S one is super scarce and they're merely tied up in established collections.

I'm not getting that sense though!!

Michael

Many thanks, Michael, for this post. Until now I hadn't realized there was a small EY cap-badge with a T&S metal slider.

I have EY beret badge (Small), with J.R. Gaunt B'ham slider.

Also have the large version EY badge, with T&S metal slider.

In addition, there is also a KC EY beret badge (Small), with slider marked F.W. Timings Ltd, B'ham.

Awra best

William

William, thank you for your post and photos. I hadn't seen the large size with T&S either so another one for my list!

The KC beret one, which only comes with the Timings mark, is much rarer than the QC beret size, (ex the T&S marked one)

Thanks for sharing.

Michael

The grey matter was whirring overnight and I will develop my theory and say I think the cap size one also falls into the pattern card category. Why...? All the ones I had seen thus far have been Firmins (although that is still an uncommon badge) but I also remembered that the IWM had a pattern card for 304th Regiment badges with examples of both cap and beret badges... and both have a T&S mark..

Do we have a date when Turner & Simpson was taken over or ceased to exist ?
Could it be that they produced the badges for the pattern cards,but by the time they had been approved for production the company had gone ?

Mike, I've had a quick trawl courtesy of Google but struggling to find specifics on this company.

There's another thread here as part of Hagwalther's A/A badge research that suggests they were going until the 1970s, if so then they would have been around to win a contract (and presumably to decline to bid on one too!)

From Chris's T&S thread it looks like many of the examples known are early ones. But I'm getting into the realm of speculation now..

Thats what i was getting at. All the T&S badges seem to be early anodised examples,similar to Grove Mfg but far less examples.