Quote:
Originally Posted by Markus Bodeux
Hello Toby,
thanks for your comment and interesting informations.Your informations are correct, without doubt. The two Gale & Poulden´s postcards are also published in "A guide to the Home Service Helmet" by Westlake, and we can cleary see the 4-pointed Dragoon-style star.
Westlake gives a source for the standard helmet plate with the "VR", an article published in May 1972 by LtCol Poulsom in "The Bulletin of the Military Historical Society", two helmet plates with VC and "VR"-cypher shall be shown in this article.
Can this standard helmet plate been a short live (or not introduced) interim solution for the Military Foot Police to distinguish them from the MMP ?
Would be interesting to get a copy of this article, may be someone has this issue from may 1972.
Otherwise i can not find any use for this gilding "VR"-cypher with the standard helmet plate.
Thanks again and kind regards
Markus
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In answer to your question the research of the RMP Museum, Toby Brayley, myself and my Co-researcher Bruce Bassett-Powell of Uniformology.com, has found no evidence whatsoever that the badge you depicted was worn by any part of the CRMP. If you look at the B&W photos of the SNCOs on foot, they are MFP. The photographic archive has been scoured and nothing remotely similar found. Bruce and I did a series on badges and other insignia for uniformology.com and showed the similar helmet plate used by the Inspectors of Army Schools. See series here:
http://www.uniformology.com/INSIGNIA-00.html
All previous headdress badges of similar design, but used on shakos (i.e. preceding 1878) were for Garrison Staff. At that time garrison staff personnel such as staff clerks, sergeant majors and quarter-master-sergeants employed in headquarters, or war office departments, and funded away from their parent regiment, were obliged to wear generic insignia with VR at the centre. We know that later the policy changed and instead the insignia of parent units was retained. This removed uniformity, but was a cost saving, as generic uniform and insignia no longer needed to be funded. Ergo I think it likely that your helmet star plate probably relates to garrison staff other ranks. In undress (headdress) these men wore the Royal Cypher (‘VR’ until after 1902) either, in bullion wire, or gilding metal, depending on their rank.