Quote:
Originally Posted by dumdum
Hi
I've got a few of these badges and also been keen to know what the purpose of the number was. I would say that the badges were numbered when they were made so Toye & Co would have been given instructions as to the range of numbers to be stamped on the back. I recall seeing a "97 A" sell on an Internet site some months back. The only letters that I can recall seeing are: A; B; C & D.
There may be an "E" lurking in my badges but I can't be sure. I'll check.
Chances are that they are "regional" groupings within the U.K. There were certainly Old Contemptibles that had their own very localised badge (Bath & Bristol; Northern Ireland; Wales and also New South Wales (Australia!).
I think that I've posted images of these before.
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I have carried out (and continue to do so) extensive research on The Old Contemptibles' Association and thought that this information may help to explain the numbering used on the rear of the badges.
Initially the badges were stamped with consecutive numbers as issued, and it is known that by May 1930 Badge No. 11596 was sent to the London S. W. No. 2 Branch in Brixton. Two years later it was deemed necessary to add a suffix to the badge numbers when a new roll was started by Chum Quick, the General Secretary, and when Chum James Robb, formerly of the 2nd Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry, was accepted as a member of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Branch on 27 May 1932 he was issued with Badge No. 453A. Within four years another roll had been started, and in May 1936 Badge No. 2497B was dispatched to a Chum of the Croydon Branch.
On 23 March 1935, at the Annual Dinner of the South Buckinghamshire Branch held at the White Hart Hotel in High Wycombe, the General Secretary of the National Executive, Chum Thomas Quick, stated that there were some 8,400 Chums who had paid their subscriptions and that since the Association had been founded in 1925 over 28,000 badges had been issued.
An influx of applications following the announcement that the Association was to close its ranks on 31 December 1938 resulted in futher rolls being initiated. By December 1950, several years after the decision to cease recruitment had been rescinded, Badges No. 569E to 753E were recorded in that month’s issue of ‘The Old Contemptible’ to have been posted to Chums. New members continued to join Branches of the Association right up until 1975, shortly before the National Executive closed, but the supply of badges was reported to have been exhausted by 1974.
Although the rolls are no longer available in order to check the sequence used it can be supposed that a system of numbering 1-9999 was employed, with the suffix E being the last in the sequence. Based on this, and allowing for the issue of replacement badges, it can be estimated that over 50,000 badges were issued during the lifetime of The Old Contemptibles’ Association, and that it is possible that in the region of 40,000 to 50,000 ‘Old Contemptibles’ were accepted as Chums over the sixty years in which the National Executive of the Association operated.
With regard to the badges mentioned in the thread relating to The Old Contemptibles of Wales, The Old Contemptibles Association of Northern Ireland, the Mons (1914 Star) Club in Bristol, and the New South Wales badge, these are nothing to do with The Old Contemptibles' Association and in fact relate to separate organisations. The Old Contemptibles of Wales existed from 1933 until 1940, the Northern Ireland group from 1935 to 1946, and the Bristol group was formed in 1922 and still in existence in 1939, even though by that time a Bristol Branch of The Old Contemptibles' Association had been formed. The New South Wales badge relates to a group that pre-dated the formation of the New South Wales Branch of the Association, which many of its members subsequently joined.