['Ticker' Riley]

Hello again dumdum & Michael

I think you might both have misunderstood my last posting a little, as I am actually saying the opposite to what you seem to think. I do not think that the letters denote a region or a trade, rather I believe that they are simply a way of continuing the overall numbering by the addition of a letter of the alphabet as a prefix. In other words, badge ‘L’ 99,999 would have been immediately followed by badge ‘M’ 1, then when they got to badge ‘M’ 99,999 this was followed by badge ‘N’ 1, and so on.

If the letters were for different regions or specific trades, then when we come to those that appear to have been reissued with ‘J’ as the prefix, and given that I have personally seen badges where the original letters have been removed in such circumstances only with a ‘J’ on them and no other letter, then this would mean they were all reissued for just one region or one trade which can’t possibly be right! To my mind, considering that by the end of July 1916 over 1,300,000 badges had been apparently issued, the logical way to achieve this would be to have chronologically consecutive alphanumeric series.

Another thing for me is the fact that the 1914 Admiralty badges use different letters to the 1915 War Office ones, whereas if the letters were for regions then surely you would get the same letters on both kinds of badges? On the other hand, if they were for trades then this might account for the differences, but my understanding is that the coded classification system which has been noted elsewhere was very extensive, much more so that the eighteen letters of the alphabet that seem to have been actually used on the badges.

I would also think that trying to manage a system where badges were simultaneously being issued on the basis of falling into a particular trade category would have been quite unwieldy, and what happens when you get to badge ‘M’ 99,999 for one on category but only badge ‘N’ 9,999 for another? What badges would you issue in order to carry things on for the first trade category in such a situation? Surely it was much more straightforward, after the initial purely numeric series of the 1915 enamelled badges, to issue a new series starting from badge 1 but prefixing this with a letter of the alphabet, which I personally think was ‘K’.

Anyhow, as I say, I think you might both not have grasped what I was trying to say, so hope I’ve explained things a little clearer now. These are, of course, my own views on matters, but I have given this an awful lot of thought and consideration. I accept that this is not what others might think, and perhaps we will just never know for certain about this.

Best regards

Martin