[Toby Purcell]

Thank you to the kind forum member who drew my attention to this thread. Yes, Bruce Bassett-Powell and I have launched the scarlet into khaki series after a year of research and much experimentation regarding the layout of the plates. I don’t know what the source of every single cap badge image that Bruce uses is, but they are all in the public domain, some are from Pinterest image pin boards I think and have been reproduced many times without there always being a clear provenance. Many others come from auction house archives. The shoulder titles are a mixture of software based image manipulation using original shoulder titles, and Bruce created an alphabet of letters with the appearance of woven thread and then lays them on the scarlet straps individually. It is a painstaking and laborious process, but we think it has been to good effect. Several members of this and other forums have assisted us with some aspects on this and our earlier series and we will acknowledge them in due course as before. This is our third collaboration and we have several more in the pipeline. We have an ethos of focusing on areas that have not been tackled previously in the public domain, although some aspects might have been seen in the journals and bulletins of old subscription based historical societies that are not open to all. Both of us believe that such information should not be confined to just those who can afford to join such societies. As mentioned the previous two series were the round forage caps 1880 to 1902 and the officers insignia 1881 to 1902. We’ve been pleased with the reception to these series and are grateful to those who have been kind enough in this thread and other places to express appreciation. It’s reassuring that there are far more of you than there are of those that express petty minded comments, and we have been especially pleased that Ray Westlake has requested (and been granted) permission to use some of our work in his own publications, and the National Army Museum has referred some insignia researchers to our series. All this promotes our express desire to bring the information to a wider audience without any charge. Our intent always is to be accurate and constructive rather than destructive and possessive. We also take trouble to amend any inaccuracies, which is then reflected in a “revised” annotation on each and every plate where changes have been made. Something that paper publications are unable to do without the expense of laboriously publishing subsequent editions.
It’s true that I post as Toby Purcell and Frogsmile, for those curious the latter relates to a nickname given to me by my late wife, who supported me during my service in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and I use it in honour of her memory.