City of London Police Detective Inspector E. J. Child, City of London Police Retirement Medal 1891

[paul wood]

http://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_11_2013/post-3085-0-19240800-1383572933.jpghttp://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_11_2013/post-3085-0-68808300-1383572913.jpg

Dear All I have just come across this medal to commemorate the retirement of Detective Inspector E. J. Child from the City of London Police 1891 after 32 years service.

Has any one seen a similar medal before and is there any information about his career.

With best wishes,

Paul

[Chris Boonzaier]

It is astonishing to see, that one mans retirement medal has a quality superior than most, if not all, military medals of all nations that have come out in the last 30 years or so....

Just what is it that they HAD back then that is so obviously lacking today (both in terms of design and production) ???

[Brett Hendey]

I echo everything that Chris wrote!

Paul, thank you for showing a really extraordinary medal.

Regards

Brett

[Chris Boonzaier]

A silly question, I thought Poppies in the Lapel were strictly a post WW1 Thing?

[Mervyn Mitton]

Paul - the key words are - In rememberance on my retirement. I think you will find that he had this designed and caste for his

own family. I have never seen anything similar and if it was a Force award then others would have turned-up. I think you should

ask the Cof L museum to find out his background. Mervyn

[paul wood]

A silly question, I thought Poppies in the Lapel were strictly a post WW1 Thing?

I suspect it is not a poppy but an orchid of some kind they were the in thing in those days.

Paul

[219PG]

Really interesting object and must be one of a kind - City of London police Museum must be able to help with this detectives history - please let us know what you find out - must be a very distinguished detective - Nothing to do with a poppy !!

[Mervyn Mitton]

I hope this one doesn't ' die a death' . Perhaps there is something in his service history that

made him feel it worth while to issue his own retirement medallion. If we are correct, then this

has to be a very rare occurence. Mervyn

[Chris Boonzaier]

Maybe the way forward is to Guess what the initials are?

The problem with the usual Googling forward is that "Police" and "child" bring up thousands of hits about Child Abuse, but little about retirement....

[Chris Boonzaier]

There is another of these....

http://www.muenzauktion.com/pater/item.php5?id=1110311004

[paul wood]

Interesting Chris. I have E-mailed the City of London Police Museum (yesterday) and as soon as I have any info I will post. I suspect they were given out at his retirement beano, bronze to the basic guests, bronze-gilt to more important, maybe there was a silver, silver-gilt and gold the latter for Child. This is pure speculation and I hope the C of L will be able to give firmer information.

Paul

[Mervyn Mitton]

With Chris' medallion you can see clearly that a mistake in the casting was made where it says - IN - the I is

actually a J. This makes me think it was commissioned by Child - as I prev. said - he probably handed them out to

anyone standing still............

Look forward to the Museum's comments.

[Chris Boonzaier]

as I prev. said - he probably handed them out to anyone standing still............

Admittedly my experiance of police retirement parties is mainly limited to Scottish Branches of the force, and those are described in crime fiction.... so "standing still" and/or "still standing" are probably a very small % of the initial numbers of people invited to the party... ;-)

[paul wood]

I am afraid not much info forthcoming from the City, not in the Ripper files and seems to be one of the many long serving officers who retired shortly after an improved pensions act of 1890.

Paul

[daviod]

Hello All,

I am new to the forum so please bear with me.

The man you seek is Robert Thomas Child (Childs). I bought one of these medals in 2005 and have completed some research on him. It didn't occur to me that there would be others - I thought I had a one-off! Unfortunately, his police record does not exist at the London Metropolitan Archives, but he appears in the census and is mentioned on more than one occasion in the Old Bailey trials online. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

He can also be found in the newspapers on Find My Past.

Robert was born in 1839 at High Wycombe and is first listed as a Police Constable on the 1861 census and by 1891 he is retired and moved back to Hugenden near High Wycombe.

From the newspaper reports his number is given as 382 in February 1869, but he is also called a detective in the same month, and as a Detective Sergeant in May 1881.

I hope this helps

Dave

Hello again,

I have just entered a search on the old bailey website (Surname: Child, Keywords: City of London Police) and have got many hits:

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18730407-name-164&div=t18730407-288&terms=city|of|london|police#highlight

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18740202-name-160&div=t18740202-179&terms=city|of|london|police#highlight

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18810131-name-144&div=t18810131-226&terms=city|of|london|police#highlight

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18810802-name-359&div=t18810802-731&terms=city|of|london|police#highlight

etc. etc.

It seems to be a lot of fraud and deception cases.

Dave

[dpk]

It seems that he had many of these made- presumably to hand out to his mates and acquainances at his retirement party or similar.