Association Logo

THE LEINSTER REGIMENT ASSOCIATION

Copyright © The Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) Association.

Association Logo The provenance of the Regimental Cap Badge

The 'hanging' badge was the only badge illustrated and described within the 1900 edition of Dress Regulations for the Officers of the Army.



The 'hanging' badge is embossed on the front of both original volumes of Lt Col Whitton's History of The Leinster Regiment



There were two variants of the 'hanging' badge:

 

There is widespread evidence of the use of the 'rolled' badge (which also had a different configuration of the coronet) by both officers and soldiers during and after the Great War.  Although published works on cap badges by Kipling/King and Cox illustrate and describe both the 'hanging' and the 'rolled' badges, they are silent on the rationale for the latter and its date of introduction.  


My personal theory - for which I have no evidence whatsoever - is that a manufacturer mistakenly copied a version of the Prince of Wales's badge used by another regiment and that the demand for economy during the Great War resulted in a large consignment of this flawed variant being accepted and taken into use.

Prepared by Lieutenant Colonel N Weeks for the Association

This article was last updated on 24 April 2014

BACK