An unusual K.P.M. group of seven awarded to Inspector-General P. N. Banks, Ceylon Police, who served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the Great War

King’s Police Medal, G.V.R., 2nd issue, for Distinguished Service (Philip N. Banks, Dep. Inspr. Gen. of Police, Ceylon); British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut.); Jubilee 1935, privately engraved ‘Philip Norton Banks’; Coronation 1937; Ethiopian Order of the Star, third class neck badge, gilt, the reverse privately engraved, ‘Brigadier P. N. Banks, July 1959’, and a fourth class breast badge, by Mappin & Webb, gilt, the reverse privately engraved, ‘Brigadier P. N. Banks, 11.7.49’, the Great War pair polished, thus good fine, the remainder generally very fine and better (7) £400-500

K.P.M. London Gazette 1 February 1937. The recommendation states:

‘For specially meritorious service extending over twenty-seven years and for his conspicuous ability in organisation.’

Philip Norton Banks, who was born in 1889, entered the Ceylon Police in 1909 and was advanced to Assistant Superintendent in 1912 and to Superintendent in 1917. In the latter year, however, he returned to the U.K. and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the 1st Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and witnessed active service out in France and Flanders.



Returning to his previous employ in Ceylon in 1919, after latterly serving in the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, K.R.R.C., Banks was advanced to Superintendent of Police (Grade 1) in 1924 and to Deputy Inspector-General in the Criminal Investigation Department in March 1932. He was finally appointed Inspector-General in 1937, in which year he was presented with his K.P.M. by His Excellency the Governor of Ceylon in a special Levee held at Queen’s House, Colombo. Sadly, however, 1937 also witnessed Banks’ hitherto unblemished career being marred by a Court of Inquiry into his recommendation that a pupil-planter with Communist sympathies be deported. Indeed it is feasible that this this much publicised case resulted in him choosing another career in Ethiopia, a career that as present remains unresearched.