Orders, Decorations and Medals

A well-documented R.V.M. group of seven awarded to Mr. J. D. H. Jones, a wartime member of the London Scottish who became a senior telephonist in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace
Royal Victorian Medal, E.II.R., silver; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45; Jubilee 1977; Federal Republic of Germany, Merit Medal, gilt metal and enamel, in its case of issue, with related dress miniature and lapel badge, good very fine (9) £400-500

Royal Victorian Medal, in silver London Gazette 12 June 1976.

John David Herbert Jones, who was born in London in October 1914, enlisted in the 3rd Battalion, the London Scottish, in July 1940, and witnessed active service in North Africa, Sicily and Italy prior to being demobilised in early 1946.

Joining the General Post Office as a telephonist a month or two later, he was originally employed in the Member’s Telephone Room in the Houses of Parliament, although sometimes attached to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. But it was not until 1949 that he commenced his long association with Royal Household, when chosen as a relief for duty as a telephonist at Buckingham Palace. Accordingly he was employed there at the time of King George VI’s death and, following the Queen’s Coronation, was selected to accompany the Royal Tour of the Commonwealth 1953-54, when he served as a telephonist in the S.S. Gothic, and aboard which ship The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were embarked up until the final stages of the tour at Malta, where they joined the new royal yacht Britannia. The tour, the most ambitious ever undertaken, encompassed ports of call in Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Jamaica, Tonga, Ceylon, Uganda, and Aden.

Jones, who served as the senior communications officer of Buckingham Palace switchboard from 1964, was a regular visitor to other royal households, and was appointed R.V.M. on his retirement in June 1976. He was also granted a separate audience with the Queen, and, in December of the same year, was appointed ‘into the Place and Dignity of a State Porter’.

Sold with a large quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s certificates of award, and related correspondence, in respect of his R.V.M., Jubilee 1977 Medal and German Merit Medal, this last dated 24 October 1972, in which year President Gustav Heinemann made a State Visit to London, in addition to the Chilean O’Higgins Medal, 2nd Class, this dated in July 1965, but the whereabouts of which award remains unknown; together with photograph albums covering the Royal Tour of Commonwealth 1953-54 (3), two of them with enamelled ‘Royal Tour 1953-54, S.S. Gothic’ badges affixed to their front covers, the whole containing a mass of fascinating images from numerous ports of call, and on board ship, including many photographs of members of the royal family, together with the recipient’s diary covering the tour from embarkation in September 1953 through to arrival at Malta in May 1954, Shaw Savill Line menus (3), S.S. Gothic telephone directories (2), crew passes (2), presentation maps of the Gothic’s outward and homeward journeys, and his British Seaman’s Identity Card, dated 24 September 1953; and to which should be added mention of around a further 225 unbound photographs, including further scenes from the Royal Tour 1953-54, in addition to Windsor Castle, Balmoral and Sandringham; a file containing assorted royal household letters and invitations, and a telegram from the Queen on the occasion of Jones’ 80th birthday; another file with Royal Household Social Club programmes and cards, and his R.H.S.C. blazer patch; and Lord Chamberlain’s certificate appointing Jones ‘into the Place and Dignity of a State Porter’, dated 2 Dec. 1976. A rare archive.