Albert Hirst Jagger

I came by this plaque sometime around 1980 at a junk fair. I had no idea what it was but I’d seen its like before. A friend of mine, or, more precisely, his mother, had one mounted in a wooden block which lived on the mantelpiece.
I’d never troubled myself to find out what it was, it was just one of those things a friends mother keeps on her mantle piece.
Anyway, the one I was looking at cost £1, a bargain, I thought then. And so it is still.
As soon as I got it home my Dad clapped eyes on it. “Where did you get this?” he asked “Flea Market” I replied. “Don’t ever throw it away” he cautioned. And that was it. It was years before I discovered what the thing actually was.

Edward Carter Preston's prize-winning design (the Imperial War Museum holds an original model in plaster, catalogue reference MEDP/3) comprises the figure of Britannia, classically robed and helmeted, standing facing right, holding a modest laurel wreath crown in her extended left hand and supporting a trident by her right side with her right arm and hand. In the foreground a male lion stands facing right; the animal was originally described as 'striding forward in a menacing attitude' which may explain its unusually low profile.
The prize-winning designs were exhibited for a time during the spring and early summer of 1918 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The large scale production of the plaques was delayed by a whole series of problems relating to the refinement and unsuccessful modification of Carter Preston's winning model. These difficulties formed the basis for extensive correspondence on points of technical detail between G F Hill and the artist through the months of October to December 1918. It is clear that at times both became exasperated by the conflicting demands of standardisation for mass production and the claims for artistic integrity of the original piece.
Production of the plaques began in December 1918 but difficulties continued to beset the project. A disused laundry in Acton (West London), grandly called 'The Memorial Plaque Factory' was the first centre of production. It was managed by an eccentric American engineer and entrepreneur, named Manning Pike, and staffed principally by women. Hill had been impressed by Pike's solution to the problem of incorporating the names of the deceased on the plaque in such a manner as to harmonise with Carter Preston's chosen script. Despite his technical expertise Pike's monopoly was later brusquely terminated by the War Office and work transferred to Woolwich Arsenal and, subsequently, other former munitions factories. After the relative excitement of the competition the whole process of mass production was a slow and 'weary business'. At Woolwich the project foundered and Manning Pike was recalled to save the situation. The work was completed but not without the decline in standards of output which Hill had predicted:
Hill originally postulated a total number of '800,000' plaques to be produced; later estimates have put the total figure at some 1,150,000 specimens. The plaques issued commemorated those men and women who died between 4 August 1914 and 10 January 1920, for Home Establishments, Western Europe and the Dominions. The final date for other theatres of war (including Russia) or for those who died subsequently from attributable causes was 30 April 1920.
To accompany the plaques was a commemorative scroll.
The scrolls started to be manufactured in January 1919 (the original total estimate for scrolls by the Central School was 'about 970,000') and were sent out in seven and a quarter inch long cardboard tubes, an example is shown below, this one would have accompanied the plaque sent to an Austrailian officer.

The plaques themselves were dispatched under separate cover in stiff card wrapping enclosed within white envelopes bearing the Royal Arms. Both memorials were accompanied by a letter from King George V which bore his facsimile signature and read as follows:

I join with my grateful people in sending you this

memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War.

George R.I.

So now I knew what the plaque was, colloquially, a "Death Penny", it being made from the same metal as the, then, coins penny, ha'penny and farthing. The picture of the scroll, above, is culled from the Imperial War Museum website, as is the bulk of the text.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Private Albert Hirst Jagger, late of Dobcross, Lancashire, who enlisted in the 8Btn Duke of Wellington’s [West Riding] Regiment. He was killed on the 9th October 1917. Albert Hirst Jagger has no known grave but is commemorated on the Tyne Cot memorial.