Vintage enamel identity Bracelet, Military? WRENS?

Hi all, I have had this bracelet for years in a draw and forgot it and dont know anything about it..Does anyone know if this is military? the code on the back made me wonder.

 

How very interesting. Not military, I think, I can't think of a British unit that would abbreviate to that. Victorian, almost certainly, from the address style and type face. I wonder if it was an early equivalent of a Medic Alert bracelet!

Let me have a think about OMDT.

 

Looks to be a World War II civilian I.D. bracelet. Very common at the time, for reasons that are obvious.

Debora

 

Not with that address style it isn't.

 

How so, OBB??????

 

We were starting to get postcode precursors by WW2 for one thing. And the county is missing too.

And, it's quite wrong to say that silver civilian ID bracelets were common here. They weren't. None of my female relatives had them, although some might just about have afforded it -the vast majority of Brits could not have. That would have been an expensive piece of jewellery, and also one that companies were dissuaded from making. Silversmiths in the Birmigham heartland of the industry were on war work - until the city got bombed so badly, anyhow.

Given the presumed weight of that thing, if it were as late as WW2 AND if it had been made here, it ought to have full hallmarks, too. So, it either isn't British - someone bought it abroad and had it engraved - and/or it's earlier.

I'm still working on that abbreviation.

 

Extremely common in U.S. (Even my mother, who was a young girl during the War, had one.) Here are some examples of both (female) military and "sweetheart" bracelets, many silver.

http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/jewelry.htm

Debora

 

Interestingly, Smethwick was bombed on numerous occasions by the Luftwaffe during World War II and 80 civilians died in the air raids.

Debora

 

Here's Slatch House Road. The estate was built in 1924.

Debora

 

It's now a suburb of Birmingham which was bombed to smithereens as an industrial centre. As a dormitory town, the bombs which fell there were either misaimed or jettisoned. Very common. Eighty is actually pretty light. It looks like between the wars municipal housing, so working class.

My grandfather, in his 70s by then, was a fireman in the London Blitz. Ma, an actress, in central London all the time, inlcuding dousing incendiary bombs on the roof of her theatre with a stirrup pump and water. London still finds bombs often, there was one not that far away in the last few weeks.

Blokes here didn't do the bracelet thing until much later - it's terribly 1960s. The popular sweetheart item here was always a brooch for women, I see them by the hundred. They go way back, but the most common WW2 ones seem to be RAF. Some silver but a great many in mass produce brass and enamel.

Don't think I've ever come across a civilian ID bracelet - and there's one other thing about this. If it were that, it ought to have the ID card number engraved.

 

davey, I think the bracelet itself is either foreign or possibly late 19th/early 20th, maybe into the 20s. Some Brit stuff was simply marked SILVER then.

And indeed, no such thing as a civvie ID bracelet. I'm wondering if it was some kind of women's group.

 

Interesting topic. For general interest, am posting an English child's World War II identity bracelet. According to the BBC, the UK government required them to be worn by unevaluated children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/25MFCD28QsaiXDYbMj_e0Q

Debora

 

FWIW my mother had one while she lived in London during WW2. I don't know who in the family has it now but it was a silver disc with her name/address on it.
I suppose you could use the ones they issued or pay extra and get one made in silver. Her's was in silver.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.guid...pvSK/8f2e0758-c43c-11e5-9b76-1245f072ccc1.pdf

 

Interestingly, this identity bracelet has similar markings... 4 letter abbreviation + 3 digits + slash + 1 digit. Must have had some universal meaning since lost. Of interest that it's from Sheffield as involved in heavy industrial war work as was Birmingham.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WW1-WW2-S...692610?hash=item2a801825c2:g:saIAAOSwSypY-JR8

Debora

 

Well, none of my family had IDs either - the other grandfather was ARP, and they certainly weren't issued with them. That carded one looks like a commercial product.

I've read a great many memoirs of evacuees, no mention of any ID bracelet, and it certainly doesn't seem to have featured in any of the many dramas on the subject.

 

But the engraving says "Mrs. Maud M. Crisp," Davey.

 

Davey, that can't be the same person? If you look at the bracelet, it says MRS. Unless. Was Mr Medley her second husband?