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British Red Cross Badge of Honour

award badge

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ4970963 ↗
Source-derived summary

The British Red Cross Badge of Honour, instituted in 1958, is an award badge given to people who show exceptional service to the British Red Cross.

The Badge has 3 classes:

Class 1 "Badge of Honour for Devoted Service"

Class 2 "Badge of Honour for Distinguished Service"

Class 3 "Queens Badge of Honour"

Up until at least 2013 the Badge of Honour was awarded in one of 4 classes as follows with associated post nominal letters:

Badge of Honour for Devoted Service BH(D)

Badge of Honour for Distinguished Service BH(DS)

Badge of Honour for Outstanding Service BH(OS)

The Kings/Queens Badge of Honour BH(K/Q)

Badge of Honour for Devoted Service

This award is given to volunteers and staff who have given devoted service to the Society. The badge is accompanied by a certificate, which is signed by the chairman of the board. The criteria for this award will include the demonstration of service above and beyond the call of duty and actions showing the nominee’s personal involvement and commitment over a longer period of time, furthermore the recipient's actions should include devoted and consistent service, showing loyalty and dependability, as well as a certain amount of self-sacrifice and determination. As a general rule, a minimum period of five years of service should have been completed before receiving this award. Exceptional circumstances may arise when it would be acceptable to make the award sooner.

Badge of Honour for Distinguished Service

The award is given to volunteers and staff for distinguished or exceptional service to the Society. The badge is accompanied by a certificate, which is signed by the chairman of the board. The recipient should have shown an element of self-sacrifice in time and effort, and should also have demonstrated the ability to initiate innovative ideas, maintain enthusiasm and expand training and service to the community.

Queen's Badge of Honour

This award may be awarded to any person by the trustees, with the approval of the president of the society, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, for exceptional service of the highest order to the Society or to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “British Red Cross Badge of Honour” is award badge. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through British, Cross and Badge, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 2013—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, British, Cross and Badge is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “award badge” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4970963. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958 and 2013.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “British Red Cross Badge of Honour” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.