A Great War Queen Mary's Needlework Guild Membership Badge, gilt metal and enamels, with four gilt and enamel bars for 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918, and complete with enamelled ‘Q.M.N.G’ top bar; an Order of Saint John Priory for Wales Proficiency Cross in Bronze, early skeletal form, the reverse engraved: ‘AGNES M. CLEMENTS. WA 18234’. These together with the recipient’s Order of Saint John Priory for Wales Brigade Nurses Badge, as produced by Dowler of Birmingham, and also a later Women’s Voluntary Service lapel badge, this being Marples and Beasley of Birmingham.
Condition: light wear, overall about Good Very Fine.
Together with a photograph, allegedly of the recipient and taken circa 1940s when wearing a nurses uniform.
Agnes M. Clements was qualified in nursing, and a member of the Order of Saint John Priory for Wales.
The QMNG was set up in 1914 with Queen Mary as it’s patron but it’s origins go back further. The Guild was founded in 1882 as The London Guild to provide orphanages with knitted garments. In 1889 it was renamed the London Needlework Guild and in August 1914 renamed the Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild. QMNG branches were set up throughout Britain and HM Queen Mary took an active involvement overseeing the Guild's work during the War. The work of the QMNG was twofold - to collect, sort and redistribute extra clothing items to the frontline troops and also to organise the production of various cloth items as required by the War Office. The items produced by the QMNG were diverse that included surgical bandages, tent panels, respirators as well as knitted ‘comforts’ for the troops. These would be distributed to the local regiments, troops on the front-line and to hospitals. Knitted 'comforts' included those additional but necessary items that were not regular issue (i.e additional socks, mitts, mufflers, caps, belts, etc). By 1919, after the War had ended, the QMNG had scaled back their work but continued in a similar role providing clothing to the poor and orphanages.
