Talk:George Medal

"George Medal."

This medal is named "The George Medal", not George Medal. It states on the warrant: It is ordained that the Medal shall be designated and styled "The George Medal." The Medal also bears the words, "The George Medal" Thanks, Vera, Chuck & Dave 18:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The Name of this Medal is "The George Medal". NOT "George Medal". Also, it is not a Silver Disk, it is a Circular Silver Medal. Vera, Chuck & Dave 23:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging up the 'The' issue again - I have a copy of the Warrant in front of me and you are absolutely right. Note though that 'Silver disk' is a perfectly appropriate term, used throughout Wikipedia's coverage of orders, decorations, and medals. Fighting over this issue is fairly profitless, the current terms are a suitable vehicle to convey the necessary information.

Xdamr^talk 23:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for amending the article. To be perfectly frank, I'm not happy with the description Silver Disk, but I certainly won't be fighting over it. The only thing I fight, is fire. Best wishes, Vera, Chuck & Dave 23:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

"Notable" recipients?

By what standard are these recipients notable? This should either become a full list of recipients or be removed. If you win the GM then you have a certain notability because of the award. Fiddle Faddle 15:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed this very partial list looks odd. The criteria for notability include the following:

"A person is generally notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included.....

• The person has received significant recognized awards or honors."

The question then becomes twofold: (1) is the GM a significant award or honour? and (2) Is meeting this criterion alone, in the absence of anything else notable, male a person worth an article? Personally, I'd say yes to the former (only 2,000 ever awarded) but no to the latter. So Tenzing Norgay deserves an article for obvious reasons, while it might just be argued that Andrew Pennington does not. We do not have an article on every GM winner (while we do on every VC and GC) and I don't suggest we should. But perhaps a link to the [[Category:George Medal recipients]] should go here in the article, rather than this incomplete list? Kim Dent-Brown ^{(Talk to me)} 19:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I do feel that the GM is a significant honour. Thus all recipients qualify by that statement.

I incline to the following:

• inline citations, properly cited, (see {{cite web}} as an example) to those deemed notable, and discarding form the list those who cannot be cited, whether they have their own article or not
• create the category as well (it has relevance and may co-exist peacefully with a lits)
• ensure that the medal is added to the individual articles for those people
• be unafraid of redlinks, for they encourage creation of articles

What brought me here was adding a pair of GM people to Epsom College in the alumni today and wondering whether I should, or not, include them. Does Tenzing Norgay rate as more notable for climbing a hard mountain that Gyles Mackrell for saving 200 people's lives, for example? The medal makes no distinction, and I suspect it would be invidious were we to do the same.

Fiddle Faddle 20:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank goodness. I'm here because Nancy Wake has died in the last 48 hours an I followed the link to check on what was said here about her . My initial response to "Notable recipients" was exactly the same as those opinions expressed above. So I am going to change it to recipients when the list become too large it should be moved out into a new article "List of recipients of the George Medal" -- PBS (talk) 10:08, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Order.

The list appears to be in a random order. Can I suggest it's done alphabetically. JRPG (talk) 17:41, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Revocation

Is there information available about procedures for it to be taken back from a disgraced recipient? It certainly happened to Terry Lewis (police officer); it appears possible this is unique, but there isn't really a basis for describing it as such. For the VC, there is a clear rule based on royal insistence that it could be worn even on the scaffold. I don't think there's anything to say the QGM was stripped from the Donald Neilson arresting officer who was later convicted, although the medal itself ended up for auction. Billwilson5060 (talk) 14:00, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Greetings Bill!

Try List of revocations of appointments to orders and awarded decorations and medals of the United Kingdom though the George Medal is missing. JRPG (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

There is a mention of Terry Lewis having lost the GM on that page, along with several other awards, but the apparent rarity of the GM being lost could warrant further comment. There is some talk on his talk page about whether this is unlikely, on the basis bravery awards generally are not liable to forfeiture but that perhaps it would be "incongruous" to leave it. There was a case a few years ago where a lower commendation was claimed on false pretences and stripped: . This doesn't tell us what would happen with future unrelated disgrace, but suggests there is no absolute lock. It may be with gallantry awards being rarer than general honours the situation just hasn't come up. Billwilson5060 (talk) 19:44, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill. There is a discussion about Terry Lewis (police officer). However since 8 VC’s were forfeited I don’t see why HMG would regard the GM differently.

The status George V requested for the VC would appear to be unique to that, leaving the GM in an ordinary category of revocable awards. Lewis and his status are mentioned on the recipients page; it would be interesting to see if that's unique, but I don't think sources to confirm the non-existence of other cases are readily available. There is an interesting user project page here that gives links on a lot of cases including Lewis and some seemingly notable ones that aren't in the main recipients page, such as rescuers in the Piper Alpha disaster. Billwilson5060 (talk) 10:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

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Posthumous Awards

Although the original text of the warrant reads "Fifthly: It is ordained that the Medal shall be awarded only for acts of great. bravery", and the 1977 changes extended this with "...and that the Medal may be awarded posthumously." it had been awarded posthumously previously. Researching a relative - a surgeon killed in enemy action in Dover in April 1942 - I discovered that he had been awarded The George Medal in August 1942. I assume that it was therefore not a prohibition, but the lack of an explicit inclusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.158.124.128 (talk) 19:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Youngest recipient

This article notes Charity Bick as the youngest recipient, and also mentions Brian Gibbons, both of whom seem to have been 14 -

• Bick - born 19 December 1925; events on 19 November 1940 (so 14 and 11 months); citation 14 February 1941 (15 and two months); award in person June 1941 (15 and six months)
• Gibbons - DOB not known; events on 2 September 1958 (reported as aged 14, eg Evening News); citation 21 April 1959 (reported as aged 14, eg Birmingham Daily Post); award in person July 1959 (still reported as 14, eg Daily Mirror).

A follow-up article in March 1960 described him as 15, and another in October 1963 had him as 19. This would seem to suggest that Gibbons was only just 14 at the time of the event (a birthday sometime between July and September?) and thus a little younger than Bick at both the time of the event and the time of the announcement.

The Birmingham Daily Post article mentions a third fourteen-year-old, Robert Thomas Waters of British Columbia in 1953; digging back, that seems to have been announced in December 1953 for events in November 1952 and he was described in the press as "the youngest Canadian" without any specific reference to an earlier young person. Waters's obituary (he died in 2007) gives a birthdate of 15 January 1939 which would seem to suggest he turned 14 in January 1953 - and thus he was fourteen (and eleven months) at the time of the award, but thirteen (and ten months) at the time of the events.

None of the reporting on either Gibbons or Waters seems to mention Bick; presumably this is because the contemporary reports had been using her false age of sixteen and it wasn't until the press rediscovered her story in the 1980s that her true age was reported.

So there's definitely some fuzziness here around whether we are counting from the time of the event or the citation, but it does suggest that Bick might have been slightly older than either Gibbons or Waters. Given our article & list of recipients doesn't include Waters, it also raises the possibility the actual youngest recipient is someone not mentioned here... Andrew Gray (talk) 21:58, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

I had a dig around to see if anyone else was reported as "the youngest" to be awarded it. It seems that the contemporary reports for John Thomas Cain in April 1941 identified him as the youngest at 15, presumably because Bick was still thought to have been 16. However, a later report in January 1942 had him as 18, possibly in error.

He was still on a stall in Dalston Market in October 1961, "aged 37". So there's some ambiguity here, but in any case I think he would undeniably have been a year or so older than any of these three.

The article on his receiving the medal from the King (June 1941, giving his age as now 16) mentions a mother Rose. There is one John Cain with mother Rose Cain in the 1939 Register; unfortunately he is in Leeds. It has him born 27 December 1924, which approximately fits but I wouldn't be very confident of the identification. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:21, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

For Gibbons - the mother who died was Eliza Jane Gibbons, and her newborn son Kevin. Father was Thomas George Gibbons. There is a 1932 marriage register entry for Eliza Jennings to Thomas Gibbons in Uxbridge; there is a birth record in 1958 for Kevin D Gibbons, mother's maiden name Jennings, in Ealing district (they were reorganised in 1947, same general area).

Looking back to Brian, we can then find one birth record in the right area (Uxbridge) with mother's maiden name Jennings. This is 3Q 1944 - July to September - which would make Brian either just over or just under 14 at the time of the accident in September 1958. Presumably, given the reporting, just over.

So I think it looks likely that he was younger than Bick, who was just under 15, though I haven't fully joined all the details up. Interesting that none of the reporting around either seemed aware of the other. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:42, 26 March 2026 (UTC)