There is an enormous variety of jobs at the Royal Mint. From silversmiths to accountants, from Ministry of Defence Police to foundry workers, from numismatists to skilled engravers, the Mint encompasses a diversity of trades and expertise found in very few other businesses. This diversity included, until fairly recent times, a messenger service that would ensure the delivery of mail to the various departments within the Mint, and if you had been a messenger during the 1950s and 1960s then you would have worn a badge like the one illustrated. There were different types of messenger badge and only senior messengers would have been eligible to wear this particular type with the red background behind the crown.
Some job titles within the Mint have inevitably been lost: there used to be a Provost of the Company of Moneyers, a title that was abolished with the disbandment of the Moneyers in the mid nineteenth century; we now no longer have a Clerk of the Irons, or a Clerk of the Papers; the position of Warden was reformed out of existence as was that of Surveyor of the Meltings. But the titles Master and Deputy Master have survived, and the Mint still has a Queen's Assay Master and a Chief Engraver, positions that are amongst the most ancient and senior in the Mint establishment.
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There is now no longer a messenger service but in the Museum we try to retain, where we can, information and artefacts, like the lapel badge, that tell us something about what the Mint has been like as well as what it has made.
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