Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A most unusual and interesting Knight Bachelor’s Badge, C.V.O., Great War M.C. group of sixteen awarded to Sir Ronald Howe, Deputy Commissioner of C.I.D. 1953-57, late Royal Sussex Regiment

Knight Bachelor’s Badge, 2nd type breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, hallmarks for London 1956; The Royal Victorian Order, C.V.O., Commander’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse numbered ‘1129’; Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; British War and Victory Medals (Capt.); Defence Medal 1939-45; Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937; Coronation 1953; Police Long Service, E.II.R. (Dpty. Commr.); Danish Order of the Dannebrog, Commander’s neck badge, Christian X issue, silver-gilt and enamel; French Legion of Honneur, Third Republic, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver, gilt and enamel; French Republic Police Medal; The Netherlands, Order of Orange-Nassau, Officer’s breast badge, gold, silver-gilt and enamel; Norwegian Order of St. Olav, 3rd issue, Knight’s breast badge, gold, silver-gilt and enamel; U.S.A., Medal for Merit, gilt and enamel, the rim stamped ‘V. H. B.’ to left of lower loop, together with a Ville de Paris, Department De Le Seine, commemorative, bronze, marking a Metropolitan Police visit to the city in 1927, enamel work slightly chipped in places, otherwise generally good very fine (16) £2500-3000

Knight Bachelor London Gazette 1 January 1955.

C.V.O. London Gazette 8 June 1950.

M.C. London Gazette 11 January 1919: ‘For conspicuous gallantry and initiative. When the situation was obscure after an enemy attack, he made a reconnaissance towards the enemy’s lines under heavy shell fire and skilfully assembled the leading companies in their positions ready for attacking next morning. The following evening he made another reconnaissance, after which he personally led his company into their position in the line. Although he lost all his officers within ten minutes of the attack commencing, he kept his own company and another company organised and ready to move at a moment’s notice. He showed marked disregard of personal danger throughout.’

Ronald Martin Howe was born in September 1896 and was educated at Westminster, where he became head boy and a King’s Scholar, and at Christ Church, Oxford.

Commissioned into the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment in July 1915, he served out in France on attachment to the 7th Battalion from June 1916 until he was wounded at Pozieres on 4 August of that year, during the battle of the Somme - here, in one week’s engagement, the Battalion sustained losses of 224 officers and other ranks, killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Howe returned to the Battalion in March 1917, was advanced to Lieutenant that July and participated in the battle of Cambrai that November. But it was for his part in the Battalion’s costly night attack at Aveluy Wood in April 1918 that he was awarded his M.C. Further active service followed in the battle of Amiens in August 1918, when, at one stage, during an attack on “Hill 105”, Howe once again found himself the only Company officer left standing. And of the bitter fighting on the Maricourt-Montauban Road in the same month, he later wrote, ‘This was a most unpleasant day, and although I do not know whom we were up against, I am sure they were some of the very best troops of the German Army’. They were, in fact, crack troops from the 2nd Guard Division (regimental history refers).

After being demobilised in February 1919, Howe entered the legal profession and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in May 1924. He subsequently became a Legal Officer in the Director of Public Prosecution’s Department 1924-31, when he was appointed to the Metropolitan Police as Chief Constable in the Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D.) by Lord Trenchard, then Commissioner of Police at Scotland Yard. Promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner in 1933, Howe attended the first ever Interpol Conference, held in Vienna in the following year - interrupted by the war years, Interpol was reformed in 1946, but he represented the U.K. at the conference held in Brussels in 1946, and at all gatherings thereafter until his retirement in 1957.

Howe also studied police methods applied by forces throughout Europe, the United States and Canada, travelling widely in the process, a case in point being his attendance of the May 1936 seminar held at Trenton, New Jersey, at which was discussed, among other topics, the merits of displaying criminal “mugshots” at public theatres to assist in the identification of suspects. Howe was advanced to Assistant Commissioner in 1945, and given command of C.I.D., in which capacity he served until 1953, his achievements including the creation of the Metropolitan & City Police Fraud Squad. He was appointed C.V.O. in the same period. And from 1953 until his retirement, he served as Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a period that witnessed him speaking out in public and through the news media on many subjects - for he recognised ‘the value of cooperation between the press and the police, and did not hesitate to take trusted newspaper representatives into his confidence’. Nor did he fall silent in retirement, often sending “broadsides” to the letter-columns of the broadsheets.

Having been knighted in 1955 - and awarded several European honours, including the French Legion of Honour in 1950 - Howe became President of Group 4 Security. He also found time to write The Pursuit of Crime (1961) and The Story of Scotland Yard (1965), copies of which accompany the Lot. Sir Ronald died in August 1977, aged 80 years.