TOPIC:

Please accept my apologies if this question has been asked and answered before. I have searched for an answer but came up empty.

While searching the net for QSA medals I came across some that were described as "professionally erased". To say I was taken aback is putting it mildly as the medal description indeed described how the name and numbers were taken off.

Is this common, what does it mean exactly and lastly why would anybody do something like this?

Thank you.
Gordon

Gordon
It could be that either the recipient or the family did the erasing when the medal(s) was/were sold. I understand that the details could be skimmed - or more likely filed off. Speaking for myself, l would not deface any of the awards given to me by a grateful Government if ever I discarded them; which won't happen. But in the good old days things were different. Times were hard and perhaps those pawning/scrapping silver medals did not want anyone knowing how hard up they were. Don't forget that any Victorian era campaign medal surviving today has had to run the gauntlet of scrap drives in World Wars, a depression, the Silver Bears of the 90's - you name it.
Don't worry about the "professionally erased" jobs; if you study lists and sites, you will usually get something of interest which is correctly named.
Regards
IL.

A single word springs to mind here, from a purely moral point of view, absolutely "criminal" moreover, at best, a complete and utter lack of respect for the original recipient, although, I do not refer to the practice when carried out officially at Woolwich, where an attempt had already been made to issue the particular medal concerned.

Taurid wrote: Please accept my apologies if this question has been asked and answered before. I have searched for an answer but came up empty.

While searching the net for QSA medals I came across some that were described as "professionally erased". To say I was taken aback is putting it mildly as the medal description indeed described how the name and numbers were taken off.

Is this common, what does it mean exactly and lastly why would anybody do something like this?

Thank you.
Gordon

Thank you IL. After reading your answer I can understand better how, and why "erasing" might be done. It's been so many years since the last Boer War and a lot could have happened since. It's heartbreaking for me to think of any medal or honour being in any way marred or defaced. And sometimes even worse. But one doesn't know and cannot understand all the details as to why this occurs. I take some comfort in that. I guess we can only hope that the vast majority of the medals have survived intact and in reasonably good if not great condition.
Thanks again.

After reading Linneyl's answer above I understand better why this practice occurs. I can sit here and say that I would never do such a thing, BUT having said that who knows why others have. To walk in another's shoes, etc. I only hope when it was done, that it was for an extremely good reason.
Thank you Frank.

Hello Gordon

Erasing also occurred when a man's original medals were either lost or stolen and he obtained replacements on the open market (often pawnbrokers). In such a case he would have the original naming details erased simply because they were those of another man.

Occasionally men who never served in a particular campaign, but who wanted to pretend that they did, effectively awarded themselves medals they weren't entitled to and in such cases would have removed the original naming to destroy the evidence so to speak.

David