Length: 6cm (2.25in)
Silver. Ovoid form slide-action vesta case, with the striker to one end, the sleeve engraved with the London Times’ clock logo over the date ‘1926’ and the Latin inscription 'Ictus Meus Utlilis Esto' (May My Strike Be Useful). Gilt interior stamped with maker’s name of Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company, 112 Regent Street, London. Hallmarked London 1926.
With the London Society of Compositors, joining some 3 million of their TUC brethren on strike, it was over to members of the London’s clubs, aristos, MPs, and the like, to produce the Times’s daily single news sheet between Thursday 6 May and Monday 17 May (the paper was not published on a Sunday). On 5 May there was the added excitement of a failed arson attack on the Times building in Printing House Square, near Blackfriars Station, and an attempt by pickets that night to seize bundles of the establishment newspaper as it was being loaded into private cars for distribution.