Overall: 4.5cm (1.5in) x 8cm (3.25in) x 2cm (.75in)
Silver. Of rectangular form with reeded side panels, engine turned base, the lid applied with the A cypher of Prince Albert, Duke of York (later George VI , reigned 1936-52) within the Garter and surmounted by a coronet of a prince of the blood. The interior of the lid inscribed ‘1922-1929 / To / R.H. Carruthers / from / Albert’. Maker’s mark of the Royal warrant holder Henry Hodson Plante, of Bury Street, St. James’s, London. Hallmarked 1928. Contained in its original gilt tooled morocco presentation case.
Read more
Ralph Henry Carruthers (1898-1981) was briefly Private Secretary to Prince Albert, Duke of York during 1925. He had a somewhat unexpected background for a member of a Royal Household. According to reliable sources he was born Ralph Henry Croall at Wisebaden, Germany and was adopted by a Carlisle grocer and his wife around 1910. In 1915, at the age of 17 he enlisted in the 2nd/8th Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, which spent the whole of the First World War on home defence and training duties. At the time of the 1921 census he was living with an aunt and uncle, who was also a grocer, in Mitcham, Surrey. He gave his occupation as Secretary to the comptroller of the Household of the Duke of York, who at that time was the naval surgeon and all round sportsman Commander (later Sir) Louis Greig RN (1880-1953).
Greig, a qualified doctor and Scottish rugby international, met Prince Albert during officer training at the Royal Naval College, Osborne and became his mentor; the two served together in HMS Cumberland. In 1914 Greig was transferred to the Royal Marines and was captured at the fall of Antwerp, spending eight months as a Prisoner of War, before being released in a prisoner exchange. Greig joined HMS Malaya in June 1917, rejoining Prince Albert, and helped cure the prince of the severe peptic ulcers from which he suffered. During the next seven years, he was extensively in attendance on the Prince, receiving an appointment as an equerry to the Prince in 1918. Prince Albert and his Equerry both joined the Royal Air Force in 1919 (Greig rising to the rank of Wing Commander), and the two were partners at Wimbledon in the Gentleman's Doubles in 1926.
Prince Albert’s Private Secretary for most this period was the colourful Colonel Ronald Waterhouse, who left in 1922 to become to private secretary Prime Ministers Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald (before stepping down in February 1928 as a result of an 'extra-marital entanglement’). According to the ‘Official Directory 1925)’, Ralph Carruthers, who only 27, was in the post of Private Secretary to the Duke of York, prior to P.K. Hodgson, CMG, OBE being appointed, in 1926. After leaving the Duke’s Household in 1929, Carruthers became a London based freelance journalist and photographer. His output included a couple of articles explaining the responsibilities and duties of a royal secretary. In 1939 he was on the Army Officers’ Emergency Reserve and was commissioned June 1940 to the General List, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.