Sergeant stripe cloth sleeve insignia with three silver coloured thread stripes on navy blue felt backing
Use
To be sewn onto a uniform tunic or overcoat to denote the rank of sergeant or equivalent.
Context
In the UK the rank of sergeant has long been the lowest supervisory police rank and since the 19th century as with the same rank in the military, has been denoted by three stripes sewn onto the arms of a tunic or overcoat. As police uniforms are traditionally blue in colour the stripes are either composed of white or silver coloured thread.
With the adoption of more modern utilitarian uniform in the 2000s, uniform tunics are only used for some ceremonial roles in Sussex and sergeant insignia has been mainly reduced to embroidered epaulettes on day to day uniform. However stripes identical to these are still used on Sussex Police tunics on the rare occasions when they are worn. In Sussex Police this style of stripe insignia replaced a thinner type (item 2272) in the late 1970s.
These particular stripes came into the museum with a collection of foreign epaulette insignia, however they are not compatible with any of that insignia and they are most likely from the UK, possibly even Sussex.
