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Two-Shilling Award: Baker Street Irregulars 1966

Julian Wolff initiated the “Two-Shilling Award” in 1962, and bestowed this first “extraordinary Irregular award” on Rex Stout "for extraordinary devotion to the cause beyond the call of duty."  In 1966, Wolff gave the fifth Two-Shilling Award to William S. Hall, “one of our Founding Fathers.”

William S. Hall was, indeed, there at the beginning.  A member of Christopher Morley’s Three Hours For Lunch Club and Grillparzer Club (Morley’s clubs that eventually morphed into the BSI), Hall frequently was mentioned in Morley’s Saturday Review of Literature articles.  Hall attended the "first meeting" of the BSI, on January 6, 1934.  In his 1/27/1934 “Bowling Green” article, Morley wrote:
W.S.H. [i.e., Bill Hall] secretary of the Baker Street Irregulars, has allowed us to look over the minutes of the first meeting of the club.”
In 1944, when Edgar Smith instituted Investiture in the BSI, Hall was part of the first class of Investitures, as The Blue Carbuncle.

The Two-Shilling Award is a tradition that has lasted through the years, and it is still periodically bestowed on worthy BSI. For a list of Two-Shilling Award recipients, see our Links page.

The BSI Trust acquired Hall’s Two-Shilling Award in 2014.

Click on the above photo to see a larger version of it, and maximize your browser window to see the most detail.

Related Materials

The 1934 BSI Dinner

The 1944 BSI Dinner (Hall's investiture)

Explanation of BSI Honours & Terms

See all the BSI Memorabilia on our website

The BSI Archive is located at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Archival material may be used by any qualified scholar, subject to the normal rules and regulations of the Library. For links to a detailed finding aid and related information, see our BSI Archive at Harvard page.

Page composed on 9/6/14 by Andy Solberg.
This page last updated 9/7/14 by Andy Solberg.


 


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