The Goldfish Club

Anyone with a spare £1,150 can join the Groucho Club in London. But no amount of money can buy you membership of the Goldfish Club. The brainchild of C. A. Robertson, who was Chief Draughtsman at the (then) largest air-sea rescue equipment manufacturer in the world, this status could only be conferred on airmen whose lives had been saved by a life jacket or dinghy. Gold signified the value of human life with the fish obviously referring to the water.

From its inception in 1942 the club fluorished as air crew in the unfortunate position of having to ditch over the sea discovered a silver, or rather, gold lining to their situation. Members were given a laminated card (designed to survive their next encounter with the water) and a silk badge. The original material for these was donated by readers of the London Daily Express who gave up their evening dress suits for the cause. Although uniform regulations meant that they couldn’t be openly worn, most airmen had them sewn under the flap of their left hand breast pocket. By the end of the war the Goldfish Club had almost ten thousand members and it remains active today https://tinyurl.com/y3qh4cbc

Another typically unusual find from charingcrossmarket.com – every Saturday in the heart of Central London.