Interesting story,
Nutloose which reflects the different attitudes of the times. Here is a quotation from the article.
Those supporters included King George V, who publicly stated no man should be stripped of his VC.
“Even were a VC to be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear the VC on the scaffold,” said the King.
Those words did the trick, but they did not benefit Ravenhill, although his name was returned to the VC register.
The Royal Warrant was subsequently amended, and the Victoria Cross can not be forfeited now. I do ask myself though, in the current climate, if the holder of a Victoria Cross were convicted and imprisoned for child sex offences, would there be a public clamour for its forfeiture? I rather think there would.
On a slightly different vein, I once attended the installation of a headstone on the grave of a VC winner, Private John Divane, who was a Crimean veteran who died in poverty in Newlyn and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Penzance cemetery. His regiment, the Rifles, (Divane had served in the 60th Rifles) had raised the money for the stone, and the ceremony was attended by a field marshal, no less, who had served in the regiment. Little comfort to Divane himself, of course, and about 100 years too late, but a nice gesture all the same.