Far from Home: Birthplaces, Places of Action and Distance for the Victoria Cross, 1854 to 2013

Where was the Victoria Cross won, where were its recipients born, and how far apart were the two? I parse the Wikipedia lists of recipients into a master table of 1,354 named people and 1,357 awards, join them to birthplaces on Wikidata (1,338 located, 99%), and geocode the place of action wherever the national lists of recipients or Wikidata give one (448 awards, 33%). The First World War accounts for 46% of all awards. 49% of recipients were born in England and 13% on the island of Ireland, but the mix changed sharply over time: Irish-born recipients were 31% of Indian Mutiny awards and 3% of Second World War awards, while those born in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and southern Africa rose from 2% in the Crimean War to 26%. Located places of action cluster at Ypres, the Somme, Lucknow, Sevastopol and Delhi. For the 428 awards with both ends located, the median great-circle distance from birthplace to deed is 6,486 km, but this sample over-represents Irish-born and dominion recipients; reweighted to the full list's mix of birthplace groups and conflicts, the median is about 2,819 km. Distances range from a few hundred kilometres for English-born soldiers on the Western Front to over 18,000 km for New Zealanders in the same war. I publish the joined data, the geocoding audit and an interactive map. Interactive version: https://tristan-hotham.github.io/victoria-cross/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/victoria-cross. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/26/victoria-cross/.