PERSONALIA

1. Campaign medals

John McGuire was born in the parish of Blacklog, Londonderry in 1836. He was a labourer by trade and joined the 44th Foot on 19th April 1854 to serve in the Crimea (papers confirm the Crimea medal with Sebastopol clasp). He was transferred and posted to India with the 6th Foot on 18th September 1857 becoming a sergeant Instructor of Musketry, returning to England in 1862. He saw service again in India from 1867-1870. Despite good conduct, he faced two courts martial during his service - in 1862 receiving a reduced sentence, and in 1871 when he was reduced to the ranks as private (working his way back to sergeant by 1872). He was discharged with a pension in 1876.

£300

The 2nd Bengal (European) Fusiliers were originally formed by the Honourable East India Company in 1839 as the 2nd Bengal (European) Light Infantry. They served in the Indian Mutiny of 1857 when in May the regiment combined with the 1st Bengal's to participate in the storming of Delhi, from which they earned their nickname the “Dirty Shirts” following the fierce action in shirt sleeves. Six Victoria Crosses were awarded to men in the combined regiments during the action. Edward Mare is on the medal roll as entitled to the Delhi clasp but his service papers have not been located in the PRO - it is possible that he left the regiment before it formally moved into the British Army in 1862 as the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers).

£300

William Glover was born about 1843 in Soberton, Hampshire, the son of Henry Glover a railway labourer and his wife Elizabeth. He is recorded on the 1861 census as an ordinary seaman aboard HMS St George, a 120 gun first rate, at the time at Port Royal, Jamaica whilst on the North America and West Indies Station. Glover became a Boatswain 2nd class on 13 September 1870 aboard HMS Asia, and was in service on a variety of ships (mainly troopships). He served on board HMS Serapis, an Euphrates-class troopship, from 19 July 1885 to 28 July 1886 during the Egypt campaign. Glover attained the rank of Chief Boatswain in 1891 serving aboard the battleship HMS Benbow, and retired from service in 1893. He is probably one and the same person whose death is recorded in Southampton 1909 aged 67.

£550

John Henry Humphries was born in 1851 in Winterbourne Monkton, Swindon, Wiltshire, one of at least three sons of Joseph and Sarah Humphries. He joined the 4th Battalion of the 60th Royal Rifles in 1870, giving his profession as a labourer. In 1872 he was transferred to the Army Hospital Corps and in the following year was posted to Nova Scotia, where he married Mary Jane Redmond on 23 February 1877 at Halifax. He returned to England in 1880 and in 1885 was posted to Egypt, where he served for just four months. By the time of his discharge in 1904 Humphries was a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps (13th Company) based in Edinburgh. These medals were sold in Christies Sale 4853 in 1992 alongside those of Humphries' brothers Assistant Staff Sergeant S.G.Humphries, RAMC, and Staff Sergeant and Assistant Quartermaster Sergeant J.W.Humphries, RAMC.

Corporal F.L.M.Jones no.8270, of the Royal Army Medical Corps was attached to the South African Field Force and is recorded as severely wounded on 8th January 1901.

2. Award medals

£150

James Robert Stark was born in Poplar, East London in 1870, the son of a Scottish house carpenter William Stark and his wife Sarah. In 1887 he was articled to the architect John Thomas Bressey and from 1891 to 1895 while working as an assistant to Bressey and Walters in London, he studied at the AA where he was awarded this prize medal. In 1895 he joined the London County Council to work in the ‘Housing for the Working Classes’ Division, designing the social architecture of LCC tenement blocks and early cottage estates. He was recommended as a candidate for licentiate membership of the RIBA in 1911 by Leonard Stokes, W.E.Riley and Halsey Ricardo, and remained with the LCC up to his retirement in 1934.

The Architectural Association (the AA) was founded in 1847, and the AA School of Architecture was established in 1890. This is a rare medal awarded to an accomplished young architect in the early years of the AA School's foundation.

£60

H.J.McGrigor was awarded the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1898 by Aberdeen University. He obtained a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1900 and from Aldershot was posted in 1901 to Barbados, from where he returned in 1904 with the rank of Captain. Medical reports and publications appear in the early years of the 20th century under his name, and during the first world war he published a number of papers relating to syphilitic conditions. In 1921 his name appears in the literature while based in Ceylon.

£25

William Euing was a Glasgow insurance broker who left an endowment in 1866 for providing courses of popular lectures in Anderson's University, Glasgow, on the history and theory of music and on the lives on eminent musicians. Details of the recipient of this medal have not been traced.

£3,800

The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce was founded in 1754, and in 1908 became the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). From 1756 the Society offered prizes ("Honorary Premiums") as medals in gold and silver to people who could successfully achieve one of a number of published challenges. Honorary Premiums for Drawing were awarded in a category to 'young ladies, daughters, or grand-daughters, of peers or peeresses, in their own right, of Great Britain or Ireland' for ‘ the best drawings of any kind, made with chalk, black lead, pen, Indian ink’.

In 1780 this gold medal ‘For a drawing’ was awarded to the Honourable Miss Caroline Walpole (1765-1841), who went on to receive further medals from the Society for drawing - silver in 1781 and 1782, and another gold medal in 1783. Caroline Walpole was the daughter of the Hon. Richard Walpole MP (nephew of the British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole) and Margaret Vanneck, who in 1787 married the Reverend Hon. George Henry Nevill (1760-1844), son of George Nevill, 1st Earl of Abergavenny and Henrietta Pelham, by whom she had four children. Caroline is found in the 1841 census (the year of her death) at Eridge Castle, Frant, Sussex, seat of her brother-in-law Henry Nevill, 2nd Earl of of Abergavenny.

£350

This medal was awarded to Peter William Barlow (1809–1885), the civil engineer, who was born at Woolwich, the elder son of  Professor Peter Barlow (1776–1862), engineer and mathematician. He was educated at private schools and went on to follow his ambition of a career in civil engineering by becoming a pupil of Henry Robinson Palmer (1795–1844), a founder member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), who proposed him as an associate member in January 1826 (ODNB). Barlow went on to build bridges (he designed the first Lambeth Bridge over the Thames) and tunnels, developing new techniques, notably the cylindrical tunnelling shield which he patented in 1864. Barlow won this medal at the early age of 15 for drawing a transit theodolite, in itself interesting as this was a new invention at the time (1824), indicating Barlow's early interest in civil engineering instruments, as well as his skills as a draughtsman.

£200

Henry Cheadle (1852-1910) was a landscape painter in oils, most of whose subjects were painted in the Midlands and North Wales.  He studied at the Birmingham Society of Arts, receiving this medal in 1867,  and was awarded a silver medal for studies undertaken in South Kensington. He exhibited 258 works at the Royal Society of British Artists, 105 at Birmingham City Art Gallery, and elsewhere.

£300

William Hosgood Young Webber (1853-1923) was a civil engineer and engineering journalist, best known within the gas industry. Born in Teignmouth, Devon, he married Sarah Snow Goodridge in 1877 in St Austell, Cornwall, who bore him three children, Caroline, William and Dorothea. In his career he moved with his family to settle around London, at Camberwell (1881 census) and Teddington (1901 census), and died in St Austell, Cornwall in 1923. He held the post of Instructor and Lecturer of the Gas Light & Coke Company, London, and published numerous papers and books including: The Science and Practice of Lighting 1892; Town Gas and Its Uses 1907: Gas Supply in Principles and Practice 1914: and Gas and gas making 1918.

£300

Leonard Benton Seeley (1831–1893), barrister and writer, was the eldest son of Robert Benton Seeley (1798–1886), publisher and author, and Mary Anne Jackson (1809–1868). He was educated at the City of London School (this medal awarded in 1848) and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1852 and MA in 1855. He was elected fellow of Trinity College in 1854 and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in the following year. He practised as a conveyancer and equity draftsman, and in addition from 1862 to 1869 he was professor of modern history at Bedford College for Women, London. He wrote a number of popular biographies including Horace Walpole and his Works (1884), Fanny Burney and her Friends (1890), and Mrs Thrale, afterwards Mrs Piozzi: a sketch of her life and passages from her diaries, letters & other writings (1891). He died in 1893, leaving a widow, Caroline Blackwell Seeley. (ODNB)

£50

The "Metropolitan" is probably the Metropolitan School of Design which opened in 1837, and eventually became the Royal College of Art

£120

Edwin Harrison (1867-1903) was a well know photographer who lived and worked in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. He was the son of carver and gilder George Harrison and Anne Stevenson (they married in 1835 in Newcastle-under-Lyme), and is recorded as an apprentice in the 1851 census. In 1862 Edwin married Hannah Gosling by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Edwin set up business as a photographer, joined by 1891 his son Alfred. In the 1881 census Edwin describes himself as an artist (painter), which in 1891 is also the profession of his daughter Annie. A monumental inscription for Edwin and Hannah (known as Annie), together with their daughter Evelyn, is recorded in Newcastle-under-Lyme Cemetery.

£75

Charles H.E.Ogilvie was a Scottish artist who painted in oils. His work was exhibited between 1903 and 1928, including eleven works being shown at the Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts, and two works at the Royal Scottish Academy.

£200

The recipient of this medal was Sir Edmund Frederick Du Cane (1830–1903), prison administrator and army officer. Du Cane joined the Royal Engineers in 1848, and after service in Western Australia supervising the management and building of prisons, he became involved in convict prisons in Britain, becoming chairman of the convict prison directors, surveyor-general of prisons, and inspector-general of military prisons. He was promoted major in July 1872, lieutenant-colonel in December 1873, and four years later brevet colonel, and was also made CB (civil division) in 1873. In the same year he proposed that local prisons (administered by local magistrates) should be placed under central Government control. The resulting 1877 Prisons Act gave control of all 116 local prisons of England and Wales to a new London-based Prison Commission, of which Du Cane became the chairman (ODNB).

Du Cane was an accomplished painter in water-colours, and his sketches of Peninsular War battlefields were exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition at Chelsea in 1890, and this Exhibition medal was presumably in part awarded for a painting entry ('No. 2350'). Du Cane's wider interest in the arts dated back to his position as assistant superintendent of the foreign side of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and assistant secretary to the juries of awards (ODNB).

£50

The Heriot-Watt College was formed in 1885 from the merger of the Watt Institution & the School of Arts and the Heriot trust bequest, providing general and technical education (becoming a university in 1966). The first Professor of Mechanics and Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics was appointed in 1887, and James Reid was one of the first class medal recipients in the department, attaining 88% in his Engineering course 1888-1889 (Heriot Watt University archives).

£50

Interesting given the subject of the award for painting china, but the recipient has not been traced further.

£300

Karl Moritz Immisch (1838-1903), electrical engineer, watchmaker and iventor, was born in Niederschmon, near Querfurt in Germany, the son of a watchmaker. Known as 'Moritz Immisch', he received a technical education and left Germany around 1860 to seek opportunities in England. Settling in London he married Emma Welch in 1876 at St John's Church, Marylebone.

Initially Immisch applied his watchmaking skills to develop precision clockwork mechanisms and other improvements. He became a Council Member of the British Horological Institute, and in 1872 submitted an essay on 'The balance spring and its isochronal adjustments' which was awarded the Institute's Baroness Burdett Coutts Prize.

In 1881 Immisch patented a small watch-shaped thermometer. More robust than contemporary glass thermometers filled with mercury, it allowed very accurate readings to be taken, and its handy size made it highly portable as a clinical instrument. It was awarded a Silver Medal at the International Medical Congress of 1881 and elsewhere, including the 1887 silver medal offered here. The very small size made the device very popular and it was referred to in many medical journals throughout the 1880s both in England and in the US.

Immisch was innovative in many other areas notably electro-magnetism, and established with others a small company Messrs M. Immisch & Co. in Kentish Town to develop and manufacture electric motors (see Wikipedia article).

£50

Two silver and two bronze medals were awarded between 1893-1920 to the best candidates and second best candidates in the Oxford Local and Cambridge Local Senior exams in physical geography and political geography. This medal was awarded to Leonard Blackler in December1893 for physical geography. A Leonard Blackler is found in the 1908 Navy List, serving as Secretary on board HMS Cormorant.

SOLD

David Garnett Hurter was born in Widness, Lancashire, in 1875 the eldest son the industrial chemist Dr Ferdinand Hurter (1844-1898), a Swiss citizen, and his wife Hannah née Garnett. His father Ferdinand was a pioneer in applying the disciplines of physical chemistry and thermodynamics to industrial processes, who by 1880 was recognized as an international authority on alkali manufacture, and in 1891 was put in charge of the research centre of the newly formed United Alkali Company at Widnes (ODNB). David Hurter studied medicine and surgery, graduating in 1897, and in that year became House Physician at the Royal Infirmary, Liverpool. He died on 10th May 1898 just two months after his father's death.

£250

The Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, was founded in 1826, and became the Royal Scottish Academy upon the granting of its Royal Charter in 1838. This fine medal was engraved by B.Wyon after designs by Sir Joseph Noel Paton RSA. It was awarded retrospectively (probably to his family) in memory of Alexander Forbes (1802-1839), one of the Academy's early Associates, elected in 1830. Forbes was born in Aberdeen, and taught art in Edinburgh. He quickly became a highly skilled painter of animals in oils, becoming known as the 'Landseer of the north'. He died prematurely aged 37, but had 64 paintings exhibited at the RSA.

Probably John Reid, gas engineer, found in the 1861 census, in Leith, who was born about 1813 in Perth. 

£100

An interesting medal in being a prize for the Owen Jones Competition, named after the famous architect, printer, and designer, best known for his classic publication, the Grammar of Ornament published 1856. Further research is needed into the identity of Emma Hodgkinson.

£50

Matthew George Taylor was born in Heyton, Lancashire, in 1843. He married Alice Ann Phythian in 1876, and was an architect.

£250

Ruby Winifred Levick (1871/2–1940) was born in Llandaff, Glamorgan, and studied at the National Art Training School (later the Royal College of Art), South Kensington, from about 1893 to 1897. A new emphasis on modelling, as opposed to carving, and a resurgence of interest in small-scale sculpture, enabled women artists to make a significant contribution to the previously male-dominated field of sculpture. Following the award of this medal in 1895, she gained a British Institution scholarship for modelling, and the princess of Wales scholarship. She became extremely competent in small-scale sculpture, decorative relief work and stained-glass, exhibited widely, and become admired among others, by Queen Alexandra. (ODNB)

£200

Frank Belshaw was born in Nottingham in 1855, studied art at the Nottingham School of Art, and was a founder member (and Secretary 1881) of the Nottingham Society of Artists. He won this medal in 1882, and a silver medal, and had work exhibited at the Royal Academy and Royal Society of British Artists. He painted landscape and still-life subjects, but died prematurely aged 29 in 1884.

£150

Richard John Durley was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 1868, the son of Richard and Elizabeth Durley. His father died in the year of his birth, and his mother became a schoolteacher. Richard is recorded as a marine engineer in the 1891 census, but is not found in the 1901 census. A Richard John Durley is found in the Mechanical Engineering Department of McGill University in Canada in the early 20th century, who in 1903 published a standard text for students "Kinematics of Machines", but further research is needed to verify the link.

£75

Possibly Joseph William Priestley born in 1842 in Rochdale, Lancashire, who is found in the 1861 census in Halifax, Yorkshire, with his sisters and brother supporting his widowed mother Jane Priestley (born c 1807), working as a wool sorter.

W.H.SMITH -SCHOOL MEDAL 1839

Tavistock School MEDAL 1839 [to William Henry SMITH]. Silver medal by Wyon, on the reverse within a wreath an engraved inscription "OCT: KAL: QVINTII: GVLo: HENRo: SMITH: DE LONDIN: D.D. GVL: BEAL". 50mm. Obverse with nice toning EF, on the reverse, the engraved inscription worn through polishing.

£500

Awarded to William Henry Smith (1825–1891), later the newsagent (of W.H.Smith fame) and politician. Born in London, the only son of William Henry and Mary Ann Smith, he was educated at home, and for a short period in 1839, attended Tavistock Grammar School, where he received this silver medal. Smith hoped to go to Oxford and take holy orders, but his father installed him in his small newsagent business in the Strand. William took the business in a new direction setting up bookstalls at railway stations, and by 1862 had secured bookstall rights at all the major network stations. He made many innovations in the trade, but leaving the day-to-day management to others, he was able to move to a career in politics. He was elected MP for Westminster in 1868, was promoted to the cabinet in 1877, and was given further high office in successive governments. (ODNB)

Archibald Hugh Payon Dawnay (1870-1918) is found in the 1891 census, a medical student aged 20, born in Peckham, living at Camberwell with his father Archibald D. Dawnay a civil engineer (aged 49, born Christian Malford, Wiltshire), his mother Isabelle (aged 43, born Islington, Surrey), and younger bothers Osmond and Percy. He married Annie Burgess Townsend in 1899, and by 1911 is a medical practitioner living with his wife in St Marylebone. His father the civil engineer Sir Archibald D. Dawnay (1842-1919), became Mayor of Wandsworth, and left a bequest through which London County Council established in 1921 the Archibald Dawnay Scholarships for the Promotion of Studies in Civil Engineering.

Harmer went to King's College, Cambridge, where he had a distinguished career as exhibitioner, scholar, and fellow. In 1885 he became university lecturer in advanced invertebrate morphology, and five years later became superintendent of the University Museum of Zoology. Harmer was appointed keeper of zoology at the British Museum (Natural History) in 1907 and from 1919 to 1927 was its director. Throughout his life he inspired affection by his gentleness, courtesy, and kindness. (ODNB)

£80

Frederick James Lord was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, and attended the historic public school of St Peter's School, York. He attended University College London between 1889-1891, and is thought to have taken up a career in chemistry. His name is found giving evidence in a patent case involving the British Soap Company in 1905.

£175

Mary Anne Drummond was born in 1862 in Higher Broughton, Lamcashire, the daughter of the Irish Unitarian theologian Professor James Drummond and his wife Frances. Mary married Arthur William Hutton (b.1857 Belfast) in 1890.

£300

Caesar Litton Falkiner (1863-1908) was a politician, barrister and a writer on literary and historical topics. Born in Dublin, he went to Dublin University where he graduated BA in 1886 and proceeded MA in 1890. In 1885 he was elected President of the college Philosophical Society (who had awarded him this silver medal the previous year) giving a presidential address entitled ‘A new voyage to Utopia’. In 1887 Falkiner was called to the Irish bar, and in 1888 he began to work actively on behalf of the unionist cause. Falkiner devoted much time to the study of Irish history and literature, publishing a number of scholarly works, but he died at the age of 45 in an accident in the Alps. (ODNB)

£300

Richard Robert Cherry (1859–1923), politician and judge, was born in Waterford, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (1875–9), where he took part in athletics, as well as being a senior moderator and double gold medallist in mental science and history and political science. In 1881 he trained in law at the King's Inns, Dublin, and the Middle Temple, and was called to the Irish bar. Cherry won this medal whilst still a member of the University of Dublin Philosophical Society. He became a leading lawyer and judge, and was appointed lord chief justice of Ireland in 1914. (ODNB)

Archibald Brown (1841-1916) was a barrister of the Middle Temple who studied at Edinburgh and Oxford universities. Brown published many works on the law including his succinct and popular New Law Dictionary in 1874 for which he is best known, the latest edition of which appeared in 2006.

£125

Daniel Grove Marshall was born in 1860 in Shrewsbury, the son of Scottish stonemason Robert Marshall and his wife Mary. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, graduating MB and CM in 1885. After initial work in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary as house-surgeon he entered the Indian Medical Service as surgeon in 1888. At Netley he was awarded the Herbert Prize, the Parkes Memorial medal in hygiene, and the Montefiore prize and medal for surgery. Marshall served in the Burmese War of 1889-92, the North-West Frontier 1892, Tochi Valley expedition 1897-98, and the China War of 1900. He was promoted to Major in 1900, but having to retire in 1905 due to ill health, he settled in Edinburgh where he became a lecturer in tropical diseases. In 1918 he was appointed a Lieutenant-Colonel in the RAMC, and became consultant on malaria for the Scottish Command. He died in Edinburgh in 1923 (obituary BMJ 1923).

£75

Alfred Alexander Murray was born in Edinburgh in 1863, the son of a law clerk Joseph Anderson and his wife Margaret. In 1891 he is recorded in the census as a law agent & lawyer's managing clerk, and by 1901 as writer to HM Signet. In 1901 he is living in Edinburgh with his wife Mary, and with a Norwegian servant Gunda Jorgenson. The latter is probably in some way relevant as in 1902 he gave a lecture to the Edinburgh Photographic Society entitled "By Stockholm to Lapland".

Carl Hentschel  was born in Lodz, Russia in1864, settled in England, and married Bertha Posner in 1889. Their daughter Irene married the theatre critic and writer Ivor John Carnegie Brown, and another daughter, Olga, married the novelist William Pett Ridge. Hentschel was a photo-engraver by trade, and was a founder member of the Playgoer's Club established in 1884. His friend Jerome K. Jerome a co-founder of the Club, later immortalised Hentschel as "Harris" in Three Men in a Boat.

END OF MEDALS SECTION