An auction of the Brian Ritchie collection of H.E.I.C. and British India medals, part I. [09/17/2004]

2004·12.5 MB·English

by  Dix Noonan Webb

K NOONAN WIHM
DNW
Auctioned * & Valuer*
THE BRIAN RITCHIE COLLECTION OF
H.E.I.C. AND BRITISH INDIA MEDALS
Part I
FRIDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2004
10 am PRECISELY
MEDAL DEPARTMENT COIN DEPARTMENT
Nimrod Dix Christopher Webb
Tel: [phone] Tel: [phone]
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
David Erskine-Hill Peter Preston-Morley
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Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Pierce Noonan Michael Sharp
Tel: [phone] Tel: [phone]
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Brian Simpkin
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Email: [email protected]
LOGISTICS AND ADMINISTRATION
Pierce Noonan - Finance Danielle Webb - Media
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Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Robin Greville - IT Alex Pallent - Mailroom
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Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Forbes Noonan - IT Averil Carr - Office Manager
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Email: [email protected]
UK REPRESENTATIVES OVERSEAS REPRESENTATIVES
Medals Australasia
Ronald Barden John Burridge
Tel: [phone] Shenton Road
Email: [email protected] Swan bourne
WA 6010
Donald Hall Australia
21 Seacroft Avenue Tel: [phone]
Barton on Sea Email: [email protected]
New Milton
Hampshire North America
BH257NY Eugene Ursual
Tel: [phone] Box 788
Email: [email protected] Kern ptvi lie
Ontario, KOG 1 JO
Militaria Canada
Dixon Pickup Tel: [phone]
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South Africa
Arms and Armour Natalie Jaffe
Brian Turner PO Box 156
Email: btmi 1 [email protected] Sea Point
8600 Cape Town
DIX NOONAN WEBB Tel: [phone]
16 Bolton Street Email: [email protected]
Piccadilly
Peter Digby
London W1J 8BQ
Johannesburg
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Tel: [phone]
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www.dnw.co.uk
AN AUCTION OF
THE BRIAN RITCHIE COLLECTION OF
H.E.I.C. AND BRITISH INDIA MEDALS
Part I
The York Room (2nd Floor)
The New Connaught Rooms
61-65 Great Queen Street
London WC2
Friday 1 7th September 2004
10 am precisely
Weekdays, Monday 6th to Tuesday 14th September
16 Bolton Street, Piccadilly, London W1
Wednesday and Thursday, 15th and 16th September
16 Bolton Street, Piccadilly, London W1
Friday 17th September
The Warwick Room (2nd Floor), The New Connaught Rooms
In sending commissions or making enquiries please contact:
Nimrod Dix, David Erskine-Hi 11, Pierce Noonan or Brian Simpkin
Front Cover: Lot 112 Back Cover: Lot 118
Viewing
All the lots in this auction are available to view, strictly by appointment only, at 16 Bolton Street, on
weekdays from Monday 6 September to Tuesday 14 September. All appointments to view must be
made with Averil Carr by telephoning [phone].
The public view is at Bolton Street on Wednesday and Thursday, 15 and 16 September, from
09.00 to 17.00 both days, and at the auction venue, the New Connaught Rooms on Friday, 17
September, from 08.00.
Saleroom Notices
Any saleroom notices pertaining to this auction are automatically posted at the head of the InterNews
section of the DNW website. Prospective bidders are urged to consult this facility before sending bids.
Prices Realised
A full list of prices realised can be viewed and printed from the Internet at www.dnw.co.uk from 21.00
GMT on 1 7 September. Telephone enquiries are welcome from 09.00 GMT on 20 September.
The Auction Venue
The New Connaught Rooms are located in
Great Queen Street, in the heart of London's
Covent Garden. The auction takes place in
the York Room and viewing on the day of the
auction is in the Warwick Room; both are
accessed by lift to the 2nd floor.
The Rooms are a 3-minute walk from the
nearest Underground station, Holborn
(Central and Piccadilly Lines), which is a
40-minute direct journey from Heathrow
Airport.
Numerous buses from Charing Cross, Euston,
King's Cross and Waterloo main line railway
stations stop at the junction of Kingsway and
Great Queen Street. The nearest covered car
park is at the corner of Drury Lane and Parker
Street, 2 minutes away.
The Brian Ritchie Collection
Parts 2 and 3
The second auction of medals of the H.E.I.C. and British India from the Brian Ritchie collection will be
held in March 2005, and the third and final part of the collection will be sold in September 2005. For
further details, please contact Nimrod Dix.
Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria
General Sale, Friday 17 September, 11.00
The general sale of orders, decorations, medals and militaria, commencing with lot 133 and including
medals from the collection of the late John Bertram, will start at 1 1.00, immediately after the auction of
the medals in this catalogue.
Brian Ritchie
B
rian William Ritchie was born at Jarrow, county Durham, on 4 September 1925, and educated at the
Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he completed his Higher Certificate. In July
1943, his father and uncle both having been Gunners in the Great War, he not surprisingly volunteered
for the Royal Artillery, opting for service in India. He completed the six-month RA Short Course at
Aberdeen University and received his primary training with the Gordon Highlanders; 23 RATR (Field, Medium
& Heavy); 10 RATR (Field) Specialist Training; and 55 Heavy Regiment RA.
Having volunteered for service in India, he next attended the OTS School of Artillery, Deolali, from
April to December 1945, from where he was commissioned into the Royal Indian Artillery, peace having by
this time been declared. Brian was posted to the 11th and 16th Field Regiments RIA (both Madrassi), and later
to the 13th Field Regiment RIA (Sikh), which was subsequently the senior artillery regiment post-
Independence. Demobilised in September 1947, he left for the UK on the second ship to leave after
Independence.
Brian returned to his studies at King's College, Durham University, where he read German, graduating
as a BA (Hons) in 1951. Whilst at Durham he joined 272 Field Regiment RA (TA), with which he served from
December 1949 until June 1952. Selected from campus, he joined Imperial Chemical Industries in October
1951 - he was then, not surprisingly, further selected for ICI (India). This was to be a period which saw ICI in
India change from a primarily import/trading company into a major manufacturer, producing polythene,
rubber, chemicals, insecticides, dyes, paints, explosives and urea fertilizer. Staff had to be similarly versatile,
and Brian served as Regional Manager in Bombay, as General Manager Paints, in Calcutta, and finally as
Managing Director, Chemicals & Fibres (India) Ltd, in Bombay, manufacturing polyester staple fibre.
He retired in 1975 and moved across the Indian Ocean to Muscat, in the Sultanate of Oman, with his
wife, Maryam Zawawi, herself an Omani national. Oman was little known at that time as it had been a closed
country until 1970, when the Sultan stepped down in favour of his son, H.M. Sultan Qaboos Bin Said. It was a
country without any real industry except in asbestos cement pipe and offered Brian exciting new
opportunities. Far from a quiet retirement, he made use of his expert knowledge of plastics and chemicals and,
drawing on his ICI connections, set up a pioneering company manufacturing polythene and PVC pipe and
explosives, both products crucial to the ambitious modernization of the country which was to take place over
the course of the next 30 years. He later expanded his interests into the fields of agriculture, public health
chemicals, environmental plant and scientific equipment, not to mention two drilling and blasting companies,
one in Oman, the other in the United Arab Emirates. Brian still lives in Oman with his wife and three
daughters, returning to the UK for a few weeks each summer to visit family and friends, but is now seeking to
retire and travel more extensively with his wife.
In the biographies that follow reference will be made to certain officers and men whose medals also
form part of the Ritchie collection, though not necessarily in this sale. In such cases a quod vide (qv)
indication will be given after their name in the footnote.
Foreword
I
n 1982 I accompanied my uncle to Spink where he was framing his family's medals, including his own Great
War M.C. and Bar. I had no idea until then that my uncle had won such great distinction and, finding myself
in the collectors' department of that old firm, my eyes were opened to the great number and variety of Indian
campaign medals. I went to Spink to meet my uncle for lunch, not to become a medal collector, but there I
had stumbled across the perfect little hobby for my retirement - though not so little as I was soon to find out.
After a few early purchases, mostly single 'type' examples, I was fortunate to happen across Nimrod Dix,
then trading from the Piccadilly Arcade, from whom I purchased the Indian Mutiny C.B. group to Major-General
Scudamore of the 14th Light Dragoons. In this I knew that I had something rather special; more than just a group
of medals, more a personality of some historical importance, one who's name I would occasionally encounter in
my reading. And so, with his help, the collection made steady progress and such key medals as those for the great
defences of Kelat-i-Ghilzie, Lucknow and Chitral were early additions.
With the acquisition, at a Christie's sale in April 1984, of the important group to Field Marshal Sir Neville
Chamberlain, the most famous of four brothers serving in India and a household name in his day, and the equally
important Defence of Delhi group to Sir John Rose, two lots later, I realised with a sinking feeling that my original
intentions of building a modest representative collection of Indian medals had gone out of the window! Nimrod,
with his great knowledge of medals, and especially where to find them, had no difficulty in keeping the pressure
on me and I soon came to understand that when he offered me something I had to pay attention.
Soon afterwards Sir Crawford Chamberlain, with an equally impressive group of campaign medals,
quietly slipped into the collection to join his brother. His medals had first appeared at auction in the mid-1970s
and have been in private collections ever since. Some years later, Nimrod found the C.B. group to Colonel Charlie
Chamberlain and three of the brothers were once again re-united, eerily reminiscent of their coming together in
1862, when Sir Neville wrote to Sir Hugh Rose: "I am here [in Delhi] on a visit to my brother Crawford, and all
four of us brothers managed to meet, not having done so for the past twenty-six years." The fourth and eldest
brother was Colonel Thomas Chamberlain, a city magistrate at Lucknow, but who was not entitled to any medals.
Luck will always play a part in collecting and I am sure I have had more than my fair share over the past
20 years, though to be accurate the collection was principally formed in the ten years up to 1992. Two notable
collections of Army of India medals came to the market in the early 1980s, one via auction (Michael Kingshott),
one privately (Philip Kamil), and from these I was able to make great inroads into that series, especially with the 6-
clasp medal to General Greenstreet and the unique 7-clasp medal to Drummer Colston. 'Unique', now there's a
word to conjure with and one that was not invented for medal collectors. True enough, Drummer Colston was the
only man to successfully claim a medal with seven clasps and I now owned it, a long-hyphen example with
impressed naming to the 15th N.l. which had been in several famous collections including those of Whitaker and
David Spink. Imagine then my surprise when I learnt that another medal had surfaced in an old French collection,
to be auctioned in Paris in 1986. This turned out to be an officially engraved short-hyphen example named to him
in the 31st N.L, as his regiment was numbered at Bhurtpore (the old 2/15th was renumberd 31st in 1824). A quick
study of the medal rolls and it all made sense - there he was, listed once under the 15th and again under the 31st,
the former (long-hyphen) medal issued in India, the latter in England. I can only surmise that the original
appearance of this engraved medal, who knows when, threatened the integrity of the impressed medal in the
Whitaker collection (acquired by Spink in 1959) which caused it to be 'put out to grass' in an overseas collection,
probably in the hope that it would disappear for good. However, we live in different times today and I am proud
to have both medals side-by-side, each with a story to tell, and that is how I wish to see them sold.
In my collection you will be seeing many medals offered for the first time at auction; great rarities like the
medals to Sir Richard Jenkins and Sir William Lloyd, both heroes of Seelabuldee in 1817, and the magnificent
group to General Sir James I lope Grant, Commander of the Forces in China in 1860. Many others will not have
been seen since the 1950s and 1960s, having come to me directly from various old collections that Nimrod had
managed to root out. In fact, to Nimrod must go the greatest c redil for the building of this collection, particularly
for the depth, substance and structure that he has given it, and also my personal thanks for his continued interest
over the past (relatively dormant) decade.
I did not set out to specialise in any particular area, other than the broad canvas of India and the British
and H.E.I.C. armies but, mostly thanks to serendipity, I have been surprisingly successful, in addition to the Army
of India series, when it comes to the Defence of Lucknow and the disastrous battle of Maiwand. The names of
Gubbins (Financial Commissioner), Schilling (Principal of La Martiniere College), Carnegie (Provost Marshall), and
Radcliffe (hero of Chinhut and killed later during the siege) will be found in all standard accounts of the siege of
Lucknow, which are further brought to life by Lieutenant Clifford Meecham (a talented amateur artist responsible
for Sketches and Incidents of the Siege of Lucknow) and colourful characters like Signor Barsotelli, an Italian
merchant, who stood, wrote one account 'with musket in one hand and a double-barrelled rifle in the other; at his
side a huge cavalry sword and pendant over his breast hung his ammunition pouch, resembling an Italian hand-
organ.'
For Maiwand I have been fortunate enough to acquire not only the emotive medals to Captain Garrett
and Lieutenant Chute, of the 66th, of Major Blackwood and Lieutenant Maclaine, of 'E' Battery R.H.A., and
various other ranks, all of whom lost their lives in this disaster, but also to some notable survivors of the action,
including the commanding officers of the 1st Bombay Grenadiers and the 30th Bombay Rifles, D.C.M. winners
from the 66th and 'E' Battery, and the humble Gunner Naylor, onto whose limber Sergeant Mullane had placed
the wounded Gunner Pickwell Istead before galloping to safety and thereby won the V.C.
The opportunity to buy the Peiwar Kotal V.C. to Major John Cook, of the 5th Gurkhas, was not long in the
decision making process. The forcing of this pass was a truly hard-fought and significant action in the second
Afghan War, in which Cook and his regiment played the leading part. Cook himself was mortally wounded in the
assault on the Takht-i-Shah one year later, an action in which his brother, Walter (whose medals I also acquired)
was severely wounded and himself recommended for the V.C. Yes, this was the one for me, I had to have a V.C.
in my collection, just the one you understand. But, of course, other Crosses followed; Trooper Kells in November
1986 (must have one for the Mutiny), Sir Dighton Probyn in July 1987 (the old man himself, how could I resist?),
and, finally, Lieutenant Moore, for the famous cavalry charge at Khushab during the Persian campaign. Along the
way I seem to have also picked up the campaign medals of another four V.C. winners, and several others who
were recommended for the Cross.
The oldest official reward for gallantry is, of course, the Order of Merit, instituted in 1837, exclusively for
Indian soldiers as a 'personal reward for personal bravery', and in these awards I have always had an especial
interest. Not too many have crossed my path but when they have I have always struck with the speed of a cobra.
They are all special to me, as they were to the recipients themselves, especially the 1st Class award to Risaldar-
Major Maun Singh, of Flodson's FHorse, whose group also includes the C.I.E. and O.B.I. Other favourites must be
the Peiwar Kotal award to Havildar Jagat Sing Rana, 5th Gurkhas; the award to Jemadar Sundar Singh, 14th Sikhs,
senior Indian survivor of the 15 men who emerged alive from the disaster at Koragh Defile in 1895; and the 1875
Naga FHills award to Havildar Heema Chund, 44th N.I., whose 3rd Class 'star' is accompanied by his seven-clasp
I.G.S. medal. Only very recently we discovered that Heema Chund was killed in action as a Subadar during the
Manipur campaign in 1891, the final clasp on his medal, N.E. Frontier 1891, hitherto unconfirmed but now laid to
rest.
Moments like this recent discovery, found reported in a contemporary account from 189 I, have made me
seriously question whether I should be selling my collection. But as I now approach my 80th birthday, I feel that
the time has come for others to sample the pleasure and pride that I have enjoyed during my temporary
custodianship of these medals. After all, I cannot take them with me and my family don't want them left behind.
'* Brian Ritchie
Honourable East India Company Medal for the Deccan 1 778-84, large silver medal for Jemadars, the edge
diagonally grained, 41 mm, fitted with later silver clip and straight bar suspension, good very fine and very
rare
£2000-2500
Honourable East India Company Medal for the Deccan 1 778-84, small silver medal for other ranks, the edge
diagonally grained, 32.5 mm, fitted with small ring for suspension, very fine and scarce
£600-800
www. dnw.co. uk
Honourable East India Company Medal for the Deccan 1 778-84, small silver medal for other ranks, the edge
straight grained, 32.5 mm, fitted with small ring for suspension, this sometime re-fixed, otherwise fine
£300-400
Honourable East India Company Medal for Mysore 1790-92, large silver medal for Jemadars, the edge straight
grained, 42 mm, good very fine and very rare
£2000-2500
Believed to be the example sold in the Hamilton-Smith sale of July 1927 (Lot 826).
www.cinw.co.uk
Honourable East India Company Medal for Mysore 1790-92, small silver medal for Havildars, Naiks, Tindals,
Sepoys and Lascars, a curious but old copy?, the obverse from the large variety die but cut down, the reverse
from the usual die, the edge straight grained, 39 mm, fitted with small ring for suspension, nearly very fine
£300-400
Honourable East India Company Medal for Mysore 1790-92, small silver medal for Havildars, Naiks, Tindals,
Sepoys and Lascars, the edge straight grained, 36 mm, fitted with small ring for suspension, very fine and rare
£1000-1200
wwiv.dmv.co.uk