Orders, Decorations and Medals

An interesting Matabele Rebellion British South Africa Company’s 1890-97 Medal awarded to Surgeon Captain A. W. Hogg, Victoria Column, a talented artist whose drawings and account of the early conduct of the campaign were published in the Illustrated London News - he afterwards lent valuable service during the course of the plague epidemic in Cape Town in 1901

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Matabeleland 1893, no clasp (Surgn. Captn. A. W. Hogg, Victoria Column), extremely fine £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of British South Africa Company 1890-97 Medals.

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Arthur William Hogg was born in London in 1862 and qualified as a Surgeon in Scotland in November 1887. He is listed as a qualified Doctor resident at Huddersfield in the 1891 Census, but shortly thereafter he made his way to South Africa, and was appointed a Surgeon Captain in the Victoria Column on the outbreak of the Matabele Rebellion in 1893.

A talented artist, his drawings and account of the early conduct of the campaign were subsequently published in the Illustrated London News, the former including views of ‘the house belonging to Mr. Colenbrander, a European trader, now occupied as a temporary hospital’, and a depiction of the battle of Imbembesi on 1 November 1893. Having met-up at Iron Mill Hill on 14 October 1893, the Victoria and Salisbury Columns fought their first skirmish with the Matabele on the 25th, an engagement described by Hogg in the following terms:

‘On 20 October, a hundred men went out at night and burnt the Insukamini Kraal, one of the largest in the country. The kraal was abandoned and the enemy was not seen. On 25 October, the enemy made their first attack on our laager. Our native contingent, the Makalakas, were encamped 300 yards away on the left, to the eastward and near the river. It was there that the first shots were heard, and the alarm having sounded, a general attack was made on us from all sides.

The light was very bad; the moon was fading away, and dawn was just commencing; the dark shadows from the bushy kopjes rendered it impossible at the commencement to make out their position. Our pickets had a narrow escape, and the Makalakas had to fight their way to the laager; the Matabele assegaied and shot forty or fifty of them. The enemy made three determined rushes, but the fire from our artillery was too heavy for them. The attack on the laager continued for about one hour. At half-past four all firing ceased, and the skirmishing party returned. Our losses were one man shot and three wounded. The enemy must have fired a great number of shots, but nearly all of their bullets went high up over the tops of the wagons. The loss of the enemy was estimated at 300 killed and about the same wounded.’

Accusations of War Crimes

The mention of enemy wounded is not without interest, for in May 1894 an ex-Hospital Orderly by the name of Lionel Cohen, who had served under Dr. Hogg in the Victoria Column, wrote to The Cape Times with a list of alleged atrocities committed by his comrades against the Matabele - the dispatch of their wounded high on his list. A day or two later, on the 19 May, Dr. Hogg’s response to these allegations was published in the same newspaper:

‘Sir - I notice in this morning’s paper a letter taken over from the paper Truth, signed by Lionel Cohen, in which he professes to give a few particulars of the incidents of the occupation of Matabeleland. As Mr. Lionel Cohen was a Hospital Orderly and attached under my command to the Victoria Column, the statements which he makes must be, as they are, absolutely untrue, for he was never in the Salisbury Column during the Bembesi fight, his duties confining him exclusively to the Victoria Column hospital. I can positively swear, as Surgeon-in-Charge of the Victoria Column, that it is utterly false to state, as Mr. Cohen does, that not a single Matabele was attended to either by the Salisbury or Victoria Columns, for I myself attended to certainly between 200 or 300 Matabele wounded during the war, and my colleague, Dr. Edgelow [see Lot 887], probably attended to an equal number. For many days after our occupation of Bulawayo, almost my whole time was devoted to attending to the Matabele wounded who came in to be treated by the white doctors. There are hundreds of others who can testify on oath to the utter falsity of Mr. Cohen’s statement and there were no Matabele wounded attended to by the Chartered Company’s doctors, for I have given the facts as they absolutely occurred, and what Mr. Cohen may have done or seen after the Bembesi fight I cannot say, nor can I tell what inducements may have been offered to Mr. Cohen to make these statements. I send you this letter because I cannot leave the country and allow a letter written by a Hospital Orderly under my command, to pass without contradiction. As I am leaving by tomorrow’s steamer for England, I trust that you will obtain for my letter the same publicity as had been given to Mr. Cohen’s.’

Cohen did indeed publish a formal apology for his ‘rash act’, and confessed to having received payment for his exaggerated statements, as part of an ongoing legal case. And as verified by official papers in the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Hogg’s letter was a welcome addition to evidence accumulated by a Commission of Enquiry into the conduct of war in the recent rebellion - although Cecil Rhodes appears to have lost the original documentation of that Enquiry’s conclusions.

The Plague Epidemic, Cape Town, 1902

In due course, Hogg returned to South Africa, where he became a District Medical Officer, and it was in this capacity that he lent valuable service during the outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in Cape Town in 1901, latterly at the Maitland Plague Hospital - indeed the Medical Officer of Health cited his good work and praised him for ‘sticking to his guns in the dark days of the plague’. And dark days they were, around 400 people dying before the endemic was brought under control towards the end of the year, the Maitland Plague Hospital dealing with around 600 admissions, a third of whom died - some of these fatalities were inevitably among the hospital’s staff, notably Dr. J. C. Dunlop, Miss Ellen Kayser, the Matron, and her sister, Minnie, an Acting Matron; see F. K. Mitchell’s related article, “The Plague in Cape Town in 1901 and Its Subsequent Establishment as an Endemic Disease in South Africa”, published in the S.A. Medical Journal, 23 June 1983, for full details (copy included).

Sadly, official papers also confirm that Hogg resigned his post at the Maitland in July 1901, as a result of a dispute with Matron Smythe - apparently he entertained two newly arrived nurses in Cape Town, as a result of which they were late in reporting for duty. Even sadder were the possible consequences of this dispute - Hogg took his own life by self-administered narcotic poison in February 1902; sold with research, including a modern day view of his gravesite in Maitland Cemetery, Cape Town.