Orders, Decorations and Medals

An interesting Rhodesia 1896 Rebellion British South Africa Company’s 1890-97 Medal awarded to Surgeon W. Redpath, Medical Staff Corps and British Red Cross Society

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Rhodesia 1896, no clasp (Surgn. W. Redpath, Med. St. Corps), suspension claw tightened, edge nicks, good very fine £500-600

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

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One of 59 such Medals awarded to members of the Medical Staff Corps.

William Redpath was born in Streatham, London in May 1869, the son of a Surgeon’s Assistant, and was educated at Dulwich College. Elected to the membership of the Royal College of Surgeons at St. Thomas’ Hospital in November 1892, he was also awarded the prestigious Cheselden Medal for being the top student in the same year. He then became a House Surgeon at the same establishment.

In 1893, Redpath travelled to the Far East to practise his profession for the British East India Company. Then in 1896, he was one of two Surgeons selected for service with the British Red Cross Society in Matabeleland and, having arrived at Bulawayo in June, was quickly asked to produce a report for Lieutenant-Colonel Baden-Powell. Thereafter, his name appears regularly in official reports sent home by the Society’s local agent, Dr. William Sutcliffe, more often than not in respect of his attachment to mobile columns in the Field - thus an early foray with Colonel Spreckley’s force, when news of an enemy force gathering by the Umguzi River was reported:

‘A small force of mounted men was at once sent out under Colonel Spreckley, and as I [Sutcliffe] was engaged at the time in preparing the wagons &c. for the patrol, Dr. Redpath left with the column. The enemy, as your Lordship had no doubt seen by the papers, were routed. The casualties on our side were five in number, three being severely wounded, but two of these belonged to another column under Colonel Beale. Dr. Redpath returned with two wounded men, one shot in the back and the other shot through the upper part of the right thigh, shattering the bone - a very severe injury.

These patients were removed to the hospital and placed under Dr. Redpath’s care there ... Dr. Redpath has on several occasions been extremely busy at the hospital, several cases of fever, dysentery, typhoid, etc., being sent in from other columns, and a few wounded. He has found it necessary to perform several major operations, and the results of these have been uniformly successful ... ’

By late July, Sutcliffe had further reports of Redpath’s work in the Field:

‘In my last letter I mentioned that there had been an action at Thabas Imamba, at which Dr. Redpath was present. He remained at Inyati with the most severe cases, and arrived at Bulawayo on the 13th, with three men all severely wounded, having had a long trek through a very rough and not by any means safe country. Dr. Mitchell, the Medical Officer in charge of Colonel Plumer’s column, had arrived two days previously with 14 other less serious cases, and I took charge of them on arrival at the hospital ... Both Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Redpath had to run considerable risk in getting out the wounded in actions, as the enemy lay concealed in caves and rocks, and fired from safe cover and quite inaccessible situations ... ’

Redpath receives further praise in Colonel Plumer’s account of the Matabeleland Field Force, the wounded from Thabas Imamba receiving by his reckoning ‘assiduous care and attention’ . Again, too, in August and September, Sutcliffe refers to Redpath’s sterling work:

‘Dr. Redpath was still away with the patrol under Major Ridley of the 7th Hussars. He returned at 5 a.m. on the 23rd. They had had practically no fighting, but a very troublesome journey of nearly 200 miles through bush country. The wagons were left behind for the last half of the journey, and Dr. Redpath arranged for bearer parties for his stretchers from among the native contingent. He had two rather severe cases of illness on the return journey, but he has brought them in satisfactorily, and they are doing well ... on 14 September information was received that there were some wounded men on the Shangani - a distance of some 80 miles. Dr. Redpath was sent with a wagon and two men to fetch them in, and he should return in about four days ... ’

Redpath, prior to his departure from Rhodesia, was mentioned by General Sir F. Carrington for his ‘valuable services in the Field Hospitals in the Bulawayo area’, and received a glowing letter of thanks and presentation cup from the British South Africa Company, the latter inscribed, ‘In recognition of zeal and skill displayed in the performance of duties as honorary member of the Medical Staff Corps.’

In June 1897, however, he returned to Rhodesia, where he was employed as a Surgeon by the Geelong Gold Mining Company at the Matabele Reefs General Hospital at Gwanda until mid-1901 - in which period family sources say he was one of the first into Mafeking before the official relief forces arrived, so, too, a newspaper obituary. During this time in Rhodesia, Redpath also had an article entitled Some Remarks on Scurvy published in the Lancet in November 1901.

Be that as it may, he returned to the U.K. to take up appointment as a Medical District Officer in Woodbridge, Suffolk, around 1902, and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (Territorials), being commissioned in the 1st East Anglian Field Ambulance in July 1912. And it was in the same capacity, as a Captain, that he was embarked for Egypt in the Royal Edward in July 1915, which became the first Great War transport ship to be torpedoed and sunk - A Dictionary of Disasters at Sea takes up the story:

‘The liner Royal Edward, Commander P. M. Wotton, R.N.R., was employed in carrying troops to Gallipoli ... On 13 August 1915, the U-15, Leutnant von Heimburg, sighted the Royal Edward six miles west of Kandeliusa Island and at once attacked her, getting home a torpedo full on her stern. The transport sank in a very short time with heavy loss of life. According to German accounts, which were fully borne out by the facts, no attempt was made to interfere with the hospital ship Soudan which arrived on the scene soon after, accompanied by two French destroyers and some trawlers. These ships picked up fewer than 500 survivors out of 1,336 troops and 220 crew. Commander Wotton went down with the vessel.’

Among the lucky survivors, Redpath remained on active duty in Egypt until being invalided home with dysentery in January 1917, one of the main ailments cited by a Medical Board being a chest problem stemming from his ‘long immersion in the sea’ back in August 1915.

Demobilised in the rank of Major in February 1919, Redpath returned to his pre-war medical duties in Woodbridge and died at Ipswich in February 1933, aged 63 years; sold with full research.