Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Lieutenant-Colonel W. B. du Pre, Royal Artillery, late Imperial Yeomanry

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Lieut., 17 Co. 13/Impl. Yeo); British War and Victory Medals (Lt. Col.); Territorial Force War Medal 1914-18 (Major, R.A.); Coronation 1911, silver, unnamed, mounted as worn, nearly extremely fine (5) £400-450

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Small Collection of Medals relating to the Disaster at Lindley on 31 May 1900.

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William Baring du Pre was born on 5 April 1875 and was educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He was appointed a Lieutenant with the 47th Company 13th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry (on his Q.S.A. medal the company number is incorrectly engraved ‘17’) on 21 February 1900, having earlier served as a Lieutenant in the K.R.R.C. Du Pre was taken prisoner at Lindley, 31 May 1900 and was sent to the prison camp at Barbeton with the other officers.

In the Great War he entered the France/Flanders theatre of war on 7 August 1915 as a Major with the 2/1st Leicestershire R.H.A. (T.F.) (ineligible for the 1914-15 Star), being advanced to Lieutenant-Colonel in June 1916.

Du Pre contested the Loughborough Division of Leicestershire in the 1906 General Election and served as the Unionist M.P. for the Wycombe Division of Buckinghamshire, 1914-23. Was a Justice of the Peace and was appointed High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1911. He died on 23 August 1946.

With copied m.i.c. and other copied research.