Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Ruston and Hornsby Ltd. 50 Years Faithful Service Medal, silver-gilt (Hallmarks for Birmingham, 1950), the reverse engraved, ‘George Henry Peel, 1893-1948’, complete with buckle suspension bar, extremely fine and attractive £40-50

Ruston and Hornsby Ltd. was formed in September 1918, when Ruston, Proctor & Co. Ltd. of Lincoln purchased the firm Richard Hornsby & Sons Ltd. of Grantham. Both companies had dabbled in the construction of internal combustion powered locomotives, with Hornsby’s being the first, when in 1896 they built an oil engine locomotive for use at the Woolwich Arsenal. The new company produced its first internal combustion locomotive in 1915, about a dozen being produced between then and 1918, mostly for use in munitions factories; the date ‘1893’ on the above award is presumably the result of an error on the engraver’s part, 1898 being the correct year.