Coins, Paper Money, Tokens and Historical Medals

Royal Geographical Society, David Livingstone Bearer’s Medal, 1874, a silver award by A.B. Wyon, bust of David Livingstone three-quarters right, rev. legend in eight lines, named (Maganga – Faithful To The End), 37mm (Storer 2229; Fearon 325.2; E 1637; cf. Magor 403). Minor surface marks, otherwise very fine and toned, extremely rare, less than 10 specimens now believed extant, four of which are in institutions [British Museum, Livingstone Museum, Zambia, Blantyre Museum, Malawi, and the Royal Geographical Society]; with clip and ring for suspension £3,000-4,000

Maganga, listed as recipient no. 35 on the medal roll prepared in the British Consulate in Zanzibar, was one of the party sent up to Livingstone by Henry Stanley in 1872. He is shown as “away with Arab traders” in August 1875, but is known to have met Stanley in the interior in May 1876. Described by Stanley as a tall Mynamwezi, and initially as “a native of Mkwenkwe, a strong faithful servant, an excellent pagazi, with an irreproachable temper”, Stanley later tempered his opinion by saying that “he…and his weakly-bodied tribe…were ever falling sick.” He added that “on approaching a village the temper of whose people might be hostile to us, Maganga would commence his song, with the entire party joining in the chorus, by which mode we knew whether the natives were disposed to be friendly or hostile.”

The story of the missionary and explorer David Livingstone is one of the great epic tales of the Victorian age. Beginning in 1841, his career of African exploration was divided into three phases, the high point of the final chapter, to locate the source of the Nile, being his historic meeting with Henry Morton Stanley at Ujiji on 10 November 1871. After spending four months together, Stanley left Livingstone on 14 March 1872 at Unyanyembe (Tabora) where he remained until the 56 native porters and fresh supplies which Stanley had sent up from the coast arrived to reinforce the expedition. Reaching Lake Tanganyika in October, Livingstone then made for Lake Bangweulu but by the time he arrived there in February 1873 he was seriously ill. Pressing on despite rapidly deteriorating health, towards the end of April he could go no further; his servants built a hut to shelter him at Ilala where he died in the early morning of 1 May. After three days of mourning, his bearers decided unanimously to embalm their master’s body and take it back down to the coast from whence it could be returned to England for burial. Going first to Unyanyembe, where they rested for a month, relays of porters carried the body through swamp, desert and forest, eventually reaching the port of Bagamoyo in February 1874. On 18 April 1874 David Livingstone was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey and on 22 June of the same year the Council of the Royal Geographical Society resolved to award a special medal to all those native servants who had carried Livingstone’s body halfway across Africa the previous year. Commissioned from J.S. & A.B. Wyon, 60 silver medals were struck and sent to Zanzibar for distribution. By the time they arrived at the end of June 1875 most of Livingstone’s bearers had long since dispersed, including 33 who had joined Stanley’s Anglo-American Expedition of 1874-7. In due course, however, many of the recipients received their medals and the details are contained in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London. For further information and the full medal roll, see Faithful to the End by Fred Pridmore and D.H. Simpson, SNC May 1970, pp.192-6, and David Livingstone’s Bearers’ Medals by Roland Hill, OMRS Journal, December 2008, pp.229-38