Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 5 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Lieut. W. McD. Allardice, Essex Rgt.) extremely fine £280-£320

Provenance: Jack Webb Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, March 2000.

O.B.E. London Gazette 7 June 1918: Captain William McDiarmid Allardice, Inspector, Small Arms, Birmingham Area, Ministry of Munitions.

William McDiarmid Allardice was born in Glasgow on 31 August 1875, the son of Lieutenant George Allardice, 50th Foot, and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 7th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) on 28 March 1900. He transferred to the Essex Regiment on 21 April 1900, and was promoted Lieutenant on 22 May 1901. He served with the 2nd Battalion in South Africa during the Boer War from December 1901, and whilst the vast majority of members of the Battalion received the medal with clasps Orange Free State, Transvaal, and the two date clasps, Allardice was one of only four officers of the 2nd Battalion to additionally receive the Cape Colony clasp. He was invalided home in June 1902 aboard the S.S. Plassey; amongst the other officers also being invalided home on the same ship was Lieutenant (later Captain) L. E. G. Oates, 5th Dragoons, who would later be immortalised as the hero of Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.

Allardice was seconded for service in the Army Ordnance Department as an Assistant Inspector on 22 April 1904, before transferring to the Reserve of Officers on 26 August 1908. Following the outbreak of the Great War, he returned to his role as an arms inspector, being appointed Assistant Inspector, Inspection Staff, on 1 October 1914, and was promoted temporary Captain on 9 August 1915. For his services at home during the Great War he was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 Birthday Honours’ List (he was not entitled to, nor received, any campaign medals for the Great War).

In 1939 he was living in Hampstead, and is shown on that year’s register as ‘Assistant Inspector Armaments, Royal Arsenal Woolwich’. He died in Eastbourne, Sussex, in 1963.

For the recipient’s Essex Regiment Officer’s Blue Cloth Helmet, together with its named tin, see lot 1431.