Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A well documented Great War ‘Salonika’ A.R.R.C. group of four awarded to Sister Dora M. Sempers, Territorial Force Nursing Service

Royal Red Cross, 2nd Class (A.R.R.C.), G.V.R., silver and enamel, on lady’s bow riband, in Garrard, London case of issue; British War and Victory Medals (Sister D. M. Sempers); Territorial Force War Medal 1914-18 (S. Nurse D. M. Sempers, T.F.N.S.) these three mounted as worn; together with the recipient’s Territorial Force Nursing Service Cape Badge, silver, unnamed; West Suffolk General Hospital Nursing Badge, silver and enamel (D. M. Sempers); and General Nursing Council S.R.N. Badge, silver and enamel (D. M. Sempers, S.R.N. 4707, 16.6.22) good very fine and better (lot) £800-£1,200

Provenance: Dix Noonan Webb, March 2013.

A.R.R.C. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

Dora Mary Sempers trained at the West Suffolk General Hospital prior to the Great War and was registered as a S.R.N. in 1922. With the Territorial Force Nursing Service she entered the Salonika theatre of war on 6 June 1916, having travelled there via Italy and Malta - her journey well illustrated by the photographs she took. Sister Sempers was later awarded the A.R.R.C. for her nursing work in Salonika.

Sold with a large certificate of appreciation to Sister Dora Sempers, from the inhabitants of North and South Collingham (Nottinghamshire), for her service in the T.F.N.S. during the Great War; a fine portrait photograph of the recipient in uniform wearing her medals; a photograph album containing many photographs, some loose, some identified, of officers, nurses, people and places visited from leaving Lincoln in May 1915; on board the R.M.S. Orsova, May 1915, then on to Italy, Malta and Salonika; two other smaller albums - mostly unidentified photographs of nurses and recuperating men; sundry other loose photographs; postcards, some inscribed; a ‘day book’ containing verse, signatures, sketches and pressed flowers etc.; a book: Counsels to Nurses, by Edward, Lord Bishop of Lincoln; The New Testament; postcards of the ruins of Pompeii; Nursing Mirror, June 1919 containing a list of honours and awards, including that to Sempers; The Mosquito, Salonika Reunion Association Journal, December 1960; The Great War, I Was There magazine; map of Salonika; identity disk ‘Sempers. D.M., C.E., T.F.N.S.’; Salonika Reunion Association 1915-19, enamelled lapel badge; a brass locket containing photographs; and the recipient’s riband bar.