Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Lieutenant C. E. Dashwood, Royal Army Medical Corps

1914-15 Star (Lieut. C. E. Dashwood. R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. C. E. Dashwood.); Italy, Kingdom, Messina Earthquake Medal 1908, silver, unnamed, with original card boxes of transmittal (2) and fitted case for Messina Earthquake Medal, extremely fine (4) £240-£280

Charles Ewart Dashwood was born in Geldeston, Norfolk, on 10 June 1870. A talented young man, he was educated at Haileybury School, later qualifying B.A. Magdalene College, Cambridge (1893), and M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., University of London (1896). A Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians, he married Ethel Hutchinson in 1894 at St. Stephen’s Church, Ealing, the bride’s address noted as ‘36 Great Ormond Street’.

In possession of a Messina Earthquake Medal, it seems likely that Dashwood served alongside his wife to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of civilians crushed by fallen masonry and rubble on the Italian island of Sicily; both Dr. and Mrs. Dashwood appear on the Messina Earthquake Merit Medal Roll. Appointed Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he served during the Great War in the Mediterranean theatre from May 1915 - the date correlating with the high numbers of casualties associated with the fledgling Gallipoli landings. Dashwood survived the war and continued his work as a surgeon, medical officer and vaccinator surgeon. He died at Walworth in November 1928, aged just 58 years.

Sold with two copied photographs of Dashwood as a teenage gentleman, a silver identity bracelet, engraved to ‘Lt. A. C. H. Dashwood’, bearing the monogram of the Royal Flying Corps, this made from a French coin, a small silver sweetheart ‘wings’, lacking pin, and a bronze life saving society medal in case of issue, to Evelyn Fosberry, July 1910.’