Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An extremely rare Great War A.R.R.C. pair awarded to Lady Superintendent Ellen D. Harris, Indian Army Nursing Service, later Voluntary Aid Detachment, who served alongside a small and hand-picked band of nursing staff during the Black Mountain Expedition

Royal Red Cross, 2nd Class (A.R.R.C.), G.V.R., silver and enamel; India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Hazara 1888 (Sister E. D. Harris Indian Nursing Service) extremely fine (2) £600-£800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Norman Gooding Collection.

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Collection

Brigadier H. Bullock Collection, 1956; Tilling Collection.

A.R.R.C. London Gazette 6 August 1919: ‘Miss Ellen Harris, Matron, Blytheswood Auxiliary Hospital, West Byfleet.’

Ellen Dovede Harris trained as a nurse at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London from 1885 to 1888. Registered with the Royal British Nurses Association on 2 May 1890, she was selected by Lady Superintendent Loch from the Staff of St. Bartholomew’s and appointed to the Indian Army Nursing Service as one of the original complement of two Lady Superintendents and twelve Nursing Sisters on 21 February 1888. The following day she sailed for India aboard the Malabar.

Arriving in April 1888, Harris and four colleagues were posted to Rawalpindi under Lady Superintendent Loch. Here she served as part of the Black Mountain Expedition, receiving the India General Service Medal with clasp. Tasked with attacking the Pathan tribes of Hassanzais and Akezais, the Expedition represented one of the first major campaigns on the North-West Frontier of India. Advancing into unknown and perilous territory, British casualties soon mounted up, especially following the action at Shingri and further engagements at Towara and Kotkai, the British resorting to burning villages in order to achieve capitulation by the tribal elders.

Promoted Deputy Lady Superintendent on 1 October 1891, Harris completed her first term of engagement at Peshawar and returned home in 1893. On 19 December 1894, she offered her resignation with six months’ notice in order to take up the position of Superintendent of Lady Robert’s Nurses. These ladies had charge of the Officer’s Hospital at Muree, giving their services to the Station Hospital at Sialkot in the winter. Remaining in India, Harris is later recorded in 1906 as Lady Superintendent at the English Home, M.A.O. College, Aligarh, a post which she held until the commencement of the Great War. Recalled to England, she ended her impressive nursing career in Surrey at the 45-bed Blythswood Auxiliary Hospital, staffed by local members of the V.A.D.