Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The rare Hong Kong Plague Medal in gold awarded to H. C. Nicolle Esq., Auditor of Hong Kong, who during the Plague of 1894 volunteered as a house-to-house visitor and was specially mentioned by the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board for his ‘splendid work, perseverance, and spirit of self-sacrifice’

Hong Kong Plague 1894, gold issue (H. C. Nicolle.) unmounted, in Wyon, London, fitted red leather case, small test mark to edge and minor edge nick, good extremely fine and rare £10,000-£14,000

Hilgrove Clement Nicolle was born at St. Helier, Jersey, on 19 July 1855, and was educated at Victoria College, Jersey. After a spell employed at the London and Westminster Bank in London, he joined the Foreign Office in February 1880, and was appointed an assistant auditor in Cyprus. He was advanced Auditor General of Cyprus in 1883, and was sometime Mayor of Nicosia. On 22 January 1890 he was appointed Auditor of Hong Kong, and soon after arrived in the Colony.

The Hong Kong Plague 1894
A virulent epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in Hong Kong in early May 1894. Recognising the danger, the Governor, Sir William Robinson, K.C.M.G., gathered all the resources available to him, both military and civil, to combat the threat. Special bye-laws were quickly passed and implemented, and temporary plague hospitals were opened. The task of finding, isolating, disinfecting and cleansing infected households was directed by Mr F. H. May, the Captain Superintendent of Police and supervised by Mr J. H. Crook the Sanitary Surveyor. To supplement the local authorities and native labour, Officers and men of the Shropshire Light Infantry and Royal Engineers were drawn in to help with the cleansing operations, and Volunteers for house-to-house visitations were sought amongst the civil population. The population in infected areas were removed and infected houses were rigourously cleansed - floors disinfected, walls, woodwork and furniture thoroughly lime-washed, and bedding, old clothing, old woodwork and general rubbish burnt. Elsewhere, doctors, nurses and ancillary staff worked heroically amongst the sick and dying.

Nicolle was one of those civilians who volunteered as a house-to-house visitor, and doubtless would have followed the official guidelines in helping to combat the spread of the Plague:
‘1. Keep separate clothes for working in, which should be changed on returning off duty and kept hung up in the air and sun when not in use.
2. On returning off duty wash the hands in water and Jeyes’ fluid (1 in 20), and if possible take a bath of the same solution.
3. Also rinse the mouth out with Condy’s fluid and water (one teaspoonful to one quart of water).
4. Saturate the handkerchief with Eucalyptus oil when going on duty and apply it frequently to the nose if in an infected house.
5. Smoke.’

Despite all the precautions taken, over 2,500 people, mainly Chinese, contracted the plague, with 2,317 deaths attributed to the disease, a fatality rate of over 90%. The plague subsided with the arrival of cold weather, and restrictions were lifted in early September; on 28 September 1894 a public meeting was held at City Hall for the purpose of considering what steps should be taken to recognise the services rendered by the community in combating the plague, and ultimately it was decided that a medal should be awarded, in both gold and silver.

Nicolle was specially mentioned by the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board ‘for the splendid work that he did in house-to-house visitations, and for his perseverance in it, and deserves the greatest credit for the spirit of self-sacrifice with which he worked in aid of the Sanitary Inspectors and the Police’ (Minutes of the Committee, 18 September 1894), and was several times mentioned in the Hong Kong Daily Press. For his services his name was forwarded to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and he was awarded the Hong Kong Plague Medal in gold. He was subsequently appointed to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong in March 1900, before taking up the appointment of Treasurer of Ceylon in February 1904. He died of typhoid in Colombo, Ceylon, on 11 December 1908.

The Medal
No complete medal roll for the Hong Kong Plague Medal is known to exist, with much of the Colony’s archival material having been destroyed during the Second World War; consequently, the number of medals awarded is a matter of conjecture. Mr. F. Pridmore, in an article for the Spink Numismatic Circular, August 1954, states that 137 gold medals were awarded to civilians, together with 13 being awarded to the officers of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry; Jerome Platt, Maurice Jones, and Arleen Platt in The Whitewash Brigade again estimate that 137 gold medals were awarded to civilians, and increase the number awarded to the military garrison to 46, as well as giving a total of 636 silver medals awarded. However, the survival rate of gold medals is likely to be a small fraction of this amount, with many likely to have been scrapped for the value of the gold content, and this theory is borne out by the low number of medals sighted or confirmed to exist, with Platt et al identifying only 20 known extant awards in gold (or just over 10% of the total produced), compared to well over a third (219 out of 636) of the silver medals having been sighted.