Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The George Cross (exchange Empire Gallantry Medal) awarded to Miss Emma José Townsend, the first of only four lady recipients of the E.G.M.

George Cross (Miss Emma José Townsend, 6th September, 1932.) mounted on bow as worn, in its Royal Mint case of issue, extremely fine £10,000-£14,000

Christie’s, November 1965; Sotheby’s, June 1970; Spink, September 1992.

E.G.M. London Gazette 6 September 1932:
‘On the 9th May, 1932, W. J. Yeoman, a farmer of Kingsbridge, South Devon, having already murdered his wife and two children, made a brutal attack on his last surviving child in the South Hams Cottage Hospital at Kingsbridge. The boy, aged nine, was an in-patient under treatment at the Hospital and Yeoman attacked him as he lay in bed, first firing at him with a gun and then striking him with it several times. Miss Emma José Townsend of Portlemouth, Devon, who was visiting her sister at the hospital, heard cries of ‘Help’, and went into the ward. She showed great courage in closing with Yeoman and trying to prevent him from killing the boy. In the struggle Yeoman struck her with the barrel of the gun and cut her head open. It was necessary afterwards to stitch up the wound and she lost a quantity of blood.’

The boy died two days later and Yeoman was arrested and detained in a criminal lunatic asylum.

Emma José Townsend was born in Leicester on 1 January 1879, and moved to East Portlemouth, near Salcombe, Devon in 1926, together with her two sisters. By May 1932, one of her sisters had become seriously ill and was moved to the South Hams Cottage Hospital in Kingsbridge, where Emma Townsend visited her on that fateful day. She was presented with the E.G.M. by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 23 February 1933. This award was exchanged for the George Cross in March 1942 and is one of nine exchange awards given to women. Only four direct awards have been given to women, three of them posthumous. Miss Townsend attended the Garden Party which Her Majesty the Queen gave to the members of the V.C. and G.C. Association at Buckingham Palace on 17 July 1962, and was presented to the Queen. She died in her eighty-fifth year at Wimbledon, Surrey, on 8 March 1965.

Sold with 7pp extract from ‘For Gallantry’ by Kenneth Hare-Scott which gives a full account of this incident.