Awards to Civilians from the Collection of John Tamplin

The East Africa campaign pair awarded to Mr Wallace Blake, Acting Sub-Commissioner of Jubaland

East and Central Africa 1897-99, 1 clasp, 1898 (Assnt. Collector Wallace Blake); Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Jubaland (Acting Sub-Commissioner of Jubaland, W. Blake) very fine and better (2) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Awards to Civilians from the Collection of John Tamplin.

View
Collection

F. Wallace H. Blake was appointed as an Assistant Collector in the East African Protectorate in January 1898, and arrived at Mombassa from England on 16 March 1898. He took part in the operations against the Ogaden Somalis in 1898 when an expedition under Major W. Quentin, consisting of about 1060 native troops, pacified the country after the troubles there. For this service Blake received the East and Central Africa medal with clasp.

Following the murder, on 16 November 1900, of Mr Arthur Jenner, Sub-Commissioner of Jubaland, Blake, who then became Acting Sub-Commissioner, was the first to telegraph this news. He was then stationed at Kismayu and signed the telegraph ‘Wallace Blake’. A punitive expedition was formed under the command of Colonel T. P. B. Ternan, and Blake was to have served as Intelligence Officer, having organized an Intelligence Department; he was ‘fully acquainted with local affairs, and will accompany the force in the field’. When Colonel Ternan arrived at Kismayu from Mombassa on 24 November, he found ‘that Mr Blake, the Acting Sub-Commissioner of Jubaland, had strengthened the place by putting up a barbed wire fence and taken various military precautions against a possible attack by the Ogadens.’

In fact Blake did not accompany the expeditionary force but remained at Kismayu as Provost-Marshal. He did, nonetheless, receive the Africa General Service medal with clasp for Jubaland. In December 1900, Blake fell ill with severe sunstroke and left Mombassa for England in March 1901, by now an Assistant District Officer. He resigned from the service in May 1902 and did not return to East Africa. During the Great War he was appointed a temporary Major in July 1915, and served as a Commandant, 2nd Class, in the Military Detention Barracks and Prisons.