Awards to the Medical Services from the Collection of the late Tony Sabell

Six: Dr Honoria Somerville Keer, The Scottish Women’s Hospitals, Assistant Surgeon, Girton and Newnham Unit

British War and Victory Medals (H. S. Keer); France, Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, star on ribbon; Medal of Honour, Ministry of War for Epidemics, silver, reverse embossed, ‘Miss Kear (sic) 1917’, with case of issue inscribed with the recipient’s name; Serbia, Order of St. Sava, 2nd issue, Officer’s breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Scottish Women’s Hospitals Medal 1914, bronze, unnamed, this lacking ribbon; together with miniature dress medals of the first four medals, good very fine (10) £400-500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Awards to the Medical Services from the Collection of the late Tony Sabell.

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Honoria Smerville Keer was born in Toronto, Canada on 26 December 1883, the daughter of Major-General Jonathan Keer, Bengal Staff Corps. She was educated at Hazel Bank, Malvern and at the University of Glasgow where she was awarded in 1910 the degrees of M.B. and Ch.B. At the outbreak of war she was serving as Resident Medical Officer at the Infirmary, Kilmarnock. She became Assistant Surgeon to the Girton and Newnham Unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals on its foundation and proceeded with it to Troyes in the Champagne district of France in May 1915. In October of that year the French Government transferred that hospital to Serbia. Soon it was obliged to retreat with the Serbian Army and from December 1915 it was sited in Salonika. In the Autumn of 1917 the unit was re-housed and re-constituted as the Calcutta Orthopaedic Centre - still under the command of its original Chief Medical Officer, Dr Louise McIlroy. As such, it continued to work in Salonika until early 1919 when it closed as a military hospital, being subsequently transferred to Belgrade to form The Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital.

However, in April 1918 Dr Keer was transferred to Corsica as Chief Medical Officer of the Scottish Women’s Hospital for Serbian Refugees, operating under the Serbian Relief Fund. This hospital closed in April 1919.

After the war Dr Keer returned to England and took a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Health in 1924. The following year she was appointed a Medical Officer to Nigeria, being posted to the Hospital in Lagos. Here she worked until 1931. Increasingly suffering from deafness, she returned to England in 1933. She died in London on 20 March 1969.

The three foreign awards confirmed; that of St. Sava listed in the London Gazette 12 August 1919 given by the King of the Serbs, Croats and the Slovenes, in recognition of her services while employed with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in Serbia. With copied research including photocopied photographs of the recipient.