The Collection of British Orders, Decorations and Medals formed by the late Fred Rockwood

The George Cross (exchange E.G.M.) awarded to John Frederick Bell, Underground Manager of the Ariston Gold Mine at Prestea on the Gold Coast, who saved several lives in a mining accident in 1930

George Cross (John Frederick Bell, 20th December 1930), good very fine £5000-6000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of British Orders, Decorations and Medals formed by the late Fred Rockwood.

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E.G.M. London Gazette 2 December 1930:

‘John Frederick Bell showed great gallantry on the occasion of an accident in the mine on 17 May 1930, when he was instrumental in saving the lives of several natives who would otherwise have been gassed. Two men who afterwards went in search of him lost their lives by gas in the attempt, and Bell himself would probably have shared their fate had he not, when he became unconscious, fallen with his mouth next to a leak in a compressed-air pipe’.

John Frederick Bell, who was born in Cardiff, Glamorgan in 1872, was employed as a Manager of the Ponthenry Anthracite Collieries and Wernddu Collieries, Neath, prior to departing for the Gold Coast. His original award of the Empire Gallantry Medal (E.G.M.) having been exchanged for the George Cross, he received the latter distinction at a Buckingham Palace investiture held in October 1941. Bell later settled in Malvern, where he died in May 1950.