Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Africa General Service 1902-56, 5 clasps, N. Nigeria, N. Nigeria 1902, N. Nigeria 1903, N. Nigeria 1903-04, N. Nigeria 1904 (Dr. F. W. Chesnaye. N. Nigeria Regt.) good very fine and rare £1,400-£1,800

Dr. A. L. Lloyd Collection, Bonhams, March 2013.

F. W. Chesnaye, passed in Forensic Medicine at St George’s Hospital, London, in July 1897, and in Surgery at the same hospital in June 1899. A Civil Establishment Medical Officer to Northern Nigeria, he ‘had the onerous responsibility of practising his profession during one of the most turbulent periods of the Protectorate’s history, from July 1900 to March 1904, during which time a large number of Punitive Expeditions were undertaken. Certain rebels, not content with the murder of Local Officials and Civilian Residents, or indeed mere robbery, pillage, smuggling, or slave-trading, had the disturbing habit of eating their prisoners, a pastime that on occasions might at least have lessened Dr. Chesnaye’s work load. So too the use of poisoned arrows, a wound from which normally resulted in death within a few agonising minutes, a grim fate that befell, among others, Major Marsh on the Sokoto-Burmi Expedition of 1903.’

Sold with copied medal rolls confirming all five clasps.