Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Volunteer W. Emberson, Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve, a Missionary of the Zambezi Industrial Mission based in proximity to John Chilembwe’s Mission and the Bruce Estates, who kept a journal during the Chilembwe Rebellion of January 1915

British War and Victory Medals (584 Vol. W. Emberson. Nyasaland V.R.) generally good very fine or better (2) £180-£220

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from an Africa Collection.

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William Wilfred Emberson ‘in 1915... a bachelor, was an evangelist member of the Zambezi Industrial Mission (Z.I.M.) based at Mitsidi, situated to the south-west of Michuru Mountain in proximity both to John Chilembwe’s Providence Industrial (P.I.M.) at Mbombwe and the vast Bruce Estates centred on Magomero. It was at Magomero that the general manager of Bruce Estates, William Jarvis Livingstone, was brutally murdered and decapitated in front of his wife and children by Chilembwe’s followers during an attack on his house during the evening of 23 January 1915...’ (The Chilembwe Rising and William Emberson: an Unpublished Missionary’s Account, by D. Stuart-Mogg, as appeared in The Society of Malawi Journal Vol. 72)

Emberson kept a confidential journal during the Chilembwe Rebellion of 1915. Extracts of this unpublished journal were printed in the above in 2019, and reflect a man fearful of his own safety during the early hours of the rebellion in Nyasaland moving on to recording events like happening on the bloody violence of an execution of prisoners by a firing squad made up of Nyasaland Volunteer Reservists in Blantyre. Diary excerpts include:

“I was sitting on a stone as a chair, when I saw one of our Mitsidi men come along. I began to wonder right off. Then he handed me a small note which made my blood run cold. It ran as follows: “Dear Mr. Stewart, If Mr Emberson has not gone to Kombe stop him. Natives have risen and attacked Mandala; come her in meantime”....

On leaving Mr Holmes and going down to my lonely house to spend the night by myself I did not feel at all comfortable. I locked all the doors and fastened the windows as a little precaution, and hid my razors, and noted where my gun was but would not load it so that it could not be said that I wanted to shoot.”

Cinderella’s Soldiers erroneously gives Emberson as additionally entitled to A.G.S. with ‘Nyasaland 1915’ clasp and 1914-15 Star. The above is his full entitlement.

Sold with copied research, including photographic image of recipient.