Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Syria (A. B. Cutfield, Asst. Surgn.) very fine £800-£1,000

Alfred Baker Cutfield was born in 1815 in Deal, Kent, son of John Cutfield, a retired Surveying Master in the Royal Navy. He was apprenticed to Mr Nathaniel Grant, Apothecary, of 21 Thayer Street, London, for a period of five years from 3 December 1829, and from 1831-35 was also a student of the North London Hospital (later University College Hospital, London). Following completion of his studies he passed the examinations for Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) on 5 January 1836, and as a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA) on 17 March 1836. Shortly after qualification he was appointed an Assistant Surgeon in the Medical Service of the Royal Navy with seniority from 25 March 1836. His first appointment was to R.N. Hospital, Haslar, in Gosport, where he remained until 3 August 1837, when he was discharged to H.M.S. Edinburgh. During 1838-39 the ship was part of a squadron looking after British interests on the coast of Mexico. Edinburgh returned to Portsmouth in August 1839 and shortly thereafter Cutfield passed the necessary examinations to qualify him for consideration as a candidate for the future position of Surgeon.

The Edinburgh set sail again in September 1839 for the Mediterranean. In July 1840 she was despatched to patrol off the coast of Syria, and in November 1840 was part of the combined fleet under Admiral Sir Robert Stopford which bombarded and retook the town of Acre, which had been held by the Egyptians since 1832, and returned it to Ottoman rule. For his services at the Siege of Acre, Cutfield was one of just five Assistant Surgeons specially promoted to Surgeon by warrant dated 4 November 1840. He subsequently received the N.G.S. medal for Syria, and the St Jean D’Acre silver medal conferred by the Sultan of Turkey.

Cutfield, after a short period on the Navy Half-Pay, subsequently joined H.M.S. Champion, as Surgeon, and served on board this sloop from June 1841 to November 1844, for the most part off the coast of South America. During this time, while in Mexico in May 1843, he was subjected to an unprovoked assault by two Mexican sentries, suffering injuries to his face from being struck by the butt of a musket of one of them, resulting in a formal complaint to the Mexican Authorities. After his service in Champion, Cutfield was again placed on Half-Pay, and was allowed on several occasions to turn down further appointments on various grounds including his wife’s confinement and his own ill-health. However, having been found fit to serve in February 1855 and declining an appointment to H.M.S. Hastings ‘For service with Seamen & Marines in the Crimea’, he was finally removed from the Navy List on 5 March 1855, his total service since 1836 amounting to 8 years and 4 months.

Following a short-lived partnership with Robert Woollaston as Surgeons and Apothecaries in Tottenham, Cutfield worked as a General Practitioner in Deal, Kent. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in January 1859, and the following year qualified as a Doctor of Medicine at Aberdeen University. He died at Deal on 11 May 1863, and is buried there at St George’s Church.

Sold with copied record of service and much other research.