Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War gold memorial locket of Lieutenant R. G. Hunter, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

A fine locket by Solomon Blanckensee & Son. Ltd., 35mm, gold (9ct., 13.92g, hallmarks for Birmingham 1918) with top wearing loop, rose gold to exterior, yellow gold to interior, bearing the Regimental crest of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders engraved to obverse and monogram 'R.G.H.' to reverse, with miniature portrait of the recipient to interior in full officer's dress uniform with tied lock of hair mounted behind glass lunettes, further engraved to interior 'Lieut R. G. Hunter, 7th. A. & S. H. Born 26 Sept. 1892, Fell at Roeux, France, 23 Apl. 1917.’, extremely fine £300-£400

Robert Gibson Hunter was born in Falkirk on 26 September 1892, the youngest son of iron works founder Robert Hunter of Glenfuir Mansion House, Falkirk. Educated at Morrison's Academy, Crieff, and Edinburgh University, he graduated Master of Arts (1913) and took employment as a law apprentice with Messrs. Miller Thomson and Co., in Edinburgh. A member of the University O.T.C., Hunter began the process of studying for a Bachelor of Law degree in 1914, but this was soon placed on hold upon his appointment to a commission in the 7th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, in February 1915. 

Posted to France 28 July 1915, Hunter was advanced Lieutenant in 1916 and was killed in action in command of "A" Company, 7th Battalion, on the Western Front. A contemporary newspaper article adds a little more information:
'In a letter to the recipient's mother, his C.O. wrote: "It is with the greatest regret that I have to tell you that your son was killed on the 23rd April 1917 while gallantly leading his Company in the attack. He was doing splendidly, and was proving himself a most capable officer, while his cheery disposition always encouraged the men. We will all feel his loss very much...'

Hunter is buried at Level Crossing Cemetery in the Pas-de-Calais, France. A short while later his mother would hear the news that another son, Captain Archibald Smith Hunter M.C., was killed on 29 August 1918, her third child lost to war following the death of Lieutenant John Hunter during the South African Campaign in 1900.

Sold with a copied photograph of the recipient in military uniform from which the miniature portrait was posthumously modelled.

For the Queen’s South Africa Medal awarded to the recipient’s brother, see Lot 395.