Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The rare East and Central Africa medal awarded to the Reverend M. J. Hall, Church Missionary Society, Uganda, who drowned during a storm on Lake Victoria, 15 August 1900, and had two works published about his life - including one by his sister titled In Full and Glad Surrender: The Story of the Life and Work of Martin J. Hall (C.M.S. Missionary in Uganda)

East and Central Africa 1897-99, 1 clasp, Uganda 1897-98 (Rev: Martin. J. Hall.) good very fine £1,000-£1,400

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

View
Collection

Buckland Dix and Wood, March 1997

Nineteen awards were made to the clergy, 13 Church of England and 6 Roman Catholic.

The Reverend Martin Hall studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge and Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He was ordained Deacon in 1889, and held a living at St. Thomas, Birmingham, 1889-1892. Reverend Hall joined the Church Missionary Society in Uganda in 1895. He transferred from Ngogwe, in September 1896, to the Church Missionary Society mission station at Bukassa, in the Sese Islands, on Lake Victoria.

Reverend Hall drowned when his canoe capsized on Lake Victoria, 15 August 1900. Further details were offered in the Surrey Mirror, 30 November 1900:

‘Particulars have just reached the Church Missionary Society of the accident on the Victoria Nyanza in which the Rev. Martin J. Hall lost his life. On August 9th he and his two Baganda boys and two Basese boatmen left Nassa to cross the lake to Uganda in Mr. Hall’s canvas sailing boat, which was built in sections. All went well until the 15th. At daybreak they left camp at Majita (three or four days’ canoe journey from Nassa), and a terrific storm came on, with terrible waves, and the first three sections of the boat filled with water. The men baled out as hard as possible with bucket and saucepans, but to no purpose. Finally Mr. Hall took up his tent and table to throw overboard to lighten the boat, and apparently the act of doing this capsized it. The five occupants climbed up and sat on the keel of the upturned boat for some time, but the wind and the force of the waves probably broke the airtight compartments, for the boat sank. The two Basese managed to cling to the floating table. One boy sank almost at once, and very soon Mr. Hall, who was trying to undress, being a strong swimmer, sank too. He was carried some hundreds of yards from the men by the force of the wind. His hat and coat came to the surface as he sank. Next his other sank. At noon the storm abated, and a canoe put off and rescued the two Bases.’

The Church Missionary Society published Through my Spectacles in Uganda, Or, The Story of a Fruitful Field by The Rev. M. J. Hall in 1898. His sister, F. E. R. Hall wrote In Full and Glad Surrender: The Story of the Life and Work of Martin J. Hall (C.M.S. Missionary in Uganda), which was published in 1905.

Sold with copied research, including a photographic image of the recipient.