TOPIC:

For those who collect medical units' medals.

www.cocollector.co.uk/viewphoto.php?shoph=51370&phqu=10

Patrick

Thanks Patrick......

Especially when the bank account is near zero.......

Mike

QSAMIKE wrote: Thanks Patrick......

Especially when the bank account is near zero.......

Mike

Well, Mike, now that his brother's QSA (also Langman Hospital) has been split off the medals are actually cheaper! Liverpool Medals offered them all in 2011 for GBP785.

Pictures courtesy of Noonan's

[ IGS 1854 ];
Egypt (1) Suakin 1885 (Surgn. M. O’C. Drury. Med: Staff.;
[ QSA ]
Khedive’s Star, dated 1884, unnamed as issued



Maurice O’Connor Drury joined the Army Medical Service as a surgeon in July 1880, and advanced to surgeon major in July 1892. He served in the Sudan Campaign of 1885 (Medal with clasp, and Khedive’s Star), and then with the Burmese Expedition 1885-86 (Mentioned in Despatches, Medal with clasp). He was appointed to the military command of the Langman Hospital in January 1900:

‘This hospital, which consists of one hundred beds, with marquees and thirty-five tents, has left in the Oriental for South Africa. The hospital, unlike other civil ones, is not a base-hospital, but is going to “the front,” where its services are greatly needed.

The greatest thought and care have been bestowed on its equipment, and no expense spared to provide, not only the most complete outfit of surgical appliances, medicines, stretchers, etc, but also innumerable comforts and nourishments that will so much help to alleviate the sufferings and hasten the recovery of the sick and wounded.

Mr Archie L. Langman (Lieutenant Middlesex Yeomanry), son of the donor, will accompany it as Treasurer.... Mr Robert O’Callaghan, F.R.CS., of Harley Street, Surgeon to the French Hospital in London, is Surgeon-in-Chief, and is a specialist of repute in abdominal surgery. As gunshot-wounds of the abdomen have been very frequent and serious during the present war, his services will be of special value to our soldiers at “the front.” Mr C. Gibbs, F.R.C.S., of Harley Street, Assistant Surgeon Charing Cross Hospital, is Surgeon.... Dr. Conan Doyle is Physician.... Major M. O’C. Drury, R.A.M.C., who has been appointed by the War Office as the Army Medical Officer in charge of the Langman Hospital....

The staff of this hospital was inspected by the Duke of Cambridge on Feb. 21 at the headquarters of the St. George’s Rifles, Davies Street, Portman Square. On the entry of the Duke of Cambridge, the staff was called to order, by Major O’C. Drury, R.A.M.C., the military officer in command. The Duke carefully inspected the men, and the medical officers were presented to him. The Duke then, in a short speech, congratulated the staff on having the opportunity of serving their Queen and Country in South Africa...’ (The Sketch, 7 March 1900)

The same publication also followed the progress of the hospital in Bloemfontein, and published photographs of Drury showing Lord Roberts around the hospital, and Dr Conan Doyle attending to the sick. The latter recalled his time there, and Drury, thus:

When we were complete we were quite a good little unit... We were compelled to have one military chief, as a bond with the War Office, and this proved to be one Major Drury, a most amusing Irishman who might have come right out of Lever. To leave service and to “marry a rich widow with a cough” was, he said, the height of his ambition. He was a very pleasant companion in civil life, but when it came to duties which needed tact and routine he was rather too Celtic in his methods, and this led to friction and occasional rows in which I had to sustain the point of Mr Langman. I have no doubt he thought me an insubordinate dog, and I thought him - well, he has passed away now, and I remember him best as a very amusing companion.’ (Memories and Adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle refers)

Drury resided at Cynghordy Hall, Carmarthenshire, and was killed in a shooting accident there in December 1906. He was climbing over a fence, when he slipped and fell with his gun going off in the process.

Drury also features as a character in Kieran McMullen’s Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Boer War Waggon.

I have yet to locate his QSA. It was not issued off the roll for Langman's Hospital (WO100/225p230). I presume one was issued and from the RAMC?

Picture courtesy of Noonan's

QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Pte. W. Milton, Langman Hospital) officially impressed naming

Private W. Milton is confirmed on the roll of the Langman Hospital, which lists 58 names but this figure includes 12 nursing sisters who received the medal under the auspices of the RAMC.

Established by Mr. John Langman, this private hospital opened its tented wards for the first time in April 1900, on the cricket ground at Bloemfontein, where, a few days later, it was inspected by Lord Roberts, V.C., who said of it in a telegram to Langman back in London, that its ‘value to our RAMC and wounded cannot be overestimated’. Indeed, under the efficient command of Langman’s son, Archibald, actually a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry, the hospital eventually treated 1211 cases, latterly at a new location in Pretoria. Of these patients, 278 returned to duty, 875 were transferred to other hospitals and 58 died.


Among the handful of Surgeons employed on the 45-strong staff, 18 of whom were from the St. John Ambulance Brigade, was Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, MD, who had, from the outset, been invited by John Langman to assist in the selection of suitable personnel - it is not without interest therefore that Corporal Weston Burt was, like Conan Doyle, a resident of Southsea, a fact that suggests they may well have been local friends. Be that as it may, both men would certainly have shared in the horrific scenes caused by ever-growing numbers of enteric victims, the famous author being compelled to write:
‘Our hospital was no worse off than the others, and as there were many of them the general condition of the town [Bloemfontein] was very bad. Coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average of sixty a day. A sickening smell came from the stricken town. Once when I had ridden out to get an hour or two of change, and was at least six miles from the town, the wind changed and the smell was all around me. You could smell Bloemfontein long before you could see it. Even now if I felt that lowly death smell compounded of disease and disinfectants my heart would sink within me.’


The Hospital was eventually given as a free gift by John Langman to the Government in November 1900, complete with all its equipment, tentage and supplies - he was created a Baronet in 1906, while his son, Archibald, received prompter reward by way of a CMG in 1902. Conan Doyle, too, was among the ex-Langman staff honoured, receiving a knighthood, although he later claimed this was in response to the publication of his pamphlet, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct.