Pair: Captain D. E. Hope, Chinese Labour Corps, late Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and North Staffordshire Regiment

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith (Lieut. D. E. Hope, 2/N. Staff. R.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Lieut. D. E. Hope, 2/N. Staff. R.), official duplicate issues claimed in 1919, nearly extremely fine (2) £200-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the North Staffordshire Regiment.

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Douglas Edmund Hope, who was born in 1873, was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the North Staffordshire Regiment direct from the ranks of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry in May 1900, in which latter corps he had participated in the relief of Ladysmith operations. He was subsequently invalided home, still suffering from an injury received whilst scouting at Botha’s Pass, when his horse was shot and fell on him, crushing his back and right thigh.

Notwithstanding the serious nature of his injuries, Hope returned to South Africa in early 1901, when he was employed as an Assistant Railway Staff Officer. He was, however, once more invalided home, where he was placed on half-pay in April 1903.
Hope was re-employed as a Railway Control Officer in the U.K. in September 1914 and then appointed a Staff Captain in Southern Command. He then appears to have served in Equatorial Africa from May 1915 to July 1916 and as a Captain in the Chinese Labour Corps in France from July 1918 until the war’s end; sold with copied research.