The Boer War medal awarded to Captain and Quartermaster B. R. Howell, of the Langman Hospital in South Africa

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Capt. & Qr. Mr. B. R. Howell, Langman Hosptl.) nearly extremely fine and scarce £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Awards to Civilians from the Collection of John Tamplin.

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Bennett R. Howell was appointed Quartermaster on 29 October 1887, of the Northern District, 4th Division, Volunteer Medical Staff Corps, whose Headquarters were in Manchester. In October 1894, he was granted the honorary rank of Captain, which rank he was permitted to retain when he resigned his commission in November 1898. Howell served in the Boer War in this rank and joined the Hospital formed by Mr John Lawrence Langman. This private Hospital, known as the Langman Hospital, was equipped by Langman who undertook to maintain it for six months. Langman’s son, Archibald, a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry, accompanied it as manager and treasurer. Of the medical staff, Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., was a physician, and ‘Mr Howell is quartermaster’. The whole personnel amounted to about 45, of whom 18 were from the St John Ambulance Brigade. The tented Hospital opened on the cricket ground at Bloemfontein in April 1900, and was inspected on the 11th by Lord Roberts, V.C., who said of it in a telegram to Mr Langman in London, that its ‘value to our R.A.M.C. and wounded cannot be overestimated’. The Hospital was eventually given to the Government with all its equipment, tentage and supplies, by Langman as a free gift in November 1900. It had treated over 1200 cases during the seven months of its existance.