Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War C.M.G., D.S.O. group of eight awarded to Colonel Owen Richards, Royal Army Medical Corps

The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G., Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, with neck cravat, in Garrards, London case of issue; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel, complete with top bar, slight enamel damage to wreath; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (O. Richards, Civ. Surgeon, I.Y. Hosp.); 1914 Star (Lieut., R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Col.), these five mounted as worn; Defence Medal, unnamed; Egypt, Order of the Nile, 2nd Class set of insignia by Lattes, Cairo, neck badge and breast star, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, with neck cravat; together with a mounted group of seven miniature dress medals: Order of St. Michael & St. George, gold and enamel, mounted singly; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., gold and enamel, with top bar; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal; 1914 Star); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf; Egypt, Order of the Nile, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, good very fine and better (16) £1200-1500

C.M.G. London Gazette 3 June 1918. ‘For services rendered in connection with Military Operations in France & Flanders’.

D.S.O. London Gazette 23 June 1915. ‘Owen Richards, M.D., F.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C. For distinguished service in the field’.

M.I.D. London Gazette 22 June 1915; 1 January 1916.

Owen William Richards was born on 30 September 1873, the third son of Rev. H. W. P. R. Owens, Rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Prebendary of St. Paul’s. He was educated at Eton (King’s Scholar, 1887-92) and New College, Oxford (Wykeham Prize Fellow, 1898-1905). He received his medical and surgical training at Guy’s Hospital and became a M.R.C.S. Eng. 1902; L.R.C.P. Lond. 1902; M.B., B.Ch. 1902 (Oxford). Latterly he became a F.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P.

During the Boer War he served as a Civilian Surgeon in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital. With the onset of the Great War he was commissioned into the R.A.M.C. and as a Temporary Captain, was awarded the D.S.O. in 1915. He attained the rank of Temporary Colonel, R.A.M.C., in November 1917. For his wartime services, he was, in addition twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the C.M.G. After the war he became Professor of Clinical Surgery at the Egyptian Government School of Medicine, 1919-24, for which service he was awarded the Order of the Nile. He died on 18 April 1949.

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