Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A K.B.E. and Great War group awarded to Sir Reginald Whitty, late Captain, Royal Army Medical Corps

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, K.B.E. (Civil) Knight Commander’s 2nd type set of insignia, comprising neck badge and breast star, silver, silver-gilt and enamels; 1914-15 Star (Q.M. & Lieut. R. R. Whitty. R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Q.M. & Capt. R. R. Whitty.) extremely fine (5) £700-900

K.B.E. London Gazette 10 June 1948: ‘Reginald Ramson Whitty, Esq., C.B.E., Public Trustee.’

Reginald Ransom Whitty was born on 18 September 1891, in Norwich and educated at Bracondale School in that city and King’s College, London. He was admitted a solicitor in 1913, taking first-class honours and winning the Clement’s Inn and Daniel Reardon prizes. He entered the office of the Public Trustee early in 1914, but his career was interrupted by the outbreak of war, in which he served first in the 4th London Field Ambulance as Captain and Quartermaster and later as Railway Transport Officer at Boulogne.

At the end of hostilities he returned to the Public Trustee Office and in 1920 took first-class honours in LL.B. examinations at London University. He went to Manchester in 1938 as Deputy Public Trustee, and in 1944 was appointed by the Lord Chancellor Public Trustee in succession to Sir Ernest Fass, and also Custodian of Enemy Property for England. He was succeeded by Sir Henry Gregory in this latter appointment in 1948, and in 1949 was advised to retire on medical grounds. He was made C.B.E. in 1944 and in 1948 was advanced to K.B.E. In 1951 he became a director of British Thermostat Company, Ltd., and of Rothermel Corporation. Sir Reginald Whitty died on 6 January 1960.