Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Royal Humane Society, small bronze medal (successful) (Revd. Arthur Frazer Sim, B.A. 16th. March 1889.) in embossed case of issue, lacking top riband buckle, otherwise extremely fine £200-240

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to Chaplains formed by Philip Mussell.

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R.H.S. Case no. 24,302: ‘At 5:30 pm on 16 March 1889 a child of about 6 fell accidentally off the quay into the River Wear in Sunderland and was carried rapidly downstream. The tide was running out very fast, at a depth of 10 to 15 feet. The Reverend Arthur Fraser Sim, Curate of St. John’s, Sunderland, coming to this place at once, took off his coat and hat, plunged in and swam out to the child, and succeeded in bringing him to the quay wall where he was assisted out.’

Arthur Fraser Sim was born in 1861 and awarded his Royal Humane Society bronze medal for saving life at Sunderland on 16 March 1889. He subsequently served with the Universities’ Mission Church in Africa, and was stationed at Kota Kota, near the town of Jumbe, on the shore of Lake Nyasa. ‘To him the call to Africa had come in no indistinct tones, and he gave up his well-beloved work in England, saying to one who asked if after all the Africans were worth the sacrifice: “HE is worth it all!”
Soon a piece of land was bought, and with William Kanyopolea, as his assistant, they built a house: “My house is mud, with a straw roof; its door is so low I have almost to crawl in. I and my teacher William, and a small boy live in it. It is our church, too. We have prayers morning and evening, and on Sundays I celebrate Holy Communion in it. The veranda will be my school at first.”
By April he had ninety boys and ten girls in his school in the baraza. At night the men came to class, saying after a Scripture lesson: “Now our eyes are opened.” But the loneliness of a new station was apparent when, at Easter, there could only be three communicants.
"The mud altar was covered with a white frontal, which the ladies at Likoma had made us. On Easter Monday and Tuesday we had games- long jump, wide jump, egg-and-spoon race, with limes for eggs.”’ (The History of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa 1859-1898 refers).
Sim died of Fever at Kota Kota on 29 October 1895. A memorial window in his memory was placed in St. Aidan’s Church, West Hartlepool. Following his death The Life and Letters of the Rev. Arthur Fraser Sim was published.