Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Family Group:

Four: Mr. E. R. Burdon, British Committee, French Red Cross
British War and Victory Medals (E. R. Burdon); France, Third Republic, Medaille de La Reconnaissance, bronze, unnamed, with gilt laurel spray pin clasp; Medaille de l’Union des Femmes de France, ‘Honneur au Devouement’ silvered medal for Red Cross service, unnamed, mounted as worn, very fine

Four: Mrs. H Burdon, British Committee, French Red Cross
British War and Victory Medals (H. Burdon); France, Third Republic, Medaille de La Reconnaissance, bronze, unnamed, with gilt laurel spray pin clasp; Medaille de l’Union des Femmes de France, ‘Honneur au Devouement’ silvered medal for Red Cross service, unnamed, with card box of issue for one of the French awards, edge bruise to BWM otherwise nearly extremely fine (8) £300-£400

Edward Russell Burdon was born in Peking in 1870, the son of Bishop John Shaw Burdon, Chaplain of the British Legation and Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong. The 1881 Census shows him as a pupil at a school in Mill Street Potton. In 1891 he was a Clerk living at Albert Rd in Altrincham. Educated at Sidney College, Cambridge, he subsequently became a University Lecturer in Forestry at Cambridge. In the 1911 Census, the family home was at Royston Hertfordshire, but also of Griante, Lake Como, Italy. He married Jane Eliza Helen Nathalie Shand, Lady Alford, the widow of Sir Edward Fleet Alford, in 1906. She was better known as ‘Helen’.

Jane Eliza Helen Nathalie Burdon, née Shand, was born in Mangalore, Madras in 1861, the daughter of the late Lieutenant Colonel John Shand, Madras Staff Corps. She married firstly Sir Edward Alford, and subsequently Edward Russell Burdon.

The medal roll shows Edward and Helen Burdon as consecutive entries with exactly the same details, they proceeded to France together in November 1916 and returned home in November 1918, serving as Masseur and Masseuse with the French Red Cross. As well as a residence in the U.K. they also retained a property at Lake Como in Italy.

Edward Burdon died in Bexhill-on-Sea on 5 January 1945, and his wife also died there in 1949.