The Richard Magor Collection of Medals Relating to India and Africa, and other Fine Awards

Richard Boycott Magor

Richard Boycott Magor, born at Chelmsford on 11 February 1918, grew up in a family destined to become the biggest private producer of tea in the world. Founded in 1869, the firm of Williamson & Magor soon became one of the pre-eminent growers of tea on the sub-continent of India; much later, under Richard Magor's personal supervision, the company expanded into East Africa, and thus it was that these two imperial locations provided the raison d’etre behind the formation of this remarkable medal collection.

After completing his education in England, Richard Magor joined the family firm and was almost immediately sent to the company's Calcutta offices to learn, with conspicuous success, the business to which he was to devote his adult life. As a champion shot, a superb horseman and a keen pig-sticker, Richard took to India with an enthusiasm he has never lost. It was, in many ways, an enchanted life and one which seems almost dream-like to those succeeding generations who never experienced the Raj in all its pre-War glory. Joining the Calcutta Light Horse (A.F.I.) soon after his arrival in 1938, he was anxious to return to Europe when the Second World War began in September 1939 but his father counselled otherwise, with the result that Richard volunteered for service in India. After basic instruction at the Officers' Training Unit at Belgaum (Bombay), he went on to the School of Artillery at Kakul where, upon completion of his training in 1940, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Royal Artillery (British Service). Joining the 5th (Bombay) Mountain Battery, he was initially posted to Wana, a relatively peaceful station in the North West Frontier province of Waziristan, but where he had his first taste of action against the local dissident tribesmen. In 1941 he was posted to Hyderabad Sind where, as Adjutant to the newly-formed 2nd Indian Anti-Tank Regiment (Indian Army), he was instrumental in bringing it up to strength and ready for combat. This was just as well since, with the bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the eastern theatres of war were about to erupt into a conflict every bit as terrible as anywhere else on the globe.

By the end of December 1941 the Japanese effectively controlled all of Malaya, Singapore was under siege, Hong Kong had fallen and there were already enemy incursions into Thailand. The threat to India suddenly became real as well as imminent and, amongst many such postings, the 2nd Indian Anti-Tank Regiment sailed for Rangoon early in 1942. Richard Magor, soon promoted Captain, survived the jungle warfare better than most but it was a gruelling campaign, fought in appalling conditions that those who were not there can barely comprehend. Nevertheless, as a promising officer, he made his mark early on as General Sir Martin Farndale, KCB, recounts in his History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery: The Far East Theatre, 1941-46, where he describes the battle for the oil fields at Yenangyaung, near Mandalay, on 18 April 1942: 

"With great courage Captain Magor managed to get his guns ready amidst the exploding shells and engaged the enemy at 600 yards ... but was wounded the next day ... Again and again the Mountain Gunners did their stuff when put to the test."

Remaining in Burma until the long and arduous campaign was brought to its conclusion, Richard Magor served at Imphal with his regiment as part of the 23rd Indian Division in 1943-4, but came home to England to be demobbed after a short posting in Hamburg en route.

Once back in civilian life, Richard returned to India to find a 'wind of change' there as independence approached. Against this background of impending upheaval, the company took the decision to expand its activities into East Africa and Richard Magor went to spear-head the establishment of the Kenyan and Tanzanian tea estates, which rapidly developed into a highly productive adjunct to the firm's main operations in Assam. In all, Richard and his wife Julia spent almost twenty years in Kenya; they were there throughout the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s when their daily lives were so fraught with danger that, as they both told me recently, they never sat with their backs to a door and always had their revolvers with them, even at the dinner table! The Magors subsequently returned home in 1965 for Richard to assume the management of the company and they settled in the beautiful house at Wadhurst which they still occupy. Although now retired from the chairmanship of the firm, Richard enjoys the satisfaction of seeing it run by his son Philip, the fourth generation of this family tea dynasty which continues to flourish despite the increasingly corporate nature of modern business.

When Richard Magor came home in 1965, he decided to pursue more actively his long-time interest in military history and that of the British Empire by beginning the medal collection now being dispersed in this catalogue. I first met him in 1968 when, aged 50 and in the prime of his life, he walked into my office at Sotheby's and announced himself as a collector Of all medals relating to the history of British involvement in India and East Africa. In time, his interest in East Africa spread to the rest of the so-called 'dark continent' and, despite the disparity in our ages, he and I quickly became friends. As head of Sotheby's Medal Department, I was soon selling him many of the items offered within these pages, his first major purchase being the Indian Mutiny Victoria Cross to Lieutenant Daunt, Bengal Native Infantry (lot 267) which, when he bought it in June 1973, created a new record price of £2,300 for a VC-how times have changed! For as long as I remained with Sotheby's I could only offer advice on purchases from other sources, but when I left the auction house in 1987 Richard was the first amongst several former clients to ask me to become his buying agent. It was a role I accepted with relish as there can be very few-if any -collectors of real substance as disarmingly charming as Richard Magor. Time and again an important item would appear in an auction catalogue and it was a race to see which of us contacted the other first. Despite his heavy schedule of business commitments which frequently took him to India and Kenya, he followed the activity of the medal market-place with all the shrewdness of a professional trader and only rarely was I able to inform him of something he himself had missed.

Individual medals and groups were bought from many different sources, from auctions as well as from dealers. A number of items, most notably Lieutenant Henderson's famous 'Dawkita' medal (lot 437) came from the Upfiii-Brown collection sold in 1991, but other equally fine pieces came from less celebrated sales where Richard's specialist knowledge gave him the advantage. One of the literal jewels in the collection, the group including the diamond-encrusted insignia of the Order of the Star of India bestowed upon the Viceroy Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (lots 237-266), came into the collection privately, whilst Richard's many business and social contacts in India also enabled bim to acquire some notable rarities virtually unobtainable here in the UK. In point of fact, this tenacious search for new material during his periodic visits to India often took Richard into the back streets of Delhi and the more dubious areas of the city normally closed to foreigners. These expeditions, in company with his faithful local agent Mr Jain, invariably tracked down something interesting which, after the usual haggling of the bazaar, found its way into the collection. These purchases have provided several opportunities for collectors to see 'runs' of medals seldom -if ever -offered together in the same catalogue. To list all the lots of significance in this collection serves no purpose in this foreword when they are self-evident on every page; rather, this introduction is to pay tribute to the collecting instincts of someone who has spent over thirty years amassing one of the finest collections of medals of the British Raj currently in existence and complementing them with a similarly choice assemblage of awards for colonial Africa. Furthermore, readers will also be impressed with the much smaller but equally fine 'general' section, containing a wide-ranging selection of other pieces which fascinated Richard Magot; even though they fitted into neither of his principal collecting areas, and which he was determined to possess.

All modern collectors will be familiar with Richard Magor's African General Service Medals, first published in 1978 and now in its second edition (1993). Indisputably the standard work of reference and the result of the author's own meticulous research over many years, it is easy to forget that this magnum opus is the only work available on its subject and will probably never be superseded. Less well-known but equally groundbreaking was Richard Magor's exhaustive account of "Gifts, Shikar and Medals" relating to visits by successive Princes of Wales to India, published in the Orders & Medals Research Society's Miscellany of Honours, No. 2, 1980, with examples of those various medals offered herein, some for the first time in public auction. Notwithstanding these published efforts, however, it is by his collection that Richard Magor will doubtless be best remembered, and collectors will find much in this catalogue to intrigue and delight them from an era now long gone.

In conversation, Richard Magor refers to himself as "an old India hand", an endearing term used less and less often these days, as those who knew the Raj intimately disappear with the passing years. A true 'Sahib' if ever there was one, as well as a man whose own efforts enriched British East Africa well before the sun set on the Empire, his attempts to preserve that history and those traditions within this collection of medals represents a considerable achievement. I count it as one of the greatest privileges of my life to have assisted him in this endeavour and anyone who has ever met Richard Magor will know instinctively how I feel.

Michael Naxton