REVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDALS & MILITARIA: 17 JANUARY

As expected, the Operation Jaywick medal group to Acting Sergeant, later Major Ronald George ‘Taffy’ Morris of the Royal Army Medical Corps went well over its £80,000 high estimate to sell for £120,000.

Meanwhile a medal for an unusual act of endurance and valour also sold above its high estimate. This was a Suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union Medal awarded to Miss Evelyn Hambling.

Evelyn Hambling was employed by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) at their London Headquarters, at Clement’s Inn, where she worked alongside such luminaries as Beatrice Sanders, Jessie Kenney, and Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst herself. Her work involved planning and co-ordinating particular acts of militancy, such as the accosting or ‘pestering’ of Cabinet ministers, as well as arranging meetings and other publicity stunts.

She was briefly imprisoned immediately after the outbreak of the Great War, and her WSPU Medal for Valour relates to this incarceration.

This was an extraordinary occurrence as her hunger strike began just three days after Home Secretary Reginald McKenna had offered to release any woman who undertook not to break the law again, and just as the leaders of the Suffragette movement were beginning to acknowledge that they had to cease activities in light of the war.

On the day Hambling began her hunger strike McKenna announced that all WSPU prisoners would be freed without condition. She concluded her hunger strike on the day that Emmeline Pankhurst issued a circular letter to her membership announcing that the campaign was suspended, and the last prisoners were released. (see p.179, Women of the Right Spirit, Paid Organisers of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 1904-18, by Krista Cowman)

The 22mm silver medal is inscribed ‘Hunger Strike’ to the obverse, with the reverse named ‘Evelyn Hambling’. The suspension bar is dated ‘Aug 10th. & 12th. 1914’ and comes complete with the integral top ‘For Valour’ brooch bar.

Presented in its original case of issue, the inside silk interior lining of lid carries the following gold blocked inscription: “Presented to Evelyn Hambling. by the Women’s Social & Political Union in recognition of a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship a great principle of political justice was vindicated.”

The estimate was £6,000-8,000, but the hammer fell at £11,000.