Windsor & Eton Humane Society, bronze, obverse impressed, ‘No XIII’; reverse engraved, ‘For Saving Three Lives in the Thames’, unnamed, good very fine, rare £200-250

Ex Preston-Morley Buckinghamshire Collection, D.N.W. 28 March 2002, lot 709; D.N.W. 18 September 1998, lot 329 and Stansfield Collection.

The death by drowning in 1834 of Jack Hall, who had been for nearly 50 years a fisherman and servant of Eton College, led to the formation of the Eton & Windsor Humane Society. The Society prevented many accidents in the summertime by stationing watermen in dangerous spots to warn those unacquainted with the river’s characteristics; in the winter, when the river was frozen, men with suitable drag ropes and other grappling devices were similarly deployed.