Royal Humane Society, small bronze medal (successful) (Albert. V. Marriott. 26th Jany. 1909.) with integral top riband buckle, suspension slack, good very fine £100-£140

Case No. 36518:

‘The boy [W. Bowen] fell through the ice on the pond 20 yds from the side 12 ft deep... Crawled along the ice which again broke but he caught the boy and got him out alive but he died.’

Albert Victor Marriott was born in Leicester, and was the son of Colour Sergeant J. W. Marriott, Royal Marines. He was a baker in Dowlais, South Wales, and was the Chairman of the Merthyr Swimming Club. The above rescue took place at 1.50pm, 26 January 1909, and is recorded in The Merthyr Express:

‘On Tuesday during the dinner hour Willis Bowen, aged six years, whose father, a collier, resides at No. 1 Penywern-court, Penywern, ventured onto the thin ice of the ‘Fish Pond’ in the neighbourhood, which is drawn upon for the purposes of the Dowlais Works, and fell in. Josiah Morgan, an elder boy, raised an alarm, and one of the first to reach the pond was a baker, an expert swimmer, named Albert Marriott of Vaughan Street, Dowlais. He plunged into the water, and succeeded in bringing the lad to the surface. Despite attempts for more than half an hour to restore animation, by Dr. H. L. Hughes, Mr. Isaac Davies, and P.S. Jones and P.S. Davies, death supervened....’

Marriott died in Merthyr in 1949.

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