Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Stoker 1st Class J. Bracegirdle, Royal Navy, late Royal Marine Light Infantry

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Pte., R.M.L.I., H.M.S. Monarch); 1914-15 Star (310768 Sto. 1, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (310768 Sto. 1, R.N.); Defence Medal 1939-45, contact marks and edge bruising, nearly very fine or better (5) £180-200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Barrett J. Carr Collection of Boer War Medals.

View
Collection

812 no-clasp Queen’s South Africa Medals were awarded to the ship’s company of H.M.S. Monarch.

James Bracegirdle was born at Knutsford, near Chester in February 1879 and enlisted in the Royal Marine Light Infantry in March 1897. Posted to the Plymouth Division, he served in H.M.S. Monarch from November 1899 to June 1900, a period that witnessed her acting as the depot ship for the Cape Squadron, and, no doubt, stints of guard duty for Bracegirdle, either on attachment to the hulk Penelope, or at the P.O.W. camp for Boers in Simonstown. He also served in the Doris on the South Africa station from June to December 1900.

In September 1906, he transferred to the Royal Navy and was appointed Stoker 2nd Class, and by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 was serving as a Stoker 1st Class in the cruiser Diana. He remained similarly employed until January 1917, when he joined the Hong Kong establishment Tamar, where he served until the end of the War. Bracegirdle, who was demobilised in September 1919, joined the New Coast Guard Force in the following month and served for many years in that capacity at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

Sold with three original portrait photographs, one of him in the uniform of a Private, R.M.L.I., with his wife, and the other two of him in Coast Guard uniform, the latest taken post-1945, his ribands including the Defence Medal.