Orders, Decorations and Medals

Three: Deputy Surgeon General H. W. Bellew, Indian Medical Service, late Corps of Guides and Army Medical Department

India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Umbeyla (Asst. Surgn., Corps of Guides); Afghanistan 1878-80, 1 clasp, Kabul (Surgn. Major, I.M.S.); Empress of India Medal 1877, silver, unnamed as issued, medals fitted in specially adapted Empress of India Medal case of issue, nearly extremely fine (3) £1200-1600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from the Collection of Brigadier Brian Parritt, C.B.E..

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Henry Walter Bellew was born at Nusserabad on 30 August 1834. He was only seven when his father of the same name was hacked to death at Futtenhabad during the disastrous retreat from Cabul. His father was one of the last six officers making their escape; he and four others were killed and only Dr Brydon made it to Jellalabad to report the disaster. The young Henry Walter Bellew qualified as a Surgeon at St. George’s in 1854, gaining the M.R.C.S. and L.S.A. Entering the Army Medical Department as an Assistant Surgeon in 1854, he served in the Crimea War, 1854-55. He was based at Scutari and whilst there wrote a diary (held by the National Army Museum) in which he gives a personal account of the hardship of the soldiers, the atrocious medical facilities and petty jealousies of the medical staff. He resigned from the A.M.D. in October 1855 and the following month entered the Bengal establishment as an Assistant Surgeon and was posted to the Corps of Guides. In 1857 he accompanied the commanding officer of the Guides - Major H. B. Lumsden, on a military mission to Kandahar - Bellew wrote an account of the mission. At the time of the Indian Mutiny he was still on the N.W. Frontier with the Guides helping to prevent Afghan incursions on the N.W. Frontier. He served in the Umbeyla Campaign of 1863 and was one of the six officers who rode as escort to Colonel Reynall Taylor, commanding 25 horse and four companies of Guides Infantry, on his dangerous mission to compell the Bunerwal tribe to burn down their own villages.

In 1867 he was promoted to Surgeon and in 1873 to Surgeon-Major. In 1869 he was employed as interpreter to the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, and in 1873 he went as interpreter/doctor with Sir R. Pollock on a mission to Seistan and with Sir Douglas Forsythe to the remote areas of Kashgar and Yarkand. For these services he was created a Companion of the Star of India on 6 February 1873. As a ‘Political Officer’ he was awarded the Empress of India Medal in 1877. During the Afghan War of 1878-80 he was again employed as Political Officer/Surgeon. In 1878 he was a member of the Kabul Mission under Sir Neville Chamberlain, which was halted at the entrance to the Khyber Pass and was refused admission by the Emir Sher Ali Khan - thus precipitating the war. Bellew was one of three members of the Political Court charged with inquiring into the circumstances of the attack on the British Residency at Kabul which resulted in the death of the Resident, Sir Louis Cavagnasi, and his staff. After the war he returned to England on sick leave, but returned in 1881 to take up the post of one of the Sanitary Deputy Surgeons General for Bengal. He retired as D.S.G. on 14 November 1886 and died at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire on 26 July 1892. He was the author of 13 books - on the subjects of Afghanistan and medicine. The Dictionary of National Biography reported, ‘Bellew belonged to the School of Anglo Indian officials who have helped to build up and consolidate the British Empire in India. He gained in the highest degree the confidence of the native rulers as well as of their subjects’. Sold with copied research.