Orders, Decorations and Medals

Family group:

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1900 (Sergt. A. Burt, Langman Hospital), date on last clasp (to which the recipient was not entitled) privately altered to ‘1900’, rank re-engraved and otherwise officially re-impressed, polished, nearly very fine

Four: Acting Staff Sergeant W. H. Burt, Army Service Corps, late Langman Hospital

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Corpl. W. Burt, Langman Hospital); 1914-15 Star (S4-091005 Pte. W. H. Burt, A.S.C.); British War and Victory Medals (S4-091005 A.-S.-Sjt. W. H. Burt, A.S.C.), the first with officially re-impressed naming, generally very fine and rare (5) £400-500

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

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Established by Mr. John Langman, this private hospital opened its tented wards for the first time in April 1900, on the cricket ground at Bloemfontein, where, a few days later, it was inspected by Lord Roberts, V.C., who said of it in a telegram to Langman back in London, that its ‘value to our R.A.M.C. and wounded cannot be overestimated’. Indeed, under the efficient command of Langman’s son, Archibald, actually a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry, the hospital eventually treated 1211 cases, latterly at a new location in Pretoria. Of these patients, 278 returned to duty, 875 were transferred to other hospitals and 58 died.

Among the handful of Surgeons employed on the 45-strong staff, 18 of whom were from the St. John Ambulance Brigade, was Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., he of Sherlock Holmes fame, who had, from the outset, been invited by John Langman to assist in the selection of suitable personnel - it is not without interest therefore that Corporal Weston Burt was, like Conan Doyle, a resident of Southsea, a fact that suggests they may well have been local friends. Be that as it may, both men would certainly have shared in the horrific scenes caused by ever-growing numbers of enteric victims, the famous author being compelled to write:

‘Our hospital was no worse off than the others, and as there were many of them the general condition of the town [Bloemfontein] was very bad. Coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average of sixty a day. A sickening smell came from the stricken town. Once when I had ridden out to get an hour or two of change, and was at least six miles from the town, the wind changed and the smell was all around me. You could smell Bloemfontein long before you could see it. Even now if I felt that lowly death smell compounded of disease and disinfectants my heart would sink within me.’

The Hospital was eventually given as a free gift by John Langman to the Government in November 1900, complete with all its equipment, tentage and supplies - he was created a Baronet in 1906, while his son, Archibald, received prompter reward by way of a C.M.G. in 1902. Conan Doyle, too, was among the ex-Langman staff honoured, receiving a knighthood, although he later claimed this was in response to the publication of his pamphlet, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct.

Sold with an original printed letter, and an old copy thereof, from John Langman, forwarding Corporal Weston Burt’s Queen’s South Africa Medal, dated 14 November 1901, and addressed to him at ‘77 Castle Road, Southsea’ (‘I greatly appreciated all the good work you did in the Hospital and would have liked to have been able to tell you so personally if a presentation could have been arranged ... ’); together with original portrait photographs of both brothers, the one of Weston Burt by Barkshire Brothers of 233 Albert Road, Southsea, further evidence of a direct link with Conan Doyle.