Orders, Decorations and Medals

A rare Jameson’s Raider’s East & West Africa 1887-1900 Medal and British South Africa Company 1890-97 Medal pair awarded to Mr. H. L. Bernstein, an Armourer in the employ of the Maxim Company, attached West African Frontier Force 1897-98, late Lieutenant, Raaf’s Column

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Matabeleland 1893, no clasp (Lieut. H. Bernstein, Raaf’s Column); East and West Africa 1887-1900, 1 clasp, 1897-98 (Mr. H. L. Bernstein, W.A.F.F.), nearly extremely fine and one of just three such Medal combinations known (2) £1600-1800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of British South Africa Company 1890-97 Medals.

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Collection

Ex A. A. Upfill-Brown Collection, Buckland, Dix & Wood, 4 December 1991 (Lot 299).

Henry Lawrence Bernstein was born in Melbourne, Australia in June 1972, the son of a Polish jeweller and an American mother of Jewish descent.

A confirmed participant in the Matabeleland operations of 1893, when he served as a Lieutenant in Graaf’s Column, he afterwards enlisted as a Trooper in the Artillery Troop of the Mashonaland Mounted Police, in which capacity he accompanied the famous Jameson Raid - captured by the Boers at Doornkop in the Transvaal in January 1896, he was repatriated to England from Durban aboard the Harlech Castle (list of ex-raiders as passengers in The Times of 22 February 1896 refers).

Shortly thereafter, Bernstein joined the Maxim Company at Dartford, and it was in this capacity, as a civilian Armourer, that he accompanied the 1897-98 expeditions in the hinterland of Lagos and the northern territories of the Gold Coast. In fact, according to accompanying research, he ‘found fame as a machine-gun expert and, later, as an explorer in South America’, and served again as a civilian Armourer for the West African Frontier Force during the Great War; sold with further details.