Orders, Decorations and Medals

Family group:

Pair: Alfred Hagger, War Office, who, in common with Thomas Hagger, must have worked in close proximity to Florence Nightingale in the Crimea

Crimea 1854-56, no clasp (Alfred Hagger, War Department), contemporary engraved naming; Turkish Crimea 1855, British issue, Hunt & Roskell type (Alfred Hagger, War Office), contemporary engraved naming, edge nicks, very fine and better

Crimea 1854-56, 1 clasp, Sebastopol (Purveyor’s Clerk T. O. Hagger), contemporary engraved naming, one or two edge bruises, otherwise good very fine (3) £500-550

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Kieran Collection.

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Alfred Hagger was appointed a Clerk 2nd Class to the War Office of the Secretary State of War in February 1852 and it was in this capacity that he was sent to the Crimea to investigate the shortcomings of the Army Medical Department after damning reports had been received from Florence Nightingale - indeed he was specifically sent to assist her at Scutari (see T.N.A. 88/70/L/GM/10 for further details). Appointed a 2nd Class Clerk in the consolidated War Office in April 1865, Hagger retired on a pension of £300 per annum in October 1878 and died in January 1914.

Thomas Oxenham Hagger appears to have been appointed a Purveyor’s Clerk in October 1812, advanced to Deputy Purveyor in September 1839 and been employed at the War Office by the outbreak of hostilities in the Crimea. In common with his brother Alfred, he was sent to the Crimea to investigate the shortcomings of the Army Medical Department after damning reports had been received from Florence Nightingale - in his case at Scutari and Kululi, in addition to investigations carried out in the trenches before Sebastopol (Medal & clasp verified by T.N.A. WO 100/84). Hagger next proceeded to the Cape in early 1857, where he was Purveyor in Charge at Cape Town during the formation of the sanatorium for the reception of the sick and wounded from China and India. Placed on half-pay as a Principal Purveyor to the Forces in 1869, he appears in the War Office List as late as 1884, thereby giving him a 72-year association with that establishment.