Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Trooper E. S. Kirkman, Imperial Light Horse and South African Constabulary, late Winnipeg Light Infantry and Matabeleland Relief Force

North West Canada 1885, no clasp, unnamed; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 2 clasps, Relief of Mafeking, Transvaal (915 Tpr., Imp. Lt. Horse) good very fine (2) £400-450

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals relating to the Boer War formed by two brothers.

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Edward Stephen Kirkman was born in 1866/7 in Hampstead, Middlesex. His parents were the Reverend Joshua Kirkman (b. 1829) and his mother Harriet (b. 1834). In the 1871 and 1881 Census the family lived at, 4 Thurlow Road, London and Joshua was the vicar of St Stephen’s Church Hampstead. In 1871, Edward’s siblings were sisters Constance M. (b. 1856 in Suffolk) and Winifred M. (b. 1866) and a brother John P. (b. 1853 in Aberdeen). At the time of the 1881 Census, Edward was a 15 year old scholar at Felstead Grammar School, in Essex.

Living in Canada at the time of Riel’s Second Rebellion of 1885, Kirkman served as a Private in the Winnipeg Light Infantry. He then served with the North West Mounted Police, 1887-93. Then moving to South Africa, he served as a Sergeant in the Matabeleland Relief Force, 1896 for which he was awarded the B.S.A. Company Medal for Rhodesia (not with lot). With the onset of the Boer War, he attested for the Imperial Light Horse at Maritzburg, 11 April 1900, after which he served with the South African Constabulary, November 1901-November 1903. With a quantity of copied service papers and other research.