Auction Catalogue

8 December 2016

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 145

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8 December 2016

Hammer Price:
£140

The R.S.P.C.A. Medal awarded to Captain the Lord Denham, M.C., Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, later Member of Parliament for Buckingham and Comptroller of the Household, for his work on the Parliamentary select committee investigation into the welfare of performing animals, 1937-39

Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals Queen Victoria Medal (The Rt. Honble. Lord Denham. M.C. 1939.) edge bruise, very fine £60-80

M.C. London Gazette 1 January 1917.

George Edward Wentworth Bowyer, 1st Baron Denham, was born on 16 January 1885, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel W. G. Bowyer, Royal Engineers, and was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1910, and served during the Great War in France and Belgium with the Buckinghamshire Battalion (Territorial), Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry from 1915-17, and on the Staff from 1917-18. He was wounded on 6 May 1915, was twice Mentioned in Despatches, and was awarded the Military Cross. Elected Member of Parliament for Buckingham in December 1918, he served as Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1926-29, and was appointed Comptroller of H.M. Household in 1935. Knighted in 1929, and created 1st Baronet Bowyer, of Weston Underwood in the County of Buckingham on 21 January 1933, he was elevated to the Peerage as 1st Baron Denham on 24 May 1937. He was awarded the R.S.P.C.A. Queen Victoria Medal in 1939 in recognition of his work on the Parliamentary select committee investigation the welfare of performing animals.

Lord Denham married the Hon. Daphne Mitford, daughter of the 1st Baron Redesdale and his wife Lady Clementina Ogilvy, daughter of the 5th Earl of Airlie, (and the aunt of the famous Mitford sisters) on 27 February 1919, with whom he had two sons and one daughter. He died on 30 November 1948, and was succeeded to the Barony by his only surviving son (his eldest son having been killed in action during the Second World War), who is still living.