Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Paardeberg, South Africa 1901 (R. B. Stamford, Surgeon.) housed in a fitted Elkington, London, case, extremely fine £200-240

Robert Basil Stamford ‘was educated at Repton and entered Guy’s Hospital in 1890. ‘On the outbreak of the Boer War he was one of the first civilian surgeons to offer his services, and after serving for one year, he contracted a severe attack of enteric fever, and was invalided home. On 30 September 1908 he received the King’s commission to act on the staff of the 5th Northern General Hospital, and on the outbreak of the Great War was called up. He continued to served during the duration, and did very valuable work as a surgeon. He retired his commission with the rank of Captain on 30 September 1921.’ (Recipient’s obituary in the British Medical Journal refers).

In December 1919 he married Mrs. Emma Pauline Cunliffe-Owen, the widow of the late Edward Cunliffe-Owen, who during the Great War had famously raised two Battalions of Royal Fusiliers, the first Battalions to be raised by a lady for over 100 years. A past-President of the Leicester Medical Society and former Chairman of the Leicester and Rutland Division of the British Medical Association, Stamford died in May 1935.