Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 6 clasps, Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Wittebergen, South Africa 1901 (Lieut: Hon: A. Littleton. Roberts Horse.) in fitted leather Carrington & Co. case, with the initials ‘A. J. P. L.’ embossed on lid, extremely fine £400-500

Provenance: Sothebys, April 1981.

The Honourable Algernon Joshua Percy Littleton was born in 1878, and was the second son of Edward George Percy Littleton, 3rd Baron Hatherton, C.M.G., of Teddesley Park, Stafford. The latter was formerly Major and Colonel in the Grenadier Guards and sometime Military Secretary to the Governor General of Canada.

Algernon Littleton was educated at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He served during the Second Boer War with Roberts Horse, firstly as a Sergeant (No. 2332), 18 January 1900 - 8 September 1900, and latterly as a Lieutenant, 19 May 1901 - 10 October 1901 (in the remarks column on the medal roll it gives ‘During siege of Ladysmith was attached to Manchester Regt. before joining Roberts Horse). He was also employed as part of the Chief Censor’s Staff at Cape Town. After the war Littleton travelled extensively throughout Tasmania and Australia as a whole. He contracted Multiple Sclerosis, and returned to the UK where he married Alice Maud Lewes in 1913. His wife, the daughter of a former Consul to Shanghai, was a qualified nurse and helped to care for him during the remainder of his life. They resided at “Tendring”, Belle Vue Road, Southbourne, Bournemouth. Littleton died in September 1951.

Sold with letters written to vendor from members of the Hatherton family in the 1980s; a photographic image of the recipient and other research.