Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Major J. P. Pigott, 32nd Foot and Ambulance Corps

Punjab 1848-49, 2 clasps, Mooltan, Goojerat (Captn. J. P. Pigott, 32nd. Foot.); Crimea 1854-56, 3 clasps, Balaklava, Inkermann, Sebastopol, top clasp loose on riband, as issued, unnamed as issued; Turkish Crimea 1855, British issue, unnamed as issued, pierced with ring suspension, mounted court-style, minor edge bruising, slight contact marks, nearly very fine (3) £1400-1800

Provenance: Colonel D. G. B. Riddick Collection of Medals to the Medical Services, Dix Noonan Webb, September 2006.

John Pelling Pigott was commissioned Ensign in the 32nd Foot by purchase on 15 February 1839 and was advanced by purchase to the ranks of Lieutenant on 28 January 1842, and Captain on 19 December 1845. He served with the regiment during the Second Sikh War, and was present at the 1st and 2nd sieges of Mooltan, including the attack on the suburbs on 27 December 1848; the storm and capture of the city; and the surrender of the fortress. He was also present at the surrender of the fort and garrison at Cheniote, and at the battle of Goojerat. Appointed to the Staff in April 1851, and placed on half-pay in August the same year, he subsequently served in the Crimea as one of the three officers of the Ambulance Corps, and for his services throughout the War received the Brevet of Major on 31 March 1856.

When the Crimea War broke out there were, famously, no organised Medical Services. To remedy this lack of provision, the ‘Hospital Conveyance Corps’ or ‘Ambulance Corps’ was created. The corps was recruited from military pensioners and other non-effectives. Their duties were to act as stretcher-bearers in the field, act as hospital orderlies, supply hospital transport, and supply medical staff with servants. The Corps proved an utter failure. Lack of training, the age and infirmity of the pensioners, coupled with their predilection for alcohol and lack of an adequate command structure doomed the Corps from the start. An entry in the diary of Lieutenant (later Major-General Sir) Howard Elphinstone, V.C., for 1854 reads: ‘Noted the innovation of the presence of a newly raised Sanitat Corps for dealing with the wounded. Each division consisted of ten wagons, four being springless with eight seats hung on leather straps; four having springs to carry one severely wounded man each; and two store wagons for medicines. There were three divisions, and so thirty wagons in all for the whole Army.’
The Ambulance Corps was soon replaced, in part by the Land Transport Corps, who transported the sick and wounded after they had been removed from the battlefield, and in 1855 by the Medical Staff Corps, who supplied hospital orderlies and support staff, and who were the forerunners to the Army Hospital Corps and Royal Army Medical Corps.

Sold together with a three-quarter length portrait of Major Pigott, wearing his uniform and three medals, the three medals additionally painted onto his portrait by a later hand. The portrait, oil on canvas, signed ‘M. Fletcher 1890’, has been professionally restored and is within a gilt frame, 820mm x 720mm, with the label ‘Maj. John Pelling Pigott, Ambulance Corps’.