Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria. Including a superb collection of medals to the King’s German Legion, Police Medals from the Collection of John Tamplin and a small collection of medals to the Irish Guards

Five: Major J. R. Perrins, Army Service Corps, late Dundee Town Guard, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, Field Intelligence Department and Southern Rhodesia Volunteer Forces

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Talana (J. R. Perrins, Dundee Tn. Gd.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Lieut., F.I.D.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt.); Efficiency Decoration, G.VI.R., Southern Rhodesia, the reverse officially inscribed, ‘Mjr. J. R. Perrins’, the Boer War awards later impressed issues, generally good very fine and better (5) £280-320

John Rose Perrins, who was born in Worcestershire in 1880, settled with his parents in Natal in 1896. Volunteering for active duty in the Boer War, he served in the Dundee Town Guard at Talana and was afterwards commissioned into Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, becoming ‘one of the eighty men of that unit who escaped alive from Spion Kop’. Latterly a Lieutenant in the Field Intelligence Department, he ended the War entitled to the Queen’s Medal with clasps for Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, Talana, Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith and Laing’s Nek, in addition to the King’s Medal with two clasps.

After the War, Perrins joined the Transvaal Government Service, but in 1909 he went into farming in the Eastern Transvaal. The advent of hostilities found him volunteering for service in the Remount Department for the East African Campaign, active employment that was followed by further service out in France with the Horse Transport Service. Then in 1920, he moved to Rhodesia, where he purchased a ranch at Lancaster, near Bulawayo, and afterwards became Vice President of the Matabeleland Farmer’s Union. Perrins was also an active member of the Southern Rhodesian Volunteer Forces, serving as Commandant of No. 17 Military District for some 21 years. He was awarded the Efficiency Decoration in 1937.