The Jack Webb Collection of Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Cape Colony (739 Pte. G. B. Lee, C.I.V.) good very fine £100-£140

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Jack Webb Collection of Medals and Militaria.

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Provenance: Baldwin’s, November 1971.

Griffith Boynton Lee was born in Liversedge, Yorkshire in 1877 and was a carpenter by occupation. He married Fanny Elizabeth Biggs on 9 January 1898 at St. Andrews, Holborn, London and joined the 2nd City of London Rifle Volunteers the same year. He served in South Africa with the Infantry Battalion, City Imperial Volunteers during the Boer War and was invalided due to dysentery back to Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, London on the S.S. Austral, arriving 25 April 1900. He was granted 2 months’ sick furlough. Lee subsequently gave a long descriptive interview in the City Press, 2 May 1900, regarding his time in South Africa.

Lee later attested for the Imperial Yeomanry on 11 March 1902 and served again in South Africa from 27 May 1902 until 29 September 1902, being promoted Sergeant on 27 May 1902 and discharged on 19 November 1902. His attestation form declares previous service in the Coldstream Guards, from which he was invalided, and a scar from a bullet wound on his upper left arm. The City Press, 2 May 1900, also notes Lee’s three years’ previous service in the Guards.