Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Princess of Wales’s Private Military Hospital, The Gables Souvenir Medallion, by Warrington & Co., London, 57mm., silver plated white metal, obverse: bust of the Princess of Wales, with her hospital ship off the South African coast and ‘Transvaal War 1899-1900’ in the fields to left and right, with the circumscription, ‘Souvenir of the Princess of Wales’ Private Military Hospital. The Gables, Surbiton’; reverse: the front of the Gables, with ‘For Sick & Wounded from S. Africa’ in the exergue, with the circumscription, ‘Maintained by Mr & Mrs Alfred Cooper as an adjunct to H.R.H’s. Hospital Ship’ (Ref: B.H.M. 3664; Eimer 1846) in fitted presentation case, the lid with gilt inscription below the Prince of Wales’s feathers, extremely fine £80-£120

‘Two of the original offers of convalescent homes eventually developed into hospitals attached to and administered by the authorities of neighbouring military hospitals. The first of these was a hospital provided by Sir Alfred Cooper in his private theatre at The Gables, Surbiton. The theatre was admirably arranged and fitted out as a hospital for 30 patients, and was specially provided with a view to receiving the invalids who came home on board the “Princess of Wales” Hospital Ship. Its establishment consisted of a matron, two nursing sisters and a non-commissioned officer supplied from the garrison at Kingston-on-Thames. It was under the administrative medical charge of the medical officer in charge of the station hospital at Kingston-on-Thames. Local medical practitioners and consulting surgeons from London carried out the professional work. This hospital was kept constantly occupied from April 1900 to 24 January 1901, and the number of patients admitted and maintained in it during this time was 133’ (H.M.S.O. Report by the Central Red Cross Committee on Voluntary Organisations in Aid of the Sick and Wounded during the South African War (1902) refers).