Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An interesting Great War group of five awarded to Captain M. W. Hilton-Simpson, the noted African traveller and ethnologist who served with the Royal Army Service Corps during the war

1914-15 Star (Lieut: M. W. Hilton-Simpson. A.S.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. M. W. Hilton-Simpson.); France, Third Republic, Legion of Honour, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamels; Belgium, Royal Order of the Lion, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamels, good very fine (5) £500-£600

Melville William Hilton-Simpson was born in 1881, oldest child of Rev. William Hilton and Emma Ellen Soames; surname of Simpson added in 1888. He was educated at Wellington College and Exeter College, Oxford, B.Sc. Travelled the Barbary States and Sahara, 1903-06; accompanied Mr Emile Torday on an ethnological expedition to the Kasai Basin, Belgian Congo, to collect for the Department of Ethnography, British Museum, and first traversed the country of the Bakongo and Bashilele, 1907-09; from 1912, excluding the period of the war, has, with his wife, been engaged in a detailed ethnological study of Berber hill tribes in Southern Algeria, among whom they have spent seven winters to date. Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, 1927; Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Lion, 1930; Corresponding Member of the Royal Belgian Geographical Society, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., F.R.A.I.; Rivers Medallist, 1932; member of the Geographical Societies of Paris, America, and Algiers, and of other scientific bodies; served in European War on Western Front; retired with rank of Captain. Publications: Algiers and Beyond; Land and People of the Kasai; Among the Hill-Folk of Algeria; Arab Medicine and Surgery; numerous papers for the journals of various societies, mainly on geographical and ethnological subjects. He died on 17 March 1938.

Sold with a first edition (1911) of Land and Peoples of the Kasai, inscribed by the author ‘To E. L. Gowlland in memory of auld lang syne, Nov. 9th 1911’.