Auction Catalogue

17 August 2021

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 210

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17 August 2021

Hammer Price:
£1,900

A fine Great War group of three awarded to Miss Emily J. Haswell, St. John Ambulance Association and French Flag Nursing Corps, who served as Matron-in-Chief of the British Committee of the French Red Cross in 1918

1914 Star (E. J. Haswell. B.R.C.S & O.St.J.J.); British War and Victory Medals (E. J. Haswell); together with a British Red Crescent Society 1913 medallion with brooch bar; a Bulgarian Red Cross badge; a French Flag Nursing Corps badge; a Great War Paris 1914-16 ‘Médaille Gallieni’; and a Princess Marie Jose of Belgium medallion, the Great War campaign awards nearly extremely fine (8) £300-£400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Barry Hobbs Collection of Great War Medals.

View The Barry Hobbs Collection of Great War Medals

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Collection

Miss Emily Jane Haswell was born in 1875 at Bootle, Lancashire and trained at the Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool, later acting as Sister at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

In response to an appeal from the British Red Crescent Society, she served in Turkey and Bulgaria during the Balkan War of 1913 and in 1914, in response to a request of the Belgian Red Cross Society, she was one of a party sent from London by the St. John Ambulance Association which arrived in Brussels one day ahead of the Germans. She was taken prisoner but permitted to nurse in a hospital for two months before being sent home under the terms of the Geneva Convention - an adventurous journey which of which Miss Haswell was placed in charge. The route chose was via Denmark and Norway where they received great welcomes and boundless hospitality before arriving back in London.

Shortly afterwards she was commanded by Queen Alexandra to Marlborough House, a command which she was unable to obey as she was already back at the front in France as a member of the French Flag Nursing Corps, a corps of British nurses accepted by the French Minister of War to serve French sick and wounded in French military hospitals. Miss Haswell was posted as Matron in charge of the large military hospital annexe at Talence, Bordeaux; later going to Paris to assume the duties of Matron-in-Chief of the British Committee of the French Red Cross, which she held until 1919.

After the war Miss Haswell visited the United States where she was warmly received in the nursing schools and on her return to Europ she worked with the Rockerfeller Foundation in Paris. Then came some years of work in Liverpool, together with her sister, where they successfully managed a busy nursing home and were privileged to work alongside the celebrated surgeon, Sir Robert Trent Jones. A nurse of real international flair, she attended a number of the Congresses of the International Council of Nurses, notably those held in London (1909), Geneva, Paris, Montreal and London (1937) and was elected a Member of the council of the British College of Nursing in 1940. She died in 1946.