Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A King’s Police Medal awarded to Chief Constable Victor Bosanquet, Monmouthshire Constabulary

King’s Police Medal, G.V.R., 1st issue (Ch. Const. V. F. Bosanquet. Monmouthshire Constab.) small edge bruise, otherwise good very fine £400-£500

K.P.M. London Gazette 1 January 1923: ‘Victor Foulcrand Bosanquet, Chief Constable, Monmouthshire Constabulary.’
The recommendation states: ‘Bosanquet, Victor F., Chief Constable of Monmouthshire since 1894 (28 years). He has a very difficult County and runs it well. He is one of the Chief Constables who is prepared to take a strong line of his own.’

In February 1929, charges were made against the Monmouthshire Police by some of the Labour members of the Monmouthshire Standing Joint Committee at Newport, after a disturbance at Nine Mile Point Colliery, at which the police were alleged to have made a ‘most callous, vicious and brutal charge’ against a civilian population. Responding to these charges the ‘Chief Constable (Mr Victor Bosanquet) denied emphatically that women were struck, or that the police were under the influence of drink. He said that when the police, about 50 in number, escorted the working miners to the railway station and to places outside the district they were surrounded by a hostile mob. Some of those present shouted to the police “Dirty swine,” “Throw them in the river,” and began to throw stones at them, with the result that one policeman was struck on the head and another injured on the leg. A charge, he continued, should be short, sharp and decisive, and in this case it was.Had he been present he would have ordered the charge himself.’

Chief Constable Bosanquet died on 31 August 1936, a few minutes after his car struck a telegraph pole at Skenfrith, Abergavenny. The Times reported on the following day: ‘Mr Bosanquet, who was 72, is believed to have had a seizure. The car struck the pole and turned over on its side. Mr Bosanquet was pulled through the sliding roof by a police sergeant who was accompanying him and died on the road.’

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