Orders, Decorations and Medals

Three: Sir Charles Ferguson Forbes, K.C.H. & K.C., Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, later a successful Physician in private practise who famously fought a duel on Clapham Common in 1827

The Royal Guelphic Order, K.C.H. (Civil) Knight Commander’s neck badge, gold and enamels; Military General Service 1793-1814, 5 clasps, Egypt, Corunna, Busaco, Badajoz, St. Sebastian (Sir C. Forbes, M.D. K.C.H. & K.C. Staff Sgn. & Phyn. to For...) last three letters of ‘Forces’ obscured by suspension claw; Order of the Crescent, 2nd class gold medal, 48mm, complete with original hook and chain suspension, very fine or better (3) £5000-6000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to the Medical Services formed by Colonel D.G.B. Riddick.

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Charles Ferguson Forbes was born on 22 March 1779 and educated to the medical profession in London. He joined the Army as a hospital assistant in May 1798 and was gazetted the following year as Assistant Surgeon to the 1st Foot (Royals), with whom he served in the expedition to the Helder in 1799, and was present at the attack on Ferrol in the following year. In 1801 he served with the army in Egypt, under Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and subsequently at Malta and Gibraltar. For his services in Egypt he was appointed by the Sultan a Knight of the Crescent, 2nd Class. Promoted to Surgeon in the 1st Foot in December 1804, he served with the regiment at St Lucia, in the West Indies, before being appointed to the Staff in July 1808. In 1808-09 he served in Gallicia and at Corunna, under Sir John Moore, and finally in the Peninsula, under the Duke of Wellington, until the peace of 1814, having been appointed Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals the previous year. For his services with the Army Forbes subsequently received the War Medal with five clasps, for Egypt, Corunna, Busaco, Badajoz, and St Sebastian.

Forbes retired from the Army in 1814 and commenced practise as a physician in Argyll Street, London. He had graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1808 and joined the College of Physicians of London in 1814, becoming a Fellow in 1841.In 1816 he was appointed Physician to the newly founded Royal Westminster Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye in Warwick Street, Golden Square, having George James Guthrie as his surgical colleague. In 1827 some difference of opinion arose between Forbes and Guthrie as to the treatment of inflammatory affections of the eye; the subject was noticed in the Lancet adversely to Guthrie, who commenced an action for libel against the journal, but abandoned it on learning that Forbes had been subpoenaed as a witness. Having been insulted at the hospital by one Hale Thomson, a young surgeon in Guthrie’s party, Forbes challenged the former to a duel. It was fought with pistols on Clapham Common at half-past three in the afternoon of 29 December 1827; when each had fired twice, without effect, the seconds interposed, but another encounter was demanded by the principals, which was also harmless. The seconds then declared the duel at an end, against the wishes of both parties. Forbes resigned his appointment at the hospital, carrying a number of its subscribers with him. He declined an offer by Guthrie to give him the satisfaction of a gentleman and an officer of the same service, on the ground that the offer was not made until after events at the hospital had been allowed to take their course. Guthrie had a considerable practice among a number of families of the nobility, and was much esteemed. His only writings are two small pamphlets of correspondence, &c., on the Guthrie affair (1828), and a brief record of a case of fatal thrombosis of the thigh veins in the Medico-Chirugical Transactions, xiii (1827). A Knight of the Crescent for his services in Egypt in 1801, he was appointed a Knight of Hannover (Civil) in 1837, but subsequently granted permission to use K.C.H. in lieu of K.H. by Royal Licence (London Gazette 4 November 1842), and was knighted at St James’s Palace on 13 March 1844. Sir Charles Forbes died at Argyll Street, London, on 22 March 1852.