Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Colonel R. Burns-Begg, K.C., a founding member of Kitchener’s Horse and Intelligence Officer to the Military Governor of Pretoria. He served as Crown Prosecutor for the infamous “Breaker” Morant trial, when the Anglo-Australian Lieutenant of the Bushveldt Carbineers was found guilty of murdering six Boer prisoners-of-war and three captured civilians in two separate incidents during the Second Boer War - the subject of much controversy at the time, and of a critically acclaimed feature film in 1980

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 5 clasps, Cape Colony, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill (Capt: R. Burns-Begg, Kitchener’s Horse.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Capt: R. Burns-Begg, S.A.M.I.F.); British War Medal 1914-20 (Col. R. Burns-Begg.) first two mounted for wear, generally good very fine or better (3) £700-£900

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from an Africa Collection.

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Robert Burns-Begg was born in Kinross in March 1872, and educated at Stranraer School, Bournemouth and Edinburgh University. He served as a Second Lieutenant and Instructor of Musketry with the 7th Clackmannanshire & Kinross Volunteer Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders from 1892. Burns Begg advanced to lieutenant in December 1893, and resigned his commission in November 1895. He travelled to Africa, and was appointed advocate and counsel to the Transvaal Government. Burns-Begg was commissioned lieutenant in the Cape Town Highlanders, and was employed as an intelligence officer and staff captain from March 1901. He advanced to captain in the South African Mounted Irregular Force from September 1901, and was intelligence officer to the Military Governor of Pretoria.

Burns-Begg was employed as prosecuting counsel in the Floris Visser murder trial of “Breaker” Morant, and others of the Bushveldt Carbineers, 17 January 1902. Harry Morant, was an Anglo-Australian officer in the Bushveldt Carbineers, who was convicted and executed for murdering six Boer prisoners-of-war and three captured civilians in two separate incidents during the Second Boer War. The case, and subsequent execution received a lot of press coverage and debate in Australia. A number of books have been written about Morant, and Kenneth Ross wrote a critically acclaimed play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts which in 1980 was turned into a successful movie called Breaker Morant.

Burns-Begg’s legal capabilities in the courtroom are recorded in Shoot Straight you Bastards by N. Bleszynski. He was recalled to England before the close of the trial, but not before he had destroyed the case of the defence. Burns-Begg was also the principal witness in the committal proceedings at Bow Street Court for Treason of “Colonel” Arthur Lynch, M.P., 1 August 1902. Lynch (an Irish Australian, who was MP for Galway Borough and fought for the Boers during the Second Boer War) was subsequently found guilty at trial, 24 January 1903, and sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment, and ultimately pardoned). The following is given about his varied career in The Scots Law Times, 11 March 1911:

‘Colonel Burns-Begg’s remarkable career has not yet solved the problem, which is the mightier weapon - the sword, the pen, or the baton? Since a wise institution told him that the development of his peculiar talents required a wider field than that afforded by the floor of the Parliament House, his returns thither at meteoric intervals, now as a soldier, now as a lawyer, now as an administrator, have left his friends in a state of bewildered admiration. His first military appointment, as galloper one manoeuvres to Brigadier General Sir J. H. A. Macdonald, was prophetic of a protean career. At the Speculative Society he was known as a master of picturesque and forcible English, and of an embarrassing capacity for the conduct of private business.

Colonel Burns-Begg is now in his thirty-ninth year. After practising as an advocate for a little over two years he left Edinburgh for South Africa, and was called to the bar of Southern Rhodesia in 1898. The outbreak of the war gave pause, for the moment, to his legal career, and Lieut. Burns-Begg, with a commission in the Cape Colonial Forces, assisted Col. Legge and Major Congreve to raise Kitchener’s Horse in 1900. During the same year he was successively attached to the Maxim Gun Detachment R.F. and R.H.A. and to the staff of the Second Mounted Infantry Corps, in which services he took part in the marches to Bloemfontein and to Pretoria, and in the actions at Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, and Diamond Hill. Through the remainder of the war he acted as Intelligence Officer on the Staff at Pretoria. He returned home with the rank of captain in March 1902, and during the year which followed held an appointment on the Headquarters Intelligence Staff of the War Office…..

Returning to South Africa, he was appointed Legal Adviser to the Transvaal Government, and for five years succeeded in running his two professions in double harness, being made King’s Counsel in 1906 and rising to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel in command of the Northern Mounted Rifles. In 1908 he became Commissioner of the Transvaal Police, and retained that office until the autumn of last year [1910], when he resigned, owing to altered conditions brought about by the reconstitution of the Government of South Africa. After a visit to this country of less than six months, he is now about to take up the duties of Resident Commissioner and Commandant General of the Volunteer and Police Forces of Southern and Northern Rhodesia [1911-15], appointments which carry, ex officio, seats on the Legislative and Administrative Councils of these colonies…..’

Burns-Begg was appointed temporary colonel and commandant lines of communication, Folkestone 1915. The latter town being a vital link in the war effort, with some ten million troops and medical staff passing through the port to and from the front. Colonel Burns-Begg returned to Edinburgh on sick leave, and died of pneumonia, 9 January 1918. He is buried in the Kinross Cemetery, commemorated on the Sutton War Memorial, at Kinross Parish Church and on the Edinburgh University Faculty War Memorial.

Sold with copied research, and photographic images of the recipient.