The Chris Thomas Collection of Boer War Medals

Lot 2370    Session 8 (2.30pm Wednesday)    The Chris Thomas Collection of Boer War Medals

Estimate $15,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $11,000

PAIR TO QUEENSLAND NURSING SISTER: Queen's South Africa Medal 1899, (type 3 reverse); King's South Africa Medal 1902. Nursing Sister B.Huston. on both medals. First medal engraved, second medal impressed. Very fine.

Officially no group of nurses was selected from Queensland however some made their way to the war in South Africa by joining with another group. One such volunteer was Nurse Beatrice Huston of Clermont, Queensland who sailed for Cape Town in the Salamis with the nursing group from Western Australia. She described the conditions on the boat so bad that she thought she would die before she reached South Africa. On arrival she was posted to the British Field Hospital at Rondebosch reporting on 14Apr1900 and then transferring to Green Point on 28Apr1900. Nurse Huston gave a graphic account of the conditions she worked under when she wrote the following; 'The superintendent came and told 2 of us to be ready at 11.30 to go to Green Point to nurse the Boer prisoners. They were dying 2 or 3 a day and no one to nurse them. They were in tents in a filthy state and very ill. We had to stay at the new Somerset Hospital to sleep and for meals. We had to go on night duty from tent to tent with a lantern and many a fall as we got over the ropes in the little gullies. There were sentries all around us and the track where the Boer prisoners are enclosed, 1,800 of them with iron fences around them and barbed wire at the top and every 10 yards there are sentries on high stands.... I was nursing 45 patients at night - Boers - in these tin huts for 3 weeks. One night I went to church and fainted and was brought home and put to bed for a week. In the same enclosure where Boers were patients there were 300 Tommies camped, nearly all sick. I was then sent to the new Somerset Hospital to be nursed and when I was better I was put on day duty. I had 12 wards, 45 patients and 4 orderlies to help me. Some had enteric fever, dysentery, pneumonia, diphtheria, jaundice, rheumatism, fractures of different limbs, bullet wounds, consumption and numerous other diseases.' Nurse Huston spent some time in England after contracting a serious illness. She wrote in glowing terms of her visit and her delight when she and 120 other nurses were presented with their medal (QSA). She said at Marlborough House the Royal Family and Lord Roberts stood under a lovely canopy in the garden and the band was playing. The names of the nurses were called and each marched up to the King who presented them with their medal, they then curtsied and marched past. After being cleared by four medical boards at the War Office, Nurse Huston returned to service in South Africa nursing at No 11 Field Hospital at Kimberley. She returned home to Australia in September 1902. With research.