An extremely rare Boer War civilian D.C.M. awarded to 1st Class Supernumerary Officer C. W....

An extremely rare Boer War civilian D.C.M. awarded to 1st Class Supernumerary Officer C. W. Baker, St John Ambulance Brigade, for service on the staff of the Langman Hospital Distinguished Conduct Medal, E.VII.R. (1st Cl: Supt: Ofcr: C. W. Baker. St John Amb: Bde:); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Sgt. Major C. W. Baker, Langman Hospital) officially re-impressed as typically found on QSAs issued to this unit; Jubilee 1897, St. John Ambulance Brigade (Supt. Cecil W. Baker); St. John Medal for South Africa 1899-1902 (555. Sergt. C. W. Baker. Met: Corps.) nearly extremely fine (4) £3,000-£4,000 --- D.C.M. London Gazette 31 October 2002; and London Gazette 24 February 1903 (correction from ‘Superintendent’ to ‘Supernumerary’). One of only five D.C.M.’s awarded to civilians in the Boer War: two Engine Drivers and one Fireman of the Imperial Military Railway, and two to the St John Ambulance Brigade, both of Langman’s Hospital (Recipients of the D.C.M. by P. E. Abbott refers). Cecil W. Baker is confirmed on the roll of the Langman Hospital, which lists 58 names but this figure includes 12 nursing sisters who received the medal under the auspices of the R.A.M.C. Established by Mr. John Langman, this private hospital opened its tented wards for the first time in April 1900, on the cricket ground at Bloemfontein, where, a few days later, it was inspected by Lord Roberts, V.C., who said of it in a telegram to Langman back in London, that its ‘value to our R.A.M.C. and wounded cannot be overestimated’. Indeed, under the efficient command of Langman’s son, Archibald, actually a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry, the hospital eventually treated 1211 cases, latterly at a new location in Pretoria. Of these patients, 278 returned to duty, 875 were transferred to other hospitals and 58 died.
Among the handful of Surgeons employed on the 45-strong staff, 18 of whom were from the St. John Ambulance Brigade, was Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., he of Sherlock Holmes fame, who had, from the outset, been invited by John Langman to assist in the selection of suitable personnel - it is not without interest therefore that Corporal Weston Burt was, like Conan Doyle, a resident of Southsea, a fact that suggests they may well have been local friends. Be that as it may, both men would certainly have shared in the horrific scenes caused by ever-growing numbers of enteric victims, the famous author being compelled to write:
‘Our hospital was no worse off than the others, and as there were many of them the general condition of the town [Bloemfontein] was very bad. Coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average of sixty a day. A sickening smell came from the stricken town. Once when I had ridden out to get an hour or two of change, and was at least six miles from the town, the wind changed and the smell was all around me. You could smell Bloemfontein long before you could see it. Even now if I felt that lowly death smell compounded of disease and disinfectants my heart would sink within me.’
The Hospital was eventually given as a free gift by John Langman to the Government in November 1900, complete with all its equipment, tentage and supplies - he was created a Baronet in 1906, while his son, Archibald, received prompter reward by way of a C.M.G. in 1902. Conan Doyle, too, was among the ex-Langman staff honoured, receiving a knighthood, although he later claimed this was in response to the publication of his pamphlet, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct. Sold with copied medal roll and article on the Langman Hospital by W. H. Fevyer, published in the O.M.R.S. Journal.