Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry

A fine St John Ambulance Brigade group of five awarded to Honorary Surgeon H. C. Howard, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., holder of the Honorary Associate’s badge of the Order of St John Honorary Associate’s Badge of the Order of St John, silver; Jubilee 1897, St. John Ambulance Brigade (Hony. Surg. H. C. Howard); Coronation 1902, St. John Ambulance Brigade (H. C. Howard Hon. Sur.); Coronation 1911, St. John Ambulance Brigade (Hon. Surg. H. C. Howard.) Service Medal of the Order of St John, Silver, ring suspension (Hon. Surg. Heaton C. Howard. 1906) mounted ‘cavalry’ style as worn, together with related ribbon bar, extremely fine and a scarce group (5) £400-£500 --- Heaton Clark Howard was appointed an Honorary Associate of the Order on 31 July 1906, as an Honorary Surgeon. This was not actually a grade in the Order of St John and did not confer membership but was a favoured and usual way of rewarding people of a certain social standing such as doctors who performed good service for the Order. In 1926 this Honorary award ended with a Royal Charter and living holders of the Badge were offered the privilege of becoming Officers of the Order. Dr Heaton Howard died in 1923 and the following obituary notice appeared in First Aid in April 1923: ‘Dr Howard was born in Lancashire in 1855 and took his medical degree in 1880. The cyclist division of the old Metropolitan Corps was founded in 1889 by Mr Alan Palmer in conjunction with Dr Howard, who was appointed its Hon. Surgeon. The late Dr Howard carried on practise in Stockwell, where he was known as the friend of the poor. His surgeries in Clapham-road and Wandsworth-road have been for years the refuges of the sick, the outcast, and the distressed, while the pauper and the orphan knew that the brave old man would respond to their call at any hour of the night. Dr Howard fell victim to blood poisoning and died in St George’s Hospital where he had been a student 43 years before.’