By John Hayward

I have compiled this month's notes from just a small part of the extensive research carried out for some years by Major Charles Townsend TD primarily at the Royal Mint but also from other unpublished sources.
The Charles Townsend Archive, which answers so many regularly asked questions relating to the genesis, institution, manufacture, issue and numismatic facets of medals, has been recently donated by his family to the National Army Museum and will be available for public consultation some time in the future once it has been examined and catalogued.

By coincidence an article on South Africa Medals has just been published in the August 2001 issue of Medal News. The information on the 1877-79 Medal and the related clasps that appears therein can be read in conjunction with the notes that follow. We welcome any feedback.

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The Rare Clasps to the South Africa Medal 1877-79

It is usually recorded that there are five clasps to the South Africa Medal 1877-79: '1877-8', '1877-8-9', '1878', '1878-9' and '1879'. In fact there are two others, which many writers have considered either spurious or of colonial origin, these are '1877' and '1877-9'. Struck from dies held at the Royal Mint, the two were issued in very small quantities.

The doubted validity of the two clasps arises mainly from the misinterpretation of General Order 103 of 1880, which far from authorising five clasps only, in fact authorises only one clasp per medal and details the services that would qualify for each.

This confusion arose from the attitude of the War Office and its several changes of mind as witnessed by the three Royal Warrants it received before the General Order was issued.
1. Royal Warrant, 27 January 1880: authorised the issue of the medal with two clasps: 'Caffraria 1877-8' and 'Zululand 1879'.
2. Royal Warrant, 15 April 1880: authorised a third clasp for operations against Sekukuni. Subsequently, when it was proposed to issue a fourth clasp for operations against Morosi, the authorities realised the absurdity of a 4-clasp medal for what was really only a series of small campaigns, hence the decision to limit the clasps to one per medal, the clasp to denote the years the recipient was engaged in action
3. Royal Warrant, 25 June 1880: one clasp per medal, though at this stage only three possible clasps were envisaged '1877-8', '1877-8-9' and '1879'.

The General Order which followed promulgated the issue of the medal with one clasp, to be awarded to officers and men of the Regular and Colonial forces and laid down the various combinations of clasp dates to be awarded for the six specified campaigns.

The War Office were not clear in their thinking on at least two points.
- First, it would seem that it did not appreciate that the engagement against Sekukuni occupied the latter part of 1878 as well as 1879;
- second, it had considered Griqualand West and Griqualand East to be two provinces of the same Colony though they are separated by about 250 miles.

The first point was addressed in amending Order 134 in October 1880 after a complaint by Colonel H. Rowlands VC, who had led the 1878 expedition against Sekukuni. The Colonial Office raised questions around the second issue, pointing out that some of its forces, without assistance from the Regulars, had been engaged in Griqualand West in 1877. Here the War Office agreed that in cases where Colonial forces only had been engaged some of the qualifying dates in the General Order could be modified to suit the circumstances, but that it would not be necessary to issue an amending Order as no Regular troops were involved.

Despite the weeding of official papers, Major Townsend's exhaustive research among Royal Mint, Colonial Office and War Office papers and Registers of Correspondence has made it possible to determine figures for the issue of these rare clasps.
The list of Cape Colonial forces entitled to the medal contained the names of 22 men who qualified in respect of service in 1877 only and for whom the '1877' clasp was requested: one in the East London Chalumna Volunteer Cavalry, 13 in the Fort White Mounted Volunteers and 8 in the Sidbury Mounted Rangers.
The list also included the names of eight men of the 2nd Regiment Cape Mounted Yeomanry, who served in 1877 and again in 1879, but not in 1878; they are:

Trooper William EARLE*
Trumpeter Frank LONG
Trooper John McCOLL
Trooper Alfred MAYTHAM
Trooper Mathew MAYTHAM
Sergeant Thos MULDOON* (Killed in Action)
Trooper Carl NEL
Trooper George James WEATHERHEAD*
(* Medal not claimed and returned to Woolwich 1911)

The order for medals placed with the Mint by the War Office in November 1881 included a request for 8 medals with the '1877' clasp and 23 with the '1877-9' clasp. There was some delay in executing this special order as new clasp dies were needed at what was a busy time for the Mint, then much occupied with the production of the Egypt and Afghanistan medals.
The 31 rare clasp medals were finally ready in March 1882.
Subsequently the War Office placed orders for a further 130 '1877' clasps, but there is no record of further orders for the '1877-9' clasp.

The following analysis by Major Townsend of South Africa Medals struck will be of considerable interest:

South Africa Medals and Clasps Struck at the Royal Mint 1880-86:

Most loose clasps '1877-8', '1877-8-9' and '1878-9' were issued in exchange for others that had been claimed prior to General Order 134 of 1880, which allowed service against Sekukuni 1878 to count. A few were issued to holders of the South Africa Medal 1853, who had also served in 1877-1879.
The loose clasps dated '1879' were mostly issued in respect of late claims by those who had crossed the border into Zululand.

A HAYWARDISM!
'Medals were not named by the issuing authority for the benefit of medal collectors'