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Auction: 18002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 147

India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919 (Capt. C. A. Jones, S. Lan. R.), official correction to rank, good very fine

Charles Aubrey Jones, who was born in 1881, served with the South Lancashire Regiment as a Lieutenant in the Cape during the Boer War (Queen's Medal & clasp) and was on 'special duty' for the Delhi Durbar. Transferred to the Indian Ordnance Department during the Great War (entitled to BWM), he was re-commissioned into his parent Regiment on 21 March 1918 and served as a Captain during the Afghanistan operations.

Retired with a gratuity of £1,100 in 1921, Jones soon took to criminality. He was jailed for six months at the Old Bailey in March 1926 as a result of fraud and obtaining goods under false pretences. As reported in the Birmingham Daily Gazette, he had obtained '....copies of Burke's Peerage and credit from various West End firms.' Just one book was recovered and this was found in a Bond Street shop. It was cited that '...a violent liking for the peerage' and the fact he had to help his ill wife '...get money for an operation, and sold his medals' before turning to fraud.

His second stay, this time for 18 months at His Majesty's pleasure was under a similar charge, at the Old Bailey in January 1932. Having changed his name via deed poll to Aubrey Wrottesley, he posed as Major Wrottesley of Wrottesley Hall, Wolverhampton and obtained credit in the West End until a local called his bluff (Western Daily Press, 20 January 1932 refers); sold with copied MIC and research.

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Sold for
£110