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Auction: 19002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 604

(x) Sandflats Town Guard

Queen's South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Lieut: T. Dyke. Sandflats T.G.), minor scratches to obverse, very fine

Thomas Felton Dyke was born at Worcester, Western Cape, South Africa in October 1872, the seventh son - in a family of 12 sons - of Thomas William Felton Dyke and Charlotte Anne Quinn. His mother's parents originated from Athlone, Ireland, and were settlers who arrived around 1820, aboard the sailing vessel East Indian.

Appointed Post-Master at Sandflats, Dyke served from 1 September 1893 to 1 July 1899 on a salary of £185 per annum, supplementing his wage with a further £22 as a Supervisor in the Special Police and Issuer of Process. Following the outbreak of the Boer War, he was one of two officers who served with the Sandflats Town Guard and is recorded as Officer in Command on the roll.

Dyke later left the postal service and went into business with the Bruton brothers, who owned the local shop, butchery and hotel in Sandflats. The change of career appears not to have appealed to him, as he later became Station Master at Irene; sold with copied roll entry and correspondence between the recipient's granddaughter and a South African medal collector, dated 24 July 1986, together with an original portrait photograph of Dyke which notes to the reverse that he married Phoebe Sophia Bruton and died at Johannesburg in 1944.


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Sold for
£130