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Auction: 23001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 49

The fine 'Defence of Legations' China Medal awarded to Mr J. H. Smyth, Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, who found himself in Peking as a result of having been detached as Professor of English at the Imperial University

Despite being struck down with illness at the outbreak of the famed Defence, he made up for lost time and having recovered, was 'mentioned' for his exceptional services in answering the Call of Duty by Sir Claude MacDonald

China 1900, 1 clasp, Defence of Legations (J. H. Smyth. Chinese Customs), mounted as worn with silver top bar, nearly extremely fine

Provenance:

Fitzpatrick Collection.

Sotheby's, November 1981, Lot 174 ('...very rare').

Glendining's, March 1987, Lot 88, when sold as part of a Collection of Medals for the great Defences.

M.I.D. as per the Report by Sir Claude MacDonald, dated 26 December 1900, sent to the Marquess of Lansdowne, as part of the 'List of Members of the Imperial Maritime Customs recommended':

'Mr Smyth, too ill at the commencement for work, took his duty at the very earliest opportunity, and was always only too eager to supplement his own watches by relieving those who were worn out by the extreme length of the watches towards the end of the Siege.

His health suffered severely under the strain of his self-denying good nature, resulting in an attack of typhoid after the Relief.'

James Hunter Smyth was born on 2 September 1874 at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the second son of Robert and Sarah, his father being the Postmaster of the City. Young Smyth was educated at Foyle College and Trinity College, Dublin, where he passed out in 1895.

His first appointment to the Chinese Maritime Customs Service came on 1 September 1898, being made Fourth Assistant (B) at Kowloon. Detached from the Revenue Department, he was appointed for duty with the Educational Department and in December 1898 went to become Professor of English at the T'ung Wen Kwan, the Imperial University of Peking. The University had been established on 3 July 1898 when the Emperor approved the Royal Charter, written by Liang Qichao. This thus found him in Peking at the start of 1900, a year which would see the Boxer Rebellion and place him at the centre of one of the most unusual 'great Defences' in the long and storied history of this island nation.

News of massacres of missionaries and their converts in the nearby province of Shandong combined with equivocation by the Chinese government soon led to a request, on 28 May 1900, for additional guards to be sent from the various foreign fleets stationed at the coast. The first contingents arrived from Tientsin on 31 May to bolster and protect those who remained. Francis Poole, another Defender, noted in his diary:

‘Everybody went down to meet the guards late in the afternoon. French, American, Russian, Japanese, Italian, and British. Ours and the Americans were Marines, the remainder Bluejackets, in all about 300, ours naturally the smartest.’

By 13 June the situation had deteriorated, Poole again recording:

‘Fires in all quarters of the city, mission compounds being burnt, shots fired down Legation Street...I think the row has begun...Everywhere Christians are being murdered by the Boxers.’

So it was that four days later events took another turn for the worse when Chinese Imperial Troops also began to open fire on the Legations’ defensive pickets. Naturally, when an ultimatum was issued by the Chinese Government, ordering that all diplomatic bodies in Peking would have to leave for Tientsin within 24 hours, under escort, it was treated with scepticism and those who remained feared a repeat of a similar instance of treachery - namely the ghastly Cawnpore Massacre under the Nana Sahib. Surely some of those who were present had relatives who had been slain on that occasion.

On 20 June, the murder by the Chinese of the German Minister, Baron von Ketteler, prompted a decision for all foreign women and children to be given shelter in the British Legation. Claude MacDonald, the British Minister, was in command of the Defence and their historic 55-day siege officially began in earnest. As the opening shots occurred, Smyth was struck down and he would have found himself in the sick bay:

‘The international hospital was housed in the chancery of the British Legation. Through it in the course of the Siege passed 125 severely wounded men (of whom seventeen died), one severely wounded woman and forty cases of sickness - mostly enteric and dysentery - of whom two died. It was a grim place. Fortunately Dr Velde, a German surgeon and Dr Poole, the British Legation’s resident physician, were skilful as well as devoted. They were ably seconded by a sick-bay attendant from H.M.S. Orlando and an amateur nursing staff, to which the handsome Madame de Giers was an unexpectedly valuable recruit; Madame Pichon, on the other hand, Dr Poole found ‘a great nuisance.’

Their resources were pitifully inadequate: the hospital had only four small iron bedsteads and seven camp-beds and most of the patients, whose numbers after the first two or three weeks never fell below sixty, lay on the floor, on mattresses stuffed with the straw in which wine-bottles had been packed. Antiseptics were scarce, there were hardly any anaesthetics and no X-ray apparatus. In the end, only one thermometer (it belonged to the widowed Baroness von Ketteler) was left unbroken. Bags of sawdust and powdered peat were used as dressings. The windows were sandbagged, and as the sun beat down on the low, overcrowded building the wounded suffered severely from the heat. There were no proper mosquito nets and the flies were a torment. They were bolder and more ubiquitous (it struck one patient) than the flies round a sweetmeat stall in an Indian bazaar, and every time a heavy gun was fired at night they rose from their roosting-places with so deafening a buzz that it woke the patients. The diet of pony-meat, varied with scraggy mutton until the sheep ran out, was monotonous and unsuitable for sick men; but the Chinese cooks showed as much versatility as their materials allowed, and ‘game’, which consisted of magpies and sparrows, was esteemed a special delicacy.’ (The Siege at Peking by Peter Fleming refers).

Another account by an American missionary-nurse who was eyewitness to events recalled her endless days and nights in the hospital, which another besieged individual, Bertram Lenox Simpson, termed the ‘chamber of horrors’:

‘The supply of everything was short ... The patients were all wounded men, the supply of absorbent dressings was very small, of rubber protectives there were almost none. When the mattresses and pillows were blood-soaked, there was nothing to do but wash them off as well as possible and use them again. The supply of proper sheets and pillowcases being inadequate, they were made up hastily out of any material that could be spared from the sandbags. Coarse, thin Chinese cotton covered one patient while his neighbour looked down on an expanse of slippery shining damask. As one patient remarked, “in this hospital it is every man for his own tablecloth.” Two napkins made a cover for a feather pillow. A beautiful embroidered linen pillowcase did duty on a pillow made of the straw bottle covers (the straw came from champagne bottles which, ironically, were in better supply than medicines.)... At first the most approved surgical dressings were to be had, then bags of peat and finally, bags of sawdust served as dressings. At first bandages were used with a lavish hand, but before the close of the siege they had to be washed and do duty more than once. The small supply of the drugs most useful became pitifully small. The last bottle of chloroform was opened. No one can be impressed with the perishable nature of the hypodermic needle until he is obliged to use it many times every day with the knowledge that the last needle that can be procured from anywhere is in his hand.’

Thankfully Smyth came through and was able to put his full weight behind the Defence, manning the barricades and making up for lost time. When the Siege was finally broken on 14 August, that gallant band were fêted across the globe. His work had also taken the eye of the Commander and Smyth found himself 'mentioned'.

The year would also see Smyth qualify with his Masters from Trinity, before being made Assistant to the Customs Stations around Hong Kong in 1902. He was advanced Third Assistant at Nanking in January 1903 and Second Assistant at that same place in May 1904.

In early 1906, Smyth had earned himself a period of two years' leave, which he had intended to take at home in Northern Ireland. It was not meant to be, as announced in the Derry Journal of 6 April 1906:

'The deepest sympathy of the Citizens of Derry every degree will be extended to Mr. R. S. Smyth, Former Postmaster in the City Chief Office, over the sad intelligence which Saturday reached him, namely, the death of his distinguished son, James Hunter Smyth, whilst his home-coming to spend a well-earned holiday with his father in his native city.

The deceased young gentleman, who some years ago went to fill an important official post in China, rapidly rose to eminence in his Department, and early made his mark as a person of talent and capacity. It is very sad now to know when at the height of his career, and when a welcome to his home was being prepared for him, that death has intervened and left irretrievable blank in the heart of his household.

Shortly after his embarkation, which took place the 31st on the S.S. Empress of China at Shanghai, the deceased gentleman was stricken down with attack of malarial fever to which he succumbed on the 4th inst. at Kobe, one of the ports of call for the steamer.
In August, 1898, the late Mr. Smyth joined the Imperial Customs Service in China, of which Sir Robert Harte is the head, having been educated at Foyle College and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, acquitting himself with scholastic distinction in both colleges. He was through the Siege of the Legations at Pekin in 1900, and for the part he took in the defence of these European State residences was awarded a medal and was mentioned in Sir Claude M'Donald's despatches. His passage was from Shanghai to Vancouver, across the Canadian Pacific Railway, and thence home to this city, where intended spend the remainder of his two years' leave with his father, but unhappily his hopes were never realised.'

Smyth is buried in the Kobe Foreigners Cemetery, Futatabi Park, Japan and further commemorated upon a family memorial at the Derry City Cemetery, Northern Ireland; sold together with copied research including his Will.


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Sold for
£12,000

Starting price
£7500