Singapore Medals: State, Police, Armed Forces, Civil Defence & Colonial: Singapore City Fire Brigade, Chief Fire Officer J.G. Shaw, Historical Post War Civil O.B.E. Medal Group

Decided to give myself a short break from blogging to enjoy some quality family time. Now back with renewed vigour as some friends have been asking for more stories about Singapore medals.

Blogging of this nature is quite time consuming, it can take an hour or up to a day for medal groups with large quantity of research materials. The entire process entails searching for interesting medal to blog among the several hundreds of medals in my collections, gathering relevant materials, online research, taking and editing photographs, thinking of the storyboard, doing the blog, final check for accuracy and coherence, publish the blog and hope someone reads it and find it useful or interesting.

I was extremely lucky to acquire this historically important medal group from a major British auction house about 10 years ago. Among my collections, this medal group is one of my favourite for many reasons, and I will always take it out from time to time to admire the medals and read the accompanying documents.

Post World War 2 Civil Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) medal group of 4 to J.G. Shaw, Chief Fire Officer, Singapore City Fire Brigade, Merryweather & Sons, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves (R.N.V.R.) and Shanghai Fire Brigade.

Medal group comprised: O.B.E. (Civil Division), World War 2 Defence Medal, 1953 Coronation Medal and Association of Professional Fire Brigade Officers Long Service Medal with bar (Named: C.F.O: J.G. SHAW. SINGAPORE. 7.3.50.). With miniature medal group (most medal groups do not come with miniature medal group).

Medal Group, Obverse with Miniature Group

Obverse

Reverse

Intricate Details on Obverse of Long Service Medal

Chief Fire Officer, S'pore City Fire Brigade, J.G. Shaw

Brief History

The Merryweather Fire King

The Merryweather Steam Fire Engine was the first fully motorized fire-engine in Singapore. It was imported directly from Britain and was named after the Governor of Singapore at that time, Mr. Broadrick. As it was one of the best fire-engines in the world at that time, it was nicknamed the “fire-king” by the firemen who used to use it.

The boiler always contained hot water that produced steam, which allowed the vehicle to respond to fires immediately. The engine also allowed firemen to have water pumped to them from a water source thus increasing water pressure in their hoses and allowing them to fight fire more efficiently.