Pair: Captain J. M. Hierons, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was strangled to death on the...

Pair: Captain J. M. Hierons, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was strangled to death on the overnight express train to Kashmir whilst making her way to the British Military Hospital at Deolali Defence and War Medals 1939-45, unnamed, pinned to a contemporary memorial panel with brass plaque, engraved ‘To the Memory of Capt. Joyce Margaret Hierons who died in the Service of her Country 14 May 1946. We Shall Remember Them’, with R.A.M.C. cap badge below, 380mm x 165mm, good very fine Pair: Deputy Superintendent D. F. Tisdall, St. John Ambulance Brigade Defence Medal; Service Medal of the Order of St John, silver (30256 D/Supt. D. F. Tisdall. No.8 Dist. S.J.A.B. 1944.) mounted in a modern frame with S.J.A.B. cap badge, shoulder titles and five buttons, glue residue to obverse of Defence Medal, generally good very fine (4) £70-£90 --- Joyce Margaret Hierons served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in India, and came to a tragic end on 14 May 1946. The Derby Daily Telegraph of 15 May 1946 takes up the story: ‘Train Murder: Two Arrests. Two arrests have been made after the murder in a train of Captain Joyce Margaret Hierons, a British woman doctor attached to the R.A.M.C., it was announced in Lahore to-day. Captain Hierons of Whitton, Middlesex, was murdered when travelling in the Bombay-Peshawar express with Miss N. W. Reid, a nursing sister, who was injured. They were attacked by three men, believed to be Sikhs, and robbed of 450 rupees (£34). The attackers, according to a description to-day were three fierce-looking bearded and turbaned men who entered the women’s first class compartment whilst most of the other passengers on the train were asleep.’ Dorothea Frances Tisdall was born on 11 February 1897 in Ireland and came to London in the early 1920s to train as a midwife. Upon graduation, she took employment as the ‘right hand man’ to Dr. Nancy Lewis and later rendered over 20 years of outstanding service to the Reigate and Redhill division of the St John Ambulance Brigade. The Surrey Mirror of 5 November adds: ‘Courage and Laughter in War and Peace. Throughout the war she was in charge of the Shaw’s Corner first aid post, and for a time, whenever the raid warning sounded, she dropped everything and went... Her colleagues spoke of her courage, calmness and tremendous sense of humour she always displayed at these times, and which, they remembered, created an atmosphere in which they were never afraid.’ An extremely popular member of the congregation at St Matthew’s Church at Redhill, Miss Tisdall died on 27 October 1965.