NAM.2022-03-5-1-25

Photograph of a stone cross memorial to Lt Teignmouth Melvill and Lt Nevill Josiah Aylmer Coghill, 24th Regiment of Foot, South Africa, 1900 (c). They were killed by Zulu warriors trying to save the Queen’s Colour after the loss at the Battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879. They were both awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously in 1907. The image was collected by Sgt Leopold Duffy, who was serving during the Boer War with the 1st Battalion, Prince of Wales’s Volunteers (South Lancashire Regiment). Duffy had enlisted in the South Lancashire Regiment as a Private in 1893. After serving initially in England and Ireland he went to South Africa during the Boer War, where he was promoted to Colour Sergeant in the field in 1901, before proceeding to India in 1903. He remained in India through the First World War, becoming an officer and rising to the rank of Captain. He is the father of war artist Louis C Duffy (1908-1998). From an album of 91 photographs relating to the service of Sgt (later Captain) Leopold Duffy, South Lancashire Regiment, associated with the Boer War (1899-1902).

Isandlwana, Battle of, 1879 (Zulu War 1879)