Small items, big stories...

It’s no secret that NESM is home to some spectacular rescue vehicles. A few of them- like our RNLI Tyne Class Lifeboat- are so massive they don’t even fit inside the building!

Yet, as attention-grabbing as our vehicles can be, it’s sometimes the smallest objects that reveal the most about the people who made the emergency services what they are. Personal objects, keepsakes and souvenirs can tell you a surprising amount about the person who owned them and about their roles- once you start diving into their story.

As part of the museum’s ongoing inventory project, I recently came across a small brass medal that bears the emblem of the St John Ambulance. Nothing particularly exceptional about this medal, I thought at first glance. I began writing the catalogue entry by describing it as: ‘a circular brass medal with four evenly spaced trefoil decorations extending from the edge and a chain loop: the obverse features the St John Cross emblem and the legend ‘THE ST JOHN AMBULANCE ASSOCIATION’. (Catalogue descriptions rarely make riveting reading, but they’ve got to be done!) Then, I thought I’d best describe the reverse side of the medal too. It was as I turned it over that I discovered something intriguing: a name. Engraved in the brass is ‘102865 WILLIAM FROST’.

William Frost's St John Ambulance Medal

At NESM, the name William Frost is legendary. Frost was Sheffield’s chief fire officer from 1895 to 1915, and was instrumental in supporting the building of the city’s West Bar Police, Fire and Ambulance Station, our museum’s iconic home! Born in Lancashire, Frost had joined the Rochdale Fire Brigade in 1889, and rose quickly through the ranks, becoming assistant superintendent before heading-up the Sheffield Brigade. He also- apparently- had a medal from the St John Ambulance.

Reverse of William Frost's medal with his name and medal number engraved.

What does this new fact tell us about Frost and about his role in Sheffield’s emergency services? The first thing to investigate was what the medal was actually awarded for. There are lots of resources available that allow you to identify medals, but given that I have the luxury of a network of helpful curators around the country, I thought I’d make use of it. I contacted Rebecca Raven at the Museum of the Order of St John in London who informed me that the medal was a ‘re-examination medallion’. Rebecca went on: ‘In 1879, two years after its foundation, St John Ambulance Association introduced a medallion to award those who had passed three of its examinations. The award acted as proof if the competency of the owner was questioned and, to ensure a level of security, the medallion number and name was engraved on the reverse side.’

So, this medal tells us that Sheffield’s chief fire officer had completed at least three courses and examinations with the St John Ambulance. That information helps confirm a lot of what we know about how the emergency services operated from the time of their modern foundations in the 19th Century, right up to the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. In the early years of civilian emergency services, ambulance cover was usually provided by the local police and fire services, which themselves were jointly administered. William Frost was technically the superintendent of Sheffield’s ‘Police Fire Brigade’ under the authority of the Chief Constable (and Frost’s firefighters all held police ranks). First Aid was often left to these police fire services.

Ambulances, as we know them, did not exist in the late 19th Century. Those that did were aimed at getting people with contagious diseases out of the community and into isolation hospitals; they did not treat people who had injuries or other medical emergencies. This was certainly the case in Sheffield where services like the Lodge Moor Fever Ambulance had sprung up in response to the smallpox epidemic of 1887-1888.

In the absence of a comprehensive ambulance service, First Aid was pioneered by the charitable St. John Ambulance Association. Courses were developed mainly for the use of public volunteers. But St. John saw an opportunity to expand First Aid care by encouraging police and fire brigades to train in emergency medical care and to house medical equipment and appliances in their stations. St John hoped that ambulance services would no longer be confined to hospital carts picking up fever patients, but would see established emergency workers treating any kind of medical emergency.

As William Frost’s medal suggests, this was exactly what was happening in Sheffield. Firefighters were being trained by St John Ambulance in courses including First Aid to the Injured. The medal acts as evidence of early attempts to provide medical first response as part of the public emergency services. In the early 1900s, St John encouraged police and fire brigades to provide dedicated ambulance services. Sheffield’s West Bar Station (which opened in 1900 with Frost in post) was the first in the country purpose-built to house ambulance vehicles. Frost’s medal is a key reminder of how firefighters and police officers were very-much at the forefront of expanding ambulance services. It can be placed alongside other items from NESM's collection that help tell this story, including a 1908 photograph of the Sheffield City Police Ambulance Competition winners.

But it’s not just service history that is illuminated by William Frost’s medal; something of Frost’s personal history is also touched upon. Frost was highly driven to make his fire brigade the best, most well-equipped and professional in the country. This clearly included making sure that he was proficient in First Aid, to the extent of taking several courses with St. John. Re-examination medals had to be paid for by the member themselves, so Frost obviously saw this training as an important professional badge of honour. It confirms what those who knew him thought about William Frost, a man respected for his modernisation of Sheffield’s emergency services. When Frost died in 1938, he was buried with the full honour of a brigade funeral, his story deemed so important that objects like his medals were taken into the museum collections that now form part of the NESM Collection. Here, they continue to shed light on the formative years of the city’s- and the nation’s- emergency services.

It just goes to show that even the smallest objects can tell some very big stories.