Two medals have been reunited after 100 years, following a query by a medal collector. The museum has over 8,500 medals in our collection which means the curatorial team often gets medal-related enquiries. Recently we were contacted by a collector to see if we had a medal to a particular Royal Marine in our collection. This led to a remarkable reunion of two medals originally awarded to the same man.
The Royal Marine in particular was a Private Francis Toole, who served in the Marines for 21 years, 17 of which were at sea. During the first Burma War, he was aboard the sloop Liffey and he took part in the operations on the coast of Syria in 1840. During his service he was eligible for two medals; the Army of India Medal with clasp Ava and the Naval General Service Medal with clasp: Syria.