"On the march" or "digging for water": A British South Africa Police officer in Rhodesia
[Photograph album of the British South Africa Police].
Oblong 4to (262 x 160 mm). 15 ff. With 92 albumen photographs, two of which mounted on pastedowns, various formats (47 x 68 to 75 x 123 mm). Captioned in English. Includes 4 magazine clippings, 10 stamps, and a clipout from a pack of cigarettes, the latter mounted to lower pastedown. Contemporary full cloth.
€ 2.500,00
A souvenir from Southern Rhodesia: exceptional photo album from the interwar period compiled by Cyril N. V. Quinion (1901-77) of the British South Africa Police (BSAP). The rare images include views of BSAP camps at Gwanda, Belingwe, Salisbury and Filabusi, along with striking images of natives wearing feather crowns and bone necklaces, witch doctors, musicians, and members of the native police. Further notable themes include BSAP parades at the 1921 birthday celebrations for King George V in Salisbury, the local war memorial, and a dress ball aboard the Armadale Castle steamer in May 1924. Curiously, a group of four photographs shows views of Madeira, featuring Ocean Line steamers in the company of small fishing boats, the location of Madeira some 600 kilometres off the African coast suggesting that Quinion was an avid traveller. Depictions of locomotives, rivers, scenery and local fauna, as well as a view of Quinion's father's saddle and harness shop at Southall, Middlesex, photos of the Quinion family, and a set of stamps commemorating the British South Africa Company and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, complete the album.
The British South Africa Police served as Rhodesia's regular police force from 1896. In 1980, BSAP was superseded by the Zimbabwe Republic Police soon after the country's reconstitution into Zimbabwe in April that year.
Binding somewhat rubbed. Some photographs a little faded; few loose. A rare survival.
