The Fothergillian Prize of the Royal Humane Society, frosted AR Medal, 1810, by W. Wyon (struck 1847), Presented to Benjamin Hawes, Treasurer of the Society. Genius stranding right attemps to breathe life into an extinguished torch, LATEAT SCINTILLULA FORSAN (Perchance some small spark may lie concealed), in three lines in exergue: EX MUNERE ANTONI FORTHERGILL M. D. MDCCCX, to right: W. WYON. R. A., rev. three shipwrecked sailors on a raft, lifeboat approaching from right. Encased in glass lunettes - obverse glass now missing, in silver band inscribed: To BENJAMIN HAWES ESQ..RE TREASURER. from the COMMITTEE of the ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY as A TRIBUTE of their ESTEEM. 1847. 73mm; 184.59 g. Jones, 'The Fothergillian Medal of the Royal Humane Society' in BNJ 1984, pp. 248-262, this medal cited; Jones, no. 197, this medal cited; Hocking, appx. II, 292, no. 12. Lacking the glass to obverse with resulting minor marks. The reverse much as made with slight staining in towards rim. Of the highest rarity and a masterpiece of William Wyon's oeuvre. By descent from the recipient Benjamin Hawes. Sir Mark Jones describes the Fothergillian medal as ‘one of the most beautiful and technically accomplished of all nineteenth-century medals.’ A bequest of £500 made in 1810 by Dr Anthony Fothergill, himself a recipient of the Society's gold medal, provided for a prize medal to be awarded for the best essay or discovery concerning the prevention of shipwreck and the preservation of shipwrecked mariners. Although the prize was announced in 1824, the medal itself was to take another twenty-three years to appear. Designs by Benedetto Pistrucci and Scipio Clint were successively considered and abandoned before William Wyon was commissioned in 1838; the finished medal was finally struck in 1847, thirty-seven years after Fothergill's bequest. The Society's original conception called for a portrait of Fothergill, with the familiar boy-with-torch emblem on the reverse. Wyon departed from this scheme, instead creating the dramatic composition of the shipwrecked mariners on the raft, balanced by the approaching lifeboat. His treatment of the closely grouped, exhausted figures is particularly assured, with the boat in the distance providing a striking counterpoint. Benjamin Hawes (1797–1862) served as Treasurer of the Society his grandfather, William Hawes, had founded, from 1826 to 1860, and was involved in the Fothergillian project from an early stage. The present medal was struck in 1847 and presented to him by the Committee as a ‘tribute of their esteem’. Two gold medals were also presented to prize winners in 1847, with a further gold medal awarded in 1882. The present medal is the only known example in silver.