The Royal Humane Society, AV Medal, 1774, by Lewis Pingo. Presented in 1776 to Dr. William Hawes, Founder of the Society. Genius standing right attempts to breathe life into an extinguished torch, LATEAT SCINTILLVLA FORSAN (Perchance some small spark may lie concealed), in three lines in exergue: SOC. LOND. IN RESVSCITAT. INTERMORTVORVM INSTIT. MDCCLXXIV (The London Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned, instituted 1774), rev. oak wreath containing details of recipient engraved in seven lines: VIRO CL. OMNI LAVDE DIGNO GVL. HAWES VN EX DVOB. HVI. SOC. AVCTORIB. HVMANITATE EGREGIIS SACRVM (To the most distinguished man, worthy of all praise, William Hawes, one of the two founders of this Society that holds humanity as sacred), around: HOC PRETIVM CIVE SERVATO TVLIT (he has obtained this prize for saving a citizen), below wreath ties: L.P, MDCCLXXVI engraved below. 51mm; 79.67 g. BHM -; Pingo 55; Eimer 758. Once cleaned and with some light scratches and hairlines. Otherwise Near EF. A very important and extremely rare gold medal. By descent from the recipient Dr. William Hawes. In mid-eighteenth-century London, an average of over 100 deaths occurred each year from drowning in the Thames and the other rivers, lakes and canals of the capital. In 1773 the physician William Hawes (1736–1808) began offering cash rewards to those who brought him persons rescued from the water, in the hope that the techniques of resuscitation he was then pioneering might save lives otherwise considered lost. On 18 April 1774 Hawes and Thomas Cogan (1736–1818), with fifteen others, founded the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned, subsequently the Humane Society and, from 1787, the Royal Humane Society. The Royal Humane Society continues to fulfil the Society's original purpose, recognising acts of bravery in the saving of human life. In 1775 Cogan proposed the awarding of a medal to ‘medical gentlemen who may have been successful in saving a life’. In December of that year, it was resolved that Lewis Pingo should engrave the dies. Taking inspiration from a drawing by Dr Watkinson, Pingo produced a restrained classical design and was paid the substantial sum of £103 for his work. He subsequently served as perpetual director and governor of the Society from 1778 to 1800. Medals of Pingo's original design were awarded until 1826, when new dies were cut by Benedetto Pistrucci. The genius obverse and oak-wreath reverse type was retained and, with minor modifications, continues to serve for the Society's medals to this day. The overwhelming majority were awarded in silver, with gold examples reserved for the Society's most distinguished recipients; Eimer records only thirteen examples of the type in gold as having been presented, among them those awarded to Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, later King of Hanover, and Tsar Alexander I of Russia (Eimer, pp. 61–62). The present medal, awarded to Hawes in 1776, bears the distinction of ‘one of the two founders.’ We are unable to trace any other example of this medal in gold having been offered at auction.