PC Brough with his Queens Gallantry Medal, £2400 at Thomson Roddick.
PC JM Brough’s honour was estimated at £1300-1500 at Thomson Roddick (20% buyer’s premium) in Carlisle on June 27 in a lot including the recipient’s personal dossier containing medal citations and newspaper articles on the incident.
PC Brough and three other officers sent from Glasgow captured Robert Francis Mone and Thomas Neil McCulloch after they had got away from Carstairs State Hospital (psychiatric) in November 1976.
With Brough in the forward police car of two, the escapees were forced off the road, crashing their stolen vehicle at the Rosehill Roundabout in Carlisle. The men were disarmed and overpowered.
Mone and McCulloch were extremely dangerous. Over six months, they had managed to stash away axes, knives, fake identification and uniforms in preparation.
On the day of their escape they had murdered a nursing officer and a fellow patient in the hospital, then attacked two constables, killing one, before launching another vicious attack on two bystanders and stealing a vehicle after threatening a family on a farm.
Queen to king
The QGM is a bravery award intended primarily for civilians but also given to military recipients. It was instituted in June 1974, just two years before the award to PC Brough.
By March this year 1101 had been presented, roughly equal between civilian and military recipients. It has now become the King’s Gallantry Medal.
In March 2021 Elstob & Elstob took £10,000 for a QGM awarded to Acting Flight Sergeant William Barker Oldroyd, Royal Air Force Provost and Security Services, for action during the Cyprus emergency of 1974.
