Bravery bevond belief

A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth

- Rupert Uloth

AMIR HAMADAMIN should never have been on the A46 near Dyrham, Gloucestershire, in the early hours of a Sunday morning in March 2022. A taxi driver from Newport, he accepted a fare to Bath, way out of his usual orbit and, as a result, he almost certainly saved an old lady’s life. What he thought was a bonfire behind a café turned out to be the house next door on fire, the flames reaching the roof. After screeching to a halt, he had to run around the back after failing to gain entry by the front door and broke in using a discarded fence post to rescue a confused old lady, who spoke little English and refused to leave as she thought he was an intruder. She kept trying to return to get her dog, so he went back in with her and retrieved the pet.

For his bravery that day, Mr Hamadamin was awarded the Royal Humane Society’s Bronze medal, one of its highest awards.

The society has been rewarding ordinary citizens for saving the lives of others for 250 years and celebrates its semiquincentennial today (September 11) with a service in St Paul’s Cathedral attended by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, representing its royal patron The King and its president, Princess Alexandra.

The society was founded in 1774 by two enterprising doctors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, eminent physicians who had become acutely aware how people were being dragged from the Thames, then dying from the effects of drowning because of the ignorance around resuscitation; its initial name was ‘The Institution for affording immediate relief to persons apparently dead from drowning’. The first meeting was held at the Chapter Coffee House in St Paul’s Churchyard, in the City of London, near where many sailors, porters and merchants were working on the banks of the Thames. The Lord Mayor of London became the society’s first president.