A RARE medal given by Napoleon to pioneering British scientist Humphry Davy was thrown into the sea by his widow, one of his family descendants has claimed after a reward was offered for its discovery.
The Royal Society of Chemistry appealed for help in finding the medal after discovering a letter shedding new light on Napoleon's decision to honour the chemist, despite being locked in combat with Britain at the time.
But Davy's fourth great-niec
e Margaret Tottle-Smith said memories of the difficult journey to collect the honour may have influenced his widow Jane's decision to hurl it from the Cornwall's Mounts Bay.
"It's a very sad story," she said. "Humphry married a young widow. She was a socialite – she loved parties, she loved balls and when he died suddenly and the money was cut off, Jane was a widow again with no children.
"She had had a very bad experience going to collect that medal. It was a shocking memory for her.
"A lot of his possessions she gave to the Society because he was president there, but not the medal. I have a feeling that Jane was very ashamed of the medal and hated it.
"The medal she took one day, apparently… and threw it into the sea. She got rid of the memories."
Davy, who was knighted in 1812 and made a baronet in 1818, pioneered electrochemistry but is perhaps best known for inventing the Davy safety lamp for miners.
He spent two years travelling in Europe, in the course of which he identified iodine as an element for the first time.
A £1,808 reward is being offered for the medal's discovery. Tuttle-Smith still hopes it might turn up.
For two centuries, until the discovery of the letter by the RSC, mystery surrounded Davy's perilous wartime journey to France to collect a medal awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The letter, dated March 14 1808 – 200 years ago last Friday – was sent by a French navy officer to Jean-Baptiste Delambre, an astronomer and general secretary of the Institut de France.
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