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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page 69
Some news of the deprivation of the inmates reached London and Miss Emily Hobhouse, funded
by the Committee of the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children, sailed from England in
December 1900 with supplies of clothes and groceries to alleviate what they perceived to be the
problem. The High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, made her welcome in Cape Town and
provided a railway wagon to carry her gifts. She had Kitchener’s leave to visit the camps. Clearly
neither of these men had any idea of what she would find.
The shock and distress experienced by Emily Hobhouse is evident in her report which is
reproduced in full in the Documents appended to this book. The conditions she discovered were
terrible. Malnutrition and disease were rife, desperate administrators, inept and responsible alike,
were swamped by successive shipments of displaced Boers dumped on them by the army and what
accommodation there was soon became insufficient. In London the report, balanced, fair and
horrifying, caused an uproar. The Minister of War, St John Brodrick, attempted to evade questions,
but pressure from the increasing number of pro-Boers forced him to appoint a commission of enquiry
which, under the direction of Mrs Millicent Fawcett, went to South Africa. Meanwhile Miss
Hobhouse attempted to pay a second visit, but this time was refused entry. This added to the protests
and Milner had to take charge of the camps in November 1901. Mrs Fawcett reported in December,
confirming all Hobhouse’s findings, adopting all the recommendations and adding to them. It should
be noted that neither lady visited a black camp, although Emily Hobhouse wrote of their existence.
Conditions slowly improved and mortality rates declined. Eventually, and ironically, the policy
was reversed and it was found more destructive to Boer commandos to refuse to shelter their
displaced families. The total of those who died in the camps was 27,927, of whom 26,251 were
women and children. More than 22,000 of the dead were under sixteen years of age. They had not, as
in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, been put to death deliberately, but the damage to
relations between British and Boer had been immense and was to last.
See also:
British Opposition to the War; Brodrick, The Right Hon. W. St John F.; Concentration Camps,
Black; Hobhouse, Emily; Sweeps; Documents: Hobhouse, Emily, Report of a Visit to the Camps of
Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies (London, Friars Printing Association,
1901).
Reference:
Hall, Darrell, ed. Fransjohan Pretorius and Gilbert Torlage, The Hall Handbook of the Anglo-Boer
War (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1999); Pakenham, Thomas, The Boer War
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979; Abacus, 1992).
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