The women who with their children had struggled to live alone on the veld or in women’s laagers or had tried to follow commandos certainly endured great hardships and suffered much. So did their children. One woman had lost twelve of her eighteen children from malaria before being brought into a camp; another had lost nine out of ten from dysentery. An inquiry into the history of twenty families at the Irene camp revealed that the parents, who among them had had 168 children, had lost 71 before they arrived in camp. The British used such facts and figures to demonstrate that mortality was high outside the camps too. It was a poor argument. That women and children on the open veld after they had been dispossessed by Kitchener’s farm-burning tactics suffered as badly as or worse than they did in the camps was hardly an adequate excuse.
The people brought into the camps were indeed often in dreadful condition. Dr. Pratt Yule, British medical officer in the Orange Free State, reported:
Those who followed the commandos were in miserable condition. They were worn out, half clad, riddled with disease. At Kroonstad one batch brought in eight moribund and three dead. Many had lost from one to four children on commando. The Heidelberg refugees came into Kroonstad in terrible condition. They started the terrible measles in July, August, September.24
One detects in all such statements the desire to believe that the sufferings of the women and children were somehow their own fault. Although the authorities were soon aware of the condition of the people on the veld, the columns sent to bring them in were not equipped in any way to alleviate their misery, and when those rounded up arrived at the camps they were seldom given prompt and proper care. There appears to have been, at least in the beginning, no processing and no medical inspections; those newly arrived were often put into areas already crowded, and naturally diseases rapidly spread. Medical facilities in the early months were often inadequate, and there were not enough doctors and nurses. Even where facilities and medical personnel were on hand the system, at least initially, was to make the medical aid available; the sick were not forced to go into hospital.
John Maxwell (who was to receive a CMG for services rendered as military governor of Pretoria “and in connection with the Concentration Camps”) wrote to his wife:
You can tell anyone who asks that they [the camps] are going well, the inmates are well cared for, and though the death rate amongst the children is excessive, it is in most cases the fault of the mothers themselves. There has been a severe epidemic of measles and as you know this only requires care. They won’t have anything to do with doctors or nurses and prefer their own squalid methods and truly wonderful nostrums.25
Many were indeed suspicious, fearful even, of the camp doctors and nurses. They were in most cases foreigners, the mortality rate among their patients did not inspire trust, and yielding up children to them was to put them into alien hands and to subject them to unfamiliar medical practices; small wonder then that so many preferred their own home remedies, some of which were undeniably horrifying:
Tar on the feet was a common remedy for reducing fever.
Dog’s blood was in demand as a medicine.
Cow dung was smeared on the chest for bronchitis and applied to limbs affected by rheumatism.
Horse dung, boiled and strained, was given to those convalescing from enteric.
A black chicken was cut open and applied bleeding to the chest for inflammation of the lungs.
Dr. Kendal Franks, writing from Bloemfontein in January 1902, said:
Mr. Randle [the camp superintendent] one day visited Abram Strauss, a man who had been selected as one of the head men of the camp and in virtue of his office was housed in a marquee. Mr. Randle was surprised to see a cat running about the tent with all its fur clipped off. He inquired the cause and was told that the fur had been cut off and roasted and then applied to his child’s chest as a remedy for bronchitis.26
Medical science in this era knew no cure for most of the diseases rampant in the camps; early and careful nursing offered the best chance of recovery. Doctors confronted with the sick brought to them only as a last resort had little chance of saving them. One exasperated doctor at Standerton shouted at a distraught mother: “Why have you brought me a dying child?” Most doctors did the best they could; often their advice was ignored. At Krugersdorp Dr. Franks reported that milk had been prescribed for a four-month-old infant with bronchitis, but the mother fed it sardines and it died within two days.
In general the doctors were supported by the administrators of the camps. In August 1901 W. K. Tucker issued the following instructions to the superintendents of the Transvaal camps:
There must be no stint in the distribution of medical comforts to the sick and convalescent, old and infirm people and young children. When necessary, stimulants may be freely given under doctors’ orders. There must be an adequate supply of milk, which should be liberally supplied to children and deserving people, as well as the sick and convalescent.27
Similar orders appear to have been issued in the Orange Free State, for in October 1901 the following stimulants were issued at the Bloemfontein camp:
Champagne 32 bottles
Brandy 171½ bottles
Port wine 73½ bottles
Claret 29 bottles
Stout 19 bottles
Whiskey 19 bottles
And 5,004 tins of milk.
Milner—who, it must be said, was not responsible for the formation of the camps and, in fact, disapproved of the whole scheme—did everything in his power to improve conditions as soon as they came under his control. On 20 November 1901 he wrote to the military governor at Pretoria and to the deputy administrator at Bloemfontein:
It is clearly the desire of His Majesty’s Government that expense should not be allowed to stand in the way when it is a question of providing anything necessary to improve the health of the camps.... And it would be better to err, in the present emergency, on the side of liberality than to leave anything unprovided which would promote the health of the inmates of the camps for fear of adding a few thousands to an expenditure which must in any case be heavy.28
Milner’s generosity with government funds was, of course, wise from every point of view, even if it did come a bit late, for considerable publicity had by this time been given to conditions in the camps, and in spite of all the champagne, brandy, whiskey, and tinned milk, the children continued to die. Typhoid killed one in five inmates who came down with it; pneumonia one in three. Between 1 September 1901 and the end of the year, one person out of every ten died. We do not know the exact number of children in the camps, only that most of the deaths were of boys and girls under the age of sixteen. Perhaps as many as one in six children died in just this four-month period. The following are the statistics for one year. The sources cited are British government Blue Books:
Much of the death-dealing sickness was the result of unsanitary camps and unhygienic habits. The authorities, reluctant in the face of the mounting death toll to admit even to themselves that the ultimate responsibility for conditions was theirs, preferred to blame the unhygienic habits of the women, although they did little to enforce or even to lay down regulations which would have modified such habits. The chief fault of the British was not that they ruled and regulated the lives of the inhabitants of the camps, but that they did not exert enough authority; given the premise that the people were forced to live in the camps, they were given too much freedom. Unless rules regarding washing, airing, eating, sleeping, and toilet arrangements are rigidly enforced, any camp, regardless of its inhabitants, will quickly become fouled. Trekboer women, for example, accustomed all their lives to defecating on the open veld and moving on, ought to have been instructed in the use of latrines and made to use them. Instead, they simply used the space around their tents. The toilet facilities provided by the British were not always such as to encourage their use. At the Standerton camp, and probably at other camps as well in the beginning, the latrine was simply a long narrow trench with a pole across it lengt
hwise on which people were expected to perch. The area was surrounded by a fence of sacking and there was but one entrance. Privacy there was none.
Boiled water ought to have been provided and the necessity for using it ought to have been explained instead of expecting the women to boil their own. Even soldiers could not be made to boil their water when fuel was scarce, as it usually was. Although water for washing was generally available, soap was often in short supply. The authorities appear to have had little understanding of their responsibilities for hygiene and contented themselves with being disgusted by the filth they observed. Dr. G. B. Woodroffe, camp medical officer at the Irene camp, reported:
The habits of the people in general are such as would be a disgrace to any European nation.... Napkins for babies are seldom used. They are allowed to mess their beds, which lie for days without being washed or aired, and the tents absolutely stink of decomposing urine, etc.
A mother had two children with diarrhoea. They all slept in one bed, and she never attended to them from the time they went to bed until breakfast time the next morning.29
In her travels about South Africa Emily Hobhouse won friends and made enemies. Her friends were the Boer women in the concentration camps; her enemies were more influential. Among the latter was Miss Dora Fairbridge, one of the founders of the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa, an organisation which proclaimed itself to be nonpolitical —except, of course, for its “determination to uphold the Imperial Supremacy in South Africa.” Miss Fairbridge wrote to Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, now governor of Cape Colony, that Emily had “sown discontent and dissatisfaction among the women she is supposed to benefit. They were all satisfied and grateful to the English Government until she came amongst them to invent grievances where none existed.” Hely-Hutchinson passed on to Chamberlain the Guild’s opinion that “Miss Hobhouse exercises a bad influence on the Boer women in the Refugee Camps.” Milner received more than sixty complaints about her. News of her activities began to precede her, and Major Hamilton Goold-Adams refused to permit her to visit the camp at Kroonstad because, as he told her, he had heard that she showed “personal sympathy” for the Boers. Emily did not deny it. “I replied with astonishment that that was just what I had come to do—to give personal sympathy and help in personal troubles.” Goold-Adams remained adamant. He had also heard that one of her letters from South Africa had been read at a pro-Boer political meeting in London. Though she denied this, it was true.
Miss Hobhouse’s letters home and her speeches after her return to England created a furore. Questions were asked in the House of Commons, but the members were told that Kitchener believed the people in the camps had “a sufficient allowance and were all comfortable and happy.” When her report on conditions in the camps was published, many were appalled, but soon there came a flood of counter statements and arguments from British South Africans. R. B. Douglas, a Presbyterian minister in Johannesburg, wrote: “I have walked through every department of the camp at Johannesburg and have seen nothing to suggest hardship and privation.... Everywhere there is evidence of cheerfulness and contentment.”30
Mrs. K. H. R. Stuart, delegate for the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa, who was in Britain to raise funds for the erection of gravestones for soldiers killed in the war, wrote this of Miss Hobhouse’s report:
[It] is apt to give wrong impressions to those who are unacquainted with the habits of life and conditions of things in South Africa, where intense heat, crowded tents, flies, scarcity of milk, snakes, etc. are every-day occurences. We South Africans wonder to hear so much made of things which we have always had to put up with.... On the whole, Miss Hobhouse’s report is unintentionally a marvellous testimony to the exceeding care our military have expended upon the women and children of the very men who are shooting our brave soldiers down.31
Dr. Kay wrote of “some agitation about concentration camps raised by a few unsexed hysterical women who are prepared to sacrifice everything for notoriety.” He admitted there was sickness in the camps but said that improvements were taking place and that these “would have taken place whether or not there was this agitation by sexless busybodies with nothing better to do than decry everything and everybody.”
Kitchener continued to send back reassuring messages. On 3 August 1901 he telegraphed:
Goold-Adams has made a tour of inspection refugee camps Orange River Colony and reports people well looked after and completely satisfied with all we are doing for them.... Male refugees at Kroonstad presenting most loyal address and peace movement is spreading fast in all camps.32
There was a good bit of understandable confusion in the minds of many honest people as to exactly what conditions really were in the camps. In spite of Kitchener’s assurances, a great many were left uneasy. Something had to be done, the politicians realised. What they did was most uncharacteristic and unusual for a British government, or any other government, at this period in history: six women were appointed to a Ladies Committee to go to South Africa, to investigate and to report.
41
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS: THE LADIES COMMITTEE
The government obviously wanted the concentration camp issue whitewashed, but, unintentionally perhaps, it selected conscientious, intelligent, honest, and energetic women for the Ladies Committee. It was headed by Mrs. Millicent Garett Fawcett, widow of Professor Henry Fawcett, the extraordinary man who though blind became postmaster general of England. Mrs. Fawcett was a remarkable woman: she was a feminist, an able public speaker, and the author of a book on political economy, but perhaps her chief recommendation to those who appointed her was an article she had recently published in the Westminster Gazette criticising Miss Hobhouse.
Dr. Jane Waterson, a beautiful and intelligent sixty-one-year-old spinster, daughter of Lieutenant General Lord Abinger, was also on the committee. She had earned medical degrees in both London and Brussels, and she had been the first woman doctor in South Africa. She too had expressed in print her displeasure with the “hysterical whining going on in England” while “we feed and pamper people who had not even the grace to say thank you for the care bestowed on them.” Other members of the committee were Miss Katherine Bereton, a former nursing sister at Guy’s Hospital in London, who had served in an army hospital in South Africa; Dr. the Honourable Ella Campbell Scarlett; Lady Anne Knox, wife of General Sir William Knox, who had done some nursing of soldiers at Ladysmith; and Miss Lucy Deane, government inspector of factories in Britain, who had some experience in infant welfare work.
Emily Hobhouse had asked to be included but was blandly told that the government wanted an impartial committee and she was obviously biased. Undismayed, she decided to go to South Africa again anyway. On the afternoon of 27 October 1901 the Avondale Castle, carrying Emily and a companion, dropped anchor in Table Bay off Cape Town. Before they could disembark an officer came aboard and, taking Emily aside, informed her that she was not to be allowed to land and must remain on board, communicating with no one ashore, and that within three days she would be transferred to another vessel and shipped back to Britain. She tried to argue: the officer had no warrant for her detention, and she had committed no crime; not being able to send a message to anyone ashore deprived her of any appeal. The most the officer would agree to do for her was to take a letter to his superior.
Emily wrote hastily, first to the commandant in Cape Town, pointing out that “the summary arrest of an Englishwoman bound on works of charity, without warrant of any kind or stated offense, is a proceeding which requires explanation.” With this she enclosed letters to be forwarded to Milner, to Kitchener, and to Hely-Hutchinson. It was, however, as she doubtless suspected, Kitchener himself who had taken this high-handed action. Nevertheless, she was determined to fight her deportation and to make matters as unpleasant and as awkward as possible for the authorities. She demanded a guard so as to make it clear that she was being held prisoner; she refused to give her parole; she demanded that she be told in writing the conditions of
her imprisonment; she claimed to be ill and in need of rest on shore; she asked to be transferred to a prison on land; she refused to pack her bags or to leave the Avondale Castle for another ship. In the end soldiers had to be brought on board; she was wrapped in a shawl and bodily carried off to a troopship bound for England.
In July the women from England appointed to the Ladies Committee went to Cape Town and were joined by the other committeewomen already in South Africa. Kitchener did not like the idea of their coming, but as he told Lord Roberts, “I hope it will calm the agitators in England. I doubt there being much for them to do as the camps are very well run.” Kitchener was wrong. The members of the Ladies Committee found a great deal to do. For more than three months they travelled about, visiting twenty-one camps. They examined water supplies, refuse disposal, trenching, hospitals, latrines, fuel, abatoirs, schools, clothing, camp regulations, food—everything pertaining to the camps. They maintained a proper scepticism and paid surprise visits: “In no case . . . did we announce beforehand our proposed visit to the superintendent.”
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