"The only bright spot in camp life"

Much has been written about what are often called the first concentration camps, being those set up by Lord Kitchener during the Boer War in South Africa and into which were herded many thousands of Afrikaner women and children after the land was laid waste through his scorched earth policy.

National Women's Monument, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Emily Hobhouse, whose ashes are buried at the foot of this memorial, is especially famous for bringing to light this shameful practice: appallingly run camps riddled with diseases, little shelter, inadequate water, food and clothing. The mortality statistics are that nearly 28,000 Afrikaners died in these camps between 1899-1902 with more than three-quarters of them aged less than sixteen.

Outrage erupted in Britain. Kitchener argued the camps were essential to stop the women supporting their men out in the field by way of supplies and intelligence, while politicians tried to soften matters by saying they were necessary to save the helpless families of the enemy who had been abandoned and left to starve by their men, leaving them easy prey to marauding black Africans.

In an attempt to placate the furore, the British Government appointed a ladies committee headed by Millicent Garrett Fawcett to report on the camps. Although she corroborated most of what Hobhouse had reported, her report had a harsher tone as she felt much blame fell on the women themselves because they had chosen to involve themselves in the war and were often more violently opposed to British domination than their men so they had to expect the consequences, also that they contributed to the deaths of their own children through ignorance and superstition.

To reinforce the policy that incarceration in the camps was purely for the safety of the women and children, the British Government initiated a program of education. This is covered in some detail by Eliza Reidi in an article, Teaching Empire: British and Dominions Women Teachers in the South African War Concentration Camps. *

“The picture of dead and dying children drawn by Hobhouse and backed by the mortality statistics was replaced by one of happy schoolchildren, ‘bright, pretty, and keen to learn’.”

But there was more politics at play here than altruism. The British Government wanted to crush the backward-looking culture of the Afrikaner people, force them towards a modern Imperial future and to make them speak English. And so the daughters of England and the Empire were recruited to carry out this important task.

Shields Gazette, 6 November, 1901.
“Ladies ... may be sure of a courteous reception from the parents
and every provision will be made for their comfort.”

A salary of 100 pounds a year and a return passage, plus food and accommodation included made this an attractive proposition for many. Some applicants would have been passionate do-gooders or die-hard British Imperialists or feminists, some were governesses, others simply wanted out of a restrictive life or a thirst for adventure (and possibly a husband), or they could be struggling single women or widows fallen on hard times.

Reidi’s article gives an overview of the recruitment processes and its challenges, with brief summaries of some of the women from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who travelled to South Africa. Some remained there, some died before their contracts were up, but most seem to have just disappeared from the records. Perhaps some will be found through judicious genealogical searching, but most resources available on these teachers are scarce or non-existent. Although there were between 300-400 of them, they are just more of the frustrating will o’ the wisps of female history. Given that these were often well-educated and literate women, where are the diaries or journals or biographies that would throw greater light on their experiences? 

Only one seems to have been rediscovered. Canadian E. Maud Graham published a book in 1905, and this has been recently been re-published and edited in a new edition by the University of Alberta Press, but the book is a little expensive and is not universally available in libraries. (Unfortunately, the original 1905 version has not as yet found its way onto the treasures at Internet Archive.) Another Canadian was writer Florence H. Randal Livesay who manages to score a few lines here and there on Canadian websites but not much else.

 

Find it on Amazon.com

An Australian contingent departed in the SS Medic from Melbourne on 31 July 1902, and their story is briefly detailed at the bottom of page 22 of this educational publication of the Australian Department of Veterans Affairs - but without specific names.

Australian teachers before departing for South Africa, 1902

The February 2015 newsletter for National Boer War Memorial Association (pages 9-10), lists several of these Australian women and puts out a request:  

“We encourage anyone with knowledge of these women, especially descendants, to let us know what happened to them.”

Ida Robertson was just one example. The daughter of a solicitor from Deniliquin, New South Wales, she had been inspired to travel to South Africa after the death of her brother. Much detail about his service and death can be found in this newsletter of the Hay Historical Society, but what happened to Ida eventually is not known.

Twenty women sailed from New Zealand and the caption attached to this photograph on the NZ History website lists the names of all of them. Interestingly, the accompanying article has this to say:

“Once the camps were dismantled the teachers found jobs working at schools in the towns or countryside. Most decided to remain in South Africa after finishing the term of their appointment. Only six of the 20 teachers returned to New Zealand and those that did found that their lives had been forever changed by their experiences in South Africa.”

The 'Learned Eleventh' from New Zealand

As world attitudes change, not only have these stories slipped into the usual fog of women’s history, they are at risk of disappearing permanently as the old “white” South Africa fades from modern consciousness with new emphasis on previously neglected black history. ^ 

Still, for taking on the challenge and doing what they thought was the right thing within the parameters of their time and place, these women remain worthy of recognition. They provided what Emily Hobhouse said was “the only bright spot” in the horrors of concentration camp life. Here, you can read the memoir of an Afrikaner child, Hester Johanna Maria Uys, who had fond memories of a Miss O’Brien teaching her English and knitting. 

There are a number of books by and about Emily Hobhouse. She even had a South African naval ship named after her during the apartheid era.

An extensive collection of images on this Pinterest page.

You may be lucky to find specific women’s names by searching for reports on lady teachers for South Africa via various newspaper archives online, including British Newspapers or TROVE.

* The English Historical Review

Vol. 120, No. 489 (Dec., 2005), pp. 1316-1347

Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3491042

^ The equally horrendous black concentration camps of this war are now starting to be researched and written about.

A Woman Making Waves

For those lucky enough to be within coo-ee of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, some interesting events on Women Making Waves are taking place there.

One unusual name that caught my eye in the list of forthcoming talks was that of Dr Attracta Rewcastle, whose medals and papers are in the possession of the Museum, and who was the first female commissioned officer in the Royal Navy to attain the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant Commander.

The Launceston Examiner, 31 March 1940.

Born Attracta Genevieve Candon in 1897 in Roscommon, Ireland, she received her medical training in Galway and Dublin. After working as house physician in Dublin she was appointed assistant school medical officer for Sheffield and during the 1930s assisted at the Children’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street.

In 1926, she had married the future politician and judge with the equally memorable names of Cuthbert Snowball Rewcastle and they had three children.

At the outbreak of World War II, Attracta was appointed Medical Superintendent of the WRNS and in 1940 was commissioned in the RNVR (Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve) which qualified her as the first woman doctor to be appointed to the Royal Navy. In 1945, she was promoted to Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander, the only woman to hold this rank, and she played a major role in maintaining an efficient medical service for service women. She received an OBE for her wartime services.

Never just a doctor, Attracta was also active in politics and religious affairs. A staunch Roman Catholic, she was also president of the Catholic Women’s League prior to WW2 and chairman of the National Board of Catholic Women post-war.

After she retired from her Navy career, she resumed her work as a specialist in the diseases of women and children and was also a member of both the Westminster and London City Councils. In the 1950 General Election, she stood as a Tory for West Willesden but did not succeed. She died in February 1951, just two months before her son was tragically lost in the sinking of the submarine HMS Affray. 

As the letter at the end of her obituary in The Times states, she was yet another woman who "... deserved far more recognition than she ever received."

Obituary from The Times, February 1951

Another article about her work can be found in this edition of the Catholic Womens League newsletter, scroll down to page 9, although her date of death is incorrect as she predeceased her son in 1951.

More copyrighted images can be found at Getty Images.

Woman in a Bubble

On International Women's Day, this Guardian blog about a new book The Trouble with Women by cartoonist Jacky Fleming is highly appropriate. 

What Charles Darwin had to say about women is pretty disturbing but only to be expected given the male attitudes of the time but which, sadly enough, haven't changed much in some cultures and societies.

Love the cover with the woman stuck in the bubble!

Find it at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

Not your "Sara Dane" - real women from the Edges of Empire

From Goodreads

Original 1955 cover

There are certain myths attached to Australia’s stories of convict women that have been perpetuated in a fair bit of romantic literature. These often feature the innocent and impoverished or orphaned young woman - usually English or Irish - and sexy and beautiful too! - who steals something small, a handkerchief, a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. Although she is sentenced to hang, by stroke of luck she is reprieved at the last minute and transported beyond the seas, usually to New South Wales or the more dreaded Van Diemen’s Land. In spite of all that she endures and the challenges she faces, our heroine succeeds in some way, either through an advantageous marriage or sheer grit and determination to better herself. She manages to put her shameful past behind her and becomes one of the founding mothers of the nation. 

The famous novel Sara Dane by Catherine Gaskin, which was inspired by the real story of Mary Reibey [see note below] started this trend back in the mid 1950s and, with variations, has been the basis of many a romantic “convict novel” ever since. 

The historical reality is that beauty was in short supply among convicts and not many of them were totally innocent, the majority being career criminals with a history of offending and re-offending. Sadly, any of those who may have been comparatively naïve or innocent before their sentences were often dragged down into the mire by forced association with these hardened individuals and the brutal treatment they received at the hands of those in authority.

There are many records still in existence in various archives of countries that used to be part of the British Empire detailing the circumstances, trials and sentences of a group of women who came under British laws and jurisdictions and these form the basis of From the Edges of Empire: Convict Women from Beyond the British Isles, edited by Lucy Frost and Colette McAlpine for the Convict Women’s Press.

Available from Convict Womens Press

This absorbing compilation throws new light on some of the amazing 200 or so women who don’t fit the accepted image of convicts all being of British heritage. Although only a tiny fraction of the 25,000 women who were transported were tried and sentenced in countries other than the British Isles, very few them were described “of colour” with others simply being described as “foreign” - which could mean anything including race or colour - but more often that simply she could not speak English. Some were slaves with no rights or no-one to defend them, some were just girls, some had aristocratic or influential connections in Europe yet still fell foul of British law. Their crimes were of passion or hate or necessity. Some were victims of men and a cruel system, others were manipulative and immoral by nature. Fascinating, and even disturbing reading in places, several of these women could be subjects of novels in their own right. 

It is somewhat ironic that having a convict in the family tree was something Australians used to try and hide but now has turned into a badge of honour and pride, although modern people do tend to rose-tint the facts about their ancestors and give them attributes that are more wishful thinking than fact. It’s fine to have a clever or pretty “Sara Dane” in your family tree, but please don’t let her be ugly or diseased or an imbecile, a prostitute, a poisoner or creepy child abuser; nor should she be a “person of colour”. Some Australians with a convict background may assume their dark colouring comes from an Aboriginal connection but won’t know they are in fact descended from black slaves from the West Indies or mixed race individuals from India, Mauritius, or the Cape of Good Hope. 

If these women survived the tough system, once they served their sentences and were no longer under the eagle eye of jurisprudence or in the paper records, many simply disappeared into the general population, probably taking new names or camouflaging their pasts. One particularly shocking story related in the book involved a Scots missionary woman in India who was suspected of incest with her brother and who was transported for whipping to death her seven year old niece. In later years, she moved frequently through the southern part of Australia, perhaps deliberately hiding her trail. If her descendants alive today know nothing of her story, it may be better that they never do, as some convict crimes still border on the unspeakable and can never be equated with the romantic stolen handkerchief version.

Another woman who appears in the list of foreign-born female convicts in this book is the con woman and serial bigamist, Hannah Mary Anson, who sometimes gave her birthplace as Madras, India. After her final release in 1854, it is assumed she went on to reinvent a different life for herself and it may well be that she is another convict with living descendants today who know nothing of her at all. Her story appeared earlier in this blog and can be read here (1) and here (2).

One contributor From the Edges of Empire, Kay Buttfield, in writing about women sent from South Africa, gives this apt closing to one of the chapters:

"The lives of these people, like all the convict lives whose stories are narrated, come to us through the records - some more detailed than others - but all allow a moment to contemplate these people. In the gathering of these threads of lives we will never know all the answers. However their lives gain a little dignity when we can tease out their stories and our history of the British Empire becomes the richer for knowing them."

(And not to forget the men of different heritage - another exceptional book from another Tasmanian author is Black Founders by Cassandra Pybus.) 

Note:  The real Mary Reibey was hardly the glamorous Sara Dane of book covers but she is worth reading about.  Most Australians will probably look at her image every day and never give her a second thought - she features on the $20 bill - and is about due for rediscovery by a new generation of enterprising women.

"Florence Nightingale of the brush"

Some of the most famous and impressive 19th Century battle scenes ever painted were done by a woman, Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, better known simply as Lady Butler.

Born in Switzerland in 1846 she and her multi-talented sister, the poet and suffragette, Alice Meynell, received an extraordinarily enlightened education for any woman of the time. Their father, Thomas James Thompson, was a man of “independent means and artistic leanings” who decided to tutor his daughters himself rather than entrusting them to a governess.

National Portrait Gallery London

Elizabeth spent much of her childhood in Italy where she first began to paint, later continuing formal art studies both in Florence and London. But it was in France where she found her true metier when she encountered the new style of battle scenes being pioneered by French painters.

The Roll Call, first shown in 1874, became one of the most famous and popular paintings of the era and people queued for hours to see it when it went on tour around the country. It has been much copied for everything from calling cards to the lids of chocolate boxes and jigsaw puzzles. The fact this very masculine subject was painted by a pretty young woman who couldn’t possibly know what the battlefield was really like somehow added to its appeal. Several of her subsequent paintings went on to equal acclaim.

The Roll Call, Royal Collection

 

28th Regiment at Quatre-Bras, National Gallery of Victoria

In 1879, by a margin of a couple of votes, Elizabeth lost her opportunity of becoming the first-ever female associate of the Royal Academy and she made no further attempts to pursue what should have been her rightful accreditation.

Scotland for Ever! Leeds Art Gallery

Although she painted what is perhaps her best known work Scotland for Ever! after her marriage to Sir William Francis Butler, giving birth to a total of six children and globe-trotting with a military husband created obstacles to her output. It also didn’t help that Elizabeth’s approach to the glorification of war and battle altered with time. Her husband was an Irish Catholic and together they started to take a more critical view of the British Empire and what it stood for. Her painting Evicted is a strong indictment on the treatment of the Irish people at the time of the Famine.

Evicted, University College Dublin

Inevitably, she was increasingly ignored by the establishment and left behind with changing tastes in art. By the time of World War I, battles bore little resemblance to the old-fashioned glorified reflections of “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die” * ideals for which she had become famous. Although she continued to paint interpretations of WW1, they never reached the fame of her earlier works.

Yet when one looks carefully at her sketches and smaller studies of the men she portrayed, her sympathy with the fears and stoicism of the fighting man remains the same, no matter the era or type of conflict.

Man of Kent (The Buffs - Royal East Kent Regiment)

 

Remnants of an Army, Tate Britain

Study of a wounded Guardsman, National Army Museum

Lady Butler also wrote a number of books, including her own Autobiography, Sketch Book and Diary and Letters from the Holy Land, all of which include lesser-known paintings and sketches from her world travels and they are free to read or browse online.

Lady Butler at her easel, Dover Castle 1898

Her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Biography concludes with: 

"Lady Butler has a dual claim to fame. She pioneered a new, more realistic depiction of warfare in British painting, one which was to prove immensely influential at the end of the nineteenth century. And she briefly enjoyed critical and popular success of such magnitude that, for a while, it seemed a new era for women artists in Britain was about to dawn."

It is interesting to discover there was more enlightenment and willingness to accept a woman artist in the 1870s than in subsequent years. Although two women had been instrumental in the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768 (Angelica Kaufman and Mary Moser) it wasn’t until 1922 that Annie Swynnerton was admitted as an associate, with Dame Laura Knight receiving full membership in 1936.

Sir William received Bansha Castle in County Tipperary as a grace-and-favour house after he retired from the Boer War, even though he had often upset his superiors over their handling over that War and was even accused of being a Boer sympathiser. (While his wife remains comparatively famous, there is much about Sir William’s own illustrious Empire career that is now forgotten, not least his involvement in Canada in the establishment of the North-West Mounted Police, now known as the Mounties.) 

After Sir William died, his wife lived on at Bansha until she was driven out by the IRA in 1922, leaving many paintings and other possessions behind. It is said one of those paintings called The Camel Corp has a bullet hole in it. Whether apocryphal or not, it reflects a certain irony.

Lady Butler spent her later years at Gormanstan Castle, County Meath. She died on 2 October 1933.

Last page in Lady Butler's Autobiography

* From “Charge of the Light Brigade”, Alfred , Lord Tennyson.

Champion of women in India

The disenfranchised women of Saudi Arabia have finally been given the right to vote and even stand for election, although only a modest few seem to have been brave enough to do so and it will be interesting to see whether this changes in the future.

One woman who devoted much of her life to helping women in a similar society where purdah was entrenched was Cornelia Sorabji. Although hallowed within academia in both India and Britain, she is little known to the general public and nor is she that easy to categorise. Due in part to her Christian heritage and her English connections, she admitted she never felt wholly Indian yet she was definitely not British either. She did a great deal to help secluded women assert their rights in regard to property, but she was not a feminist. She had little time for the politics of men like Gandhi and supported the British Raj in spite of its failings.

Cornelia's nephew, Professor Richard Sorabji, has written a book about her. Another biography is Cornelia Sorabji: India's Pioneering Woman Lawyer by Suparna Gooptu of the University of Calcutta, also see An Indian Portia by Kusoom Vadgama.

As long ago as the 1880s, Cornelia was making her mark. This article appeared in The Sydney Mail of 12 May 1888 and even allowing for the usual patronising and racially superior attitudes of the age it carries a tone of admiration:

Miss Cornelia Sorabji

Women all over the world are bestirring themselves to assert their sometimes questionable, but in many cases perfectly justifiable, claims to a status in culture, equal to that of men.Their fitness and right of doing so cannot be doubted any longer, considering the successes they have achieved at the universities of Great Britain, India, the United States and on the Continent. Miss Cornelia Sorabji is a case in point. She is the daughter of the Rev. Sorabji, a Parsee honorary missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Poona, and of Mrs. Sorabji, who visited England in 1886 to plead the case of female education in India, and was the first and only lady to enter the Deccan College at Poona in 1884. Her position, among upwards of 300 men, who, with the exception of two Englishmen and a few Parsees, were all Hindoos, was at first a most difficult one, but, with the goal of her ambition ever in view she went bravely on, winning golden opinions from principals and professors alike.Among her own sex her example has already borne fruit, two Parsee ladies and one Jewess having sought for admission into the colleges in Bombay and Poona. In Miss Sorabji’s case no concessions were made. She studied Latin in common with the men (though French has since been allowed to lady students). She was “top of her year” in the previous examination, has held a scholarship each year of her course, was “Hughlings Scholar” in 1885, having passed head of the University in English, “Havelock prizeman” the end of the same year, being top of the Deccan College in English, has taken honours each time, and in the final B.A. examination of the Bombay University, held in November, 1887, she was one of the four in the entire Presidency and the only student from her own college who succeeded in gaining first-class honours. Now that Miss Sorabji has thus succeeded, in spite of the unfriendly criticisms among her own countrymen and women upon her unprecedent career, her brave, high-souled behaviour cannot fail to raise the character and ability of women in the estimation of the Parsee and Hindoo community. 

From The Sydney Mail, 12 May 1888 (TROVE)

Here is another from a few years later that demonstrates the petty obstacles Cornelia would have faced (The Ballarat Star, 22 January 1902):

An Indian Portia

The Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn have made a notable departure in granting permission to an Indian lady, Miss Cornelia Sorabji, to frequent their library and use the books therein. The lady to whom this exceptional privilege has been extended is a very remarkable personage. She came to England from India a few years ago to study law, and resided at Somerville College, Oxford, where she passed the examination for B.C.L. [Bachelor Civil Law] and obtained a certificate equal in merit to that degree, which women cannot take in Oxford. She subsequently returned to India and in Bombay obtained the university degree of LL.B [Bachelor of Laws] and practised in the neighbouring courts and also in the High Court there as an advocate where she was admitted by order to defend prisoners in certain cases. She is now in England for the purposes of further study. 

In 1909, she was awarded the gold  Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for her work in helping widows and other women in estate matters through the Bengal Court of Wards. (She is not shown in the Wikipedia listing for medal beneficiaries, although several reports of her receiving the award can be found in the newspapers of the day.)

Aside from her involvement in the law, Cornelia wrote extensively on many subjects to do with India and its culture, including short stories and even plays. She also wrote her memoirs, but apparently they are discreet and do not go into her private life in any way.

Cornelia's style and dignity evident in this cover of The Queen publication
copyright UC Press

Photograph 1930
copyright National Portrait Gallery, London

Cornelia's bust at Lincoln's Inn
From Wikipedia.
Photo by James Frankling Gresham Lectures

First woman jockey to win Melbourne Cup

History made today in Australia, 3 November 2015! 

First woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup on an outsider.

Michelle Payne

ABC