Friday, April 15, 2022

The Ladies of the Committee - (4) Lady Alice Knox

 In some ways, Lady Alice Knox is the odd woman out in the Ladies Committee. At the time of her appointment, she wasn’t a public campaigner for women’s rights or actively involved in improvements to education nor was she involved in health. 

Thus, she’s a shadowy figure, the wife of an important military man, Sir William George Knox, of the Royal Horse Artillery, who had served in all the famous British Empire conflicts of the latter 19th Century – the Abyssinian, Ashanti, Afghan and Zulu Wars and ultimately the Boer War.  (In appearance he looks to be the absolute epitome of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Major-General.)




Alice was most likely recruited because of her husband’s connections in South Africa during the time the Ladies Committee was travelling and reporting on the concentration camps, so she might best be described as a “facilitator” and purely there to smooth the way through authorities and red tape.

Alice and her husband had been trapped in Ladysmith during the famous siege so she did have some frontline experience although there is no record of her ever having talked or written about it afterwards.

Again, it is difficult to find any portrait or photo of the adult Alice and the only one readily available in the UK National Portrait Gallery is this one of her as a child with her brother and sister. Perhaps she is the one wearing a hat.




Below is an image of Alice’s mother, Emily, from the Dundas family website




Alice’s birth date seems to vary. In some reports it is shown as 1863, but Scottish records indicate that it was much earlier, 22 August 1855. Her father was Sir Robert Dundas, 1st Baronet of Arniston and her mother, Emily, was a member of the Knox family. Alice was a cousin of her future husband. She was married to Sir William in St Paul’s Knightsbridge in July, 1889. They would have no children.

Alice died at Marazion, Cornwall, on 5 August 1929 and left a substantial estate in excess of 45,000 pounds, or around 3 million pounds in today’s value.

An obituary from The London Times of August 10, 1929 indicates that Lady Knox was a council member of the Society for the Oversea Settlement of British Women.



The Society is an interesting body, long defunct and out of fashion, but its main purpose was finding jobs for British women in the dominions and colonies of the Empire. After so many men died in World War I, there was “surplus” of women in Britain. According to the thinking of the time, what better way to help them by despatching them around the Empire where they could find jobs, and no doubt husbands, and where they could begin again with new families and communities.

Alice was also involved in a similar scheme resettling soldiers and their whole families in a similar way. Like many of the grandiose soldier settlement schemes following WW1, the success rate was low and by the time it folded in 1930, Alice would be dead. Alice and her husband are both buried in the churchyard at Temple, Midlothian, Scotland, not far from Alice’s ancestral home at Arniston.


The grave at Temple

There are some smatterings in archival newspapers of Alice giving talks or reports on the overseas emigration scheme; here is a link to one about the first army settlement in Western Australia in the Country Life Stock and Station Journal 17 February 1925. Note that Lady Knox introduced the group to Queen Mary in Buckingham Palace shortly before their departure. It would be interesting to find out how the families fared.


Links to other posts in this series about the members of the Ladies Committee sent to investigate the Concentration Camps in South Africa:-

Introduction to the Ladies

Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Lucy Deane Streatfeild

Katherine Blanche Brereton

Lady Alice Knox

Dr Jane Waterston

Dr Ella Scarlett Synge



Personal library sources include:

"The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War, A Social History" by Elizabeth Van Heyningen

"Rebel English Woman, The Remarkable Life of Emily Hobhouse" by Elsabe Brits

"The Compassionate Englishwoman" by Robert Eales

"The Boer War" by Thomas Pakenham

"Those Bloody Women, Three Heroines of the Boer War" by Brian Roberts


Thursday, April 7, 2022

The Ladies of the Committee - (3) Katherine Blanche Brereton

Katherine Blanche Brereton was born into a prominent landowning family in Norfolk in 1861. Like her fellow Committee member, Lucy Deane, she had connections to the upper classes and the military. Her father, Shovell Henry Brereton, had served in the Norfolk Militia and her grandfather had once been the vicar of the English church at Versailles. Her brother, Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton, became a respected poet, translator and educator.

Katherine's father was opposed to her dream of becoming a nurse and she was nearly 30 years old before she defied him, left the comforts of  Briningham Hall and commenced training as a "lady pupil" nurse at Guy's Hospital in London. She became the head sister of the Bright Ward (named in honour of Richard Bright who was an early pioneer in kidney research).


Briningham Hall
Wikimedia Commons

She also worked at the Birkenhead and Wirrall Children's Hospitals and trained in midwifery at the York Road Lying-In Hospital. Katherine returned home to Norfolk in late 1899 when her father died suddenly after falling from his horse during a hunt. A short time later in 1900 she joined the nursing section of the Royal Army Medical Corps and sailed out to the war in South Africa. 

Katherine was involved in the establishment of hospitals at Pretoria and Elandsfontein, and served as night superintendent at the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at Deelfontein. 


The imperious ladies of the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital Fund Committee
Wellcome Collection



Unnamed nurse and patients at Deelfontein
Wellcome Collection


Another unnamed nurse and patient in a bed donated by
Queen Alexandra for use at Deelfontein
Wellcome Collection


(This Youtube video shows the sad state of the Anglo-Boer War hospital at Deelfontein as it is today.)

Apart from her important English establishment connections, it was her experience in the hospitals that resulted in Katherine receiving a letter from the War Office requesting her to join the Ladies Committee to investigate the conditions in the concentration camps. She became a good friend of Millicent Fawcett and joined forces with her again in 1903 on a special mission to promote the conciliation of Boers and Britons.

After she returned permanentlyhome to England, Katherine often gave talks about her nursing experiences and being a member of the Ladies Committee investigating the concentration camps. (There are several reports on her talks in British Newspaper Archives). But she was always diplomatic and careful not to be overly critical of the camps or British policy in their operation.

Katherine's medal record for the Boer War shows she received the Queen's South Africa Medal and Clasp and also the highest nursing honour of the Royal Red Cross which she received at an investiture by King Edward VII in December, 1902.


These are not Katherine's medals, but she would have had a similar set,
including the Royal Red Cross and Anglo-Boer war medals

Katherine spent the remainder of her life in Norfolk where she managed the family's estates and set herself to master the farming of several hundred acres. She also devoted herself to public work, was President of the Holt Suffrage Society (later the National Women Citizens Association), also became a Justice of the Peace, served as a magistrate and was involved in numerous other causes. It seems she was also an avowed member of the Temperance Movement and may have not gained popularity by being instrumental in closing her local village pub!

When she died in October, 1930, she left her body to medical research. Her obituary in the feminist newspaper "Common Cause" sums her up as follows. 

"Her useful life of remarkably interesting and varied forms of service has come to an end; of her it may be said in the words proposed for the tablet to be erected in her memory: 'She asked nothing; she gave all'"

Sadly, there are no accessible images of Katherine Brereton to be found online although there must be some in family collections or records of the many organisations in which she was involved. 

Bed hangings belonging to her ancestors were donated by her in 1929 to the Norwich Museums. Read about them in the following links.

Brereton Bed Hangings

Frayed: Textiles on the Edge

Norfolk Museums


Introduction to the Ladies

Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Lucy Deane Streatfeild

Katherine Blanche Brereton

Lady Alice Knox

Dr Jane Waterston

Dr Ella Scarlett Synge



Personal library sources include:

"The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War, A Social History" by Elizabeth Van Heyningen

"Rebel English Woman, The Remarkable Life of Emily Hobhouse" by Elsabe Brits

"The Compassionate Englishwoman" by Robert Eales

"The Boer War" by Thomas Pakenham

"Those Bloody Women, Three Heroines of the Boer War" by Brian Roberts