Bloemfontein

Bloemfontein was the first significant camp to be established and it was not typical of most camps. It was one of the largest, larger in fact than the town of Bloemfontein, which had a recorded population of 3,379 in 1890. Because it was used as a holding camp, it had a constantly changing population. Water supply and health were a never-ending struggle since the British army made heavy demands on the limited supply of water and the soldiers had brought a severe typhoid epidemic into the town. Above all, it never had a really competent superintendent. Nevertheless, it was by no means the worst camp in the system and it was under the direct eye of the central camp administration.

Refugees began to trickle into Bloemfontein even before the British took the town in March 1900 but the camp was formally established about 22 September 1900. It was a bleak place, some two miles outside the town, ‘dumped down on the southern slope of a kopje right out on the bare brown veld’. There was no shelter of any kind so that the hot sun beat down on the tents. In June 1901 Inspector Daller commented that the old site continued to look disorderly:

‘... the outcropping rocks and broken contour of the site – surely such a steep slope is not necessary in a country where surface drainage is so easy – make it impossible [to keep tidy]. The tents are alternately huddled and scattered in a narrow strip between the rock above and the flat with its conspicuous latrines below. The turf has long since been worn away and the soil, being naturally black, gives an unfortunate tone of grimness to the whole.’

By contrast, the second camp, set up in April 1901, seemed fresh and sweet.¹

By 15 November 1900 there were 519 people under canvas; a few days later the number had risen to 800. When Emily Hobhouse arrived there in January 1901 there were already at least 2,000 people there. At the end of March this had reached over 3,000 and a couple of weeks later the number was nearly 4,000. Families continued to pour in and Bloemfontein camp had reached the considerable size of 7,500 in August 1901.²

While the testimonies of the Boer women have to be used with caution, an early letter from a mother to her prisoner son suggests that conditions were rudimentary in these early months. At the time that she wrote, there were thirteen families in the camp, with twelve people to a tent. There was no fuel and the women had to scavenge the veld for green bushes and mule dung to make fires. ‘It is very hard to be beggars’, she wrote. Another woman commented, ‘I never knew tent life was so hard’. ‘Still’, she added, ‘it might have been worse’. The greatest hardship was that they were not allowed into town to supplement their rations. Fortunately her brother had sent some furniture to make their tent more comfortable.³

Much of our information about Bloemfontein camp in its early days comes from the letters of Emily Hobhouse who arrived there in January 1901, while it was still under military administration. Like Lucy Deane of the Ladies Committee later on, she was scathing about the military mind. ‘Crass male ignorance, stupidity, helplessness and muddling. I rub as much salt into the sore places of their minds as I possibly can, because it is so good for them; but I can’t help melting a little when they are very humble and confess that the whole thing is a grievous and gigantic blunder and presents an almost insoluble problem, and they don’t know how to face it.’ Emily Hobhouse struggled for weeks to persuade the authorities to provide mattresses and soap and to give clothing to the most destitute. Above all, a better water supply was needed and she was able to have tanks installed so that the water could, at least, in this typhoid-ridden town, be boiled.⁴

Emily Hobhouse was particularly contemptuous of the superintendent of Bloemfontein camp, Captain Arthur Hume. She complained to the Deputy Administrator of the ORC, Major H.J. Goold Adams, who reprimanded the captain, reducing him to a ‘state of abject deference’, Hobhouse reported with glee.⁵ In fairness to Hume, he had taken over a disorganised camp with no records. There had been constant changes of superintendent so that no routine had been established. Certainly he was well-intentioned:

‘It is my object to make the people under my charge, forget as much as possible that they are here under compulsion, and as far as is compatible with sanitary and health conditions I leave them to themselves. Discipline is an unknown quantity amongst the Boers, more especially as regards their women and children and the camp is largely made up of the latter. Further, I think that the treatment meted out to those in refugee camps will have a material influence for good or evil in the future settlement of the country. I am therefore very careful in my dealings with them’.⁶

These were fine words but in fact Hume struggled to keep on top of the work. Reports noted repeatedly that the camp was unkempt. The first camp, which had five long tin huts in addition to the tents, was not tidily pitched. It was not regularly cleaned and, above all, the latrines were filthy. Hume responded to criticisms defensively. The camp, he agreed, was unhealthy and bleak, swept by cold winds. The cleanliness of the camp was a source of great anxiety but he had too much office work to supervise the cleaning – an excuse which was a sure sign of an incompetent superintendent. Others, of course, were to blame. ‘The whole truth of the matter is that Dutchmen in this camp who occupy the positions of corporals are, with two, or at the most three exceptions, utterly useless. Give me a dozen NCOs and men whom I can depend on to carry out an order, and the camp will very soon be clean’, he wrote.⁷

Yet, despite the considerable deficiencies of his administration, Hume was not removed from his post. Why? The explanation probably lies in the official attitude to the camps in these early months of 1901. Economy was the watchword. Attempts to introduce comforts were flatly rejected. The request for a shelter for the women washing hospital laundry was turned down. ‘I think the Afrikander ladies who wash clothes should be well used to it, having lived in the country all their lives, and they might wash early in the morning or evening. In any case winter is coming on and the rays of the sun getting less and less every day’, the Chief Superintendent stated patronisingly. As the people began to pour into the camp in increasing numbers, urgent requests for more tents received equally short shrift. The troops also required tents, the superintendent was told. The military authorities who supplied the tents demanded that, like the military, inmates should sleep fifteen people to a tent. This was too much for the Chief Superintendent who pointed out that he could not put more than one family in a single tent and that women and children required different conditions from soldiers. Excessive thrift also inhibited the authorities from appointing a second doctor but, by April 1901, both the superintendent and the inmates were petitioning for another doctor and the authorities had to accede.⁸

Even more striking was the response to Dr Pern’s rejection of some of the meat in March 1901. At least one cow had suffered from ‘pleurisy’ and Pern considered the meat inedible. ‘Please do not in future condemn the Contractors’ supplies in such a wholesale manner’, the Chief Superintendent instructed the superintendent. ‘It would always be better to have an expert’s opinion. Dr Pern has not been long in the country, and cannot know much about lung sickness’.⁹

Thrift was not the only factor at work. The reality was that the senior authorities in the ORC were reluctant to confront Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief, with the unpalatable fact that they lacked the resources to run an ill-considered camp system for which there had been little planning. No-one seems to have anticipated either that the war would be so prolonged or that so many people would be swept up into the camps. As a result, they responded as defensively as Hume to criticism, ignoring the growing crisis and blaming the Boers for the insanitary state of the camp. This attitude is particularly striking in the case of Bloemfontein camp and came to permeate much British writing about the camps in general. So, when the Chief Superintendent suggested that a commission to be established to enquire into the management of Bloemfontein camp, Goold Adams responded: ‘It seems that the majority of the faults found with the camp are unavoidable, either from military reasons or on account of the dirty slovenly habits of the refugees themselves’. He did nothing.¹⁰

As a holding camp in an unhealthy town, Bloemfontein camp was particularly vulnerable to disease and both typhoid and measles struck much earlier than in most other camps, where the crisis came in the winter months of 1901. In Bloemfontein the measles epidemic peaked in April and May 1901, but typhoid was also severe in the summer months at the end of that year. Already by mid-February children were dying of measles and there were nearly forty cases of typhoid in the hospital. Since camp inmates were limited to one pint of boiled water a day for drinking – in the February heat – typhoid was almost unavoidable. Only a better water supply would improve conditions, Pern was convinced. ‘As MO here I cannot impress on the authorities too strongly what a death-trap the Modder River water-works are, accountable for the death of hundreds and hundreds of our soldiers stationed around Bloemfontein, during the last twelve months or so’, he reminded the superintendent. An inadequate staff struggled to cope. Dr Pern went down with typhoid at least twice during his long stint in Bloemfontein camp. Sister Kennedy, the only trained nurse in the early months, worked until she was utterly exhausted. Emily Hobhouse considered that she was doing ‘splendid work’. Not only had she established the hospitals, she was also training young Boer women as nursing assistants, with some success.¹¹

The pattern of deaths in Bloemfontein camp was unusual in that, although there were two peaks, mortality did not decline at all until 1902. Such a long duration was rare for many camps had only a brief period of high mortality. A second feature was the early onset of the epidemic, long before measles attacked most of the camps. Like Bethulie the second wave of mortality was even more severe than the first. This is not surprising in a town which was riddled with typhoid.

Interestingly, the graph showing the death rates suggest that Bloemfontein was less unhealthy than some other camps, for the average death rate was lower than that of the camp average, apart from the early epidemic. Adult mortality was relatively high, a result of the typhoid which riddled the camp and the town.

In the published accounts of the inmates, the Bloemfontein camp hospital has a particularly bad reputation. For D.H. van Zyl the word ‘hospital’ was synonymous with ‘murder’ and the camp inmates did all they could to avoid being sent there. Mrs Roos, the wife of the Heilbron landdrost and one of Emily Hobhouse’s most articulate informants, was more graphic. ‘No pen can give an idea of the suffering of the inmates’, she wrote. The wards were dirty and unruly; the place was noisy as staff tramped up and down in nailed boots. The patients were not separated by sex, age or ailment. Vermin crawled over the blankets. The children were starved, crying out for food, and were callously treated, left shivering with cold. Mothers could visit their children only once a week for five minutes. They were not allowed to be with their loved ones, even when they were dying.¹²

What are we to make of these terrible indictments? The answer is complex and can only be dealt with partially here. Although Mrs Roos gave no date, her account almost certainly relates to the early period since there is plenty of evidence that the camp hospitals were well run later on. Appalled though she was by the sufferings of the children, Emily Hobhouse left no record of such conditions. She paid the highest tribute to Sister Kennedy, the only trained nurse in the beginning. Hobhouse describes her as ‘underfed and overworked, just sinking onto her bed, hardly able to hold herself up after coping with some thirty typhoid and other patients with only the untrained help of two Boer girls’. Hobhouse was rightly critical of some of the nurses sent up from the coast, who were undoubtedly not good but this was a passing problem. Certainly she made no objection to the sick being sent to hospital. The question of fresh air was a regular source of conflict between the British doctors and the Boer families, which may partly explain Mrs Roos’s descriptions of the shivering children. The rapid growth of the camp and the early onset of the epidemics of typhoid and measles led to a severe shortage of hospital accommodation and medical staff until about the middle of 1901, perhaps explaining the overcrowded conditions which Mrs Roos described but, although the state of the camp was so bad that it led to an enquiry, no-one ever suggested that the hospital was in such a state. One explanation may be that the Boers had a very different perspective from the doctors on health and medical care. As a largely pre-industrial people, the Boers still clung to seventeenth-century notions of medicine and they could not understand the cold efficiency of modern hospital medicine. Mrs Roos may have been articulating a clash of cultures rather than describing a reality.¹³

The most famous inmate of Bloemfontein camp was a little girl, Lizzie van Zyl, who died in May 1901. Her photograph, of a skeletal child clutching her doll, has become the symbol of the inhumanity of the camp system and appears in almost every book about the camps, but her death also became a political football. Probably the full story will never be known but it is worth looking more carefully at her. The Bloemfontein camp registers were not well kept but the most likely candidate was Elizabeth Cecilia, from Twistniet farm, Ventersburg. Lizzie van Zyl. Note that her hair had been cut, a common practice when children had high fevers.14 . She was seven years old when she died, of typhoid fever, on 9 May 1901. Lizzie was one of seven children, from a bywoner family, whose father was on commando. Her 31-year-old mother had much to cope with and Lizzie was not the only member of the family to die. Her brother, Hermanus Egbert, died of the terrible cancrum oris, in March 1902, and a sister, Hester Wilhelmina, may have died as well, in February 1902. For Emily Hobhouse, Lizzie was the archetypal suffering child, the consequence of an inhumane system; the British authorities suggested that she died because of her mother’s neglect. The British academic, Liz Stanley, has examined part of Lizzie’s story and points out that Lizzie’s death was not seen as unusual at the time. It came to public notice because Emily Hobhouse published her picture as an example of the horrors of the camp system. Dr Pern indignantly defended himself in the British press, asserting that the mother had neglected the child and Hobhouse replied with equal force, arguing that the child’s death was the product of unsuitable food and great heat. From that point, Lizzie’s story has been used and abused repeatedly. But there are other aspects of the case. Lizzie died early, in a camp where sick children could easily be missed by the authorities for a long time. She was probably very ill by the time that she entered the hospital. Lizzie was seven, no longer an infant and past the age when a parent’s ‘neglect’, of which Mrs van Zyl was accused, was critical. The problem was that, although typhoid as a disease was partially understood (as a bacteria, Salmonella typhi., typhoid had been identified in 1896), treatment was rudimentary. Doctors understood that the disease damaged the intestine and usually put patients on a diet of milk and eggs, which the Boers regarded as little more than deliberate starvation. If Lizzie had also contracted measles, her intestine may have been damaged further and it was very difficult for such patients to ingest any food. Children like Lizzie faded and died in the early twentieth century, despite the best medical attention. Her brother, Hermanus, died even more horribly. Cancrum oris (Noma) was a kind of gangrene of the jaw, which sometimes occurred in children who were severely debilitated. It was usually fatal and there was no treatment for it in the camps.15

By May 1901 the numbers of people pouring into Bloemfontein camp put pressure on all the facilities. Staff suffered from the overcrowding as well as the inmates. If they were not made more comfortable, they were likely to resign, the superintendent complained. The decision that all families should be moved to the camp nearest to their homes created more work for the weary staff. The newly-appointed Dr Becker continued to criticise various arrangements. Above all, he complained, the system had been started on the wrong plan, ‘guided too much by economic principles’. While he felt that the Boers were partially responsible for the grubby camp, want of order and discipline prevailed amongst the subordinate staff ‘to a marked degree’. He asked for soldiers to do the work but Hume objected on account of the ‘great deal of immorality’ amongst the women. Soldiers were the last people he wanted in the camp. A month later, Inspector Daller also commented on the apathy of the subordinates. ‘It is only fair to add however’, he noted, ‘that continuity of administration has been impaired owing to the unhappy fact that many members of staff have from time to time fallen ill at their post’. This indiscipline spread to the management of disease as well. Dr Kendal Franks also complained of the ‘lack of systematic supervision’. Above all, there was no camp matron and no system of checking the tents to ensure that the seriously ill were removed to hospital.¹⁶

Typhoid and measles were not the only diseases assaulting the camp inmates. Many of the new arrivals were destitute and sometimes suffered from malaria. The children were prone to diarrhoea because their mothers had been forced to wean them too early and there was insufficient condensed milk to meet their needs. Coughs, bronchitis and catarrhs were widespread, as was anaemia and general debility. Many of the women suffered from amenorrhea. (The doctor thought that more exercise and fresh interests would help the latter). Ophthalmia was very common as result of the flies; some had jaundice and flu was also on the increase. Occasional cases of syphilis also occurred. (Jaundice in Bloemfontein was so widespread and unusual, in fact, that it provoked an article in the British medical journal, The Lancet, on the subject).¹⁷ Unless there was a better supply of milk, butter, clothing and tents, there would be greater mortality amongst the elderly, the MO warned.¹⁸

Hume finally left Bloemfontein camp in July 1901, to become resident magistrate of Boshof, and was replaced by Captain J.H. Bennett, a much more efficient man. By this time additional medical staff had been recruited and the hospital greatly improved, to the extent that women were now willing to send their children there, as Miss Mynie Fleck informed Emily Hobhouse. The authorities were even beautifying the camps by planting 4,000 ‘forest trees’. Although the camps were now much cleaner and more orderly, there were still problems. The water supply had been improved but, as the summer approached, the flow from the boreholes diminished. As a result, despite all efforts, diphtheria and typhoid increased. School accommodation was cramped and the meat was unsatisfactory (as it was everywhere by August 1901). Worse still, scurvy appeared although lime juice was issued to the people. As a result, a vegetable garden was started, ‘already green with promise’, it was noted in December 1901.¹⁹

In these censorious Victorian times the superintendent had another difficulty to contend with. In a town crowded with soldiers, Bloemfontein camp was a source of interest and entertainment. Initially soldiers came and went freely but the superintendent complained that the visits were for ‘immoral purposes’. Immoral women, he was told, should be isolated from the rest of the camp on half rations and the camp was put out of bounds to the men. Much of the policing, therefore, was as much concerned with keeping soldiers out, as with imprisoning the inmates. ‘Immorality’ was a thin thread which continued to run through the history of the camp. Mrs Roos, the wife of the Heilbron landdrost, complained that she was put into a tent with a woman of low character, infested by an obnoxious disease. In this camp, she declared, ‘could be found all sorts and conditions of men and women – bad characters, who had been removed from other camps – idiots, simpletons, madmen, half-castes and Kaffir miscreants’. One of the officers complained that he had encountered an entire post looking through a telescope at a couple from the camp ‘in an unbecoming position’. This must be stopped, the Chief Superintendent ordered but Hume pointed out that the women had to go out to collect fuel, given the shortness of supplies. Unfortunately for the reputation of the camp, the military tended to send women of ‘bad character’, who were a nuisance in the town, into the camp and the superintendent found it impossible to keep out all the soldiers, so the problem continued to simmer.²⁰

Blacks as well as whites entered Bloemfontein camp and a number of Boer families brought servants with them At first they were rationed but Hume soon put a stop to this practice; after that employees had to be fed by their employers. But a separate black camp was also established at about the same time as the white camp. By 16 February 1901 there were nearly 900 inmates, over 200 of them in the ‘hospital camp’. By April there were nearly 1,500 in the black camp and another 700 arrived in the second week of the month. Thereafter people streamed in as fast as they poured into the white camp. For some months the black camp sent reports to the Chief Superintendent and they give some details about life for the inmates.²¹

In February 1901 A.E. Cox was appointed as clerk for the black camp. The sanitation was in A.1. condition, it was reported at the end of that month. Two hospital tents were erected and a doctor attended regularly. Unlike the whites, the blacks had to provide their own shelters. Although a few had tents, many had nothing but sacking to shelter them. The cold nights were having a very bad effect on the children, the MO reported. While the tents were in short supply, black camp inmates fared particularly badly. The camp authorities made no bones about their priorities: ‘. . . as it is much more important to house the delicate wifes [sic] and families of White Refugees before anything is done for the Natives, I shall be glad if you will let me have first call on you, as it is always possible for Natives to erect their own shelters’, the Chief Superintendent wrote to the Chief Ordnance Officer, who supplied the tents. As in the white camp, sanitation was of first importance to the authorities. In the black camp, however, discipline was exerted much more firmly, aided by black staff. ‘Henry’, the black constable, was ‘a good boy and a rigid disciplinarian’.²²

But, despite these efforts, the death toll was ‘somewhat heavy’, largely as a result of ‘infantile diarrhoea’, leading to a total of 29 deaths in February 1901. Babies suffered particularly badly. Puzzlingly, there is little record of the measles which affected white children so badly. Typhoid, inevitably, was present but it was diarrhoea and bronchitis or pneumonia from which most children suffered. Inadequate nutrition also probably contributed to the mortality. It would appear that not everyone received rations, although sufferers from dysentery were isolated and provided with such additional medical comforts as barley, brandy, beef extract, milk and tea. Despite the terrible deficiencies, the superintendent considered that the black inmates were extraordinarily fortunate:²³

‘It does not fall to the lot of every native to come within the scope of the magnanimity of Great Britain, but to the fortunate 1500 who are brought within the pale of the Native Refugee Camp at Kafirfontein, [they] can appreciate the difference between the serfdom of a Dutch Republic and the equal rights laid down by a Monarchy such as Great Britain. To have to leave their homes seems hard on the surface, but to be fed & sheltered and protected without remuneration amply atones for all’.²⁴

Such fatuous complacency militated against compassionate administration. After May 1901 the black camp was taken over by a new administration and the reports disappear, although a few statistics have survived. The camp was eventually closed in November 1902.²⁵

By the end of 1901 conditions in the white camp had improved considerably. A number of charitable volunteers brought comforts like clothing and sweets for the inmates. Particularly prominent were Mrs Blignaut (President Steyn’s sister), Miss Fleck and Mrs Krause. As in Irene camp, their contributions were eventually excluded, however. In March 1901 shops were opened to provide for the immediate needs of the inmates. In September 1901 there were at least ten, well stocked and full of customers, the Ladies Committee noted. Apart from food, including chocolate, brawn and jam, the stores sold such items as gramophones, sewing machines and watches.²⁶

In fact, the Ladies Committee found relatively few faults when they visited Bloemfontein camp in September 1901. The unpleasant latrine trenches had been replaced by a pail system and the camps were fairly clean. The hospitals were properly managed and the patients looked cared for and happy. The schools, too, were well run and the children were vivacious and alert. The meat, they had to admit, was dreadfully thin and the people sometimes threw it into the road in disgust. ‘Almost any poor family in England would have been thankful to have such meat, and would have made most excellent meals from it’, the Ladies Committee stated disapprovingly.²⁷

Dr Kendal Franks was equally impressed when he visited the camps in November 1901. Under superintendent G.L. Randle, ‘active, energetic and tactful’, morale improved. ‘He exercises a firm yet tactful discipline which is not resented as it is recognised as just’, Dr Kendal Franks reported. Most of the men were now working, many of them without pay. There were a dozen carpenters, the head getting £4 a month and the others £3, making coffins, bedsteads and tables. There was also a bootmaker’s shop employing twelve men. ‘They make really good boots and sell them for 1/6 to adults and 1s for children. If people can’t pay, they get them free’, Kendal Franks explained. In addition there was a blacksmith’s forge, he getting £5 per month. Others were employed in the vegetable garden of eighteen acres, and in tree planting.²⁸

When the war ended, the families returned home slowly. Because it was so large, for months Bloemfontein continued to operate normally. To celebrate the coronation of Edward VII, a dance was held for the younger people and a tea for the elderly and the children, although neither was a great success. ‘I suppose one can hardly expect the people to become loyal and enthusiastic members of the empire all at once, but I must say, I was surprised to find the people keeping themselves as aloof as they did’, the superintendent commented sadly. Water supply and bad meat continued to be an issue until the camp was closed. The camp was finally shut down on 3 January 1903.²⁹

Sources:

E.H. Hobhouse, The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell (London, Methuen, 1902).

E.H. Hobhouse, War Without Glamour (Bloemfontein, Nasionale Pers, 1924).

E.H. Hobhouse, Emily Hobhouse. Boer War Letters, ed by R. van Reenen (Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 1984).

L. Stanley, Mourning Becomes . . . Post/Memory, Commemoration and the Concentration Camps of the South African War (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006).

E. van Heyningen, ‘Women and disease. The clash of medical cultures in the concentration camps of the South African War’ in Writing a Wider War. Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899-1902 edited by G. Cuthbertson et al (Athens, Ohio University Press and Cape Town, David Philip, 2002), pp. 186-212.

CO and SRC files in the Free State Archives Repository [FSAR].

FK files in the National Archives Repository, Pretoria [NASA].

CO files in the National Archives, United Kingdom [NAUK].

Dr Kendal Franks report, Cd 934, pp. 2-9.

Ladies Committee report, Cd 893, pp. 39-45.