Emily Hobhouse: Beloved Traitor. Elsabé Brits
and a traitor combined”. The material destruction and bodily suffering were one thing, Emily wrote, but the worst aspect of war was the moral miasma that grew from it and infected everything.
It was during this time that she noticed Lizzie van Zyl152 in the hospital tent in the Bloemfontein camp. On the well-known photo of an emaciated Lizzie the doll Emily gave her lies next to her.
The English nurse told Emily that the seven-year-old Lizzie’s mother was to blame for the child’s condition, as she had starved her. Emily found this hard to swallow, and asked people in the camp about the case. She was told that the starvation allegations originated from the Van Zyls’ neighbours, who were so-called “Refugees”. Lizzie’s mother, on the other hand, was classified as an “Undesirable” because her husband was still on commando. As “Undesirables”, the Van Zyls received less food than the “Refugees”.
Lizzie’s mother subsequently removed her from the hospital tent because the child was being neglected there. Emily reported later that she “used to see her in the bare tent, lying on a tiny mattress which had been given her, trying to get air from beneath the raised flap, gasping her life out in the heated tent. Her mother tended her, and I got some friends in town to make her a little muslin cap to keep the flies from her bare head. I was arranging to get a little cart made to draw her into the air in the cooler hours, but before wood could be procured, the cold nights came on …”153
Lizzie died in early May 1901, probably from typhoid. Other diseases that were prevalent in the camps included measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, bronchitis, diarrhoea in babies, diphtheria and pneumonia. Few people in the camps were completely healthy.154
The atmosphere in Bloemfontein was so depressing that Emily felt paralysed and intimidated, “like being in continual disgrace or banishment or imprisonment. Some days I think I must cut and run … The feeling is intolerable. To watch all these Englishmen taking this horrible line and doing these awful things …”155
She was concerned about the image of her country, and the devastation that England was causing; nevertheless, she remained patriotic. “[I]f only the English people would try to exercise a little imagination – picture the whole miserable scene and answer how long such a cruelty is to be tolerated …”
Appealing to Aunt Mary in a letter, she asked whether her aunt “couldn’t write such a letter about it in the Times as should make more people listen and believe and understand – which would touch their conscience? Is England afraid of losing her prestige? Well, that’s gone already in this country.”156
The day before Emily left to visit the first of the other concentration camps, she met the wife of President MT Steyn, Rachel Isabella Steyn (née Fraser),157 known as “Tibbie”, which was her Scottish nickname. Prior to their meeting Emily had seen her walking about in Bloemfontein, always followed by a soldier because the English did not trust her. “A handsome woman, dignified and self-controlled,” Emily wrote later. The two women had a long and heartfelt conversation, and took an instant liking to each other.
Tibbie said about Emily: “She was a beautiful woman, extremely intelligent and committed heart and soul to improving conditions in the camps. We owe her an incredible debt because if it had not been for her, the death rate among the women and children would have been much, much higher.”158
Emily left Pretyman under no illusion as to what she thought of his camp. What horrified her most was the condition of the sanitation facilities. The slop buckets were not emptied regularly, and the stench at the tents that stood downwind was terrible.159
Pretyman was quick to cast suspicion on her. Emily had said beforehand that her mission was non-political, he wrote to Milner, but “I hear that since her arrival the refugees in this camp have suddenly found out that they are very badly treated and ought to be supplied with many more comforts than at present afforded them … I can see she is very much in sympathy with our enemies … I fear this class of fanatic will not do the cause much good from our point of view.”
Yet Pretyman also made a surprising admission: “But at the same time I could not help in my heart agreeing with her that this policy of bringing in the women and children to these camps, is a mistaken one.”160
On 2 February 1901 Emily set off on her own on a goods train for Norvalspont, about 195 kilometres south of Bloemfontein. She found herself in an alien, searingly hot, dusty world. In her letters to Aunt Mary, she gave her address as “The Land of Nod” – the place east of the biblical Eden where Cain was exiled by God after he had murdered his brother Abel.
After what she had witnessed at Bloemfontein, Emily feared what awaited her at Norvalspont, where the camp housed 1 500 people. But she was impressed with the camp superintendent, Captain Du Plat Taylor, because the inmates did not have to use water from the Orange River but instead had access to piped water from a spring. The food was slightly better than at Bloemfontein and no diseases had broken out, although everyone who went to the hospital tent died there. There was a school for the children, but clothes were urgently needed.
Most people in the Norvalspont camp were “prisoners of war”, as Emily referred to them, while “Refugees” were in the minority. She noticed in the camps she visited that there were in reality very few who fell in this latter category, and that they were housed in big marquees with furniture and other luxuries they had been allowed to bring along. But the military authorities still insisted to her that most of the inmates were “refugees” who had come to the camps of their own free will.
From here Emily took the train to Aliwal North, about 155 kilometres east of Norvalspont. While the town had only 800 inhabitants, the concentration camp was home to 2 000 inmates. Here, too, she was impressed with the camp commandant, Major Apthorp, who kept the camp neat and made sure that inmates received dried vegetables and potatoes twice a week.161
Emily distributed clothing. Like in all the other camps, there was no soap. “This seems to have been due to a careless order from Headquarters with regard to the rations, and men don’t think of these things unless it is suggested to them, they simply say: ‘How dirty these people are!’”162
While Emily was travelling from one camp to the other, the authorities increasingly took note of her activities. Major Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams, who had succeeded Pretyman in the meantime, reported to Milner: “Miss Hobhouse has been playing the dickens with the women in the camps.” She, Tibbie Steyn, Maynie Fleck and Caroline Fichardt were “creating a great deal of unrest by impressing upon such people the hardships they are enduring”.
“I have it on good authority,” Goold-Adams wrote, “that Miss Hobhouse is here on behalf of the Liberal Party to collect information for them for the usual purposes, and she has sent round circulars asking for information from various individuals as to their circumstances and whether their farms have been burnt.”163
Emily in turn described Goold-Adams as energetic, open and affable, but short on brains. She found it unbearable that such men were determining the fates of women and children. She did not seem to have much respect for their military abilities either, commenting that “this army it is thought will never catch De Wet”. There was “too much riding and shooting and picnicking and polo and golf playing for war to have much place … All those Tommies asleep upon the line and all the badly kept offices. Oh dear it is dreadful … it is remarked as a surprise when an officer does behave like a gentleman.”164
The people in the concentration camps informed her that they would never submit to British rule. The English, for their part, “hate the Dutch and take every opportunity of shewing it and of saying so. But the Dutch women are aghast at the barbarities committed by what they believed to be a civilised nation.”
On 21 February (1901) Emily was back in Bloemfontein, where many letters from home awaited her. Aunt Mary recounted that Uncle Arthur had assisted at the swearing in of the new king, Edward VII, son of the late Queen Victoria. Kate Courtney informed her that the South Africa Women and Children Distress Fund Committee had met after receiving her letters; they would make a further sum of £500 available to her at a bank in Cape Town.165 The money could not arrive soon enough, as the need in the camps was enormous.
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