Those Bloody Women: Three Heroines of the Boer War

by Brian Roberts

The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 has been called the "last gentleman's war", but that is no reason to ignore the emergence of three remarkable Lady Sarah Wilson, Hansie van Warmelo and Emily Hobhouse. Although all three were determined, fearless and strong-minded females, each represented a contrasting viewpoint of the conflict. Lady Sarah Wilson, youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and aunt to the young Winston Churchill, was a conventional British "Jingo"; happy to act as Baden-Powell's leading lady in the stirring imperial drama of the siege of Mafeking. Hansie van Warmelo was a staunchly republican Boer, dedicated to the cause of Boer independence and no less convinced of the serf-like status of blacks within her country. Most admirable of all was Emily Hobhouse, the liberal, pro-Boer Englishwoman who bravely exposed the shocking neglect, mismanagement and appalling death toll in the British concentration camps. Set against the tumult and tragedy of the war, the adventures of these three troublesome women - "that bloody woman", Lord Kitchener called one of them - throw a fresh light on the bitter colonial struggle. Their exploits, ranging from the farcical to the deeply moving, played no small part in the controversies which reverberate in South Africa to this day.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[John Plowright · Rating 2 out of 5]

In ‘Those Bloody Women’, Brian Roberts investigates the role of three women in the Boer War of 1899-1902, namely, Lady Sarah Wilson, youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, who found herself besieged at Mafeking; Johanna “Hansie” van Warmelo, an activist for the Boer cause; and Emily Hobhouse, who helped to expose the scandalous conditions in the British concentration camps where roughly 28,000 Boer women and children died as a consequence of inefficiency and neglect. The book’s title relates to Kitchener referring to Hobhouse as “that bloody woman”.

The book provides an overview of British involvement in southern Africa from 1815 but in a decidedly sketchy manner. For example, no mention is made of the Zulu threat in helping to persuade the Transvaal Boers to accept British annexation of their land in 1877, nor how the removal of that threat as a result of the Zulu War of 1879 revived their demands for independence.

There are also elementary errors. We are told, for example, that Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape in 1891 and that Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe, when in fact Rhodes became Cape PM in 1890 and it is only Southern Rhodesia that became Zimbabwe (Northern Rhodesia is now Zambia).

The book’s footnotes are perfunctory, failing to provide page references, whilst the bibliography has not been updated to take account of the literature that has emerged since it was first published in 1991, such as Paula Krebs’ 1992 ‘History Workshop Journal’ article on Women in the Boer War Concentration Camp Controversy or the books on Emily Hobhouse written by John Hall and Robert Eales (both 2014) or Elsabé Brits (2016).

What one has here then is a readable but somewhat dated account of three spirited women and one, moreover, in which it is sadly difficult to have full confidence in the accuracy of the text.