20 JULY
GENERAL’S REQUEST TO DEPORT BOER WOMEN TO REMOTE ISLAND IMPRACTICAL.
On 20 July 1901 the British Secretary of State for War, St. John Brodrick wrote to General Kitchener, the Chief of Staff of British forces in South Africa, commenting on his suggestions for the seizure of Boer property and the permanent banishment of the families of insurgents. The minister advised him that it was impractical to deport such a vast number of women and children to the small remote and barren Atlantic island of St. Helena. “Your other suggestion,” he noted, of sending Boer women to St. Helena, etc, and telling their husbands that they would never return, seems difficult to work out.”(1)
FOOTNOTES
- Quoted online at https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/women-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902