TOPIC:

6180 LANCE CORPORAL WILLIAM LESTER: THE QUEEN'S (ROYAL WEST SURREY REGIMENT)
ACCIDENTALLY STABBED

Lance Corporal William Lester served with 'C' Company, 2nd Battalion of The Queen's and would have arrived in South Africa aboard the 'Yorkshire' arriving at Durban on around 14th November 1899. The Queen's arrived early in the campaign and therefore were in the thick of it!
Please see the regimental account on the Unit Information section of this website for more details to avoid my repeating descriptions of campaign events.

As far as I can see there are no surviving Attestation documents for Private Lester, therefore all of the following information comes from Hayward (1982) and Watt (2000) and a brief research into tactics employed by the imperial forces in the area at the time.

Lester would have faced the Mauser fire of the Boers and the deprivations of campaigning on the veldt. At the commencement of the guerilla phase following the victory in the conventional stage of the war, Lester was most likely on blockhouse duty between either Volksrust and Wakkerstroom or between Wakkerstroom and Piet Retief. These blockhouse lines were established to protect the British supply lines from Durban.
It was at Wakkerstroom on 16th November 1901 that Lester was stabbed accidentally and died of his wound the same day. Stabbings whether accidental or criminal were not uncommon among the soldiery, but in this case it is the offending weapon that is unusual.
Harking back to previous conflicts with the indigenous tribes, Lester had been stabbed by an Assegai, the throwing and stabbing spear as used by the Zulus. How on earth he managed to stab himself with one is not detailed, nor whether horseplay was involved.

The unfortunate 6180 L-Cpl. William Lester was interred at Wakkerstroom Cemetery and is commemorated on monument 1.

His QSA bears the clasps Orange Free State, Transvaal and South Africa 1901.

Further to the pages on Steinaecker’s Horse I have collated the following -
20 men died of disease, presumably enteric and malaria would have been the predominate causes.
10 men Kia
2 men died of fits
1 was killed by a lion
1 was killed by a crocodile
1 died by being kicked by a horse
1 died from a fall from a horse
1 died by suicide
1 was found dead (this would fit into the snake bite theory)
Total 38.
I hazard a guess that if the same horse was responsible for both deaths it’s days would have been numbered.
I must look thru my notes, I am sure I have the QSA to a fellow who died by suicide and found later his brother had the same fate.
Jim

Hi Jim,
I had never realised that just 10 men were killed in action serving with Steinaeckers Horse.
That would be a highly desirable QSA!

Back to snakebites, I find it hard to believe that half a million men slogging over the veldt would not have recorded a single case! Someone found mysteriously dead would be a great possibility as the fang marks can be almost invisible in some species (I do not profess to be a herpetologist!).

A suicide to two brothers is a very sad and bizarre scenario. Please let us know if your research turns up confirmation.

Cheers Steve

H Steve,

I’ll have a look thru my notes, I can’t remember his name so it will be a matter of elimination.
There should be an answer in a day or so.

Jim

One of the 9 casualties who were accidentally poisoned was 9368 Private Joseph Parker. 46th (Belfast) Company, 13th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry.

Joseph was born in 1871 at Eastfield Farm Belfast County Antrim.
He joined the Imperial Yeomanry on the 1st of January 1900
A farmer by trade he was 29 years and 6 months old when he left for South Africa. Of fair complexion, brown hair and eyes, he was 5ft 7 inches tall and weighed approximately 10 stone 7 pounds. His religious denomination was Protestant. He served for one year and during his time in South Africa he ended up at the British field hospital at Deelfontein. It is not certain if Private Parker was wounded when he arrived.

In 1900 the British military field hospital, the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital, Deelfontein, Great Karoo, Northern Cape was constructed for casualties from the Second Boer War. The location was chosen for its communications and dry climate, and its proximity to De Aar, then the centre of hostilities. Alfred Downing Fripp was Chief Medical Officer.
The hospital, with a capacity for some 800 patients, largely comprised tents and prefabricated huts.
Little remains of the complex except a cemetery with around 130 graves and the remains of the Yeomanry Hotel, built after the war to accommodate soldiers' relatives visiting the site.

What happened to Joseph whilst at the hospital remains an enigma.
His death was recorded as accidental poisoning. However, was it self administered, or a medical blunder?


Private Joseph Parker was killed by an accidental taken dose of Carbolic acid


By 1867Joseph Lister decided that carbolic acid (or phenol, a derivative of coal tar), then being used to cut the stench of sewage, was just the thing to help dealing with infections and germ reduction in hospital wards and operating theatres. Carbolic acid, Lister determined, should be rubbed on the surgical tools and hands, and the bandages meant to cover the wounds should be soaked in it. Moreover, he suggested, it should be continuously sprayed in the air of the operating theatre during the duration of the surgery, even on the surgeons, to ward off germs. If this practice was being implemented during the ABW conflict could it be  possible that Joseph was accidentally killed by fume inhalation or through bandaged wounds? or he may have just decided to end his life by ingesting the liquid? The report states accidentally taken which does indicate Private Parker may have mistook it for something else.Unfortunately, all supposition on my part, and a mystery which will remain unsolved whether it foul play, a medical error, suicide or just a simple error of mistaken identity of medicine which cost Private Parker his life.

Joseph died on the 30th December 1900. His personal effects were returned to his father James, he left behind his mother Evalina and his brother and sister Tom and Mary. His QSA entitlement was Cape Colony and Orange Free State.

Dave,
Great piece of research. I havn’t seen those pages before, are they for UK service members only?

Cheers,

Jim