From the Rhyl Record, 8th February 1908. A similar report also appeared in American and Canadian newspapers around that time. I'd guess that almost all of it is fantasy....unless you know different?
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MASQUERADED AS A TROOPER
WOMAN'S STRANGE STORY
....The woman who describes herself as Lily Whitrerose, but who admits it is a fictitious name, has given a Bradford correspondent a most extraordinary account of her adventures as a despatch runner and soldier. She was locked up on a charge of drunkenness, and told the Bench that she had been through the South African War.
...."My mother," she said, "was an Austrian lady of title, and my father an Irish officer in the 12th Lancers. I was born in India, and in my teens came to England. After two years on the continent with an aunt I ran away to America and joined Buffalo Bill's show. I became a crack shot and an expert rider.. I got a big salary as circus performer, and ultimately found my way to Austria, where I married an officer of the 17th Lancers. When war broke out in South Africa we lived in London, and we quarrelled. He went out to Capetown, but I followed soon afterwards. I got in touch with the Boers, and after supplying them with valuable information, I was engaged by De Wet as a despatch rider. I had a desire, however, to serve the British, and consequently deserted the Boers just before the Modder River struggle.
....She went on to say that she donned military attire and masqueraded as a trooper. She was captured by the Boers and transferred to a concentration camp at Johannesburg, where she took up nursing. Then came the most remarkable part of her story.
...."I was attending a woman who was out of her mind," she said, "and, catching me unawares, she felled me to the ground with the butt end of a rifle. t was her life or mine, and in self-defence I pulled out my revolver and shot her dead." She was stricken with enteric fever, invalided home, and kept in a London hospital for some months. On her recovery she rejoined Colonel Cody's show at Olympia.
....She speaks several languages, and is now earning a living as an itinerant vocalist.
