TOPIC:

1900 - Mafeking siege day 210 (96%). Lord Roberts forces passage of the Zand River.
1901 - Boer Council of War meets near Ermelo.
1902 - Petition for suspension of Cape constitution presented to Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson from members of Legislature.

2012 - The Telegraph - Boer War soldier 'Breaker' Morant pardon plea rejected.

A plea to have Boer War soldier Harry "Breaker" Morant posthumously pardoned has been rejected by Australia's Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, who has refused to take his case to the British government. Commander James Unkles, an Australian military lawyer, has been seeking a pardon for Morant and his two co-accused who were convicted by a British court-martial of the murder of 12 prisoners of war more than a century ago.

Morant was executed by a firing squad in Pretoria in 1902, along with Peter Handcock, a fellow Australian soldier. His story, which was made into the film Breaker Morant starring the late Edward Woodward, has proven one of the most controversial episodes in Australia's military history.

For three years, Commander Unkles has been seeking an official pardon from the British government, arguing Morant and his co-accused were following orders and were subsequently denied the right to properly prepare the case.

In 2010 the then Australian Attorney General, Robert McClelland, asked then British Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, to examine Unkles' material, but the appeal was rejected.

A fresh petition was submitted to Ms Roxon, who rejected the appeal and said she did not want to "gloss over" the crimes of the three men. The third co-accused, George Witton, was sentenced to life in prison but freed in 1904.

"It would not be appropriate for the Australian government to advocate for a pardon when there is no dispute that Mssrs Morant, Handcock and Witton actually committed the killings of unarmed Boer prisoners and others," Ms Roxon wrote in a letter to Commander Unkles.

"I consider that seeking a pardon for these men could be rightly perceived as 'glossing over' very grave criminal acts." Commander Unkles said Ms Roxon or her advisers were afraid of offending the British Government and had "made a political decision".

"They don't want to offend the British, and there are powerful institutions and individuals in this country who want to make sure that this case goes no further," he told ABC radio.

"According to military law at the time, these men were entitled to a full and fair trial, and in particular that they had a right of appeal. The British denied that right of appeal and gave them 18 hours' notice before two of them were executed."

An Australian historian, Craig Wilcox, said the court-martial had been fair and lasted about five weeks – far longer than the standard three days for civilian murder trials.

It was thorough; it was fair by the standards of the day," he said.

"One of their own men said that any idea of orders was a bogus idea. No evidence of any orders have ever been found."

1900 - Diary of the siege of Mafeking by Edward Ross

10 May

Our food-stuffs are getting worse and worse, but it will just about keep us alive until relief comes, that is if Lord Roberts keeps his word. Only the smallest portion that will keep body and soul together is now doled out to us, and we are eating anything that can be eaten, and thankful to get that. We have now commenced a soup-kitchen for whites. The stuff is horrible, but we must live just a little bit longer. B.P. says we have enough to keep life going until June 10th. I have at last, I think, finished my work for the Imperial authorities, and am going to spend the day and evening writing up all I can remember.

We today broached a bottle of 3-star brandy that we have had buried fathoms deep in the floor of our dugout ever since the siege started. It was kept entirely as a medicine, and both being seedy we had it up. Perhaps it will help me to write.

First of all let me tell you of the work I have been doing for the last two months. I mean the making of the £1 siege notes. It is an interesting form of currency, especially to a photographer.

The idea originally occurred to Baden-Powell when he found that the supply of gold was running short. He knew me as an amateur photographer, and spoke to me upon the feasibility of producing such notes, and to test the practicability of copying a pen and ink design, I experimented with a leaf out of the Colonel’s sketch-book. The result of the exposure was a success, so the next thing to be done was to prepare the design. Anybody knowing B.P.’s cleverness can readily understand that that was no bar. Before the sketch was half-finished I had a trial exposure which was again a success, even showing up clearly the faint pencil lines, almost as plainly as the ink itself. In the centre of the design is the Wolf, the gun made by the men of Mafeking; by its side is a pile of the home-made four and a half inch shells, made here and used in it. Above the howitzer waves the Union Jack, besides which stands a typical trooper of the P.R. A woman kneeling with a child in her arms symbolises the helpless inhabitants of the town, surrounded by those who are protecting her. On the left of the design is the bearded form of one of the loyal Dutch burghers, while on the opposite side is a member of the Town Guard. As there was no silver paper or platinum to be got, something else had to be resorted to. Captain Greener (Chief Paymaster) bethought himself of the ferro-prussiate process and, having an old text-book containing the directions and formula, set to work at once with some thick notepaper, and after a good deal of worry and trouble, eventually turned it out clear enough for what is required. The materials required are red prussiate of potash and ammonia-citrate of iron. The prussiate was plentiful enough, but the supply of the other necessary chemical was a very, limited one. The whole of the latter was quickly used up, but some more was brought from the north by a native runner and this lasted to the end. Nearly every night Captain Greener or his assistant, Sergeant-Major Jollie, coated the paper for the next day’s printing, brushing the sensitising solution on with a camel hair brush, and allowing it to dry by the morning, when I got to work on the prints. In the brilliant light of our sun the printing itself took very little time, most of tire prints being finished in 15 to 20 minutes, the printing speed of the various negatives, as might be expected when one considers the difficulties under which they were made, varied considerably. I gave each of them a nickname, for instance the clearest and best was known as the "High Velocity, Quick-Firer ’; one which took an intermediate time was christened the "Armstong Gun’’; whilst the slowest printer of the lot bore the title of the ' Lord Nelson Muzzle-Loader Poor old negatives. I was always in a state of irritability with the Boers, thinking bits of their shrapnel or shell splinters were going to bust them up whilst printing. Our one great serious difficulty was the supply of water which was insufficient, 

and it was only by stealth I managed to get enough. I had a little signboard printed, "Mafeking Mint. No Admission”, but this was regarded by everybody as a joke, most people saying, "Well, if there’s no admission, I’m going in to see what’s going on,” and sometimes when the bell rang the "Mint” was packed. Not much use trying to keep it private. Of course everything did not work smoothly; for instance, one morning Greener sent me a batch of paper, and only in the light could it be seen that he had got hold of some old B.B.P. notepaper with their crest at the top. Naturally this could not be used, and so a fresh batch had to be made the next evening.

This note business is going to be a good thing for the Government as I am sure they will be worth much more than face value as curios after the siege, and people are collecting as many as they can get hold of now, to make money afterwards, and as I have made 620 that means about £600 clear profit for the Imperial exchequer! And that’s how the £1 note was made.

I have by the courtesy of the staff been able to verify my figures re Big Ben’s shells, and find the total number fired at us is 1 379. And this is the gun they told us could only fire about 200 shots. Now multiply this by 94 and you get nearly 65 tons of cast iron hurled at us by this one gun alone. Now add to this the armament they continuously used, namely, one 12-pounder Krupp, one 10-centimeter French gun, one 9pounder, one 7-pounder, one 5-pounder Snider, one Hotchkiss, one 1pound Maxim, from 8 000 to 2 000 (at intervals) Mausers, Lee Metfords, Martini-Henrys, Snider and Joubert elephant rifles and tell me if you can possibly conceive what it was like once or twice when the whole lot were being used at the same time. Did you ever have your head in an elephant’s mouth when he sneezed? Because if you did, you might compare that to a cat miaowing, to what the other is like. There is absolutely nothing in the world that one can compare with it, except the same thing going on somewhere else. Of course, we have had a much softer time since Big Ben has gone, but what I want to know is, who gave the bally Boers permission to take that gun away? That gun belongs to Mafeking, and we are going to have it stuck up in the Market Square or else there’ll be a row. We resent their interference with what we now consider our property, and we will have it too.

You’ll no doubt remember we’ve had a Good Friday during the siege; well, our baker, who I suppose has a bit of humour in him, reminded us of the fact by putting a cross in the shape of two rough furrows in our daily ration of hard-baked horse oat bread. This stuff we have got to eat, or go without anything at all, and is made out of badly crushed oats, with half the husks left in just to give you something to do in the way of picking your teeth, taking the sharp pointed pieces out of your gums with a pair of tweezers, etc. It is made into a sort of round dog-biscuit about 4 inches in diameter and half an inch in thickness. If you break a piece off, the husks stick out in such a manner that it makes a splendid substitute for a toothbrush. But it is not good from a really serious point of view as I believe it has already sent one or two to the hospital with "perforatin [sic} of the bowels”. Talking of eating, the horsemeat is really not so bad, just a little sweet that’s all. What we do is to put our biscuit and our meat ration into a pot with some water and let it cook for three or four hours. The soup we have for one meal in the morning and the balance for dinner late in the afternoon, that fixes us up until the next morning. Sometimes we get a snack of lunch in the shape of "Brawn” made from the following: horse hoofs, horse heads, cow hide, donkey meat, carpenters’ glue, spice and split peas. One cannot get through very much of this, but the natives seem to highly appreciate it and get full up with it. I think everything in the place has been eaten except horseshoes and barbed wire. I of course must not forget our "Sowen porridge” : this is a skilly made from fermented oats; this is not very palatable, but it fills the vacuum for a couple of hours. When this was first made everybody, white and black, turned up their noses at it, but now it is, "Please give me a quart of sowens,” for which you gladly pay your sixpence.

On the eating tack reminds me that some artful johnny has managed to keep a fowl down in his dugout all this time, and he has now sold it by auction and has put into his pocket the nice little sum of 30/-.

I want here just to say a word or two in favour of our womenfolk. They have indeed behaved well, untiring in their devotion to work at the hospital, each one in the town trying to do their utmost in eking out the rations for their husbands, their children, and themselves, without [sic} hardly a murmur of complaint. The Sisters of Mercy at the convent proving themselves the nearest relations to angels it is possible to be on this earth. The young ones helping the old, and so on, keeping up the men’s spirits when desponding moods come on, and always doing their level best to brighten things generally. What will be done for them after the siege? Surely they will receive the recompense they so much deserve, and have so hardly earned.

I think that the patience, endurance, and plucky determination of the garrison and townspeople generally, and especially the womenfolk, have pleasantly surprised, yes, even amazed the military authorities.

The world is certainly very small for some people. In conversation with Lord Edward Cecil one day, the case of Quinlan the ex-station master cropped up. This man, it will be remembered, was arrested for not obeying orders in the matter of sending away the dynamite at the commencement of the siege; he was also suspected of being in league with the Boers. He is an Irishman and a suspected Fenian. On being brought up before his Lordship for trial he made all sorts of excuses, but it was no good, as Lord Edward who has an excellent memory, and who sat on the Commission at the time of the Phoenix Park murders, distinctly remembered the man as being a suspect and accomplice then, and told him so. That settled master Quinlan and he has been in gaol ever since, waiting trial by the civil authorities after the siege, and then to be sent home, as he is "wanted” in London.

Poor old Mafeking looks now a perfect hole of desolation, all the trees have been cut down for firewood, all the wooden fences torn up for a like purpose, the houses all in a state of complete wreckage. There is not one single house or store in the town that has not at some time or another been severely punished by shellfire, many of them having to be pulled down as being dangerous, all the galvanized iron roofs of those standing are riddled with shrapnel and bullets, until they resemble enormous corrugated sieves. Black gaping holes here, there, and everywhere, showing where the shell has passed through on its way to other damage or to kill, kill, kill. The shop windows that have not fallen in are nailed up with pieces of old iron, packing cases or anything else that could be used. Here and there can be seen a huge tarpaulin spread over a roof, endeavouring to keep the inmates at least dr)'. The ends of all the streets barricaded by large, heavy sheets of galvanized iron, supported by large heavy buck-waggons and sandbags. Miniature loopholed forts made of sandbags dotted here and there about the town at different corners of streets. Protection holes dug out of the streets all over the town. Not a solitary unbroken window to be seen, not even the little curl of a bit of homely smoke to be seen coming out of the few chimneys that are left. Hardly a soul, man, woman, or child, to be seen about the streets, and the very few one does meet are white, hungry, gaunt-looking faces that makes one shudder, and gives one the blues. The whole town gives me the impression that this is what it will look like at the time the poor old Earth has had her last shaking up and the last Trumpet has been blown.

But then, of course, there is the other side of life to be seen. Just you wander round some of the walls or down some of those passages, and when you see a piece of gas-pipe or water-pipe or suchlike thing projecting through a mound of earth, you know you have struck somebody’s happy little home or dugout, such protuberances being the ventilating shafts. Then put your mouth to the open end of the pipe and shout down, "Are you there?’’ Now put your ear where your mouth was and you will get the reply, "Yes, come on down.” You walk round the mound until you find the entrance, you can either slide down on your trousers or go down steps just as the case may be. You hear your friend say, "Mind your head there,” but by now, after having three or four decent egg-sized lumps raised on your head, you are careful how you enter. As the other fellow said, "It makes you careful, doesn’t it, doesn’t it make you careful?” And now you are inside, what do you expect to see? Dirty mud walls and floors with dampness everywhere? Oh, dear no! This, gentleman, is the dining and household room. Wooden floors, side walls lined with tapestry or chintz, and a calico ceiling, with tables, chairs, shelving, etc., complete. The mother getting things ready or tidying up or otherwise, the little ones playing about the floor with their toys, etc., such as bits of shell that "the nasty old Boers threw at Daddy”, and the father probably sitting in the corner having a bit of comfort and ease preparatory to going on sentry-go. Then again you might go to one of the next holes of habitation, which by accident or intent might be "Monte Carlo”. Here you will find the roof probably extra-strong and the furniture severely plain. The side walls rough earth, the floor as nature made it, the roof corrugated iron on top of steel railway rails, outside of that being packed up with earth probably five or six feet deep. Go down this one and you will find a conglomeration of cosmopolitans sitting round dealing out cardboards from a bifurcated pack of fifty-two pieces. Listen to their conversation. "Are you in?”, "Are you playing?”, "Come on there, ante-up,” "I go five and five better,” "Well, come on what have you got?”, "Three is it, no good I’ve got a straight,” and so on. You ask what are they doing? Well, it might be a “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Boers”, but it isn’t. Of course there are many other dugouts, respectable and otherwise; there’s the solitary man’s dugout, there’s the solitary ladies’ dugout (Eh! what), there’s the coolies’ dugout, and the natives’, and even my dogs have had instinct enough to seratdi a hole for their own protection. Some of them are comparatively speaking like palaces: there’s Lady Sarah’s hole, for instance, that is fitted up regardless of expense, and is draped with flags and arranged with curios until it is quite a charming residence, where she is able to entertain her husband and her friends. Enough of dugouts. Those that are not respectable won’t bear writing about.

I had a chat with Major Baillie the other day, and asked him if he was keeping up his diary. He said, if I would tell him what to write, he would do so. He is very laconic. This is one of his wires to his paper, the Morning Post, sent off the other day: "This morning the Boers attacked us. The result as usual. There is an aching void here. Pass the loaf.”

Here is a little yarn for you which at least has the credit of being true. A native was digging in one of the outpost trenches, and getting a bit careless stood up and stuck his spade into the top of the ground facing the enemy. He had not been standing a minute, when ping came a Mauser bullet clean through the spade, and stuck half-way in and half-way out of his skull high up behind his ear. He retired down the trench to the fort, and requested some of the men to pull it out, but it was found so firmly embedded that it could not be pulled out with the fingers, so the boy was sent on up to the hospital. He came back later on with the bullet in his hands, showing it all round and saying the doctor had taken it out with the instrument he used for pulling teeth out. He has got a small piece of cottonwool soaked in carbolic plugged into the small hole in his head, and has gone back to work seemingly none the worse for his wound. He ought to be mighty pleased at being such a "thickhead’ ’.

Here is another little one - guaranteed true.

Eloff, the Boer Commandant, sent in a letter the other day saying that he could see on Sunday that we were in the habit of playing cricket matches, and he asked our Colonel’s permission to bring a team into town one Sunday for the purpose of playing a friendly game. He may have meant what he said, but we could not stand the risk of their playing any monkeytricks, so the Colonel, who must have been in a good but sarcastic humour, replied, saying that although we were over 200 (days) not out we had not yet closed our innings, and he had better try and get a change of bowlers.

Some of B.P.’s dodges were indeed clever: he had at one time a dummy fort erected to the left of Cannon Kopje. Everything made in the regular way, with a tall look-out built and half a dozen tents put up; these latter were on a sort of sliding scale and could be pulled up or down with ropes fixed a long way off. Everything was there except the men in it. This ruse took in the enemy entirely: they shelled it unmercifully with their big gun, they shelled it with their smaller cannon, and they fired thousands of bullets into it. Every now and again a tent would go down as if it had been struck, only to go up again a little later on. Goodness only knows the amount of ammunition they expended over this unoccupied spot, until some spy must have given the show away, as their attacks suddenly stopped. It was not so much the waste of their ammunition we appreciated as the fact that whilst they were shelling at the dummy, we were having a respite.

B.P. with all this could at times be very severe. Lt. M. for instance in gaol, a native for second offence of stealing food, shot. Two other natives’ first offence of theft 50 lashes each.