TOPIC:

More early shots of the Spioenkop graves and monuments. The last one taken in the early 1960s shows how low the surface of the communal grave was, with ammunition and bones being exposed after the rains.

"Graves of Colonel Thorneycroft's men on Spion Kop"
5985 Private Albert PEGG, T.M.I., and others



Source: Horace Nicholls, "Uitlanders and Colonists". n.d. (c.1900)





Image courtesy of Nation Archive of South Africa



..

Rob, the attached photo (Watson, Johannesburg) seems to depict the mixed Boer/British burial party you refer to as non-recorded.

EFV, I could be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge this is the context of your photo; please let me know if you have information to the contrary:
Your photo, which is well known, is seemingly one of two photos taken on a box camera by one of the British medics. The other photo is also well known and is attached here - this copy was kindly provided by Neville Constantine. The photo you show was taken in the morning of 25 January 1900, the angle of the shadows show that. The day was later cloudy, when the Boer photographer van Hoepen took his photos with a tripod camera in the afternoon. Lund brothers may also have had a tripod camera there on 25th, or they may have taken over the pictures of van Hoepen when the latter was deported to Holland later in 1900. Burials had not begun at the stage your photo was taken, but had just begun when van Hoepen took his "Lancashire trench" photo.
At the time of your photo, Louis Botha had met with the British medics , and given them permission to search for wounded among the dead. At the same time, hundreds of burghers climbed the kop to look at the evidence of the battle, and to gather up rifles and ammunition, both officially for the Boer commissariat, and unofficially for themselves.
Both photos taken by the medic became very valuable, and were commercially reproduced. You will see in some of those commercial versions a caption written on the photo. Photos of the Spioenkop dead were sold in huge numbers for over 1 shilling each.
The Boers did not bury any of the British dead on the kop, as far as I know, but they buried their own dead, both on the summit and elsewhere. The graves of the Carolina men have been lost altogether.

Here are the two "British medic's" photographs side by side.





..

Rob, Neville, thanks. Attached three additional photographs regarding the aftermath of the Spion Kop battle that are perhaps lesser well known. One (possibly van Hoepen but erased in the negative) is dated 24 January but I doubt that.