George Webb Hardy was born in 1867, in the Barton-upon-Irwell registration district (which included Stretford, Urmston, and Worsley). He served in Kitchener's Horse as 9662 Sergeant George Webb Hardy, from 8th August 1900 - was he later promoted to Lieutenant? - and died around the 13th to 15th of October, 1922.
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GLOBE-TROTTER'S FATAL DELUSION.
....Under the delusion that he was paralysed and going mad, George Webb Hardy (55), a journalist and globe-trotter, stepped in front of a Llandudno Junction train, which killed him.
....A colleague, Mr David Clwyd Griffiths, a Llandudno journalist, on his way to attend the inquest, fell on the platform at the railway station and expired immediately.
....Hardy had been staying in apartments at Llandudno. He had led an adventurous life, and had been all over the world, including some time in Klondyke. About twenty years ago he had a breakdown in health, and was in his brother's charge for some time, but he recovered.
....Deputy Chief Constable William told the Coroner that he had a conversation with Hardy at Llandudno, as he had been acting strangely.
....Hardy then told him that he held the rank of captain in Kitchener's Horse during the Boer War, and was a captain in the Liverpool Regiment Reserves during the late war, serving at Liverpool Docks and at Barrow.
....Dr Lever, Llandudno, said Hardy on October 8 had a fall in Mostyn Street, and was under the impression that he was paralysed. Witness told him that was all nonsense, but Hardy went away still under the impression that he was paralysed.
....A railway engine-driver said Hardy stepped right in front of his train when he was ten yards away. He whistled and applied the brakes, but Hardy took no notice. Written on a note-case upon deceased was the message, "Paralysed and going mad. G. W. Hardy."
....A verdict of suicide whilst temporarily insane was returned.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, Tuesday, 17th October, 1922
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"The Prince’s controversial editor, George Webb Hardy, had already been imprisoned in 1905 for indecency after publishing sensational material from his investigation into an allegation of ‘Black Peril’, involving a black gardener seducing white girls at a Natal school. Hardy is only remembered now because of his subsequent 1912 novel, The Black Peril, loosely based on the articles. Little is known about Hardy’s life before arriving in South Africa, although he is listed as a Cambridge Law graduate in 1892, and seems to have travelled at least to Australia, New York, and through parts of Alaska and Canada, before arriving in Natal in 1901 and founded The Prince as a weekly newspaper. This was a popular, if risky, venture at the time. Independent newspapers were ‘either treated with suspicion by officialdom, or (more frequently) simply ignored’. Several editors were jailed during the Boer War in particular. Despite this, Hardy consistently demonstrated a ‘willingness to thrust his rhetorical rapier into public officials and to employ unrestrained language in describing both them and public institutions’. As a result, his residence in South Africa was marked by a high readership, a degree of infamy and an increasingly acrimonious relationship with local authorities. This was his final exposé, as his newspaper folded upon his return to Britain in early 1907.
...."It is not clear why he returned to Britain, given the apparent success of his newspaper. The inquest into his suicide in 1922 raises more questions. His brother stated that he had had a nervous breakdown ‘about twenty years ago’ which suggests that either his arrival in Durban in 1901 was a therapeutic change of scenery after this breakdown, or that his departure in 1907 was due to the breakdown."
(From 'Migration, Masculinity, and Mastering the "Queue": A Case of Chinese Scalping' by Rachel K. Bright, Keele University, 2017.)
eprints.keele.ac.uk/4357/1/09_28.3&4Bright.pdf
There's an unpublished MA dissertation by a Peter Rees, 'George Webb Hardy, journalist and novelist, and race relations in Natal, 1901-1906, with particular emphasis on miscegenation' (1991), which is said to be the only account of Hardy's works and life.
A review of Hardy's book, "a semi-novel," was in the Western Daily Press, of 8th June, 1914. It would seem to be a partly autobiographical work of fiction, as the hero, Raymond Chesterfield, "a journalist of brains and application, who, arriving in South Africa . . . starts a paper to inaugurate a campaign in the spirit of humanity." First published in 1914 by Holden & Hardingham, it got a second publication in 1920, by C. W. Daniels, Ltd.
