Children in the concentration camps

“I can’t describe what it is to see these children lying about in a state of collapse – it is just exactly like faded flowers thrown away. And one hates to stand and look on at such misery and be able to do almost nothing . . .

“If only the English people would try to exercise a little imagination – picture the whole miserable scene and answer how long such a cruelty is to be tolerated.”

Emily Hobhouse wrote these words in one of the many letters to her aunt, Lady Mary Hobhouse while working to improve conditions in the British concentration camps in South Africa.

At The Story of Emily, the War Rooms is a rich, immersive, and visual experience—a sensory journey back in time to when the Second Anglo-Boer War had dire consequences, especially for the women and children in the concentration camps. We invite you to visit us and see the exhibitions about the war, including the camps and their artefacts.

Tens of thousands of children were forced into the camps with their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers.  

Within days after visiting, Emily discovered the nature and extent of the misery in the concentration camps. The necessities of life were lacking—fuel to cook rations, clean drinking water, lack of food, milk for the children, and clothes. There were not even candles; they were only used when someone was seriously ill. There was no soap, and none had ever been supplied.

While confronting the camp commanders, she realised how difficult her task to improve hygiene and obtain soap and clean water was: “This seems to have been due to a careless order from Headquarters about the rations, and men don’t think of these things unless it is suggested to them, they simply say: ‘How dirty these people are!”

But the high death rates were caused by a combination of extreme temperatures, the unsuitability of the bell tents in the open veld, the lack of clean drinking water, poor rations, emotional toil, and diseases. View a projection on the “pond” in the War Rooms that explains this in detail.

“The women are wonderful; they cry very little and never complain … Only when it cuts afresh at them through their children do their feelings flash out,” Emily remarked.

Malnutrition, whooping cough, measles, pneumonia, scurvy, typhoid and dysentery: the close living conditions bring on various diseases. Many children died of ‘waning’ – a combination of exposure to the elements, disease, and malnutrition.

Hospitals were inadequate and themselves disease-ridden. Most Boer women distrusted the enemy in treating their children; most refused even to take them there. After losing their homesteads and farms in the scorched earth policy, few Boer women were willing to trust the British with the healthcare of their children.

Some children were born in the camps and died there. There were also many orphans. The children were not separated from the war and its effects. It was also their lived experience. They could not be protected from the death surrounding them. They attended the funerals in the camps and witnessed everything.

A girl (M.E Kilian) described how her mother died in the tent, and her body was wrapped in a sheet and taken away: “The cutting wind made one side of the sheet flutter as if she waved goodbye to us. I held onto the baby, and there we stood, six orphans.”

But one should not only view the children as victims – even though they did experience trauma. They continued to play, as children do, in the camps. This is evident in the artefacts found years later and saved by families or generations after the war.

Some unique items guests visiting the War Rooms can see are tiny porcelain toys, marbles, and a doll.

Many children in the camps helped their mothers with various tasks such as fetching water, searching for fuel to cook food (either wood, if they could find it in the veld or collecting dried cattle dung), or helping raise siblings.

In the War Rooms, you can see a cooking area made with small pieces of wood and cattle dung.

One of the groups in the camps who had some influence and visibility were educated young girls in their late teens, and young Boer women who could speak English fluently. They were able to communicate with the British and took on some leadership roles, especially to talk on behalf of the others, in some cases, and to mediate for improvements.

During the last six months of the war, the number of children attending camp schools also increased significantly. However, the language of education was English, and the majority of the teachers were Afrikaans. The schools aimed to end “the retrogression of the Boers, making them outward-looking and open to progress and modern civilization”.

But the children did want to go to school as it took them away from the camp chaos. And their parents did want them to be educated. Sunday School, organised by the Dutch Reformed Church, was also very popular.

One of Emily's challenges was dealing with men's authority during the war. Criticising them and the mighty Empire was unwelcome. She was seen as a traitor, not as a benevolent pacifist.

While Emily was travelling from one camp to the other, the authorities increasingly took note of her activities. In the meantime, Major Sir Hamilton John Goold-Adams, who had succeeded Major General George Pretyman as the Military Governor of Bloemfontein, reported to Lord Alfred Milner: “Miss Hobhouse has been playing Dickens with the women in the camps.”

Although her letters were censored, that did not prevent her from sending pictures taken in the camps to her brother Leonard, nor writing vivid details to him and Lady Mary Hobhouse.

In October 1901, mortality rates in the camps peaked. In the white concentration camps  up to 390 people per 1,000 died. Between 28,000 and 34,000 white women and children died, 80% of them under the age of 16.

Figures show 15,000 deaths for black women and children, but research now suggests 25,000 died. The true figure may never be known. These were under the Native Refugee Department, which fell under direct British military command.

The “brunt of the war” fell on the women and children, as far more of them died in these camps than men on the battlefield, Emily realised. She collected experiences and facts weekly to write about in her later report.

Emily wrote a long letter to her brother Leonard: “You must not think that I pick out bad cases to send home. I never pick out at all. The tents are entered at random and I note what they say and often leave a camp without having seen people who have had the worst experiences.”

After her experiences in the camps and her fight to save lives, she wrote: “If you knew the women as well as I do, you would realise that every child's death tends to blacken England's name and to make it more and more impossible for the people ever to settle under our rule. That should tell, even if the simple humanitarian feeling does not prevail.”