Liz Gill visits a fascinating exhibition about the life of Emily Hobhouse at a beautifully restored attraction in St Ive, near Liskeard, Cornwall
When the ashes of a vicar’s daughter from a small Cornish village were interred inside a special niche in the National Women’s Monument in Bloemfontain in 1926, the event was the equivalent of a state funeral. Crowds lined the streets to watch the procession and hear the tributes paid by dignitaries to a woman the South Africans called an angel: Emily Hobhouse.
Emily who has always been the reaction in this country for the simple reason that in the second Anglo-Boer war of 1899 to 1901 this welfare campaigner and pacifist supported the ‘wrong’ side. Her exposure of the appalling conditions in the British concentration camps led to changes that probably saved thousands of lives but also led to her being branded a traitor by the government and the press.
Long overdue recognition for her bravery and resolve, however, is now the subject of a new museum in St. Ive near Liskeard. It comes in two sections: the Victorian rectory which had been her childhood home, now painstakingly restored to how it would have been in 1875 when she was a 15 year-old and the War Rooms which tell the extraordinary story of her adult life.
Here cutting edge technology including animation, installations, film and virtual reality combines with information displays, period photos, documents, artefacts and tableaux both domestic and military to create a fascinating immersive experience.
It starts with visitors stepping – literally – into the soft leather shoes worn by the farmers and their families though I imagine the ones we exchange our own footwear for are probably rather lovelier than the original tough durable ones.
What follows is a neat summary of the issues which sparked the clash between the Boer settlers in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State and the British Empire. The story is complex but involved, needless to say, gold and land and power. The first brief four month war was won by the Boers, a humiliation the British found intolerable.
When the second war started therefore the onslaught was vengeful and savage. Kitchener pursued a ‘scorched earth’ policy to destroy not just the fighting men but their homesteads, their possessions and their livestock. The displaced women and children, black and white, were then herded into the concentration camps where they faced death by starvation and disease.
Appalled by the over-crowding, lack of hygiene, clean water and meagre rations, Emily Hobhouse spoke out. “I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty. To keep these camps going is murder to the children”.
Her journey had begun when after the death of her father – til then she had been caring for him as the dutiful Victorian daughter – she became actively involved in the South African Conciliation Committee. Soon afterwards, she set up the South African Women and Children Distress Fund and in 1900 sailed to Cape Town to oversee its dispersal.
Travelling for months between the camps, delivering aid and improving some conditions by speaking to the military authorities in charge, she reached a point where she felt she needed to “hasten home to state plain facts, and beg that a stop may be put to it all.”
Her report and recommendations sent waves of shock and disbelief through the country but led to a change in policy. An estimated 34,000 white women and children and 25,000 black died in the camps. Without Emily Hobhouse there would have been countless others.
The events are brought to life by small but imaginative touches. In the Boer farm with its verandah and veldt beyond, for example, there are children’s toys home made from animal bones or glass bottles. Visitors can also try a cup of the traditional coffee and eat a rusk, a mainstay of Boer diet with every family having its own recipe.
We can also join Emily in the realistically jolting railway carriage with its vista outside the window in which she travelled alone for miles, existing mainly on bread and apricot jam, a preserve she said she could never face again.
We follow the fortunes of individuals through battles and sieges and their aftermath, not just of a Boer but of an English soldier too. In the camp area we put on headsets for a virtual reality glimpse into the wretchedness of life there with its sound of lamentations. The cumulative effect is heart-rending.
There are, however, positive postscripts. Miss Hobhouse returned to South Africa after the end of the war and set up three innovative schemes to teach young women the skills of spinning, weaving and lace-making. In return in 1921 a grateful country raised £2,300 for her, a considerable amount in those days, and insisted she use it to buy a home in England.
Fact Box
The Story of Emily is open from 9am till 5pm, Thursday to Sunday. The Victorian Rectory and the War Rooms are open from 10am. Self-guided audio tours of the Rectory and War Rooms must be booked in advance. Adults £25, children £12 https://www.thestoryofemily.com
Visitors can also wander around the lovely grounds or try one of the South African heritage dishes served in the restaurant such as the traditional sausage boerewors or the couma onder die kombers, an old Cape dish of cabbage and lentil meatballs.
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