Creative Ebook TEMPLATE WITH A PROFESSIONAL THEME
The siege of Kimberley
1
The siege of Kimberley During the siege of Kimberley, Cecil Rhodes offered to send the women and children of the town down into his De Beers Diamond Mine, to protect them from the Boer gun, Long Tom. The British in turn built a gun called Long Cecil, which Mr George Labram and the De Beers engineers made in the mine workshops.
Long Tom was very powerful and could shoot from 5 miles away, right into the centre of town. Long Tom killed soldiers and civilians, women and children, black people and white people. The British soldiers defending the town under Colonel Baden Powell used semaphore flags when they heard Long Tom fire, to warn the people to shelter in trenches.
5
The siege of Kimberley After 124 days in the mine General John French led a cavalry charge through the depleted Boer lines to break the siege. Lord Roberts used his vastly greater quantities of troops and equipment to force General Piet Cronje to surrender at Paardeberg. Boer supporters in the town were sent to the concentration camp at Newton with boer women and children from outlying areas whose farms had been burnt down.
Of the 5000 prisoners, more than 500 died in the next 2 years, most of them children from the measles. The poor food and lack of medical facilities caused great bitterness and resentment among the women in the camp. The Englishwoman Emily Hobhouse visited the camp and told the women she would try to help them in the English parliament. But the British military establishment and many British citizens opposed her.
5
The siege of Kimberley In June 1902 the Boers surrendered and the war was over. The schools re-opened and the children carried on with their lives. The electric trams resumed service, running from Kimberley Central to Beaconsfield and Kenilworth.
5
The siege of Kimberley Rhodes asked Sir Herbert Baker to design a memorial for the people who died defending Kimberley. The memorial is made of sandstone that Rhodes sent from the Matopo Hills in Rhodesia and 27 soldiers are buried in it. Rhodes got Rudyard Kipling to write an inscription for the monument. Long Cecil sits in front of the monument, surrounded by shells from Long Tom.
5
Cecil John Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape, was discredited after the Jameson Raid, and died shortly after the war. George Labram, De Beers’ chief engineer, was killed less than a week before the siege was lifted, when a Boer shell hit his room in the Grand Hotel. Lord Roberts was commander in chief of the British forces in the boer war. At the Battle of Paardeberg on 27 February 1900, Roberts forced the Boer General Piet Cronjé to surrender with some 4,000 men. General Piet Cronje, shunned by the other boer generals, was held prisoner with his wife on St Helena until the end of the war. General John French led the cavalry charge through the boer lines to end the siege. In World War 1 he commanded the British army on the Western Front . The king ordered French to resign after the British casualties in the battles of Ypres. Emily Hobhouse campaigned bravely but without much success, to improve the conditions in the camps. She was made an honorary citizen of South Africa for her humanitarian work. Sir Herbert Baker was the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, designing the Union Buildings and many other public buildings. Rudyard Kipling. English journalist, editor and novelist, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Colonel Robert Baden Powell. After the war Baden Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement modelled on those young British soldiers in Kimberley. Today there are 190,000 scouts and guides in South Africa, and over 54 million scouts and guides worldwide. Electric tram. Kimberley was the first city in Africa to have electricity and electric streetlights.
5