‘This is what South Africa has done for me’: ‘Lunacy’ among Boer War veterans in Britain

EPOCH
Mar 1
10 min read

George Tanton | Canterbury Christ Church University

‘I dream that hell is like the veldt, - a waste, -

A changeless desert, wherein who be placed

Against invading madness must keep guard, -

Arid, monotonous, despairing, hard!’

Kaufmann C. Spiers, 'To the Fallen'

Post-war Britain in the 1920s and 1930s was tragically unprepared for the integration of traumatised and brutalised men into civilian life. This is surprising considering that the diagnosing of ‘war neurosis’ had occupied medical minds since before, during, and after the Second-Anglo Boer War (1899-1902). After the war in South Africa, criminally ‘insane’ ex-servicemen were at the mercy of the law courts in Britain. Certainly, the paths of glory for many of these men would eventually lead to the corridors and padded cells of ‘lunatic’ asylums in a country that wanted to forget the Boer War altogether, and which was woefully ill-equipped for the shell-shock pandemic of the Great War.

After returning from the Boer War, many British servicemen suffered severe psychological trauma, resulting in a surge of violent crime and suicides. The asylum cruelly beckoned for those whose minds had been utterly broken. ‘Their brains had been incapable of withstanding the strain upon their nerves and they had gone mad’, remarked war correspondent George Lynch after observing several British casualties onboard a troopship returning to England from South Africa. ‘“I went off my head after Magersfontein,” one poor fellow tells you,’ Lynch recalled. ‘Another repeatedly asks “Will they put me into an asylum when I go home?”’.

Victorian societal expectations around masculine stoicism implied that constitutional frailty, weak moral character, or alcoholism were the root causes of nervous disorders in ex-servicemen. More sympathetic explanations instead blamed nervous shock on prolonged physical exertion or ‘disordered action of the heart’. Purportedly, this caused heart palpitations, nervous irritability, extreme fatigue, shaking, and unexplained pain in the head among sufferers. ‘Severe pains in the head’ were blamed on the suicide of John Higgs in February 1912. His wife Elizabeth had testified that her late husband had been a reservist with the 3^rd Royal Warwickshire Regiment. ‘He had something to do with the Boer War, but she was not sure what’, reported the Rugby Advertiser. During the investigation his wife was questioned on the personal nature of her husband. ‘He had enjoyed very fair health during their married life’, the paper conveyed. ‘Asked if [the] deceased was a sober man, witness said he liked a glass of beer, but he did not take it to excess’. On the night John Higgs committed suicide, he had complained of ‘pressure on his brain’. In the middle of the night, when his wife and young daughter had been asleep, he had leapt out of bed and deliberately flung himself from the top of the stairs into the kitchen below. The coroner concluded that Higgs had committed suicide whilst ‘temporarily insane’.

Sunstroke was another medically accepted factor in explaining irrational behaviour in war veterans. Prolonged exposure to the blistering heat of the African veldts was considered to have frazzled the minds of many men, with sun rays penetrating the nervous system through the spine and causing nervous instability. This ailment had previously been documented throughout Queen Victoria’s small wars in the Sudan and Egypt during the 1880s and 1890s. Certainly, sunstroke was considered to be the main factor behind the suspected suicide of Black Watch militiaman Walter McKenzie, whose drowning was reported in the Perthshire Advertiser in September 1904: ‘It seems McKenzie served in the South African campaign, when it is feared he sustained sunstroke, which left him mentally deranged, a supposition which is verified by the strange conduct of the unfortunate man since his return home about two and a half years ago’.

Seven men, three standing and four sitting down, wearing Boer War medals pose for a formal photograph. — Non-Commissioned Officers from the 1st Scots Guards, all with seven clasps for service in the Boer War. (Credit: Author’s Collection).

Newspaper reports of veteran suicides or violence often stipulated how the individual ‘had just returned from South Africa’ or had ‘served in the late war,’ to either sensationalise the incident or garner reader sympathy for the man in question. In August 1902, the Northampton Mercury reported: ‘A sergeant in the Bedfordshire Militia, named Frederick Ireland, who returned from South Africa a week ago, has become insane. After blackening his face with soot, he seized a broom, imagining it to be a gun, called the passers-by Boers, and threatened to shoot them. He was secured and placed in a cell pending removal to the asylum’.

In the wake of serious violence crime, defence lawyers and medical witnesses emphasised how the war had temporarily unhinged an otherwise respectable man in attempt to salvage the veteran’s dignity. A reservist in the Scots Guards, Robert Browne, who despite attempting to shoot dead his wife in 1902, was given only a 12-month imprisonment due to the sympathy of the judge at the Glasgow High Court. Browne had been wounded at Magersfontein and discharged from the army in April 1900 as being unfit for further service; he evidently returned a broken man and was victim to ‘nervousness’ and ‘sleeplessness’. According to the Edinburgh Evening News: ‘There was absolutely no doubt that his mental condition was such that he did not really realise what he was doing...[The magistrate], after taking time to consider the case, said he had come to the conclusion that what the accused had passed through in South Africa had to a certain extent affected his mind’.

Samuel Atherley, who had served with the 6^th Royal Warwickshire Regiment in South Africa, had murdered his lover and her three children, two of which were purportedly his own, in a jealous rage. The jury heard at the trial that Atherley had been invalided home after an attack of enteric fever. A medical professional present at the enquiry claimed that in many cases, ‘army men who had been abroad and suffered from disease sometimes developed epilepsy, which might cause them to lose temporary control of their faculties’. A strikingly similar case was that of Harry Williams, a private in the 4^th East Surrey Regiment. Upon his return from the Boer War, he had murdered his 5-year-old daughter to spite his estranged wife, whom he had suspected of infidelity while he had been in South Africa. During his trial, the jury wished to know whether there was a connection between Williams’ war service and his mental stability when he had slashed the throat of his only child. Giving evidence at the Old Bailey, Williams’ former employer explained: ‘When [Williams] came back from South Africa, he came to see me and spoke about the awful sights he had seen – he said that it was enough to turn a man’s head’. Medical experts present at the trial put forth their suggestions, claiming that Williams may have acted out of ‘momentary lunacy’ caused by both a ‘lowness of spirits’ and paranoid delusions. One even remarked: ‘I have heard that the war in South Africa affected the minds of many men’.

Two dozen wounded ex-servicemen, wearing hospital fatigues, pose for a photograph outside Netley Hospital. — Invalids at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley. These men were wounded at Magersfontein, Modder River, Belmont, Frazier's Drift, and Spion Kop. (Credit: Author's Collection).

Equally, when passing sentence on violent veterans, many judges considered their war service in South Africa and previous good conduct, often granting leniency. In December 1901, Frank Pearce, who had been fighting the Boers for 19 months with the 4^th Lincolnshire Regiment, pleaded guilty to attacking his wife with a tobacco knife after drinking. Considering his war service and taking into account he had spent eight weeks in custody while recovering from paralysis, the magistrates released him. In October 1903, William McLaren, a reservist in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, was charged at the High Court of Justiciary in Aberdeen for culpable homicide. He had bludgeoned to death his friend with an iron poker under the influence of alcohol. McLaren’s defence counsel had appealed to the jury, implementing his military service which had been ‘without stain’ in the Sudan campaign and the war in South Africa. The jury chose leniency and the judge sentenced McLaren to only 18-months imprisonment. In December 1905, ex-serviceman John Murphy surrendered himself to police after killing his sister and niece. The Bideford Weekly Gazette explained how it was relayed to the court that Murphy had ‘served 13 years in the 2nd Rifle Brigade… He was in the Soudan [sic] Expedition, and the siege of Ladysmith, and his characters were marked “very good”’.

Though not a medical term, ‘temporary lunacy’ was often applied in courts to crimes committed under the influence of alcohol, during uncharacteristic sudden outbursts of rage or where the perpetrator could not mentally account for his actions. Unlike ‘chronic lunacy’, which evoked Darwinist societal stigmas around imbecility and racial primitiveness, ‘temporary lunacy’ implied that civility could be recovered as could moral exculpation. Regardless, some war veterans suffering from ‘temporary lunacy’ met their unfortunate end swinging from the hangman’s noose. Bernard White of the 2^nd Essex Regiment and Charles Howell of the 1^st Suffolk Regiment were both executed at Chelmsford Prison by the same hangman for the murders of two young women. Before their demise, both men were visited by psychiatrists from the Home Office. In the case of Howell, he was assessed by two clinicians from the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor Prison. According to a report by the Barking, East Ham & Ilford Advertiser in July 1903, Howell had been in a ‘very depressed condition, and since he received his sentence, he has sometimes cried all through the night’. Before his execution on 7 July 1903, for several days previously he had sat on the condemned pew in the prison chapel in quiet contemplation.

The infamous ‘D’ Block at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, Southampton, the only facility in the country used solely for military psychiatry, was opened in July 1870 as a purpose built ‘lunatic asylum’. After the Boer War, there were increased numbers of referrals to ‘D’ Block which resulted in an extension to the facility in 1908. The act of suicide remained a criminal act, and unsuccessful attempts led to prison sentences. One ex-serviceman who was confined to the Netley institution was 35-year-old Pte. John Bass. Bass had fought in South Africa for two months with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Returning from the war, Bass was incarcerated at ‘D’ Block for four weeks owing to his ‘very strange’ behaviour. Whilst he had been confined to his ward, he had frequently ‘spoke of his comrades who were shot down by his side’ in South Africa. He had even remarked, ‘I would like to have died with the regiment. It is shocking to leave those poor dead fellows behind’. After his release, he shot himself dead. An inquiry subsequently returned a verdict of ‘suicide whilst of unsound mind’.

Wounded servicemen, recovering from war wounds, pose for a photograph outside Netley Hospital. — *Invalids at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, August 1900 (Author's Collection).*

Pte. Robert Coxon of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers was invalided home after contracting enteric fever. Coxon reportedly arrived at the regimental depot in Berwick with ‘a deranged state of mind’. Before leaping out of a third storey window, he had left a note on his desk, reading: ‘This is what South Africa has done for me…Goodbye’. Coxon had ‘alighted head-first on the cobbles below’. His injuries were so severe that he was sent for palliative care at Berwick Military Hospital. A high-profile case of unexplained suicide was that of Corporal William House of the 2nd Royal Berkshire Regiment. House had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions in the attack at Mosilikatse Nek on the 2nd August 1900. In February 1912, whilst in the process of cleaning his rifle at the Shaft Barracks in Dover, the weapon discharged and shot him through the head. A ‘subsequent examination showed that a cord had been attached to the trigger and the bedpost.’ The Dover Express reported that House had committed suicide, ‘owing to his brain being unhinged either by the wound he had received at the time he gained the V.C.’.

In December 1904, the St. James's Gazette published an article suggesting that the recent national struggle with the Boer republics in South Africa was responsible for a scourge of ‘topical madness’ across the country. This was based on the rising admissions amongst citizens to asylums:

‘The South African War was responsible for many a mind unhinged... It would be interesting to know what result attended the close of war in the case of a number of patients whom the London County Council had in charge. One of their reports showed that quite a number of persons had been admitted into the Claybury Asylum believing that they were pursued by Boers, especially [President] Kruger's relatives. The name “Spion Kop” was particularly disastrous to morbid fantasies. “Spion Kop!” was hissed into their ears, the suggestion of the word “Spy” in all probability having seized upon their sensitive morbid minds’.

Several men lying dead on the Spion Kop battlefield. — British casualties at Spion Kop. (Credit: Creative Commons).

After the war, medical minds worked diligently to determine why it had left such a devastating scar across the British psyche. With military psychiatry still very much in its infancy, observations between physical and psychological trauma were eventually made by a civil surgeon, Morgan Finucane. He carried out research into sixty invalided men, focusing on how nervous shock, brought on from gunshot wounds and injuries sustained from shell fragmentation, had affected their minds. More than several of these case studies involved individuals wounded at Spion Kop, one of the bloodiest defeats for the British in the entire war. Men were wounded by stray bullets, immobilised within the shallow trenches. They may have been shot multiple times as they lay in agony for hours amongst their dead comrades, helpless and prone on the battlefield, whilst shells exploded and bullets whizzed around them. The terror of it all is hard to imagine.