Ladies of the Veldt: Two Accounts of Remarkable Women in South Africa During the Boer War

This volume contains accounts by two English women who made their way through the bushlands of Southern Africa in the 19th century. The first work is that of Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill, the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and aunt to Winston Churchill, who became the first female war correspondent when she was recruited to cover the siege of Mafeking during the Second Boer War for the Daily Mail. Although untrained as a journalist, Lady Sarah's 'matter of fact' style proved to be a huge hit with the domestic reading audience for depicting the bulldog spirit that they felt typified their national character. From an earlier period of the Cape's troubled colonial history, the second work in this book relates the experiences of Mrs. Sarah Heckford. Arriving in the Cape on the eve of the Zulu War in the late 1870s, Mrs. Heckford carved a life for herself in close proximity to the Kaffir tribes and the Boers, who were disaffected by British Imperial rule--in particular, by the annexation of the Transvaal. The hostilities of the First Anglo-Boer War broke out in late 1880 and Mrs. Heckford found herself besieged in Pretoria in the midst of the uprising. In this work, she provides her recollection of the war.