BOER WAR PRISONERS IN BERMUDA 1901
- 1902
Now that the centenary year has passed since the Boer Prisoners were held on
the islands in the Great Sound, it is time to celebrate this important period
in Bermuda’s history. Bermuda was chosen along with other isolated British
colonies as suitable centres to keep the captured Boers so that they would have
little chance of returning to the fight in South Africa.
Various islands off Hamilton were selected for different
groups: children on one, officers on another, those basically sympathetic to
Britain on a third. Then there were those who might sign the oath of allegiance
to Edward VII if it got them home sometime on a fourth and the irreconcilables,
those who had sworn everlasting hostility to the Empire on two other rather
inaccessible bits of rock. To amuse themselves and to make pocket money the
Boers carved toys and implements, usually out of cedar. This was because cedar
was the most common wood. However they would use anything they could get their
hands on: pieces of old furniture, bones, coins, anything. Some they signed,
some they didn’t.
By 1903 very few prisoners were left in Bermuda,
so whatever has that date on it is scarce. Even more rare is anything bearing
a later date than that – 1906 for example, as only a couple of diehards
remained, eking out a precarious living in a carpenter’s shop. They eventually
wandered off or were absorbed into the community.
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