From 'the sunlit plains extended' to Paradise

NOTE: All stories in this series on those who are buried at Paradise Cemetery in Zimbabwe can be followed via the links highlighted in blue below

This poignant memorial to just one individual can be found in the small town of Sea Lake in the heart of Australia’s wheat belt. It commemorates another young man who lies in the woodland of Africa in the Paradise Cemetery and far away from his home “on the sunlit plains extended” *. 

Private John Kiley, Trooper of the 4th contingent of the Victorian Imperial Bushmen, Service No. 418, lies either in grave No 2 or No 7, depending on which source you follow as per the ZimFieldGuide. As with others buried there, there is much confusion and even a mix-up with another trooper called Kelly, but the Australian Boer War records are pretty clear as to his name being Kiley. See the Boer War database. He is also officially commemorated at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

John Kiley was born in 1870, possibly in Garvoc, Victoria, the eldest of ten children born to Irish immigrants to Australia, Patrick Kiley (1846-1928) originally from Marlfield, Clonmel in Tipperary, and Annie Welsh (1845-1905) who came from Tuam, Galway. ** 

More information about John Kiley is found in the excellent and eye-opening work on the 3rd and 4th Victorian Imperial Bushmen, That Ragged Mob by Robin Droogleever, which tells the stories of Australian volunteers to the Boer War in considerable detail. What is particularly interesting - and at times almost disturbing - is the incompetence and mismanagement at all levels and general disarray that accompanied a good part of Australia’s contribution to the Boer War and led to irritation, outright anger and even ill-advised actions on the part of its participants. Commenting on any of this in depth is far from the remit of this blog which is purely a genealogical research project into a handful of individuals buried in one cemetery, but the book is highly recommended reading for anyone who wishes to study the topic in greater depth. Also, many of Droogleever’s sources are not available in the public domain and his book is invaluable in it is the only source of many photos and extracts of diaries and journals that have not been reproduced elsewhere and are still in private hands.

As our John Kiley never got to see active service, the fighting campaign detailed in the book is not relevant to him. The biographical entry matches most information available elsewhere with the addition of an actual birth date, religion and physical characteristics:

“KILEY, John, Private [418], D Squadron. Born 19/3/70. Farmer. Single. NOK: Father, P. Kiley, Boigbeat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Height 5 feet 11 3/4 ins. Chest measurement 40 1/2 ins. Left Port Melbourne on the Victorian, 1/5/00 for South Africa, disembarking at Beira, 23/5/00. Died of pneumonia at Marandellas, 13/10/00. Buried Marandellas (now Marondera, Zimbabwe) Medal entitlement: QSA and two clasps: cc/rhod.”

Boigbeat is in the Mallee, a region of sand and salt bush, with the odd scattering of red gums. Life there in the latter part of the 19th Century would have been extremely tough and challenging with droughts and dust storms and plagues of mice, rabbits and grasshoppers, but the Kiley family would have learned how to cope, to be self-sufficient and enterprising in order to survive and make some sort of success of it. He was probably an excellent horseman and used to roughing it outdoors in rugged terrain. Temperatures in the Mallee can be extreme, searing heat in the summer, frosts in winter. Even today, it can be a daunting environment for any soft city dweller.

Images of farming The Mallee, c. 1900  (State Library of Victoria)

What made John Kiley, a Roman Catholic of Irish origins, give up his farming and decide to go a’soldiering on behalf of Queen Victoria is unknown, but the fact that his future commanding officer, Captain Joseph Dallimore, DSO, came from the Warrnambool area and that Kiley’s family had previously lived in Garvoc not far away hints at some possible link.

The selection process required physical strength, excellent riding and shooting skills and no doubt John would have passed these without difficulty. After training at “Australia’s Aldershot”, otherwise Langwarrin, the contingent and their horses sailed on the Victorian for Africa, arriving at Beira, Portuguese East Africa [Mozambique], on 23 May 1900.

 S.S. Victorian

In spite of earlier bad experiences, the port continued to be used for strategic reasons as it was the gateway to Rhodesia and the northern defence against the Boers to the south in the Transvaal.

Offloading horses of the 4th VIB at Beira (Australian War Memorial)

Beira c. 1900s (Wikipedia)

Beira at that time was notorious, described by one traveller as “a fly-blown and wretched place built on sand” and riddled with fever due to the swampy malarial land behind it. Horses fell ill from diseases such as African horse sickness and glanders. Men who didn’t get sick from fever or dysentery and had too much time on their hands often got drunk or indulged in the usual attractions of a seedy cosmopolitan port with the inevitable problems with discipline.

Captain Joseph Dallimore was increasingly annoyed with the delay but by the time “D” Squadron was ready to move on from Beira he tells us that: “Two men, Alexander Gillanders [559] from Cargarie and John Kiley [418] from Boigbeat were left behind, having been sent to the hospital ship with fever.”

While John Kiley was on the hospital ship, his squadron embarked on the journey from Beira to Marandellas (approximately 190 km/118 miles) by train. On the way, men continued to fall ill, some of them dying and being buried at Bamboo Creek, the point on the railway where they had to transfer from the narrow Portuguese railway to the broad gauge one that had been constructed for Cecil Rhodes’ Chartered Company.

Today, Bamboo Creek is known as Nhamatanda. Traces of any Boer War burials there are likely to have long since disappeared - although if anyone reading this can enlighten me otherwise, please do get in touch.

The open carriages that carried men to Marandellas (Australian War Memorial)

The 4th VIB’s time at Marandellas was one of continued frustration and even boredom as some companies moved on while others, including “D”, were forced to stay behind awaiting orders.

At some point John Kiley caught up with them and on page 284 of That Ragged Mob, we finally discover what happened to him and the anger felt by his commanding officer revealed in comments from his diary, dated 14 October 1900.

"Dallimore had expected to be in Bulawayo by the end of October. As commandant at Marandellas he was in a position to act against what he saw as dreadful mismanagement of the Marandellas Hospital. His crusade came about as the result of the death of another Bushman, John Kiley, from Boigbeat, on 13th October:

‘He died from nothing short of neglect. He was sent into the Hospital ship at Beira and discharged because the doctor there wanted to close up and get away. He then went into the Umtali Hospital and discharged from there, although I believe he was looked after there. However, this hospital finished him and we buried the poor chap a few days ago. The treatment they get in some of the hospitals is disgraceful … Kiley was discharged from the hospital here as fit for duty, but as I thought he looked ill I asked for a report by two doctors. They reported he had a touch of fever and ordered him back again. The next night he was dying from pneumonia and no fever at all. He died at 1.30 in the morning and the hospital orderlies had a row and woke up all the other patients quarrelling as to who ought to remove the body. Next day I went in to see him put in the coffin and I found the lazy beggars had not even straightened him out properly … I’ll give some of them pack and shot drill until they won’t be able to stand up … They live off the medical comforts that are supposed to go to the sick and very often are too lazy to give a dying man a drink … As my men are getting ill I am having them invalided to Cape Town at once.' "

Although I have no personal connection to John Kiley, I did once linger beside his grave and wonder who he had been in life. Now, so many years later, at last I know a little about him. Reading Dallimore’s angry response to his ill-treatment in his last days on earth is enough to bring anyone to tears, but one hopes Kiley’s family would never have known anything of it.

While he neither faced the foe nor won awards for gallantry and his name remains wrongly spelled on his grave, there is some comfort that he was loved and remembered by all those he left behind in Australia who recognised his contribution in the memorial at Sea Lake where it can still be visited today.

Image Copyright ZimFieldGuide

Weekly Times, Melbourne, 20 October 1900

Although quite a lot of men of the 4th Victorian Imperial Bushmen have photographs in That Ragged Mob, and there are many group photos in the book, there is none that points to John Kiley himself. However, this one shows the members of “D” Company and with a height of almost 6 foot, it may be he is one of the taller individuals at the rear.

Image copyright acknowledgment That Ragged Mob, Robin Droogleever, page 227

Boigbeat in more recent times.

Wheat silo at Boigbeat 1962 (State Library of Victoria)

Railway siding. See video on YouTube

Miscellaneous sources:

4th Victorian Imperial Bushmen

Items belonging to John Kiley’s commanding officer Joseph Dallimore are in the Warrnambool Art Gallery. (Dallimore was tragically drowned with other family members off Cape Otway in 1905.)

Scapegoats of the Empire by George Witton

* From Banjo Paterson's poem "Clancy of the Overflow". "And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended and at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars"

** Thanks to Ancestry member V. Fawcett for this family tree information.

All posts in this series on Digging the Dust

The Road to Paradise

The Chronicles of Hamilton

From the sunlit plains extended

The man who never reached Paradise

More lost Australians?

Brothers and Others

He was Only Nineteen

Farewell to Paradise

With special acknowledgement and thanks to ZimFieldGuide, Sabretache and to Robin Droogleever whose book That Ragged Mob has been an invaluable resource in re-discovering some of these lost men of Empire.

"For pity's sake, don't shoot 'em"

With my current research into a group of forgotten participants in the Boer War who lie in a small cemetery in Zimbabwe, this ABC News item is timely as it tells of a great find of items at a rubbish tip in New South Wales which are connected to Harry Harbord Morant, known as the "Breaker" who is a legendary and controversial figure in the history of Australia and perhaps better known for the manner of his death than his life with a -

" ...reputation as horse-breaker, drover, steeplechaser, polo player, drinker and womanizer, from 1891 he contributed bush ballads to the Sydney Bulletin as 'the Breaker'. When the South African War broke out in 1899 he enlisted in Adelaide in the 2nd Contingent, South Australian Mounted Rifles ..."  [Australian Dictionary of Biography.]

Click here for a video link (may not be available in all countries) in which an expert verifies the items as connected to Morant, included his bandolier which perfectly matches that shown in this photograph.

The "Breaker", copyright Australian War Memorial

Morant was famously (and very briefly) married to another controversial Australian legend, the anthropologist, Daisy Bates (see my companion blog about women, The History Bucket).

He was also the subject of a major Australian film Breaker Morant.

The Poetry of Breaker Morant

The last poem -

BUTCHERED TO MAKE A DUTCHMAN'S HOLIDAY

by Harry ("Breaker") Morant

In prison cell I sadly sit,

A d[amne]d crest-fallen chappie!

And own to you I feel a bit -

A little bit unhappy!

It really ain't the place nor time

To reel off rhyming diction -

Whilst waiting cru-ci-fiction!

But yet we'll write a final rhyme.

No matter what "end" they decide -

Quick-lime or "b'iling ile", sir?

We'll do our best when crucified

To finish off in style, sir!

But we bequeath a parting tip

For sound advice of such men,

Who come across in transport ship

To polish off the Dutchmen!

If you encounter any Boers

You really must not loot 'em!

And if you wish to leave these shores,

For pity's sake, DON'T SHOOT EM!

And if you'd earn a D.S.O.,

Why every British sinner

Should know the proper way to go

Is: "ASK THE BOER TO DINNER!"

Let's toss a bumper down our throat -

Before we pass to Heaven,

And toast: "The trim-set petticoat

We leave behind in Devon."

At its end the manuscript is described as The Last Rhyme and Testament of Tony Lumpkin.

First published in The Bulletin, 19 April 1902.

The closing credits of the movie are particularly moving, with Edward Woodward singing Soldiers of the Queen.

The Chronicles of Hamilton

NOTE: All stories in this series on those who are buried at Paradise Cemetery in Zimbabwe can be followed via the links highlighted in blue below.

There is a fascinating connection between a famous lion doorknob in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and one of those men who died during the Anglo-Boer War and now lies far from his native land in a quiet corner of Paradise.

 (My initial blog post about this Boer War cemetery in Zimbabwe can be read here.)

The grave of Captain H.C.W. Hamilton of the 3rd (Queensland) Mounted Infantry Contingent * is the subject of quite a bit of confusion according to the ZimFieldGuide due to various authorities being involved in the reporting of the deaths and markers being made with errors. One cannot even be sure H.C.W. is where the cross says he is.

Also, on the cross the date of his death is out by a year and in fact he died on 12 July 1900. This also means that H.C.W. died for “Queen and Empire” not “King and Empire”, as King Edward VII did not ascend the throne until 22 January 1901 when Queen Victoria died.

It does not help either that H.C.W. accompanied the force but was never an official member of the 3rd Queensland Contingent and therefore does not appear in many of the usual Australian Boer War records. Naturally, this begs the question, why?

From ZimFieldGuide. (Note date error!)

The first record connecting H.C.W. Hamilton to Australia is a passenger list for the Duke of Buckingham, a ship carrying assisted immigrants that sailed from London on 4 November 1885 and arrived in Brisbane on 4 January 1886. He travelled Second Class, no occupation mentioned, aged 30. Thus one might assume a birth year of about 1856.

Queensland, Australia, Passenger Lists

With no matching birth records for him in England, the next clue was found in a Brisbane Telegraph newspaper report of his death dated 16 July 1900 which mentions the North Irish militia and from which it also appears he had been much younger than stated on the passenger list.

Thus a birth in Ireland looked likely, also that he had some status; enough to warrant several paragraphs in a colonial newspaper. **

There are a number of references in the Queensland Government Gazettes 1890-1896 to H.C.W.’s various promotions through the ranks in the Queensland Defence Force (Permanent Force) including his appointment as a Justice of the Peace. But H.C.W. resigned his commission in 1896 and it is not known what he did between then and accompanying the 3rd Contingent to the Boer War.

It turns out that Hugh Cecil Waldegrave Hamilton ^ was born on 17 November 1864 in Rathmines, Dublin, which would have made him just 22 when he arrived in Australia.

He had an aristocratic pedigree with links via his mother (Mary Warren) to the Baronetage of Borlase Warren that included a number of prominent individuals who had served in the Royal Navy, as Members of Parliament and Sheriffs of Nottingham. +

H.C.W.’s father was The Reverend Thomas Robert Hamilton, with many churchmen in his lineage and a descendant of an aristocratic Scottish family sent to Ulster in the early 17th Century by King James I. The Reverend, said to be an excitable individual with fierce opinions, including a hatred of Catholics, had been a chaplain in the Royal Navy during the Crimean War and later a curate at Holy Trinity Church in Rome and ultimately the Rector of St. Mark's, Dundela, Belfast.

Thomas and Mary had four children, two girls and two boys, but it was the younger sister of H.C.W., Florence (Flora) Augusta Hamilton (1862-1908) who left her mark in surprising ways. #

Flora went to Queen's University in Belfast (then Royal University of Ireland) from which she graduated with 1st Class Honours and a degree in Mathematics. It was very unusual for a woman to go to university and study such subjects at that time. She later went on to to marry Albert James Lewis and one of her sons was Clive Staples Lewis, best known to the world as the famous author of the Chronicles of Narnia , C.S. Lewis.  C.S. was only about 2 years old when his uncle H.C.W. died.

Some insight into H.C.W. and his family can be gleaned from this extract from C.S. Lewis: An Examined Life edited by Bruce L. Edwards: %

...According to Sayer [another biographer] Thomas and Mary were failures as parents - neither knowing how to make their children happy nor how to raise them without giving any of them preferential treatment. This they often did to Cecil [H.C.W.] and Lilian. Also, Gussie [the other son] was so disliked by his father that he refused to help him pay for his education as he helped the other children. And even though he eventually made good for himself, Gussie, in response, became completely self-centered and unkind to others, even to his mother and to his close friends. Hooper [another biographer] also notes that Cecil, after finishing his education and failing to obtain a commission in the Royal Army, emigrated to Australia - where he worked and served in their army, eventually dying in South Africa in 1900. Even Flora, with her great education at Queen’s University, Belfast, completed in 1886, as far as is known, failed to do anything with it, merely functioning as another servant for her mother. It would still be another eight years before she married Lewis’s father, Albert. Green and Hooper, among many other biographers, have noted how Thomas Hamilton misused Albert’s romantic interest in Flora for his own benefit, expecting Albert to travel with or make preparations for him, serving his hoped to be future father in law much as Jacob served Laban for Rachel.

 To add to this, there is this extract from a letter mentioned in the ZimFieldGuide and written by one of the commanding officers at Marandellas to his fiancee in Australia, dated 10 July 1900, and a picture begins to emerge of Cecil:

“ ... Captain Hamilton under my care who has gone to the dogs with drinking and morphine. No orderly would stay with him and I was afraid he would commit suicide. I had a bad time. I managed to get him into the hospital, so that was a relief.” 

and two days later: 

“Captain Hamilton, I regret to say, died yesterday and was buried close to the camp.”

Did Cecil disappoint his parents or even disgrace them in some way and was thus packed off at the age of 22 to the colonies, a typical “remittance man”? Or did he leave of his volition simply to get away from family dysfunction or impossible expectations and find his own way in life? A not uncommon scenario in high achiever families, both then and now.

Although with his former career in the Queensland military, it is surprising he wasn't an automatic choice to be taken into the 3rd Queensland Contingent to Africa. Did he have addiction problems that would have been known to the recruiting authorities and this would explain his decision to travel with them as unattached? The references to alcohol, drugs and potential suicide carry all the signs of a man who may have not been suffering just from illness but who could have also been deeply troubled for other reasons.

For someone from a privileged background, the Irish Probate records of 1901 show that Cecil had a modest estate of £145. 12s. 10d, or around £14,000 in modern values.

No images of Cecil can be found, but perhaps he had some similarities to his sister, Flora.

Florence Augusta Lewis, nee Hamilton

And so to the doorknob mentioned at the start.

Perhaps that door of the rectory was intentionally banged shut by H.C.W. in 1885, who was never to return. Was he considered a black sheep? Did C.S. Lewis ever know the real reasons his uncle went off to Australia and how he died “of dysentery” in Africa? (If any student of the life and works of C.S. Lewis has any information to add in this connection, I would love to hear from you.)

A little ironic that H.C.W. was laid to rest in soil over which real lions would once have roamed.

The inspiration for Aslan, the Lion of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Doorknob of Rectory of St. Mark’s Church, Dundela, Belfast, family home of Captain H.C.W. Hamilton 

YouTube Video showing the home of H.C.W. in Ireland.

Belfast Telegraph

The Rectory

* This contingent consisted of 320 mounted infantry and was commanded by Major W. H. Tunbridge. It sailed from Brisbane on 1 March 1900 on the Duke of Portland arriving at the Cape on 3 April and was then sent to Beira, Mozambique, where it arrived in the middle of April. The contingent became part of the Rhodesian Field Force and travelled the first 500 kilometres overland, first via railway to Marandellas and then using other modes of transport, in coaches and wagons and on foot, another 500 km to Bulawayo in the west of the country. Exposure to deadly diseases such as malaria and dysentery while in Portuguese East Africa was to play havoc with the health of the troops.

** Queensland Officer.

Captain H.C.W. Hamilton.

Death in South Africa.

His Excellency the Governor this morning received a cablegram from the High Commissioner for South Africa (Sir Alfred Milner), announcing the death from dysentery of Captain H: C. W. Hamilton, of the Queensland Permanent Artillery.

Captain Hamilton joined A Battery of the Queensland Regiment of Royal Australian Artillery as a probationary lieutenant on May 14; 1890. He was promoted to be lieutenant on July 23, 1890. On February 25, 1895, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He resigned his appointment, and was placed on the unattached list, on November 18, 1896. Captain Hamilton went to South Africa with the third contingent, but not as a member. He was granted a free pass to South Africa, whither he went with a view of seeing active service. Captain Hamilton, at the time of his death was 35 years of age. He formerly belonged to the North Irish militia. The Defence Force authorities have received an official message from the officer commanding the lines at Marandellas, dated July 13, as follows: "Captain H. C. W. Hamilton, Queensland Mounted Infantry, died yesterday of dysentery at Marandellas." This seems to indicate that Captain Hamilton accompanied the Queensland third contingent as far as Marandellas, although he was not enrolled in Queensland as a member of the contingent.

^ With many thanks to a fellow member of Ancestry, V. Fawcett, for tracking down this information for me.

+ The family name lives on in a quite a different way with The Sir John Borlase Warren being a popular gastro pub in Nottingham, UK!

# Click here for more details on Flora Hamilton Lewis, mother of C.S. Lewis.

% Reference to H.C.W. Hamilton in The London Gazette reads - War Office, 7th February, 1882. MILITIA. ARTILLERY. Antrim, Hugh Cecil Waldegrave Hamilton, Gent., to be Lieutenant. Dated 8th February, 1882. 

All posts in this series on Digging the Dust

The Road to Paradise

The Chronicles of Hamilton

From the sunlit plains extended

The man who never reached Paradise

More lost Australians?

Brothers and Others

He was Only Nineteen

Farewell to Paradise

With special acknowledgement and thanks to ZimFieldGuide, Sabretache and to Robin Droogleever whose book That Ragged Mob has been an invaluable resource in re-discovering some of these lost men of Empire.