TOPIC:

Alfred Overett Gould

Corporal, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry
Captain, Johannesburg Mounted Rifles

- Queens South Africa Medal with clasps Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal and Laings Nek to Capt: A.O. GOULD, Joh’burg M.R.

Alfred Gould was born in Kelvedon, Essex in 1866, the son of Joseph Gould, a Gardener by occupation, and his wife Zillah, born Overett.

At the time of the 1871 England census the family were living in the High Street, Kelvedon. Alfred, aged 4, was with siblings Harry (6), Zillah (2) and baby William who was a week old. Ten years later, at the time of the 1881 England census, the family had moved to Church Street in Kelvedon. Alfred, at the age of 14, was already out of school and employed as a Gardener – most likely working alongside his father. The parents had been busy in the years since the previous census and the house was rather full with new additions Thomas (7), Emma (5), Frank (3) and baby Anna (7 months). Sarah Overett (78), Mr Gould’s mother-in-law, had also taken up residence. Of little William there was no sign – he had passed away at the age of 6 in 1877.

Imbued with an adventurous spirit, Gould tired of life in Old England and set sail for Africa, intent on making his fortune. He settled for the sparsely populated territory of Swaziland where he involved himself in the burgeoning business of mineral rights and concessions in the largely unexplored country. On 26 July 1889 he witnessed, along with his great friend and soon to be pioneer aviator Alistair Miller, a document wherein the Swazi King Umbandeni and his Indunas, granted concessionaries John Thornburn and Frank Watkins, the “full, sole, free and exclusive right in that portion of my country lying to the south of the Komati River to cultivate and carry on any species of agriculture and arboriculture deemed necessary and needful.”

That he was influential in Swaziland in the latter part of the 19th century was beyond doubt – Huw M. Jones, in his work a Biographical Register of Swaziland to 1902, wrote that Gould was expected to go to central Africa on an expedition but Ngwenyama Mbadzeni, the previous monarch, died and Gould’s pal, Miller, lost his job as secretary to the Ngwenyama tribe and the expedition was cancelled.


A map detailing the various places Gould found himself in

He also commentated on Swazi customs and traditions – in 1891, when referring to the make-up of a typical Swazi homestead, he was quoted as saying that “some have 800 to a 1000 huts in them, whilst others you light upon suddenly in a day’s journey are but miserable compilations of two or three huts and an apologetic cattle kraal.”

Gould next tried his hand at cattle breeding with a D. Forbes (Junior) but this didn’t last and he joined the Swaziland Government Police as an Assistant Inspector. Posted to the small settlement of Pigg’s Peak, Gould was reported to have a bitter relationship with Carl Von Brandis, the Mining Commissioner at Steynsdorp. Steynsdorp was a town in the then Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (Transvaal); and Von Brandis a prominent personage and close confidante of President Paul Kruger’s, who, having remained neutral during the Anglo Boer war, was destined for high office under the British administration.

But controversy with the land concessions he had been party to caught up with Gould. The area granted by the King was so enormous that it amounted to about one-sixth of the whole of Swaziland which led to a court case contesting the validity of the grant. The court documents recorded that, “Beyond the obvious want of knowledge of the contents and effects of this grant by the Swazi King it appears from the Affidavit of one of the three attesting witnesses: Mr. A. Gould sworn at Bremersdorp on the 7th June, 1895, that he was not present either at the signature of this or any other concession by Umbandeni, as he never saw the Swazi King, though his name appears as attesting witness in other similar documents; the other attesting witness is Mr. Allister Miller who was at the time secretary to the King Umbandeni and immediately afterwards became Manager of the Company which purchased the concession from his father-in-law.”

Something appeared “rotten in the state of Denmark.” It must also be remembered that the Swazi territory was regarded by Kruger and his government as almost an extension of the Transvaal and they felt very protective over it and its people. This didn’t bode well for harmonious relations between the Boers and the British as events were to show.

War clouds between the two Boer Republics of the Transvaal and her ally the Orange Free State and the might of Great Britain, which had been gathering for some time, burst onto the international stage on 11 October 1899 and Gould, despite being relatively safe in Swaziland, deemed it prudent to join his compatriots against the Boers. On 24 February 1900 he enlisted with B Squadron of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and was assigned the rank of Corporal and no. 919, giving his father, Mr J. Gould of Relabedon, Essex as his next of kin.


B Squadron a week after the Relief of Ladysmith - Gould could well be in this photo having joined them two weeks earlier

Thorneycroft's M.I. had been called into being just prior to the battle of Colenso on 15 December 1899 and had given an excellent account of themselves at Spioenkop in January, as well as the lead-up to the Relief of Ladysmith. Gould had, however, missed out on these actions. The T.M.I. were the first troops to cross the Tugela on the 20th and did most valuable scouting work on the 21st with Gould joining them shortly thereafter.

Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry took part in the movement for turning the Boer position on the Biggarsberg and that at Laing's Nek. They suffered slight casualties on various occasions during these operations. General Buller stated that on the 13th of June he sent back the Telegraph detachment under an escort of 150 men of Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry under Captain C F Minchin. "They were attacked by superior forces south of Gans Vlei, whom they drove off, and the waggons were brought safely back via Botha's Pass with the loss of only about seven miles of their line, which they were unable to pick up. I consider that Captain Minchin's dispositions were good".



When General Buller moved north towards Belfast and Lydenburg, the regiment remained with General Clery in the vicinity of the Natal-Pretoria Railway, and had arduous patrol work and often severe fighting, as on 6th September, when 4 men were killed and Captain Molyneux and several men were wounded. It can be assumed that Gould, with the Transvaal and Laings Nek clasps to his medal, was in on all the forementioned skirmishes but trouble was brewing – on 30 November 1900 he was reported as being a Deserter. This was most likely a misunderstanding as he next appeared as a Captain with the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles – according to the medal roll, he first took a slight detour as a Cattle Collector with the Army Service Corps although for what length of time we are left guessing.

The Johannesburg Mounted Rifles that he joined was founded on 12th December 1900, and soon two battalions were recruited. They had the good luck to get as commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel H K Stewart and under him did much valuable service. The greater portion of the corps was in the early part of 1901 stationed in the Springs district (just east of Johannesburg), where they always had the enemy near them and used worthily the opportunities they got. They had casualties at Springs on 6th January 1901 and on several other occasions during the three following months. In March and April two companies were in Colonel Colville's column, based on the Standerton line, and were said to have done good work particularly in an affair at Roberts' Drift. Both battalions afterwards did much column work.

Early in 1901 part of the corps was sent to the Zululand border, a district in which they saw much arduous service. Towards the end of April 600 of their number were with Colonel Stewart in a column working from about Volksrust. Colonel Stewart had also under him Gough's Mounted Infantry, 600; the Commander-in-Chief's Bodyguard, 1000; the 74th Battery Royal Field Artillery, and a pom-pom. In July 1901, the two battalions were put together, and under Colonel Stewart operated as a column, which did much trekking and skirmishing generally in the east of the Transvaal and about the Zululand border. A Standerton telegram of 5th August mentioned that by a night raid on Amersfoort the JMR had captured a laager and 20 prisoners.

The London Morning Post of 3 June 1901 reported, under the heading “Officers discharged to Duty” that Captain A.O. Gould (among others) had been discharged from hospital for duty for the week 26 May 1901.” Now recovered from his ailment, he rejoined his regiment.

Again, in the absence of certainty, one must assume that Gould was part of the skirmishing and patrolling mentioned above. Having spent more than twelve years in the Eastern Transvaal and Swaziland, he was admirably equipped to assist in the tracking down of the enemy. How long he spent with the JMI is open to conjecture but, referring once more to the medal rolls, he was not eligible for the South Africa 1902 clasp – indicative of the fact that he resigned from their service in 1901.

The war over on 31 May 1902, Gould returned to his civilian pursuits but bad news reached him towards the end of the year – according to an article in the Essex Newsman of 27 December 1902, “At 10 past 10 on Friday morning a shocking accident occurred in the High Street, Kelvedon, by which seed grower Joseph Gould, aged 61, who lived at Church Street, was knocked down and killed through the horse he was driving having bolted.”

Precisely how educated, or otherwise, Gould was, is unknown – being employed as a gardener at the age of 14 would suggest that he wasn’t exposed to any great learning and it would be easy to write him off on the basis of that alone. But you don’t become the confidante of Kings and a commissioned officer in a Colonial regiment without being adroit at what you do. Gould had “picked up” an education somewhere on his travels and, naturally gifted, he was about to confound any detractors he had yet again – on 21 July 1903 he, along with two others of his acquaintance, patented in both the USA and the UK, “An improved means for putting up, protecting and handling tapes, braids, ribbons and the like.” I won’t bore the reader with the details but, suffice it to say, this was a rather technical innovation which is still with us today.

Despite the above, the lure to revisit his past passion proved too strong and, in June 1906, the Barberton office of the Registration Mining Rights Department received a request for the granting of licences to Mr A.O. Gould of Oshoek (on the Swaziland border). On 10 June he wrote, “I will now avail myself of your kind offer to forward me licences by post. Will you please send me by return three Bare Metal licences for A.O. Gould. Will you also kindly let me know on what date the Bare Metal claims which were offered for sale on the 28th instant become open for pegging again.”

Armed with these licences, Gould and his partner, Ryan, duly pegged out the farms Hartebeest Kop in Oshoek and Steynsdorp (a place we know him to be familiar with)

Gould’s story now comes to an end – what happened to him hereafter I have been unable to determine. We know that his younger brother, Thomas Samuel Gould also came out to South Africa and was a Storekeeper in Durban when he married in 1912. Thomas had a son, Aubrey Overett Warren Gould, who passed away in Mbabane, Swaziland in 1986 confirming that the family retained strong ties with that country.

An excellent account and beautifully named QSA, Rory.