TOPIC:

25404 TROOPER MARK SPRAGGON: ROBERT'S HORSE

Mark Spraggon was born in 1883 at Nafferton, a farm in Northumberland, England, the son of George Hare Spraggon and Georgina M Spraggon.
The Census of 1891 lists a large household with father (38), mother (36), Ada M (11), Bertha M (10), Mark ,(8), Catherine (7), Benjamin (5), George H (3), Georgina C (1). Charlotte Spraggon (31) and Steve Pick 26) were visitors to the household on census day.
This large household was cared for by three servants namely; Charlotte M Richards (21), Annie Moore (22) and Agnes A Tindale (20).
The full address was given as "Nafferton", Northumberland.

The Spraggon family had been farming for at least a few generations as evidenced by the probate notice published in the London Gazette of April 4th 1884, of the death of Mark's paternal grandfather Benjamin Spraggon, a farmer or Bank Head House, Northumberland. The beneficiaries of the will being Mark's father George and uncle Benjamin.

In 1888, George Hare Spraggon took over a farm at Nafferton, an area of 201 acres. The farm was possibly part, or formerly part of His Grace Algernon, the 6th Duke of Northumberland.

The farm holdings of George were tragically cut short within eight years as he died in 1896. With no male of the family of sufficient age to take over the farm it would be reasonably safe to assume that the widowed Georgina and family would have been forced to move on to pastures new.

Mark Spraggon was not in England when the 1901 Census took place. Having flown the nest, we find him aboard the ship "Carthaginian" on the 30th March 1899 bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was just 16 years old according to the passenger manifest when he embarked on his great adventure. He was described as a labourer and it cannot be known whether he was accompanied on the voyage or a lone passenger. There was no-one else sharing his surname aboard ship.

ANGLO BOER WAR
By October 1899, the British Empire had become embroiled in it's long conflict with the two Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Mark had journeyed to South Africa while still aged 16/17 years of age and attested to Roberts Horse at East London on 23rd July 1900. He was allocated the regimental number 25404 and the rank of Trooper. He served with RH until his discharge on 13th June 1901 after having served 326 days with this renowned unit, his character was described as "very good".
After only 5 days back in civvies, Mark now enlisted with another very capable outfit, the Canadian Scouts as Trooper 34426 on 18th June 1901. He was gainfully employed by the Scouts until 13th June 1902 time expired.
His next of kin was his mother G. Spraggon of 2 Gosforth Villas, Newcastle upon Tyne (by 1911 she had moved to 9 Elmfield Road, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne as a 56 year old widow living on independent means with daughters Bertha M and Georgina C).
Mark does not appear in any of the casualty lists and I cannot relay to the reader any specific action he was involved in, but suffice to say he probably had a lively time being a member of these two fighting units!

FIRST WORLD WAR SERVICE
The usual resources provide a reference to a Lt. Mark Spraggon who served with the Northumberland Fusiliers during World War One and was a casualty listed as suffering from sinusitis, and who made a couple of voyages to Cape Town under this rank after the war. His age and year of birth entered into the Admissions and Discharge Book certainly fit, so it is feasible that this could be the same man.
However, Mark Spraggon was quite a common name in Northumberland. Indeed, our Mark's ancestors bore the name through the generations.



ueen's South Africa medal awarded to 25404 Trooper Mark Spraggon bearing clasps CAPE COLONY, ORANGE FREE STATE, TRANSVAAL (from Medal Roll WO100/267 for Robert's Horse) and SOUTH AFRICA 1901 (from Medal Roll WO100/287 for Canadian Scouts). Also entitled to DA1902 date clasp.


Regimental number officially impressed to the rim.


Rank and naming to the rim.


Regimental naming to the rim.


RHODESIA, MURRAY MACDOUGALL, BLACKBIRDING AND MALARIA!
Information about individuals who lived over a hundred years ago can come from unexpected sources.
Manamere (2016), while authoring and publishing a paper on the history of malaria in the south eastern Lowveld of colonial Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1979 reveals the activities Mark Spraggon was involved in. During the period prior to and following World War One, white settlers were beginning to establish farms within this 'unhealthy' area of Rhodesia. Among these was one Scotsman by the name of Thomas Murray MacDougall, a transport rider by profession,vwho was granted ownership of Triangle Ranch consisting of 120,000 hectares, a huge undertaking. He served in World War One, leaving his top hand Zulu Tom Dunuza capably running the show in his absence.


Thomas Murray MacDougall 1881-1964 (image from The Murray MacDougall Museum used for research purposes only).


Murray MacDougall and Tom Dunuza at Triangle (image from The Murray MacDougall Museum).

Spraggon went into partnership with MacDougall in 1920 ranching cattle. This, despite the existence of tsetse fly in the area , actually provided good cattle country, the wooded Savannah known as the "sweet veld" held enough forage to sustain the cattle during the dry season.
Spraggon was very well known in the region, plying his skills as a transport rider and labour recruiter he settled at Marambini.
He must have been quite a character as I quote from Manamere (2016): "Tales of him as a self-appointed consul, magistrate, district commissioner and policeman abound."
I surmise that with so few white men of authority in country, well, somebody had to step up and wear all of those hats!

Despite being "ideal cattle country", Spraggon ceased cattle ranching later in the 20s. There just wasn't enough money to be made out of it, so he began a recruiting establishment at Marambini, on the Runde Junction. This was to prove more profitable as the depot became the main processing point for migrants labour seeking employment in the Witwatersrand Goldfields.

And what of Spraggon's former cattle ranching partner MacDougall? He also quit cow banging and sold his stock at a huge loss to begin an irrigation business and cultivation of sugar cane. He also became involved in the labour recruitment business, befriending the Katanga and Shangaan tribes. He was trusted as a fair man by them, and they provided much of the labour to build the early infrastructure of the area; canals, bridges, roads, etc.

Manamere (2016) states "MacDougall and Spraggon's partnership went beyond cattle ranching. The two worked together as illicit recruiters and blended illicit business with legitimate entrepreneurial activities."
The partners established a trading post at Nywenyenyi, and in 1930 constructed roads essential to their transport business.
To facilitate the lorries required to transport the supply of illegal labour, they built a road from the Portuguese border to Pafuni trading post. It must have been lucrative to have justified this level of effort and investment.
The authorities, such as they were, suspected the pair of illicit labour recruitment, but they could not be charged due to lack of evidence.
Besides, who was going to inform on them? Certainly not the incoming migrants and workers. I'm any case, it would seem that Messrs Spraggon and MacDougall were running their own little empire here!; The blackbirding kings of Crook's Corner (as the location became known as it's notoriety grew!

It can come as no surprise that Mark Spraggon became a "great white hunter" to add to his other epithets.
The following newspaper clipping is extracted from"Belfast News-Leyter", dated 31st January 1935 on page 4:

"TERRORISM IN RHODESIA"
Notorious Bandit Wounded and Captured
BULAWAYO (S. Rhodesia), Wednesday.
"A reign of terror in the native districts of Rhodesia has been ended by the capture of the Colony's most famous bandit. He is a native named Mabfuno, and for some time he has terrorised the native villages with his gang looting, and destroying kraals. Mabfuno escaped from gaol some months ago, whereupon a price was put on his head. But so terrified were the natives of the outlaw's revenge that they refused to disclose his whereabouts to the police.
Mr. Mark Spraggon, a white hunter and tracker in the Nuanetsi district, set out to find the bandit. His native trackers reported that Mabfuno and his leading Confederate were were attempting to cross the frontier into Portuguese territory. Just as it was beginning to get light the bandits were seen accompanied by two native women. Spraggon at once opened fire and Mabfuno fell shot through the hip. He is now in jail, while the police are on the heels of his companions-Reuter".

However, the truth does appear to have been stretched here to put it mildly!
Perhaps another example of a larger than life character unashamedly self-appointing themselves to a major event!
The downfall of the bandit Mabfuno and his merry men is also documented in detail by Hello well (Window on Rhodesia. The Jewel of Africa). ...it is a detailed account of the escape, the manhunt and the shooting and death from wounds of Mabfuno. The crucial shot being made by Trooper Cunningham of the British South Africa Police accompanied by two native constables. No mention of Mark Spraggon in this account!

And now as I track Mark Spraggon the trail goes cold. Did he end his days on the Lowveld, did he return to the north east of England?
To have survived at the frontier of empire after having emigrated at just sixteen years old, he must have been a highly resourceful tough nit, just the stamp of man the empire encouraged to straddle the fine line between legality and doing what had to be done, even if for self-gratification and personal gain.

They don't make em like Mark Spraggon anymore!

REFERENCES:

djbbfor attestation document for Robert's Horse.

Anglo Boer War Forum.

Findmypast.

Ancestry.

Family search.

Manamere, aKundai. (2016)., "A History of Malaria in the South Eastern Lowveld of Colonial Zimbabwe 1890-1979."

Murray, M. J.," Blackbirding at Crook's Corner., Illicit labour recruiting in the North East Transvaal 1910-1940." Journal of South African Studies Volume 31, No. 3,:1995, pp 373-397.

Wallace, Jim., "Knowing No Fear."

To add to the biography of Mark Spraggon, I found this detailed character assessment in a publication which deals specifically with the life on and development of the Rhodesian Lowveld. It makes for interesting reading.




Mark Spraggon (excerpt from "A Lowveld Son," J. R. C. Beverley)

"Mark Spraggon arrived at the Sabi Lyndon junction about 1920. He was a short, rotund man, with broken teeth and a very cold smile. My father said he could have been the local grocer down the road. He was extremely ruthless, and had organised an "army" of Shangaans, whom he sent out to find men willingly or unwillingly, to work in the Johannesburg mines, as he was a recruiter for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (referred to as Wenela). Two Africans robbed his store once, and he then followed them for about 200 kilometres into Mocambique. When he found them, he brought them back and beat them until they told him where they had hidden the cash. He took them into the bush, and they were never seen again. A court case against him proved fruitless, as he insisted that they had departed to work on the South African mines.
To describe him, here are extracts from a letter to Tony Seward, O. C. Vila Salazar, 1973/1974 by his friend Harold Mockford, who had worked for Spraggon as a young man.

"In 1936 I went to work for Spraggon. As a boss he was a real tiger and you started work at sunrise and stopped at sunset and a Sunday off was unheard of. It was seven days a week and my pay was £5 a month. A training I have never forgotten and recommend it to any youngster leaving school! There were two others with me there, Jock Wilson, ex-BSAP and Gordon Southern. Wilson did the books, ordering stores etc. and Southern kept the vehicles going. Wilson was a lightly built man, but I believe he never lost a fight. He got married while I was there, to a Miss Sugden from Natal, but she could not take to the life in the bush. He joined up during the war and I heard that after the war he was in Intelligence in Palestine, and one of those Jewish gangs got him, but don't know if it was the truth. Southern was a very handy person, a good mechanic, body builder and keen on hunting and fishing, but he was unfortunately an alcoholic. Spraggon had dismissed him on several occasions, but always took him on again.
I was told that Spraggon was a sniper in World War One, but I never saw him handle a firearm of any sort. He had devised a hundred and one ways of making money, from charging "exchange" when a note was changed into silver, to charging for fares for crossing the river in his boats. The buses would wait at his Mpandhla Store for the repatriates from the mines. From the river to Mpandhla he had a wagon carrying their boxes and this was an extra charge. From Mpandhla, they were taken through to Marumbene Store and from the store to the river, the luggage went by wagon at an extra fee, and if there was water in the river then there would be the boat fare. He was an excellent organiser, but hell to work with. If you did not know the exact number of gallons of petrol or bags of meal or kaffircorn at any of the depots, there was an explosion.
Spraggon cut the original road from Mpandhla to Marumbene, so that his vehicles could use it. He was given the contract by Wenela to cut a road all along the border in Mocambique from Dumelo to Mavue. It had to be properly stumped and this was the days before bulldozers. It was pick and shovel and axe all the way, and those clumps of Umsimbete forests were hell. Then Wenela gave him the contract to cut the road from Captains to Massangena. This road cut through virtually unknown parts in those days, and even the Africans knew very little about the interior of those parts. The course would be set by the sun each morning and the road came out a few miles from Massangena, which was pretty good. We had two excellent Africans on that road Mark Mafungwe and Five Pambuka. The latter, a fearless person with a vast knowledge of the bush. A huge, strapping man. Many years ago when at Pafuri, I received a message that he was very ill and wanted to see me. I found him at his home between Mavue and Massangena, dying of T. B.- a pathetic sight. He gave me two small tusks and was dead a week later.
Mark Mafungwe was one of the greatest black naturalists I have ever known, and his bush knowledge was wonderful. However, this is another story, but they were all employed by Spraggon. While cutting the roads in Mocambique, Spraggon had a Portuguese hunting license -to supply meat to the road gang -issued by the Company of Mocambique. Game was plentiful and there were vast herds of buffalo. Also eland, Liechtenstein's hartebeest, wildebeest, kudu, inyaka, giraffe, impala, sable and of course elephants.
PLEASE CALL BACK THERE IS MUCH MORE FROM THIS QUOTE TO FOLLOW TOMORROW.....

Will be calling back. Many thanks, Steve.