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How Tom nearly captured a Boer town
(With quotes from R N Currey’s biography of Tom Vinnicombe)

By July 1900, Tom was serving with the Mounted Infantry under Major Gough and he was taking part in long patrols in search of Boer commandos. On returning to Standerton, Tom would search out Boer POW’s and refugees and ask for news of his wife, Rachel, and children, who were still at the family home in Bethal, which was in Boer territory. Refugees had already reported a food shortage in Bethal, and then one day Tom was told that his baby daughter, Iris, had died of enteric*.

Tom immediately went to Major Gough and asked for permission to make a night journey to Bethal to take food for his family and to comfort his wife. Major Gough reminded Tom of the dangers and the fact that, if captured, he faced execution as a Boer citizen in a British uniform. “Gough was a hot-tempered character, and it was the end of a long day; but it is always hard for a young officer to refuse a ‘compassionate plea’ from an older man and Tom’s obstinacy had been well exercised in recent months.”

Tom then set off for Bethal with his aide, a “Cape boy”, carrying food for the family, mounted on the horses they had been riding all day. “Soon it became clear that [the second] horse could not manage the double load, so [Tom] told the Cape boy dismount and follow him to Bethal on foot.”

Although the intention had been to reach Bethal before dawn, due to the slow pace of the exhausted horses, Tom “arrived at Bethal in full daylight, his rifle slung from his shoulder in the khaki tunic and red hatband of the Natal Corps of Guides. …… Just outside Bethal a herd-boy gaped at him and ran like hare to spread the news.”

His family ran to meet him and “were more alarmed to see him there than pleased to see the horse carrying the food.” Both English and Boer neighbours were on hand as well.

Tom “could hardly have expected what happened next – to be greeted by a respectable Boer citizen carrying a bunch of keys”. The meeting is told in verse by Tom himself:
“The Landdrost ** had cleared out and left the keys
Of the Court House with old Hamman – if you please!
Said, ‘When the British come hand over these,
But I am in a hurry!’ –Off he flees.
Old Hamman saw the weary one come home;
Brought him the keys, shook hands, and said, ‘Welkom!’”

Tom was evidently amazed by this development and reacted by telling Hamman to keep the keys as he was tired and needed to sleep. The keys to the liberation of Bethal therefore remained in Boer hands!

“The common assumption was now clear. Tom Vinnicombe’s presence in Bethal in British uniform meant that the British forces were on the way. How like him to come on ahead to see his family! It emphasises again that this was a Civil War. Those with British sympathies were delighted to see him and he felt bad about deceiving them. Many of the others decided it was a good thing to have a friend at court.”

Tom’s 18-year-old daughter, Edith, remembered a succession of visitors to the house while he slept, a few of whom were “long standing opponents whose presence filled her with alarm.” Rachel plied the visitors with tea and coffee, but when she “felt she could no longer stretch [their] patience …., she dragged [Tom] out of his sleep to come and meet them. Primed by Rachel, he parried their questions on when the British were to be expected. ….. He had come on ahead simply because he had heard his family was short of food.”

The visitors left and the family felt that “those who had always been hostile to Tom had only gone to see what officials could still be hunted up. The absence of the Landdrost and most able-bodied burghers, and the assumption that the taking of Standerton must be followed by the taking of Bethal were factor’s on Tom’s side.”

The Cape boy arrived in Bethal late in the afternoon and plans were made to return to Standerton that night. The return was far more troubled than the arrival, but Tom and his companion eventually succeeded in returning safely to British lines. The aftermath of his visit to Bethal caused an upheaval that troubled the family, but it died down and their lives returned to normal.

The premature and unintended capture of Bethal by Sergeant Vinnicombe of the Natal Guides had been averted without bloodshed, while his intended personal mission had been successfully accomplished.

*In fact, Iris had not died and she lived on to marry and have her own children.

**Probably Landdrost Kleyhans, who had ill-treated IY POW’s, and who had later fallen into British hands, as reported earlier in this thread.

War comes to the Vinnicombes
(With quotes from R N Currey’s biography of Tom Vinnicombe)

In the 1890’s, Tom was settled in the south-eastern Transvaal with his wife, Rachel, and their five children – Ernest, Edith, Faith, Ira and Iris. He was prosperous, with successful career as an architect and builder. By the time the Boer War started, he owned five houses in Volksrust and Standerton, which were rented out, in addition to the one he and his family occupied in Bethal.

The Vinnicombe family arrived in Volksrust early in 1894. The town was situated on the Transvaal side of the border with Natal and it grew after the railway line through it to Johannesburg was completed. Tom secured a contract to build station buildings and houses between Volksrust and Standerton, the first important town after the border.

After the Jameson Raid in 1895, Tom decided to throw in his lot with his adopted country and took out Transvaal citizenship. He became a Burgher in about 1897.

Early in 1897, the family moved to Standerton, where Tom was building an addition to the Dutch Reformed Church that was known as the ‘Klip Kerk’ (Stone Church). In spite of the deteriorating political situation, there “was very good feeling between the English and Dutch in those days”. The people of Standerton celebrated both a visit by President Paul Kruger and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

The Vinnicombe family moved to Bethal in mid-1899 after Tom had won a tender to build a Dutch Reformed Church in the town. To his advantage was the fact that he would be the architect, builder and contractor for the project, while he had already made a name for himself through his work on the Klip Kerk at Standerton. The house in Bethal was the one the family occupied when the war started and it was the one in which they went through their most difficult times.

Tom’s daughter, Faith, later wrote about their Bethal house as follows:
“We had a lovely home there, with a few acres of land, with avenues of apple, apricot and peach trees …. enormous stables, cattle kraal and native quarters. Animals were about forty horses and mules, two or three spans of oxen, ten to fifteen cows, donkeys to draw water carts, a collie dog, Freda by name, and a half-breed mastiff called Gellert, and swarms of cats to lap up the skim milk. We made our own butter and often [had] enough to give away to friends. In such a set-up there was always a ‘Totty’ – the Hottentots being especially good with animals. Ours …. smoked dagga [cannabis] of course; it grew with the weeds about the place ….”

The outbreak of the Boer War was very unsettling for the family. Tom “took advantage of his long acquaintance with Piet Joubert, the Commandant-General of the Boer forces, and wrote a personal letter to him asking for permission to go to Natal with his family until the ‘crisis’ was over.” Joubert advised him to continue his work in Bethal, since no-one would molest him while he was building “God’s Kerk”. Other supporters of the Vinnicombes included Hendrik and Francina Hancke, who were later to come to their aid in their hours of need. Hendrik was a wealthy farmer in the Bethal district and a member of the church building committee

The Vinnicombe’s eldest child, Ernest, had by that time left home and was working for the Post Office at Vereeniging. He was obliged to serve in the local commando and he had already been issued with a Mauser rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition. However, he was determined not to fight against Britain, so plans were made to get him out of the country as soon as possible. With the help of family and friends he eventually escaped to Natal by going east through Portuguese territory to Lourenco Marques and then by sea to Durban. He promised his mother he would not enlist in a Colonial regiment, since she feared that, if captured, he would be shot as a deserter.

Tom was treated as a burgher with a reserved occupation, but his church project in Bethal was soon in trouble because of the commandeering of building supplies and the loss of workers for various war-related reasons. There were personal losses as well. The Vinnicombes had horses and a wagon, with all their accoutrements, commandeered. The wagon was hit by a shell at Elandslaagte and its remains were chopped up for firewood. Later, they sold more animals to pay debts, mainly to Hendrik Hancke, whose loans were keeping the church project going.

The Bethal Commando was called out when the war started and was amongst the first to cross into Natal. It was soon in action at the Battle of Talana on 20 October and its casualty list had a sobering effect on all in the town, including the Vinnicombes. Worse was to come with the Boer defeat at Elandslaagte, with the final cavalry charge by the British being regarded by the Boers as an act of barbarism. More bad news for the Vinnicombes with their divided loyalties was the retreat of the British to Ladysmith and the subsequent investment of the town. They also had news that their son, Ernest, had been killed and, although this was later proved to be incorrect, “it was a distressing experience”.

A casualty that was confirmed was Commandant-General Joubert, who was injured by a fall from his horse at the Battle of Willow Grange, after which he returned to his farm near Volksrust to recuperate.

As the months passed, the news from the battle fronts improved from the British perspective, but problems for the Vinnicombes continued to grow. There was a shortage of supplies in their home and the work on the church continued at a slow pace with Tom increasingly getting into debt related to this project. Then on 27 March 1900 Tom’s protector, Piet Joubert, died. Tom immediately came under increased pressure to join the Bethal Commando. He refused and was imprisoned early in April, although he still had many supporters amongst the Boer residents of Bethal. He was released 18 days later on bail of £1000, half paid by Rachel and the rest by two friends in the Bethal community, a Scotsman and a Boer (Hendrik Hencke), who both urged him to make for the British lines as soon as possible.

Although Tom was ordered to remain in Bethal, in early June he left to hide on the farms of friends in the district. The British lines in Natal were still out of easy reach and Tom had to remain hidden until Buller’s army had arrived in the Transvaal. A complication in finding and arresting Tom was the fact that by then many Boers had abandoned their commandos and returned to their farms, so the authorities had their hands full in tracking down unwilling soldiers. “Dozens of burghers are running away from the front every day. As soon as it is found out that they are at home again the Veldkornet makes them go back again ….. Thus they are always going to and fro …”

There was another avenue open to the authorities. Any burgher failing to report for duty with their commandos could have their belongings confiscated and this was the action they took against Tom. However, the Vinnicombe’s had prepared for such an eventuality before the war by legally making over all their possessions to Hendrina Hancke.

Edith wrote:
“Last Tuesday the Sheriff and Policeman came armed with a long Government document to confiscate everything. It was quite amusing to see the face of the Zarp as he stood writing down a list of everything. In the meantime we sent the Totty … out on horseback to Mrs Hancke’s, asking her to come in and bring the paper she had to prove that we sold everything to them before the war. So she wrote a friendly note to the Landdrost requesting him to please leave Mrs Hancke’s things which are in Mr Vinnicombe’s charge alone. My word, they were wild and disappointed. They thought to have a nice lot of cattle and horses to divide between them.”

The cat and mouse games went on throughout Tom’s absence. Daily attempts were made to get Tom to report for duty, but he remained away from the house and “all their trouble [was] in vain”. By 10 June, Rachel “was thinking of asking the police to come and live with them!”

Rachel took two precautions that had important results in the future, one good and the other bad.
“She had the front wheels taken off a four-wheeled wagonette or trolley, and hung by a rope or chain down a well. The rest of the trolley, a sloping platform, stood at the end of a shed, collecting fowl droppings, and looking, as intended, not worth commandeering. ……. Also, she and Edith carried Ernest’s issue Mauser and Tom’s and Ernest’s issue ammunition up a ladder into the loft and hid them carefully.”

It was at this time that the British army crossed into the Transvaal. The ambiguities of the war were illustrated by the fact that General Buller “had a friendly feeling towards the Boers of the Wakkerstroom district, who had supplied him with a commando during the Zulu War.” He visited the farm of Cornelius Uys and “had a meal there before fighting the Battle of Alleman’s Nek.” Other battles followed and the Boers “retreated to the west through Bethal”.

The retreating Boers were in need of remounts and saving their horses was the next trial for the people of Bethal. Edith wrote:
“They came into our stables, but all they could find was a lot of ducks. We had sent the horses out to Hancke’s that very morning. …… They wanted to take McClean and Hill’s two best trap horses but they had already put them away –in the house” …. [with cushions tied round their hooves].”

In spite of the retreat, the hunt for Tom continued and he was forced to move from farm to farm to escape those who were out to arrest him. “The search was now being made over a wide area, under the direction of Tjaard Kruger, son of the President, in command of the secret police.” The fact that Tom managed to avoid capture for so long is such an extraordinary and eventful story that needs to be told in full elsewhere. Eventually, at his last hiding place, after nearly three weeks on the run, he was told that Buller had reached Standerton. In fact, Buller was close to the eastern edge of the town, while Tom was only about 30 miles to the west.

On 22 June both Buller and Tom reached Standerton. There, as a Transvaal Burgher, he “surrendered to Buller in the Queen’s name”. Not long afterwards, Tom enlisted in the Natal Guides and a new chapter in his life began. This was also the time when the conventional war was drawing to an end and the guerilla phase was beginning.

Good morning Brett,
Regarding Ernest in the eighth paragraph, I was under the impression that the Commando laws stated that a burgher must provide his own rifle and horse, moreover, also a very small, rather silly, amount of ammunition as well?
Kind regards Frank

Frank

It is possible that the government was obliged to arm urban Boers, since, unlike their country cousins, they may not usually have been equipped with weapons of war, especially those unwilling conscripts such as Ernest Vinnicombe.

Regards
Brett

A tale of two houses
(With quotes from R N Currey’s biography of Tom Vinnicombe)

Two of the houses owned by Tom Vinnicombe feature in his biography, and they tell something of the social history of the Boer War. The first was in Volksrust, which was for a time rented by an official of the Netherlands Railway Company, while the second was the one the family occupied in Bethal when the Boer War started.

The railway lines in the Transvaal were built and managed by the Netherlands Railway Company, but its control ceased after the British occupied the Transvaal. The Dutch employed on the railways were expected by their Government to remain neutral in the conflict. Those that had obeyed this injunction were freed, but those that did not were put on a train to Durban and from there shipped back to the Netherlands. The latter group was very vocal in its support for the Transvaal and Tom wondered about the fate of his rented house in Volksrust.

At the time of the repatriation of the Dutch railwaymen and their families, Tom’s family had escaped from Bethal and joined him in Standerton, which was overcrowded with refugees. Tom decided to move his family to the recently vacated house in Volksrust. When they arrived “to take over the house they had a wonderful surprise. Their Hollander tenants had not only taken good care of the property, but had left behind furniture and household items to make up for the frozen rent-payments – teacups, feather beds and a harmonium are mentioned by Faith [who was then about 11 years old]. ‘We loved our garden in Volksrust,’ she says, ‘and the sweet briar hedge we had planted was still beautiful.’”

The family was, however, troubled by some of the troops “from all over the Empire [who] were passing through the little border town. This was a foreign country to them, and the family often contrasted their ways of supplementing rations with those of Burghers passing through Bethal …... Faith saw some Australian soldiers rooting up their vegetables and then going into the stables to take their horse. She ran out indignantly and shouted to them to stop. ‘And they did. They were astonished to hear me speak English!’ She was, also, a very pretty girl.”

This was a happy time for the Vinnicombe’s. The war seemed to be drawing to an end, they were together again, and free to travel into Natal to visit family and friends.

There is an unhappier tale to tell about the Bethal house. The Vinnicombe’s early contentment there changed for the worse after the war started and they had to face many and increasing stresses and strains as the war progressed. Tom’s escape to Standerton and, later, the family joining him there, left the Bethal house unoccupied and subject to a sad fate.

After entering the Transvaal, the British had concentrated in taking the towns along railway lines, thereby ensuring their lines of communication and supply. Later, they moved to clear the Boer commandos from the areas between the railway lines. This brought them to towns such as Ermelo, Carolina and Bethel. Although the British passed through Bethel during October 1900, they did not stay.

The British found that they were unable to deal effectively with the scattered and mobile Boers, who launched surprise attacks of short duration in a new form of guerrilla warfare, for which the British were ill-prepared. This led to the proclamation in December 1900 of a ‘scorched earth’ policy by Lord Kitchener, the British Commander-in-Chief. It involved destroying the farms that were keeping the Boers supplied with necessities, and concentrating displaced non-combatants in camps under British control. While ultimately effective in a military sense, it was a disaster socially and politically.

The Vinnicombe house in Bethal fell victim to this policy. In February 1901, the British moved through Bethal for a second time, and on this occasion the ‘scorched earth’ policy was implemented. Amongst other actions, it involved the burning of the Hancke farm, and those of other friends of the Vinnicombes, and moving the families to the camp at Standerton. It was also at about this time that the Vinnicombe’s house, outbuildings and furniture were razed to the ground. It later transpired that, when the British were searching the house, they found the Mauser and ammunition hidden there by Rachel and Edith while Tom was on the run from the Boers. There was no-one there to explain the circumstances that led to the arms being hidden and to whom the house belonged. “By the end of April nothing remained standing in Bethel but the ‘man’s height’ walls of the kerk and one dwelling house.”

Hello Brett,

You might find this interesting to know more about Kleynhans-Bethal, Landrost.

Picked this post up on Gentleman's Interest Club posted in 2011
Posting-Started By Chris Boonzaier , Feb 23 2011 09:52.

Interesting reading recommend you check this out.

Regards
Elandslaagte