JOHN COOPER-CHADWICK (1864-1948) AND THE FAMILY OF BOERS

I’ve been rereading the memoir published by my grandmother’s cousin John Cooper-Chadwick, called Three Years With Lobengula, and Experiences In South Africa. It was written in 1892-93, and has a lightness of style which you wouldn’t expect from a late Victorian author.

John Cooper-Chadwick (1864-1948), pictured in 1885 when he was serving in South Africa with Methuen’s Company of Horse

It was written, John notes in the preface, “only to amuse my father during his latter years of declining health.” This explains the breezy narrative voice which he used to describe an often dangerous or harrowing set of adventures in southern Africa. The voice is all the more remarkable given the physical circumstances under which it was written.

John Cooper-Chadwick was shot by his dog. It wasn’t deliberate. In May 1891 John had cocked his rifle to shoot an antelope, but the antelope ran off. Forgetting to uncock his weapon John upended it and leant on it with his hands resting one on top of the other over the business end. His dog Minnie leapt up handwards hoping to be petted, then slithered back down the slippery barrel. She caught a paw on the trigger. John sustained injuries to his chest and face, but both hands were damaged beyond salvation. He wrote his book, as one biography casually states, “with a pen tied to his elbow joints.”

John was in South Africa between wars, as it were. The First Boer War had ended in 1881 with a moral victory for the Boers, the Dutch settlers in the Transvaal, with whom Britain wisely negotiated a truce. In 1895 an ill-considered British attack on the Transvaal, known to historians as the Jameson Raid, shattered the peace and led eventually to the Second Boer War. John was in Africa from 1885 to 1891 and had spells as a policeman, a gold prospector and a hostage to fortune placed in the camp of Matabele leader Lobengula by Cecil Rhodes.

 Lobengula, king of the Matabele; and Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia. Rhodes sent John Cooper-Chadwick to be his eyes and ears in Lobengula’s royal compound

The book is a good read. It reflects the imperial British attitudes of the day, but does so with a good humour and humanity couched in rich descriptions of the lives and customs of those around him, of all nationalities and cultures. Here for example is his encounter with a Dutch family as he travels from Bechuanaland to Johannesburg in 1887.

“The first place we came to was Malmani, a little mining town on the Transvaal border. We passed through several small Dutch farms along the road; at some of these we bought milk, butter and eggs, and the people were generally civil.

“On entering a house, it was necessary to shake hands all round with the whole family. This is a long, tedious operation, always performed gravely and silently. Their hands are large, clammy and dirty, and held out as if they did not belong to the owners. Then the usual questions were asked: ‘Where are you going and coming from?’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘Your father’s?’ and so on. When all these questions have been answered coffee is produced, and drunk out of little china bowls. Coffee is drunk all day long, and when the real article is scarce they make it out of roasted Indian corn [maize].

A Boer family photographed in 1886 (picture from Wikipedia)

 “No Boer house is complete without a concertina, and generally one of the young men will keep on playing the same tune for hours for the benefit of his admiring family circle. Their furniture is not very elaborate: a few chairs, benches, and table is about all; overhead, along the rafters, are strings of onions, dried peaches, apples and biltong [dried beef].

“Any stranger passing is welcome to put up, if on horseback; but they look with suspicion on those on foot, and give them the cold shoulder.

“When a young man goes courting, he sits up opposite the girl on certain nights with a candle between them, scarcely speaking all the time; when the candle is burnt out, the young man must go, and it is according as the girl likes him how much candle she leaves to burn.”

For all I know all these customs still persist today, but John Cooper-Chadwick certainly draws a vivid sketch of Boer family life 125 years ago.

Small Boer farmsteads like this were set on fire as part of Britain’s punitive scorched earth policy when hostilities broke out again in 1899

JOHN COOPER-CHADWICK (1864-1948) AND THE DISPLAY ADVERTISEMENTS (Part 2)

The publication of John Cooper-Chadwick’s memoir of adventures in southern Africa, Three Years With Lobengula, was funded in part by the inclusion of six display advertisements. I wrote about some of those ads directly connected with South African shipping and with Cooper-Chadwick himself in an earlier post.

There is also an advertisement for the South Africa weekly newspaper, “the South African’s Vade Mecum at home and abroad,” with a testimonial from that hero of British imperial colonialism Cecil Rhodes: “South Africa is the only paper of its kind that deals properly with South African Events and Questions.” Rhodes’ mineral rights treaty with Lobengula, king of the Ndebele people, in 1888 was one of the steps towards the creation of the country named after him, Rhodesia. South Africa was launched by Edward Peter Mathers in 1889, while John Cooper-Chadwick was being held in Lobengula’s camp. The Mathers newspaper legacy extended beyond his South Africa title: using the pen name Torquemada in The Observer newspaper, Mathers’ son Edward Powys Mathers is credited with popularising the cryptic crossword clue in the 1920s.

 

Advertisement in Three Years With Lobengula from the South Africa newspaper, "dealing propoerly with South African Questions"

S.W. Silver & Co, who also advertised in John’s book, had been supplying overseas outfits to members of the Army and the Colonial Service from their Cornhill premises in London since the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century they developed the techniques and materials which Mr Charles Macintosh had first introduced in his rubberised Macintosh raincoats. By the end of the century they were involved in the very modern world of insulated wire and submarine cables. But as a testimonial in their display in Three Years With Lobengula shows, they had not forgotten their clients throughout the British Empire.

 Advertisement in Three Years With Lobengula from S.W.Silver & Co., “equippers” for explorers and travellers

 “This firm has supplied travellers, including myself, with their outfit, and know exactly what is needed for every part of the Globe. As they retain lists of all articles supplied to various expeditions, anyone, by reference to these lists – as, for instance, the outfit of my Kilimanjaro expedition – will be sufficiently guided in their choice.” Thus Silver & Co quote Harry Johnston, polymath explorer, novelist, naturalist and soldier who played a large role, working with Cecil Rhodes, in colonising vast swathes of Africa for Britain at the same time that Rhodes had placed Cooper-Chadwick as his eyes and ears in Lobengula’s camp. His expedition to Kilimanjaro was in 1884, a year after he had met Henry Morton Stanley in the Congo. Johnston published his own African memoirs in 1920 as The Backwards Peoples And Our Relations With Them. (In fact he favoured a much more cooperative attitude to working with native Africans than Rhodes’ aggressive military approach, and the two men fell out.)

Harry Johnston (1858-1927) and Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), who both wrote testimonials for advertisements in Three Years With Lobengula (photos from Wikipedia)

John, like Johnston, reflected the values and attitudes of his day; but he retained a compassion for all the men he met on his adventures which is reflected in the humanity of his simple story-telling. Three Years With Lobengula is available again in a facsimile edition, and I heartily recommend it both for John’s memoirs and for the fascinating display advertisements which helped pay for its publication.

JOHN COOPER-CHADWICK (1864-1948) AND THE DISPLAY ADVERTISEMENTS (Part 1)

Among the many delights of my ancestral cousin John Cooper-Chadwick’s book Three Years With Lobengula are the six pages of advertising within it which presumably helped to fund its publication.

Louis Velveteen – “Ladies Should Reject All Subsitutes”

(advertisement from Three Years With Lobengula)

The book describes John’s adventures in southern Africa, and naturally there are advertisements from the shipping companies which served that region. He sailed out to Cape Town in 1885 aboard the Pembroke Castle, a ship of the Donald Currie Line; and the book concludes with the sentence, “The Dunottar Castle was due to sail in a few days, and brought us safely home.”

Above, the Pembroke Castle; below the Dunottar Castle

Donald Currie founded his shipping company in 1862, and the original Pembroke Castle was one of four ships built by Robert Napier of Govan on the Clyde to create Currie's Castle Line fleet in 1863. The second Pembroke Castle, on which Cooper-Chadwick sailed, was the only ship of the line not built on Clydeside – she was launched at Barrow-in-Furness in 1883 only two years before John joined her, and her maiden cruise had attracted the Russian Tzar and European royalty on board.

The Castle Line sailed mainly to Calcutta, until the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and Currie switched his attention to South Africa. On that route the Union Line, established in 1853, was already dominant. In 1876 both lines were appointed to provide the mail service to the colony, to avoid giving either one a monopoly. In 1900 however, the South African government decided to award the contract to only one company. To avoid either of them losing the valuable business, the two lines merged to become the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Co Limited. Currie and his Union Line counterpart Sir Francis Evans signed the deal aboard the Dunottar Castle, built in 1890 only a year before Cooper-Chadwick’s home voyage on her.

The Castle and Union advertisements from Three Years With Lobengula, both boasting the presence of surgeons and stewardesses on board

The promotion of Louis Velveteen through the pages of Cooper-Chadwick’s South African adventures is a less obvious marketing strategy. So too is the decision to advertise Langdale’s Manures there, until one reads in the ad’s copy that John Cooper-Chadwick is Langdale's local agent in Tipperary. John returned on the Dunottar Castle with horrific injuries sustained in a rifle accident while escaping from Lobengula. Despite the loss of both hands he took on the running of the family estate in Ireland, attracted a wife, raised two sons AND handled the agency for the Newcastle-on-Tyne fertiliser firm. Perhaps he was also an agent for Louis Velveteen.

As his book illustrates, he took a no-self-pity, get-on-with-it approach to life even when faced with the tribulations of his African adventures and their consequences. I have the greatest admiration for him.

John Cooper-Chadwick’s advertisement for Langdale’s Manures in his book Three Years With Lobengula – “To agriculturalists who do not use them, a trial is respectfully suggested.”

More advertisements from John Cooper-Chadwick’s book here.

RICHARD CHADWICK (1800-1827), THE BRIDGE AND THE GRACE-MARA VENDETTA

My 4x great uncle Richard Chadwick was murdered in circumstances remarkably similar to those surrounding the death of his cousins Austin Cooper and Francis Wayland twelve years later. Do such things run in families? In a sense yes – all three men were killed in their inherited roles as members of the hated ruling protestant class in Ireland.

Richard worked for his uncle Billy Sadleir as a land agent for the township of Rathcannon in Tipperary (Rathkennan on some of today’s maps), west of Holycross. Billy was a major landowner in the county and a leading Orangeman in Tipperary town, and Richard was according to one account “firm” in his dealings with Billy’s tenants.

Rathcannon, near Holycross, Co Tipperary

scene of rebellious acts in 1827 and 1848 which led directly to at least two murders,  eight hangings, and eight transportations

For “firm” read “ruthless.” Rents at that time were paid in the form of tithes to the protestant Church of Ireland, something which stuck in the craw of Catholic tenants. The Catholic Association was formed in 1823 to agitate for change, and its members did so through non-payment of rent. In 1827, two years into the job, Richard met such tactics by simply evicting tenants; they in turn responded by setting fire to houses and haybarns.

Richard was also the local magistrate; and his next move in the so-called Tithe War was to arrange for the building of a police barrack at Rathcannon. If he hoped that this would deter the Association’s activities or help to monitor them, he had badly misjudged the mood (just as Francis Massy, another cousin did, eleven years later). At noon on 30^th June 1827 he oversaw the cutting of the first sod for the new building. On his way from the site to Holycross with his building foreman Philip Mara, his road was blocked by two gunmen. One ordered him to “give yourself up, you rascal,” and the other, favouring actions over words, shot him twice at close range.

“Oh Mara, I’m shot, I am killed,” Richard cried, and died. As Mara ran off, he saw the second gunman searching Chadwick’s clothing, from which he stole promissory money notes and Richard’s gun. He used this to fire a third shot into the lifeless head of his victim.

Paddy Grace was hung on a portable gallows at the site of his crime, the last man in Ireland to be so executed

Mara identified the gunman as Paddy Grace, a popular local activist already known to the authorities as a troublemaker. When Grace was arrested at dawn the following morning, and the stolen notes were found in his possession, his fate was sealed. He was tried and convicted in Clonmel on 17^th August before a jury of Orangemen and the sentence of death by hanging was carried out with great haste only three days later.

Of course the gunmen were not acting in isolation. Other men walking with Richard Chadwick as he left the site withdrew before the shooting, leaving him alone with Philip Mara; and after it, no one came running from either Rathcannon or the next village Bohernacrusha, although both were well within earshot. It was as if they all knew what had just happened. Mara himself, as Chadwick’s foreman, may have tipped the assassins off about his boss’s movements, then turned informer on Grace when he realised that he would come under suspicion.

Piery Grace, who had held his dead brother in his arms at the gallows, began to gather a gang of heavyweights to take revenge on Mara (the key witness to Paddy’s act, and now under protective custody) by killing his three brothers. They murdered one, Daniel Mara, in a house at Bohernacrusha, on 1^st October 1827; the other two only escaped the vendetta when the authorities spirited them out of the country for their own good. The gang of twelve was eventually caught: six, including Piery, were hanged, and six more transported to Australia.

A cartographical footnote to the story:

The sentencing of Thomas Meagher, Terence McManus and Patrick O’Donohue after the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 – death was commuted to life transportation

Twenty years later, when the Dublin-Cork line of the Great Southern and Western Railway was laid through the area, a bridge over it was built on the road (the modern R661) and at the very place where my 4x great uncle was shot. A year later, messrs Meagher, Leyne and O’Donohue, three leaders of another secret society, Young Ireland, were arrested on the bridge after a failed uprising. Meagher and O’Donohue were transported in 1849; and Leyne was eventually hung in 1854. The crossing is known to this day, perhaps surprisingly, not as Grace’s, Meagher’s, Leyne’s or O’Donohue’s but as Chadwick’s Bridge.

JOHN COOPER-CHADWICK (1864-1948) AND CHRISTMAS IN MASHONALAND

I’ve written here before about my cousin John Cooper-Chadwick’s exploits in the imperial colonization of southern Africa. In between his uniformed adventures with the Bechuanaland Police and Cecil Rhodes’ Pioneer Column JCC found time for a spot of gold-prospecting with his brother Richard.

John Cooper-Chadwick (1864-1948)

serving with Methuen’s Company of Horse

His memoir Three Years with Lobengula contains vivid descriptions of conditions – a really gripping first-hand account of a time very different to our own comfortable present. Without even the most basic supplies of clothing, tools, medicines and food, the early European settlers in Africa were dependent entirely on their wits, their hands and their rifles. But special occasions still demanded special provisions, however meager the available resources.

Here’s JCC’s description of Christmas 1887:

We had no proper mining tools, dynamite or even rope for a windlass, which was a great disadvantage as the latter was absolutely necessary. … Many of the pioneers were laid up with fever, in want of medicines and the bare necessaries of life. … It was an everyday occurrence to see men walking about bare-footed, or with bits of hide for boots. … Pumpkins and mealies were then the backbone of Mashonaland, and what most of us depended on for our daily bread. …

John and Dick were re-digging ancient African mining shafts

(photo by Jono Terry)

We worked on until Christmas without striking anything, and so far escaped the fever. No doubt the active life, and a dry hut on high ground to sleep in, had a good deal to do with it, in spite of bad food and frequent wettings.

The few of us around made an attempt to keep up Christmas, and contributed what we could for dinner. A railway pudding was manufactured, a plum here and there, like the stations on a line, few and far between. Four diminutive Mashona fowls, blue-legged and skinny, flanked with biltong and a liberal supply of rice and pumpkins, composed the feast.

About ten of us assembled round the festive board, which was laid out on the hut floor, each man supplying his own cutlery and plate. Someone mysteriously produced two black bottles, which made a great sensation, as they were expected to contain whiskey, but they only turned out to be sour Cape wine.

John and Dick were mining near the Mazowe River,

which is still panned today (photo by Jono Terry)

In April 1888 Dick and John finally struck gold, although their triumph was short-lived. Dick got malaria, and John had a serious accident with his rifle which forced them both to return to Ireland. Both men survived however, and the memory of that Mashona Christmas must have made them grateful for all the family Christmases they enjoyed thereafter. Happy Christmas to you, dear reader! May your fowl be not blue and your black bottles not foul.

FREDERICK JASPER CHADWICK (1838-1891) AND THE GUELPH GAS WORKS

I am descended in one branch from a long line of Tipperary Chadwicks who first came to Ireland from England in the 17^th century. Chadwicks of Ballinard in the county and their near neighbours the Coopers of Killenure frequently intermarried. My 3x great grandparents were William Cooper and Rebecca Chadwick; and William’s sister Elizabeth married Rebecca’s first cousin John Craven Chadwick.

While William and Rebecca’s line (and mine) remained in Tipperary until the 1960s, John and Elizabeth’s son John Craven Chadwick junior emigrated to Canada in 1830 and founded a Canadian Chadwick dynasty. They settled eventually in the town of Guelph, 60 or so miles west of Toronto. Guelph was a flourishing colonial trading post, established by the Canada Company in 1827 on land which was already a market and meeting place for indigenous Canadians before the British arrived.

Frederick Jasper Chadwick (1838-1891)

as Mayor of Guelph, Ontario in 1877

Chadwicks played no small part in the development of the city. John junior served in several militia units during the rebellions of 1837 which sought to overthrow British rule in Canada. He subsequently served on the Commission for Peace locally. His son Jasper also did military service: Jasper and his father were first in line when the Guelph Rifles (No. 1 Company) were being formed in February 1857, and Jasper rose to the rank of Captain.

Jasper was a prominent businessman, a Provincial Land Surveyor who served on the town and county council and was elected Mayor of Guelph in 1877. It was a big year for Guelph, the 50^th anniversary of its founding, and Jasper must have presided over many celebratory events. He was from 1871 to 1885 the proprietor of the conservative Guelph Herald newspaper, and under his tenure it went in 1872 from a weekly to a daily edition. (The Herald was eventually bought up in 1924 by its lifelong rival the radical Guelph Mercury, which still publishes to this day.)

Guelph Town Hall (built 1856)

(pictured in 1879, the year the town became a city)

Guelph Town Hall which housed the mayoral offices (as well as courts, market stalls, jail and library)  had been built in 1856, during a period of prosperity triggered by the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railroad in the town that year. Guelph itself had only been granted town status a year earlier. That prosperity was soon boosted with another rail connection to the outside world by the Great Western Railway.

Guelph Board of Trade was determined to capitalise on these transport links and attract manufacturers to the town, and Jasper Chadwick was a founding director of the Guelph Gas Works, one of the Board’s schemes to that end. Its gas first came on stream on 18^th January 1871. Gas meant heat and light, which in turn meant longer working hours in factories; and like moths to a flame, industries were indeed drawn to Guelph. (The gasworks survived until they were demolished in the 1960s.)

Guelph Junction Railway’s monopoly-busting Freight Office

(the line was leased to the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1888)

In 1879, two years after Jasper’s mayorship, he could take some credit when Guelph was declared a city. Three years later, when the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railways merged, fears of a monopoly of rail access to the city prompted Chadwick and several other leading citizens to found the city-owned Guelph Junction Railway. At a dinner in his honour that year, he could say with much justification:

“When I came to Guelph in 1848 it was a small place; the spot on which is now erected the Wellington Hotel [in which he was speaking] being a lumber yard and scarcely a building of any pretensions between here and the market place. Her population at that time being counted in hundreds where now there are thousands. Coming here at an early period of my life I might almost claim to be a native, and as you have been kind enough to express in the address, I have been identified with everything that has made Guelph what she is. Nothing, since I was able to take my share, has been done for the advancement of our good city in which I have not taken an active part.”

Well done, Jasper Chadwick - power, media and transport tycoon, citizen and benefactor of Guelph!

Guelph Junction Station in 1986

(built in 1888, demolished in 1989)

Photo by William D. Miller