WENTWORTH

http://www.eggsa.org/library/main.php

• Photo’s from the website of eGGSA link above

People in this camp

319

People who died in this camp

21

Wentworth camp was the third of the three Durban camps to be constructed. It was located just north of Jacobs Siding, on the Bluff railway siding. Although it was built on a healthier site, with sandy soil rather than marshland, it shared many of the discomforts of Merebank, with a humid summer climate and it was infested with fleas and mosquitoes. By the time that Wentworth was built, the importance of adequate housing and sanitation had been well established. Despite Natal’s careful economies, the cost of construction of the coastal camp was fairly considerable. By May 1902, when Wentworth’s population reached 2,962, building had reached the sizeable sum of£16,631. Wood and iron buildings replaced the bell tents and, although they had their disadvantages, with thin walls which provided little privacy and soil floors, they were infinitely preferable.1 The Natal camps were determinedly British in their staff. Frederick George Philip Peters was appointed superintendent at Wentworth, with William Nichols as headmaster of the school and other teachers recruited from England; Drs Martin and Monckton were in the hospital. Despite the fact that schooling was compulsory, and a considerable effort was put into education, a relatively small percentage of the children in Wentworth actually attended school. The regular numbers reached only about 180 out of some 1,200 children. This is fudged in the records which reported proudly that 82% of registered pupils attended regularly. But the British took care not to interfere with religious practice provided that the clergy were not preaching‘sedition’. Wentworth never had a resident clergyman so camp elders provided most of the services, helped out by occasional visiting predikants, while camp women ran the Sunday School.2 There is little information about the inmates of Wentworth camp although, like all the coastal camps, they included the families of men still on commando and some of the more recalcitrant women. Miss Otto, for instance, had been instrumental in getting fifty children from the government schools (presumably she had been teaching them in Dutch). http://www2.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/bccd/Histories/Wentworth/

Blue names Geni Profiles

Black names Not on Geni Yet

They survived

A

B

They died in this Camp

A

B

How to Participate

If you have an ancestor who was in the ABW WENTWORTH Concentration Camp:

1. Get yourself added as a collaborator
2. Navigate to your ancestor's profile
3. Under the "More Actions" link choose "Add to Project"
4. Select the ABO Wentworth" project

How to add a link is explained in the attached document - Adding links to Geni profiles to projects.

Optional:

• Include in the "About Me" section of each person a brief biographical sketch of their lives. Also include their Settler party and ship name and arrival date if known
• Include a photograph/painting of your ancestor if one exists.
• Your ancestor's profiles should be marked as "public" and not "private".
• All included profiles should include full identifying information including birth and death dates as well as birth and death locations. It would also be very helpful if the immediate family of your pioneer ancestor, (their parents, siblings and children) profiles were public profiles also.
• Do not make public any profiles of living people.

NOTE: All POW included on this project will have their profiles editable by other geni.com collaborators of this project. The object of reproducing the list here is to see if these people can be located on Geni and perhaps develop trees from them. To take part in any project - you do need to first be a collaborator - so join the project. See the discussion Project Help: How to add Text to a Project - Starter Kit to get you going!