Dr Francis Wilson (born Arnold Millson)

The doctors’ dilemmas: Medical practice in the Free State during the South African War John Boje

"Francis Wilson was not only British by birth and a burgher by residence; he also had a Boer wife. In these circumstances, he defined his national sentiment in negative terms by saying that he was “not a Boer hater but not pro-Boer”.

p110

When the Boers sought to recruit his services, he took refuge in Basutoland, leaving his family on his farm. When Boers threatened to burn his house down, he returned with a view to removing his family to safety. The Boers arrested him and paroled him to his farm, where he remained until September 1901 when he was visited by the 1st King’s Dragoons on a farm-burning mission. Afterwards he went to the camp of Lord Basing, their commanding officer, on a neighbouring farm, where he saw remains of his furniture and his library of 300 books. He seems to have felt no rancour towards the British, but prided himself on serving them as a medical officer with Bethune’s column and by providing them with information.111 Wilson and his family were “brought in” by Bethune’s column on 12 September 1901112 and for the next month he and his son were resident in the Winburg concentration camp,113 but the camp register offers no indication on the whereabouts of his wife. In December 1901, Wilson applied from Ficksburg for a position in any concentration camp but specified that for private reasons, he did not want a medical appointment. He clearly hoped to secure an appointment as a camp superintendent because he makes a point of saying that he had had much experience in managing large numbers of emigrants in the service of various shipping lines. He was strictly temperate, in robust good health and could speak Dutch, Sesotho, French and German. Wilson was promptly offered a position as medical officer in the Bloemfontein camp, where a doctor was sorely needed, but when he indicated that he proposed bringing his family with him, the appointment was cancelled because the commandant of Ficksburg would not allow his pro-Boer wife to remain in Ficksburg if he was not there to keep an eye on her, while the military authorities in Bloemfontein would not allow her to live there either because they had “quite enough of this sort in town already”.

114. FSPA, SRC 35.34 and 35.35.

J. Boje, “The doctors’ dilemmas: Medical practice in the Free State during the South African War”, Historia, 63, 1, May 2018, pp 45-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309-8392/2018/v63n1a3

Copyright: ©The Author(s). Published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.