Lizzie van Zyl

Lizzie van Zyl
Lizzie van Zyl, photographed in January or February 1901
Born	Elizabeth Cecilia van Zyl 22 April 1894 Orange Free State Republic
Died	9 May 1901 (aged 7) Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State Republic
Cause of death	Typhoid fever
Burial place	Unknown but most likely in an unmarked grave in President Brand cemetery in Bloemfontein
Nationality	South African

Elizabeth Cecilia van Zyl (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɪˈlizabet səˈsilja fan zɛi̯l]; 22 April 1894 – 9 May 1901) was a South African child inmate of the British-operated Bloemfontein Concentration Camp who died from typhoid fever during the Second Anglo-Boer War.

Background

Lizzie and her mother (Elizabeth Cecilia van Zyl) were deported to the Bloemfontein Concentration Camp on 28 November 1900. They were labelled as 'undesirables' and placed on the lowest food rations because her father, Hermanus Eg(e)bert Pieter van Zyl (Cape Colony, 21 March 1859 – Bothaville, Orange Free State, 31 January 1921), had refused to surrender. In December 1900 or January 1901, Lizzie was separated from her mother and sent to the infirmary barracks in the concentration camp, because she was starved and had typhoid fever.

She died on 9 May 1901, at the age of 7, from typhoid fever and starvation, weighing about 6.8 kilograms (15 lb).

Anti-war activist Emily Hobhouse used her death as an example of the hardships the Boer civilians faced in the concentration camps set up to intern them during the war. She described Lizzie as "a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care". Initially, the publishers of Hobhouse's reports refused to publish the photograph.

She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the 'undesirables' due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labelled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling: Mother! Mother! I want to go to my mother! One Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.

Photo

The photo of the emaciated van Zyl reportedly was sent from British author Arthur Conan Doyle, who served as a volunteer doctor during the Boer War, to Joseph Chamberlain. Both Doyle and Chamberlain were ostensibly proponents of the Boer Wars, at least publicly; Doyle wrote a short work The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, that set forth his reasoning for supporting the war. The photo was allegedly used as propaganda, not as directly anti-war propaganda, but to support the false notion that Boer children were neglected by their parents.

The image was released with the detail that it was taken when van Zyl and her mother entered the camp. Chamberlain was quoted in The Times on 5 March 1902, saying that Lizzie's mother was prosecuted for mistreatment.

Emily Hobhouse investigated the case and was unable to find any evidence of a case or the prosecution of Lizzie's mother for neglect. She located the photographer, a man named de Klerk, who was also a camp inmate at the time, and de Klerk stated that the photograph was taken two months after Lizzie had arrived at the camp, not when they had just arrived.