This interview with Fenella Redrup was included in the souvenir brochure Occupation of Matabeleland celebrating forty years since 1893 when the Salisbury and Victoria Columns rode into King Lobengula’s royal kraal at Bulawayo. Most of this article is a direct quote.

Why I came out to South Africa

Mrs G.F. (Fenella) Redrup during the course of a chat about early days said: Two things determined me to come to South Africa. First, I brought out the wife of the late Sir Norman Moore, consulting physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital where I received my training. She was in ill health and I brought her out for a trip to the Cape. We stayed a few days in Cape Town and then caught the boat back.

Secondly, the sister of Mr Kantback, the Johannesburg engineer, who was also with me at Bart’s put the idea into my head to come out here. So after returning with Lady Norman, I went back to finish my training and passed through all the branches of nursing, including massage and maternity work.

I came out to South Africa in 1896 much to my parent’s dismay and went first to the Rand. My people thought it was a terrible thing for a young girl to come out to Africa and I didn't know a soul. In Johannesburg I met the Crewe’s[1] and very soon after I came up with them to Bulawayo, just as the 1896 rebellion was nearing the end. I stayed with the Crewe’s at Maurice Gifford’s[2] house and at first I was very ill for some time. When I came out of hospital, I started nursing privately and nursed a number of well-known Bulawayo men through attacks of malaria - and they did have malaria in those days, I can tell you.

Soon after I came up they had a dance in the old Stock Exchange buildings and I danced the Polka with Cecil Rhodes. It was a fancy dress dance and I went as Trilby. Cecil Rhodes asked to be introduced to me and danced with me. He did not dance very well, I may tell you. He was not a dancing man. After that I was always known among the men as Trilby and that was my nickname down at Fort Tuli.

I nursed for some time in Bulawayo and then I became engaged to my late husband and was engaged to him for some time before I consented to marry him. In 1899 we got married and in the same year the Boer War broke out. Colonel Nicholson[3] asked my husband to let me come down to Tuli to nurse the troops. There was nobody else to go down, so I went travelling partly by coach and partly by Cape cart. When I arrived at Fort Tuli I found that the conditions were appalling. Some of the officers had huts, but the men slept out in the open in all weathers. Colonel Bodle[4] gave up his hut to me or I should not have had a place to sleep in.

                      Mrs G.F. (Fenella) Redrup                                            The late Sidney Redrup

Nursing at Fort Tuli during the Boer War (1899-1902)

The hospital was a mud hut and the sick and wounded lay on the floor in their ordinary clothing, which was never changed. There was only one doctor - a young Royal Army Medical Corps man - and there was no other woman than myself in the place, not even a native woman. Later Doctor Roscoe came down. We hadn't got a thing. All the comforts we had were a few things such as tins of milk and bully beef that the police had. I had to make up soups for the sick men out of bully beef. I went to see Colonel Plumer[5] afterwards to ask if I couldn't have something better and he managed to get me some milk from a neighbouring kraal and a goat occasionally. I also found two medical students among the police who helped me a great deal. There were not even dressings for the wounded. I used to wash out the old dressings and use them again and again. What these men who were badly wounded went through no one will ever know.

I felt very depressed when I got there but the next day something happened which showed me that I could be of some real use and that cheered me up. One of the men was accidentally shot through the kidneys with a revolver and it became necessary for the doctor to operate. I would not dare tell you all the details of that terrible operation which was carried out in a hut with packing cases for an operating table and everyone pouring with perspiration in the heat; but the man would have died in any case.

After some time I got makeshift stretchers and began to give things more shipshape. I sent up to tell my husband and Bulawayo of our position and the people in Bulawayo collected money and sent me down as quickly as possible some of the things that I needed. Even so, it took three weeks for them to arrive. When the stores came I found I had to watch the orderlies to see that they did not feed themselves on the bacon and eggs meant for the patients, substituting their own rations. It was so bad that I had to go to Colonel Plumer about it. The sanitary arrangements were pretty awful; but I got a sort of sanitary inspector appointed.

The men were a scratch crowd brought up by Colonel Plumer from the South. They would not have liked to be called the scratch crowd, I expect, but they were. Colonel Plumer was very much liked by the men, but they called him ‘Starvation Plumer.’ We were on quarter rations and dog biscuits were part of our rations.

They had several fights down there and on one occasion they bought back with them a Dutch flag from the fight around Bryce’s store[6] and gave it to me. It now hangs in my dining room.

I stayed at Tuli until the troops moved to Mafeking upon which I returned to Bulawayo as there was no longer the same need for me, bringing back with me the badly wounded men. Colonel Plumer realised what a rough time I had had and wrote a very decent letter to my husband about it, thanking him for letting me come.

Sidney Redrup

Sidney Redrup died on 23 March 1922 at the age of fifty-nine. He came north to Bulawayo with the first party to arrive in the new town after the occupation in 1893. The expedition consisted of eight wagons loaded with merchandise and it included Hancorn Smith, known to the old hands as ‘Timbertoes Smith.’ They travelled via Fort Tuli and up the Semokwe river. That year happened to be marked by a particularly wet season. The wagons were held up for three weeks by one river and it took them six months to get to Bulawayo. When eventually they arrived at Old Bulawayo they received a hearty welcome from the Pioneers and their goods were sold in no time, until then the Pioneers had to make do with the stores provided by the Chartered Company from Mashonaland.

   Sidney Redrup and wagons nearing Bulawayo

Sidney Redrup was one of the most active and versatile of the Pioneers in Bulawayo. He began as an artist in London. He was on the staff of the Illustrated London News, had pictures exhibited in the Royal Academy and executed a number of commissions for members of the Royal Family. When he came out to South Africa he branched out into the stockbroking business in Johannesburg, but shortly afterwards he came up to Southern Rhodesia armed with a letter from Cecil Rhodes to Colquhoun[7] in which he was described as an artist who was to be given every possible assistance.

He was one of the first members of the Bulawayo Sanitary Board, of which he was afterwards Chairman. When the township moved to its present site he established himself in business in Selborne Ave on the corner stand opposite the Market Square which was then the busy centre of the town as manager of the Charterland Stores. The building still stands today and is one of the oldest brick buildings in Bulawayo. It is just next to the corner building opposite the Selborne Hotel. His public activities covered most of the primary amenities of the town. With Major Mainwaring, he was responsible for providing Bulawayo with its first fire brigade.

    Bulawayo’s First Municipal Council (1897)

    Back (L-R) Councillors Saber, Hutchinson, Ross-Frames, P.D. Crewe, Slater, Landman, Major Mainwaring, Robertson (Town Clerk)

    Front (L-R) Councillors Sam Lewis, C.T. Holland, I. Hirschier (Mayor) Sidney Redrup, Col Jack Spreckley

In conjunction with Mr Wallenstein he started the first newspaper in Bulawayo, the Matabeleland Times. He secured the land for the Bulawayo Park from Dr Jameson and took a leading part in getting the whole of the present park laid out. He was also responsible for laying out the cemetery. He was a member of the Hospital Board and took an active part in raising the money to build the Memorial Hospital. He was gazetted a Justice of the Peace for Southern Rhodesia by Cecil Rhodes and was afterwards one of the early presidents of the Pioneers and Early Settler’s Society.

As the senior member of the Bulawayo Sanitary Board he had charge of the six hundred people in the Bulawayo Laager during the Matabele Rebellion (Umvukela) of 1896 and the signed memorial which was presented to him afterwards by the townspeople in recognition of his services on that occasion still hangs in Mrs Redrup’s House.

  Illustrated London News – 1896 Siege of Bulawayo during the Matabele Rebellion (Umvukela)

In 1897 he built the house in Park Road in which Mrs Redrup still lives. It was one of the first houses to be built in the suburbs. Cecil Rhodes had dinner there and admired it because it was built as he believed a house in this country should be built, with high ceilings, large rooms and plenty of light and air. Rhodes was opposed to the dark, narrow and stuffy passages of the houses in Victorian England being reproduced in this country. “Thank God, Redrup, you haven't put up a Clapham Junction villa,” he said as soon as he saw the new house.

When the Bulawayo Sanitary Board was to be promoted to the dignity of a Town Council, Sidney Redrup was freely spoken of as the Mayor and as the chairman of what was, in effect, then the Town Council, he would undoubtedly have been the first Mayor of Bulawayo if he had not resigned from the Board to escape the office. He had rendered outstanding services to the town and no doubt felt he had done enough.

That his services were appreciated is shown by letters in the possession of Mrs Redrup. One from the Hon Arthur Lawley, then the Administrator of Matabeleland  Administrator expresses appreciation of all he had done for the town, mentioning in particular the fire brigade. Another from Earl Grey reads, “Before leaving Bulawayo for Salisbury, I feel I must write you a line just to repeat to you in private what I've already on more than one occasion attempted to say in public; how greatly I appreciate, and everyone connected with the administration also, the important services and the untiring energy which you have devoted to the interests of the people and the sanitation of the town.”

References

Occupation of Matabeleland: A Souvenir. November 1933