IT has come to my notice that descendants of Lieutenant Peter Handcock (a Bathurst farrier) and others, including, I understand, the Bathurst sub-branch of the RSL, are still campaigning for posthumous pardons for Handcock and Lieutenant Harry Harbord Morant and placing of their names on Anglo-Boer War memorials.
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Both men were executed on February 27, 1902 on conviction of murdering Boer prisoners of war.
I dealt with the executions in an article in the Journal Of The Royal Australian Historical Society in 1987.
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Boer prisoners whose offer of surrender had been accepted were being systematically murdered on covert orders from the British Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener.
At their trial, both men pleaded justification on this basis. Neither denied killing an unknown number of prisoners.
I believe all the evidence goes to support the argument in George Witton's book Scapegoats Of The Empire that the two Australians were really executed for Handcock murdering the Rev. Daniel Heese, a German-born missionary, at Morant's urging.
IN NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
Half of the Boer gene pool came from German immigrants and German opinion, very hostile to British policy, needed to be appeased.
Apparently the two accused escaped conviction on a charge of killing Heese by providing spurious alibis.
According to Witton, Morant told him shortly before going to his death that Handcock had broken down in pre-trial interrogation and admitted to killing Heese.
The British prosecutors, knowing that they had the actual murderers, used the killing of prisoners of war to nail them.
On July 4, 1901, Handcock killed Private van Buren of his regiment.
It was claimed that this killing was reported to higher authority the same day.
Van Buren was an Afrikaner and no action was taken to pursue the matter.