SECRET HISTORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 May 1929, Page 2

SECRET HISTORY

JAMESON RAID FINANCE. The British Museum has received a commercial cash book which holds in its undistinguished pages secrets of a very dramatic incident in Empire history. The cash books records the financial transactions of the famous Jameson Raid in South Africa in December, 1895, and- it has been given to the Museum by Mr James Hall, of Madison Avenue, New York, a partner in the American firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co.

It was left with Mr Hall by the clerk who was cashier to the Insurgents’ “Reform Committee” in Johannesburg. The Jameson Raid was an attempt organised by Dr Leander Starr Jameson with the connivance of Mr Cecil Rhodes, then Prime Minister of Cape Colony, to restore British rule in the Transvaal, which was then an independent Boer State.' The British in Johannesburg, the Transvaal capital, were to rise when Jameson crossed the Bechuanaland border with an armed force. The Johannesburg plans miscarried, but Jameson insisted on invading the ■ Transvaal. On January 2, 1896, his 1 troop was surrounded and starved into ‘ surrender. 1

A Parliamentary inquiry followed the handing ovei* of the prisoners to the British authorities. At this inquiry the cash book was called for, but it could not be found. Cecil Rhodes was severely censured and resigned his Premiership. Jameson, who had already . b’een imprisoned for invading a friendly State, was released because of ill-health. He lived to become Prime Minister of South Africa and to receive a baronetcy. The cash book, which was lost to official eyes for 33 years, is a quarto : size book of the usual commercial tvpe,

containing 149 folio pages. Twentyseven of these pages record the transactions of the Reform Committee. Approximately £50,000 was subscribed by different Johannesburg companies ann individuals between December 31, 1895, and January 3, 1896, and the disbursements, which consisted principally of “Relief” and “Commissariat,” amounted to £47,565 2s 9d. Among the latter was “£1343 10s to A. Trimble —Detective Agency.” From the document addressed to the British Museum by the donor it appears that • the name of the Reform . Committee cashier was McClelland, who took part in the Jameson raid.

Mr James Hall was once a colleague of his. in a firm of chartered accountants in Glasgow. McClelland disappeared, and meanwhile the cashbook had been lent to a Mr James Tennant, of Marchmont Road, Ayr, in whose possession if has remained for nearly 30 years. It was on the a'dvice of Professor Norman Kemp Smith, of the Chair of Logic, Edinburgh University, that Mr Hall decided to present the book to the British Museum.

An official of the Manuscript Department at the British Museum said “We have no reason, to doubt the authenticity of the Book, although we were somewhat surprised when we first inspected' it, to find that most of the horses and stores were bought whilethe Baid was actually in progress.”