THE JAMESON RAID

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 658, 9 May 1929, Page 2

THE JAMESON RAID

SECRET HISTORY IN CASH BOOK The British Museum has received a commercial cash book which holds in its undistinguished pages secreis of a very dramatic incident in Empire history. The cash book 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, ot Madison Avenue, New York, a partner iu 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, hot Jameson insisted on invading the Transvaal. On January 2, 1896, his troop was surrounded and starved into surrender.

A parliamentary inquiry followed the handing over 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 been imprisoned for invadinf a friendly State, was releaser because of ill-liealth. 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 type containing 1-19 folio pages. Twenty seven of these pages record the transactions of the Reform Committee. Approximately £50,000 was subscribed by different Johannesburg companies and individuals between December 31, 1595, and January 31896, and the disbursements, whtcr consisted principally of "Relief' an “Commissariat,” amounted to £b.aw 2s 9d - Among the latter was “£le>« to A. Trimble—Detective Agency. From the document addressed the British Museum by the dono , r '_ appears that the name of the Reform Committee cashier was McClellan* who took part in the Jameson Raia^ Mr. James Hall was once a colleague of his in a firm of chartered oof o ® ants in Glasgow. McClelland <*c appeared, and meanwhile the c book had been lent to a Mr. Ja®Tennant, of Marchmont Road. Ayr. in whose possession it has reman* for nearly 30 years. , It was on the advice of Profes ■ Norman Kemp Smith, of tbe Cbal Logic, Kdinburgh University, Hall decided to present the boo* the British Museum. n . An official of the Manuscript Pepa.ment at the British Museum sal • . p We have no reason to doubt authenticity of the book, aithoug were somewhat surprised w ° en first inspected it to find that. n ’" i ’ jthe horses and stores were - while the raid was actually progress. -