Francis PW - South African Documents
The following documents represent the period 1899 to 1903 leading up to and following on from the time in 1900 when Francis (Frank) Powell Williams went to South Africa during the Second Boer War. He was a volunteer and one of the first batch of electrical engineers to the attached to the Army Royal Engineers.
The electrical engineers' duties in South Africa were initially to helping to set up and maintain the telephone communications system that was set up during the war. They were also responsible for installing and maintaining the arc lighting system that was used to illuminate the army hospital operating theatres. To generate electricity they had taken with them a number of steam traction engines. These also doubled up as transport and Francis spent some time in charge of a traction engine that hauled supplies to the front and brought prisoners back, all at the speed of 4 miles per hour.
The documents start with a cutting detailing a work based accident that occurred to Frank while he was working for the Ark Works in Chelmsford. This was, presumably, before he worked for Crompton’s Electrical Works in Chelmsford (see document 8). It was Colonel Crompton who became Honorary Colonel to the Corps of Electrical Engineers with which Frank went to South Africa.
Documents continue with odd bits and pieces to do with his joining up and medical for the Royal Engineers (documents 2 to 8), followed by a newspaper cutting detailing his departure with the RE to South Africa with document 9 detailing a send-off dinner.
The next section involves a variety of documents including a series of letter from family members. More detail of this is shown in his Military Diary which reveals the length of time taken to get to South Africa (about 3 weeks) and that shortly after he arrived he went down with enteric (typhoid) fever. There is quite a lot of detail in the diary of the impact that this, often fatal, disease had on soldiers serving in the Boer War, something not revealed in the letters.
In the central section from document 24 onwards there are a series of move orders and telegrams which document Frank’s work in South Africa. Either side are a variety of family news documents and souvenirs from his journey to and from South Africa including a number of social events around the sending of the corps to the war. For more details of this see his Military Diary .
Frank is then shown on the passenger list of the ship Norham Castle returning from South Africa on the 19th November 1900 (document 48). What follows are documents concerning two dinners for the returning Royal Engineers (documents 55 and 56). This is followed by a gap of almost a year before document 57 which is a letter from the Electrical Engineers Volunteers inviting Frank back to South Africa.
Frank’s return to the service with the Royal Engineers was not greeted with much enthusiasm by his father who had hoped he would get a more stable career outside the army (see document 37 and other family letters). Despite this, however, Frank registering for a second tour of duty in South Africa with the Electrical engineers in 1901 as a Second Lieutenant (see document 60). There are no documents from this second tour of duty but the final document is a Standing Pass from India in October 1903 giving Capt. F Powell Williams a permit to visit ‘all forts’. Francis did go back and the final document shows him, as a Captain in the Royal Engineers, in India in 1903. He was to stay in India where my father, John Francis Powell Williams, was born in 1917 in the military hospital Dum Dum, just outside Calcutta. Francis became Secretary to the Indian Electrical Society in the 1920's, retiring through ill-health in 1929, when he returned to England.
The other people in the documents are - Family Members: father (Joseph); mother (Anne), Dodo (Dorothy, sister); Tommy (sister); Rowly (Rowland brother); Juliette (French friend of family) - Military: Colonel Crompton (Commanding officer of RE Electrical Engineers); Captain Leaf (a friend in the RE)
See also the full transcription of Francis' military diary in a separate document The Military Diary of Francis PW which fills in a lot of the details around these other documents.