September 2012 - Living Villages

LOCAL HISTORY
By David Stuart-Mogg
In British history the town of
Ladysmith is largely
remembered for its rôle in the
Second Boer War when Imperial
troops were besieged there
between October 1899 and
February 1900. Over ensuing
years the famous London
headline ‘Ladysmith Relieved’
was the predictable source of
much smutty music hall ribaldry.
Few people today possibly
realise that Ladysmith was
named after the Spanish wife of
a local Whittlesey man, by then
Lieutenant General Sir Harry
Smith, Governor of Cape Colony and
High Commissioner.
Henry George Wakelyn Smith was born
in Whittlesey in 1787, one of the eleven
children of a local surgeon. In 1804,
aged 16, and Britain being at war with
France, Harry Smith (always Harry,
never Henry) volunteered for the
Whittlesey troop of Yeomanry Cavalry
which was charged with patrolling the
neighbourhood of the Norman Cross
Barracks, where some 15,000 French
prisoners-of-war were incarcerated.
In 1805, while acting as an orderly to
Brigadier-General Stewart during a
review at Norman Cross, the General
asked Harry whether he would like to
become an officer. On receiving an
enthusiastic response, the General
decided Harry Smith would make a good
‘green jacket’ and had Harry gazetted
second lieutenant to the 95 th Regiment,
Riflemen. A lieutenancy unexpectedly
became available upon his joining the
18
regiment, so Harry’s
father stumped up
the £100 (about
£4,000 today)
purchase money and
Harry was Gazetted
lieutenant just one
month later.
Shortly after this
juncture Harry’s life
took on a mantle of
adventure and high
drama that at times
challenges belief in
its sheer extent and
breadth. He set sail with his regiment
for South America and was closely
involved in the siege and capture of
Monte Video and later Buenos Aires. In
1808, as Adjutant, he sailed for Spain to
engage with Napoleon in the Peninsula
War and fought at the Battle of Coruña.
Harry Smith served throughout the long
campaign, receiving a bullet in his ankle
and multiple contusions caused by
bullets passing through his clothes.
It was at the storming of Badajos –
Harry records: ‘the atrocities committed
by our troops on the poor innocent and
defenceless inhabitants of that city, no
words suffice to depict’ - that he met his
future wife, one of two high-born
Spanish ladies who fled the city and
sought refuge with the British High
Command. In relating this meeting Harry
Smith observed: ‘I was only twenty-two,
my wife just on the verge of fourteen’.
They were married within a few days: a
love that was to prove enduring as from