Description:In 1879 a Committee was established at Stafford House to provide aid for English soldiers fighting in the Zulu War. The Sutherland Papers include many documents relating to the Committee's work. In addition to the printed ‘Report of the Stafford House South African Aid Committee in the Zulu War 1879’, a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings provides a detailed insight into public opinion surrounding the scheme.
The ‘Report’ featured above states that in June 1879 a meeting was chaired by George Granville William Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1828-1892), the third Duke of Sutherland, with the aim of establishing a Committee ‘to furnish trained nurses and hospital comforts and to supplement arrangements for promoting the convalescence of the sick and wounded in South Africa’. Similarly to the scheme established to assist soldiers in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, the Committee's charitable work would ‘command the sympathy and support of the public’.
To learn more about the Stafford House South African Aid Committee's work, click on the images on the left.