Makers and Shapers Profile

Bertram Mitford

Person

1855 - 1914

[Source - Benathi Marufu for FHYA, 2022 using Bertram Mitford FRGS facebook page: He was born in Bath, England in 1855, Bertram attended Hurstpierpoint College from 1870 to 1874. He visited South Africa for the first time at the age of nineteen to engage in stock farming. Four years later in 1878, he joined the Cape Civil Service as a clerk at Fort Beaufort, a border outpost until 1880. He was the first person to visit the battlefields of Zululand, to gather the opinions of the survivors and to meet as many participants as possible of the Anglo-Zulu war at Isandlwana, where the British experienced their worst defeat during the Victorian era in 1879. Just one year later in 1880, starting from Rorke's Drift, he visited Isandlwana and the scene of the Prince Imperial of France's death in the Ityotyozi Valley. In his book, Bertram gives a detailed account of the site, a report of the Prince Imperial's death and people involved. Bertram was fluent with many African dialects and spoke several African languages. Through the Zulu Country: Its Battlefields and its People (1883), was the result. He was proprietor of the East London Advertiser (1886-1888) and over the following twenty five years, he wrote over forty popular novels and short stories, set in South Africa. He married Zima Helen Ebden in 1886 and they produced a daughter, Yseulte Helen in 1887 and a son, Roland Bertram in 1891 (who died at Sunnybank Hospital, Cannes, France in 1932). There were no children. From 1881 to 1913 he wrote 44 books. He was proposed by Arthur Montefiore and elected Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society on 28 April 1890.]