The Van Zyl Photograph
The Van Zyl Photograph is an article mentioning a reply from Arthur Conan Doyle published in The Daily Chronicle on 31 january 1902.
Elizabeth Cecilia van Zyl (22 april 1894 - 9 may 1901) was a South African child inmate of the British-operated Bloemfontein Concentration Camp who died from typhoid fever during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The photograph of her emaciated body had become famous.
The Van Zyl Photograph
Dr. Conan Doyle makes the following reply to Miss Hobhouse's statement that "it would be well to leave the question of the infant mortality, and incidentally of the concentration camps, entirely alone." "It is"
(he writes) "surely unnecessary to remind her that these questions and her report upon them have been turned into formidable political weapons by those who, on the chance of injuring the Government, have really been attacking the national honour which is our common heritage. How is it possible, then, for me to avoid discussing them in a general defence of the national position? Had I avoided them it would have been said that I had no answer to them. As a matter of fact I was able, I hope, to show that, deplorable as the camps and the mortality were they were better than the only alternative, which was to leave the families upon the veldt."
