The truth about deaths in camps

Madam, – I was struck by the comments from arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg on Question Time last week, justifying concentration camps set up by the British army in South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902).

He further compounded matters by arguing that Glasgow had the same death rate as those interned in these camps.

The camps were originally set up as refugee camps for civilian families forced to abandon their homes due to the war.

However when Lord Kitchener took over the British campaign in 1900 he launched a scorched earth policy which included the burning down of farms and slaughtering of livestock, as well as the poisoning of wells.

Tens of thousands of men, women and children were forced into concentration camps, and while the vast majority of captured men were sent overseas, the camps became largely populated by women and children.

Rations were meagre and two-tiered, with smaller rations for the families of men still fighting.

Disease and starvation killed more than 28,000, or around one in four of those Boers interned, 22,000 of which were children.

Twenty thousand black Africans also died, of the around 80,000 interned.

Mr Rees-Mogg is also well-wide of the mark in comparing this death rate to that of Glasgow at the time.

Camp deaths were a horrifying 24,000 out of 100,000 of the population, more than 10 times that of Glasgow which was 2,124 per 100,000.

Before pontificating with such authority, as Mr Rees-Mogg is often prone to do, he should clearly check his facts. Alex Orr.

2 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh.