e obvious that the concentration camps were hopelessly ill prepared to handle the volume of people the degree of care necessary to maintain the health of those held in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. What made the situation even worse was that the Boer farms were often separated by many miles and this semi-seclusion never allowed them to build up an immunity to such diseases as measles, whooping cough and chicken pox. These conditions soon overwhelmed the abilities of the understaffed and ill equipped medical facilities that were set up to care for their health and the death rates in every camp became alarmingly high. Eventually there were between twenty six and twenty eight thousand deaths in the concentration camps of which approximately eighty percent were children and if one compares this to the total loss of British troops at twenty two thousand and the loss of Boers at an estimated four thousand troops it becomes clear as to who the true casualties of war were. The British military initially attempted to keep the questionable activities a quiet problem of their own concern but vocal opponents of these actions soon got word out of the atrocious conditions in the camps. Emily Hobhouse was initially the most vocal of opponents of the camps. She would go there in person and witness the devastation of the mind and body of the Fleming 10Boers who’s rations were halved simply because there husbands fathers and sons were still fighting against the Empire’s armies. A British journalist, W.T. Stead writes of his encounters in the camps:"Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed and stark and unshamefully as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of people whom we were not able to defea...
