[Contents of a document attached to some mail.]

The following is taken from Cornish Pioneers in South Africa by the late Richard Dawe. Published by Cornish Hillside Publications and distributed by Tor Mark Press. ISBN 1-900147-10-6

William Hosken, 1851 (Loggans, Hayle) -1925 (Muizenburg. SA)

Together with his brother and William Hosken of Hayle he walked the 170 miles from Pilgrim’s Rest to Lourenco Marques in order to catch a boat to Durban.

Twenty-three year old William Hosken, who was to become perhaps the most influential of all Cornishmen in the Transvaal, recalled many years later how he made had made the tour of the Transvaal, inspecting mining resources. He came to the conclusion that the Transvaal was to become one of the greatest mining resources in the world. p 78

The actual Cornish Association was formed within a couple of months with William Hosken being its first President… p 111

[Harveys of Hayle] …the Hosken brothers (William, Samuel and James, were all from Hayle and brothers to Richard Hosken) who were trading as the Cornish Trading Company. Unfortunately the Hoskens ran heavily into debt with their suppliers in 1890 which resulted in a law suit with Harveys and they lost the agency. p 125

The only other Cornishman who perhaps could have given a real insight into the Jameson Raid from the Reform Committee’s point of view was William Hosken…One of the terms of Hosken’s release, as it had been for all the others, was that he was no longer to interfere with the politics of the Transvaal.

William Hosken built up a successful mining and commercial firm known as William Hosken & Co. Hosken was assisted by his brothers Samuel and James and later Richard, who came to South Africa in 1897. William Hosken was very much a commercial Pioneer. He became a director of a number of gold mines including the City & Suburban. By 1896 Hosken was back in Johannesburg becoming the founder of the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce of which he became President, a post to which he was elected six years running. William Hosken became a spokesman for the Cornish in South Africa and it is not surprising that in his role as President of the newly formed Cornish association on the Rand his views were listened to with respect and given prominence in the newspapers. p 128

William Hosken was an ideal link between mine management – he was managing director of several leading Natal mining companies and a founder member of the executive committee of the Camber of Mines – and the ordinary miners, of whom many were Cornish. The second Cornishman was C.A.C. Tremeer, an ex-Major in the Cape Frontier Police and considered as the ablest of the volunteer officers….Hosken and Tremeer, along with all the members of the Reform Committee, were arrested and thrown into jail. Hosken, who claimed the Reform Committee had not been ready despite having amassed 2,200 rifles, 3 Maxim guns and spending £400,000 in laying up provisions against a possible siege, called Jameson an erratic individual. pp 136 & 137

The political explosion caused by the Jameson Raid in January 1906 was followed in February by an ‘almighty’ dynamite explosion in the Johannesburg suburb of Vriedendorp. The blast, which made a hole 40 fathoms [240ft] long, six feet wide and nine deep, ‘created a Gwennap Pit in an instant’. This Cornish idiom was quite apt. for indirectly the explosion was linked to a Cornishman. It was believed the dynamite which had been left exposed to the sun for some days in trucks at a railway siding, exploded due to a combination of heat and the impact made when the engine began to shunt the trucks….The dynamite should have been safely stored in a warehouse belonging to William Hosken.

pp 144 & 145

The was no mistaking the reason for the Uitlander demonstration organised by William Hosken and to avoid arrest Hosken had to escape to Natal, his leaving the Transvaal being seen as a bad omen for peace. p 147

Instrumental in the reconstruction of post-war South Africa were a number of Cornishmen, including the two Hosken brothers. Richard Hosken, who had been an advisor to Lord Roberts, Lord Milner, and to the military police, had been one of the first civilians to enter Johannesburg after its capture by the British. He later earned distinction for his work among the refugees in Natal…Re-elected as President of Johannesburg’s Chamber of Commerce, William Hosken was to become very much its leading Cornishman. In April 1903, Hosken was selected as one of the Johannesburg members of the Transvaal Legislative Council. p 183

There was some doubt as to whether Hosken would support the move for Chinese labour or not, and the Guardian asked:

Which way is Mr W. Hosken M.L.C. going to vote?

The oracle of Nonconformity – is he going to vote for the yellow slave system, for the horrors of the compound and the iniquities that the Chinese hordes would bring? If so the Nonconformist conscience must be particularly elastic as exemplified in Mr W. Hosken M.L.C.

On this occasion Hosken went along with the economic argument, an argument the pro-Chinese lobby won. The anti-Chinese group secured the high moral ground; it was a stance Hosken himself was to take later, over another issue involving humanitarian rights. p 205

It is perhaps ironic that the two most influential Cornishmen in South Africa, Oats at Kimberley and William Hosken at Johannesburg, became involved in an amalgamation struggle…During the diamond slump Hosken’s company made a bid to take over the Somerset West Factory but Oats turned down the offer…Neither man was involved in the amalgamation of the explosives companies following the Great War, for Oats had died and Hosken had resigned as a Director of his company in 1914 due to illness. pp 268 & 269

[Emily Hobhouse] If Emily Hobhouse is to be best remembered for her humanitarian stance and having the courage of her convictions – totally objecting to any segregation of people by race, colour or class – then her Cornish male equivalent is without a doubt William Hosken.

Hosken deserves above all to be remembered for his fight on behalf of the rights of Indians in the Transvaal. He was one of the very few politicians after the Boer War actually to be in favour of granting municipal franchise to coloured persons. It was Hosken who led a deputation to Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner, who had replaced Lord Milner in 1905, making it clear to him that the treatment of the coloured races in the Transvaal since British occupation was worse than before. Hosken was the first signatory to petition on their behalf and ‘although it was a voice in the wilderness it was fearlessly in favour of justice and humanity’ wrote Gandhi. Hosken is praised time and time again by Gandhi for making what was often a lone stand against Indian discrimination, and in his memoirs, Gandhi pays tribute to Hosken’s encouragement.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, having studied in England, went to South Africa to practice law in 1893.

Gandhi said of Hosken: ‘…he had always been free from colour prejudice but his interest in the Indian question deepened after the starting of Satyagraha’

p 298.

In an attempt to get Gandhi and the Indian community to submit to the terms of the Act and to bow to the inevitable, Prime Minister Botha and the Colonial Secretary, Jan Smuts, sent William Hosken as their emissary to address a large meeting of Indians on 31^st July 1907 at Pretoria. Hosken although in total support of the Indian cause still felt they should comply with the law and finished with the words:

To resist it will be to dash your head against the wall. I wish that your community may not be ruined in fruitless opposition or invite needless suffering on their heads.

Gandhi translated the speech and Hosken retired amidst cheers. p 299

Hosken was in no doubt as to his duty. He had become Chairman of the European Sympathisers which mediated between the Satyagrahis and the Government. In March 1908, at a special dinner provided by the Indian community for the European Sympathisers, Hosken said on behalf of the whites:

I feel ashamed now to think that in July (1907) I had advised the Indian community to accept the law. I meant well. I felt it would prove futile to resist the Boer Government. But Mr Gandhi told me that they did not depend upon human help for their movement. They depended on divine aid. They were sure of help from him in whose name they had embarked on the movement. I see his words have come true. The courage shown by the Indian community has won increased sympathy from the whites. The Indian community has taught the whites a great deal… Whites and Coloured persons ought to live together amicably. The Indian community deserves praise for the unity, patience and humility it has shown.

A few days later at another dinner, this time provided by the Chinese community for the European Sympathises, Hosken said:

There is very little I have done. I make no distinction between coloured persons and whites. The Asiatics have taught us a lesson. I think both your courage and your success are worthy of the highest admiration.

Gandhi considered Hosken to be one of the few men in South Africa who had the courage of his convictions, and claimed Hosken

was known all over South Africa to be the friend of the non white races at a time when practically every public man with the exception of Mr Hosken seems to be opposed to the Indians.

On another occasion Gandhi wrote to Hosken that the Indian community was:

deeply grateful for the kindly interest you, as a lover of the Empire and a Christian gentleman take in the present bitter struggle that Asiatics are engaged in.

By 1910 Hosken’s sympathies had become more concrete and he wrote to Smuts supporting Gandhi and the Indian community in their struggle. His letter angered Smuts who wrote in reply:

I very much regret your attitude – I can only express in reply my regret at your action which I feel is ill considered and mischievous. It is not you who will suffer in the end but the Indian community against whom the white population is becoming daily more exasperated and demanding even more stringent legislation. p 300

The support Hosken gave to Gandhi and the Asiatic community probably cost him his seat in the 1910 election. The Transvaal Leader and the Pretoria News were highly indignant at the non-election of this Cornish worthy while the Leader said:

the objection against Mr Hosken on the ground of his so-called negrophilism is one which we could more patiently hear if it came from men who had earned the right to voice it by public labours one-fifteenth as valuable as his; the News wrote it is difficult to write with patience at the rejection of Mr Hosken as a Senator.

Hosken and his wife returned home to Cornwall, where such was his popularity that about 1,000 men attended the Tuckingmill Men’s Brotherhood monthly meeting one Sunday afternoon to hear Hosken give a speech entitled Cornishmen in the Transvaal.

On returning to the Transvaal, Hosken continued to speak out on behalf of Indians and in June 1911 the Indian Opinion contained a portrait of Hosken saying:-

We should like our readers to have the portrait glazed and to hang it up in their rooms – we earnestly hope that every Indian will have in his living room only the portraits of those who have us in their debt or those memory we wish to cherish.

William Hosken died on 7^th June 1925. He had been, without a doubt, the most influential Cornishman in South Africa and it was believed by one newspaper that he might have been Prime Minister, except that.

his candour; his regard for native races, his religious fervour and the tenacity with which he held a belief in Free Trade probably robbed him of the leadership of the British electorate in the Transvaal.

He died at Muizenburg and was buried in Johannesburg. At the funeral, as his coffin was carried out of the Wesleyan Central Hall:

An Indian Military Officer in full uniform passed through to the front rank of the great crowd that was present. As the coffin passed he drew his sabre and gave an impressive sweeping salute of the swordsmen. He sheathed his weapon and again as the last bearer passed him the glittering steel flashed once more – the final salute.

pp 301 & 3012, the last pages of the book.