Boer Skills At Work in British POW Camps

The varied talent concentrated in the prisoner-of-war camp is most illuminatingly revealed in the report of the Census of the Island, which happily came to be taken very soon after their arrival. No fewer than 152 different previous occupations were recorded.

The list begins with an accountant and ends with a Wine Merchant. Farmers were of course in preponderance, (3679), and there were by no means a few carpenters, black-smiths, masons and fitters. There was a professor of Mathematics, 32 Engineers, 1 Attorney, 2 Advocates or barristers, several doctors and more interesting to reflect on, a conjurer, 2 pugilists and an undertaker.

As has ever been the custom of war-prisoners all the world over, a large number spent their time manufacturing curios to while away the dragging hours. Not having tools they devised planes out of table-knives, saws out of barrel-hoops, and with the aid of these and other improvised implements turned out souvenirs an multitudinous articles of utility, most of them from waste material.

Visitors recall that one of the most interesting features viewed in the camp was these groups at work. While in one corner of a temporary workshop three of four were assisting at a make-shift turning lathe of a very primitive fashion, in another there were busy sawyers of nadun or tamarind, or carvers at work on ebony and other hard Ceylon woods bought from Don Carolis. Although as stock-keepers and shepherds most of these craftsman had never handled the tools they were putting to use, the skill shown in cabinet making and carving was surprising.

Source: Boere Krygsgevangenes in Ceylon