General Sir John Dartnell and Colonel W.J. Clarke NMP

My Grandfather, Lt-Col. George Stratford Mardall, joined the Natal Mounted Police as a Trooper, aged 19, in 1879. He served under General Dartnell until Dartnell's retirement in 1903 and then was Assistant Commissioner under Chief Commissioner Colonel W.J.Clarke until retirement from the Natal Police in 1911 to become Inspector of Prisons.  He left a number of articles and a memoir and two photo albums, with which my sister and I are compiling a book on his life for limited family and academic circulation. I wonder if anyone could help me please with any information on General Dartnell, especially from the early days of the NMP (I have the book on the NMP by H.P.Holt), or any information on Colonel Clarke, especially a photo I could use in the book.  Thank you.

Hi Elisabeth .
Welcome to the forum , I'm sure Brett along with Barry ( who is related to Clarke ) maybe able to help somehow . I'm looking forward to your book and wish you all the best with the project , I'd be happy to buy one , as may a few others on here if you decide to go that way .
Cheers 90th.  

Hi Elisabeth,
Welcome to the forum and nice to hear from you. Like 90th I would like to procure a copy of your work too, when complete.
I have many pictures of Col Clarke in the family archives and his hitherto unpublished war diaries. Although not for long, as I have "one in the works" too.
I also have copies of all the "Nonquai" NMP/NP  police magazines which feature Col Mardall. In various publications I have a small  number of pictures of Gen Dartnell.
I am presently in he UK but will pm you once back home in SA.
 
Kindest regards
 
Barry Clarke

Elizabeth. Click on link below photo of Clarke.

https://www.1879zuluwar.com/t1587-clarke-major-william-james?highlight=Clarke

Your Grandfather is bound to be in this book. One of the best books onthe NMP.

http://archive.org/stream/mountedpoliceofn00holtrich#page/n7/mode/2up 

Read on line it's free!!!

Hi Elizabeth. Welcome to the forum, you have certainly come to the right place. Hopefully lots of information will be posted on your Grandfather. And you may already have that information, but bare with us, something new may come to light.

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Natalie Jura Stratford Mardall was born in 1907.1 She was the daughter of Colonel George Stratford Mardall.1 She married Robert Campbell Lloyd Fitzwilliams, son of Duncan Campbell Lloyd Fitzwilliams, in 1949 at Cape Town, Cape Province, South Africa.1 She died in 1965.


She was an artist serving with the Admiralty during the Second World War.1 From 1949, her married name became Fitzwilliams..






Source: The peerage 

24th
Elisabeth states in her opening post that she has the Holt Book on the Natal Mtd Police .
90th

Elizabeth

Good news, indeed! I will look forward to seeing the publication on your grandfather. I have frequently consulted and quoted from his paper in 'The Nongqai' that dealt with the role of the Estcourt District Police during the Boer War. This period in the Boer War has been central to my interest, so I have had much for which to be thankful to your grandfather.

Regards
Brett

Thank you all very much for your warm welcome.  Barry, I live in London, UK, and have tried to pm you in the hope we could talk while you are here, but I am apparently too new a member to do this yet.  If you could pm me with your e-mail address or phone no. perhaps I can catch you before you leave?

You have all been so welcoming and interested that I thought I would expand a little on the book my sister, Caroline Gray, and I are compiling on our Grandfather, Lt.Col. G.S. Mardall.  We are putting together the articles he published, and his memoir "Looking Back" (which is in the Killie Campbell Collection, University of KwaZulu-Natal), so much of the material may already be familiar to you.  On the other hand we are including as many images as we can from his two photo albums of Natal in the early 1900s.  (Many of the people can't be identified, but some images speak for themselves). We also have some exciting documents, which I believe are of historic value (such as a note written by General Dartnell in November 1899 and smuggled out of Ladysmith) and a short series of letters written by our Grandfather to his sister in England during that period, and we are including facsimiles of these, which may be of interest to you, Brett.  We have also transcribed letters written to our Grandfather by General Dartnell in retirement from 1903-1911, which show how difficult it was to return to England after life as a colonial warrior. We are not compiling this book for commercial purposes, but for Mardall family circulation, and others such as yourselves perhaps, and for a few academic institutions that may be interested, such as the Talana Museum etc.  The book will start with Lt. Col. Mardall's great-Grandfather, Daniel Mardall (1756-1838) who was Steward to the 1st Marquess of Salisbury on the Hatfield Estates outside London, and end with the current generation of his great-grandchildren spread around the world today.  One aim is to give a kind of history of an Anglo-Scottish family from the 1700s to the 2000s, through contemporary photos and documents.  The bulk of the book though will be about Lt. Col. Mardall and his family, however, because he documented his life so well, and his subsequent family have looked after his papers.  The photo of Natalie Mardall, posted by Littlehand, is our aunt and my godmother, Lt. Col. Mardall's daughter.  I am sure she was christened Natalie after Natal, a land he loved and the place where his wife, Helen Jura Campbell McEwan was born.  I hope this is of some interest!

Hi Elisabeth,
See my pm for contact particulars

regards

barry

Hi Elisabeth .
Thanks for the summary , should be an interesting and enjoyable book . I'm certainly willing to buy one .
Cheers 90th.

Elisabeth

Thank you for giving the background to the book. I developed a particular interest in the then Inspector Mardall because I lived in Estcourt for many of my formative years and I know the countryside where the Natal Police patrols under his command operated. I have the medals of one of these Estcourt District policemen who is mentioned by your grandfather in his paper in 'The Nongqai'. This same man was later punished for a lapse in discipline by a stern Chief Commissioner Mardall.

Good luck with producing the book.

Regards
Brett

Thank you very much for your interest in the book, 90th, and Brett - I have passed your comments about Inspector Mardall to my sister and cousin, son of Natalie Mardall, (whose self-portrait was posted by Littlehand) and they are at a loss for words, as I am!  What is the name of the policeman whose medals you own, and what was his punishment for which misdeed, I wonder?  Could he be in one of the group photos we have?  It is amazing to think that you grew up in the area around Estcourt and are familiar with the country that my Grandfather used to patrol.  He speaks of those days with great affection in his memoirs, and is very proud that his local nickname was "Mapindela", which he translates as "one who returns to us".

Elisabeth

I will pm you my e-mail address. The account of the errant policeman relates to a later time, so is not appropriate for this forum.

Regards
Brett

Elisabeth,
Being related to John Dartnell, I am most interested to see anything you have written about him, if that would be permitted.
Kind regards,
Keith Dawson.