Boer War

Flooding in Quorn, 1932. Photo courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Miss Grain: And I can remember the end of the Boer War. There was a man, his name was Joe Burton, they lived in a little house not far from us, and he come home from the war and he stood outside this shop and he said, ‘Now then you children, get together ‘til I come out’, and he threw his khaki hat up in the air, he says one of you hold my hat, and he went in this shop and bought a lot of oranges, and throwed them all, great fun! And then I remember my mother taking me down to the village green – it’s a car park now – but we had a, to me it were like a big haystack, and they burnt Kruger on it, and I thought it were real, it were an effigy of him, and I cried, I were ever so frightened.

©EMOHA