Breaker Morant's last day

1902 Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant (b. 1864) was executed by firing squad in South Africa.

On this day in 1902 one of the most famous moments in Australia's history took place on a field not in Australia, but thousands of kilometres away in South Africa.

Harry Morant, nicknamed ‘The Breaker’, poet and rebel, had been born 37 years earlier in Devonshire, and arrived in Queensland in 1884 after a period of service in the Royal Navy. Following a period as a poet published in the important Australian journal, The Bulletin, The Breaker signed up to fight with the colonial troops in the Boer War in South Africa, after having walked to Adelaide, South Australia to enlist.

The war bored this man of action, and instead of capturing prisoners and bringing them back to camp, he shot 12 and stood trial accused of killing intending prisoners of war. Found guilty, his death warrant was personally signed by the British commander in South Africa, Lord Kitchener. He was executed by firing squad (sources differ as to date) with a comrade-at-arms Lt Peter Handcock.

In 1980, Australian director Bruce Beresford made the movie Breaker Morant.

Footnote: On March 13, 1884 Morant had married Daisy May O'Dwyer, who later became famous in Australia as the controversial anthropologist Daisy Bates ('Kabbarli'), who lived among tribal Indigenous people for many years.

Tagged: australia, history, australian+history