The Diary of Iris Vaughan I’m treading very cautiously today, because what I’m going to relate is an incident that many of you possibly know a lot more about than I do. However, corrections, extra information and photographs that relate to this post are always welcome. With the Cape carts wrested back from the military, and everyone well rested at the Bedford Hotel, the last part of the Vaughans journey to Adelaide must have been short and pleasant, as it is even today in the comfort of a motor car. For Iris, it was in aforementioned cart with the “portmantoes”. A portmanteau is a large travelling case made of stiff leather that opens into two hinged compartments (photo 1). Once again I apologise for the ‘k’ word in quoting from Iris’ Diary. “We came to Adelaide in the 2 Cape carts Pop got back from the military. Charles and I and the portmantoes came in the one. The driver told us about the little child called Andy who lived before we were born in the mountains of Adelaide. His father was a parson and one Sunday when the parson was having church and leaving his little child behind, the Kafirs stole the child away and hid him in a cave. And the people thought it was baboons stealing the child. But the Kafir who was cross with the parson killed him and left him in the cave and only many years after did they find the bones of the poor little child and knew what had happened.” Violence against innocent children is not a new phenomenon. This is a story of anger, revenge, kidnapping, murder and finally forgiveness. Iris has remembered it pretty well as it was told to her, and she relates it with sensitivity. She just gets a few details wrong, such as the name of the child. He was Ebenezer Davidson; ‘Ebby’, and not Andy, for short. His father was the Reverend Peter Davidson (picture 3. Sorry the quality is not good; I photographed it though glass, badly!), the minister at the Union Presbyterian Church in Adelaide (picture 4). Ebby was a ‘laatlammetjie’ it seems, for his father was already 52 when he was born. In 1879, the Revd Davidson went out one Sunday to preach at the Glen Thorn Presbyterian Church on the farm by the same name. He took Ebby, just under 4 years old, with him. While everyone was in the church, the little boy was playing outside, maybe in the care of one of the female house servants. When the service was over, Ebby had disappeared and although the countryside for miles around was searched, he was never found. His distraught parents eventually gave him up for dead, believing he might have been dragged away by a wild animal. Peter and Janette Davidson put up a new stone on the grave of the infant daughter they had buried in 1869, which stated that Ebenezer had been “mysteriously taken” (picture 2). At that time they did not yet know that he had been abducted as an act of revenge. Those who took him felt wronged by some incident for which the owner of the farm, Robert Pringle, had been rewarded during one of the Frontier Wars. They plotted to steal one of his children, but took the wrong child by mistake. Eight years later new information led to the arrest of two men and subsequently the remains of young Ebby were found on the summit of Governor’s Kop, a nearby mountain. When these developments were brought to light in 1887, they caused considerable sensation in the media. According to the Queenstown Free Press, there was also an African woman involved, and it might have been she who lured the child away. At their trial in Bedford, the Revd Davidson pleaded that the death sentence not be imposed. A heart-wrenching story, and thus was Iris introduced to Adelaide.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 18:56:41 +0000