When the English troops marched into the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, most of the farmers who composed the bulk of the population of the two Republics having taken to arms, there was no one left in the homes they had abandoned save women, children and old men no longer able to fight.

These fled hurriedly as soon as English detachments and patrols were in sight, but most of the time they did not know where they could fly to, and generally assembled in camps somewhere on the veldt, where they hoped that the British troops would not discover them.
There, however, they soon found their position intolerable owing to the want of food and to the lack of hygienic precautions.
The British authorities became aware of this state of things and could not but try to remedy it.

Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.

To come to the help of several thousands of people in a country where absolutely no resources were to be found was a quite stupendous task, of a nature which might well have caused the gravest anxieties to the men responsible for the solution.

It was then that the decision was reached to organise upon a reasonable scale camps after the style of those which already had been inaugurated by the Boers themselves.
The idea, which was not a bad one, was carried out in an unfortunate manner, which gave to the world at large the idea that the burgher families who were confined in these camps were simply put into a prison which they had done nothing to deserve.