THE BREAKING OF HARRY MORANT
If you encounter any Boers, You really must not loot’em, And if you wish to leave these shores, For pity’s sake, don’t shoot’em
—‘Butchered to Make a Dutchman’s Holiday,’ by Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant
As the sun rose over South Africa’s Pretoria Gaol on the morning of Feb. 27, 1902, two British army officers walked hand in hand across the yard toward a pair of straight-backed chairs. The pair had been convicted of committing acts counter to “the rules of civilized warfare”—to wit, murder. Specifically, they had shot or ordered the shooting of unarmed Boer prisoners, some of whom had surrendered under a white flag. Court-martialed for the killings, the officers—Lieutenants Peter Joseph Handcock and Harry Harbord “Breaker” Morant—had been sentenced to death by firing squad.
In fact, the “last words” story is almost certainly apocryphal, part of the mythos surrounding one of Australia’s most controversial figures. From Morant’s birth to the day he was shot, his life story was embroidered with halftruths, legends and outright lies. Even his name was a fiction of his own inventing.
The man who would become known as Harry Morant was born Edwin Henry Murrant on Dec. 9, 1864, the son of a union workhouse manager and matron in Bridgwater, Somerset, England. The young man of humble origins later appropriated the Morant variant of his surname from a prominent British admiral, with whom he falsely claimed kinship as an illegitimate son.
In 1883 Harry Morant migrated to Australia, where he spent the better part of the next two decades working his way across outback Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia in a bid to further reinvent himself. He was widely known for his skill at taming wild horses, a talent that earned him the nickname “The Breaker.” It was under that sobriquet The Bulletin, a respected Sydney journal, published his widely read verses.
As some of his verses allude, the handsome, roguish Morant had a taste for high living and seldom let a lack of funds discourage him. He repeatedly defaulted on debts, on at least one occasion professing to be awaiting a check from fictional wealthy relatives. By the eve of his 35th birthday in 1899 his carefree, hard-drinking lifestyle had taken a toll. His debts were mounting, his credit was in tatters, and—charmer though he was—he had worn out his welcome in his usual haunts. The timing, however, was propitious. The Second Boer War had just begun.
Seeking to maintain control of the African corner of its far-flung empire, Britain was waging
