The Koffyfontein Boer War Siege Five Pound Note

The Koffyfontein Boer War Siege Five Pound Notes

Pierre H. Nortje (June 2026)

Introduction

Various monetary notes have been issued during the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, either as “good fors” due to a lack of hard currency or as prisoner of war issues. One of the scarcest of these is the £5 note issued under instruction of Major J.W. Robertson, the military commander of the besieged diamond producing town of Koffiefontein in the Orange Free State.

In his book Money in South Africa (1987:92) C. L. Engelbrecht tell us that not much is known about the circumstances in which the notes were issued. Many questions still remain: Historians and numismatists to this day, for instance, disagree on the number that were produced. Engelbrecht notes thirty-five while Brian Hern in his Handbook on South African Banknotes believes fifty to be the correct number. In his book Paper Currency of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902, John Ineson (1999:26) states that a note numbered 91 is known.

Whatever the correct number is, we know today that very few survived. In 2017, Spink of London offered a specimen in their world banknote auction of April 26-27 that was estimated at £6 000-8 000 but sold for double that at £15,200 (R335 125) confirming its ultra-rarity. A note was again put on the auction block in 2023 by Noonans Mayfair that sold for approximately £18 600 (R414 500) if one includes their standard buyer's premium of 24%. They described it as “… arguably the most difficult and certainly desirable Boer War note to find with only four other examples in private hands.”

Koffiefontein (spelled Koffyfontein on the notes)

During the late 1800s, Koffiefontein was a sojourn spot (out-span) for transport riders traveling from the Cape to the diamond and gold fields of the north. The name “Koffiefontein” is a reference to the coffee that was brewed by them during their stopovers. They used the water of a natural spring (“Fontein” in Afrikaans) to boil the brew. A diamond was discovered by one of the transport riders in the spring of 1870, after which a town quickly developed by the influx of many prospectors in search of high-quality diamonds for which the area became known.

Boer War

Because of the proximity of the town to Kimberley, the diamond capital of South Africa, Koffiefontein soon became involved in the Second Anglo-Boer War with defensive fortresses, called blockhouses, being erected by the British in 1900 to protect the small diamond-rich town against Boer commandos from the Transvaal.

Due to the advancing threat, the British authorities decided to appoint Cape-born James Wege Robertson (1873-1950), an officer in the Kimberley Light Horse (a voluntary force), as Assistant Resident Magistrate at Koffiefontein. Robertson armed the resident miners as a defensive unit and commanded the town garrison from 1900 to 1901.

On the 12th of October, a Boer Commando under Commandant Visser demanded the surrender of the town, but Robertson declined. Four days later, the miners withdrew from the town and barricaded themselves in a nearby mine. On the 21st of October, General Barry Hertzog, who would later become the Prime Minister of South Africa, turned up with a large Boer force, but was unable to capture Koffiefontein. A number of skirmishes took place in the ensuing days as the fight ebbed and flowed with no one getting the upper hand.

In the first week of November 1900, two companies of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, under Captain Crichton-Browne and Lieutenant Neilson, assisted Sir Charles Parsons’ Squadron of Imperial Yeomanry in relieving Koffyfontein

The Siege Notes

According to Brian Hern, two stories are told about the issue of the notes. The first is that the notes were issued as emergency money because the Boers had laid siege to the town. The second story is that the soldiers’ pay had not reached the town and the notes were issued as a temporary stopgap. The latter explanation is questionable, as firstly, there were no soldiers in the town – only Robertson was a military man. Secondly, if the miners were entitled to pay for defending the town, the daily salary in those days for a private was only 1 shilling and 3 pence. A Five Pound note was a lot of money and hardly a practical denomination with which to pay soldiers. When Mafeking, in the Northern Cape was besieged by the Boers, emergency notes were also printed, but these were in lower denominations of 1/-, 2/-, 3/- 10/- and £1. (Incidentally, while the Mafeking siege lasted over 7 months, Koffiefontein was relieved within a month).

It seems that there is also some confusion regarding the issue of who was responsible for the design and manufacture of the notes. Hern names three names, firstly Lieut. Jack Fradgley, an engineer at the time, a Captain Haldane and the mine manager, Jimmy West. In the Sink sale of 2017, it is mentioned that the notes were designed by the local mine manager, Jimmy West, and printed by the mine’s chief mechanical engineer, Jack Fradgley. Confusingly, Wikipedia notes that James (Jimmy) West was succeeded by Walter Stanley Whitworth in 1896 (3 years before the siege) as the manager of the mine.

According to Hern, the notes were printed on a blueprint machine and when redeemed were then cancelled and returned to the vendors as mementoes. The cancellation is written into the small diamond shaped lozenge on the obverse of the note while the details of the redeeming of the note are shown on the reverse. We could source only one picture of the reverse of a note, being the one graded by PMG as a VF25. On the back, the following is written in black ink and signed by Major Robertson.

The name of the recipient of the note is Pte. J Maltman. It would seem that the miners were given military ranks after the siege started, because, as we had stated, a few sources (e.g. pelteret.co.za) says that Robertson was the only military person in the besieged town.

Dr. David Biggins writes on AngloBoerWar.Com that 9 examples of the Koffyfontein note are known, 5 of which are in private hands. (Spink notes that only 4 are in private hands). We were able to locate pictures of the following notes: -

AngloBoerWar.com states that 30 Queens Medals were issued for those involved in the defence of Koffiefontein, of which 4 were returned unclaimed. However, we were successful in locating a copy of the Queens Boer War medal roll for the “Koffyfontein Defence Force.” Fifty-five names are listed plus 3 nurses who served at the local hospital. The roll is signed by Major Anderson and dated 13 July 1901. It is possible that some of these men may have joined the town guard after the relief ended in November the previous year, so they were not involved during the siege.

(In a confusing post on https://www.angloboerwar.com/forum/5-medals-and-awards/33323-medals-to-the-koffyfontein-defence-force it is stated that there are 116 names on the roll but the AG2 (?) information would suggest 22 were issued).

The roll names 7 officers, being Major Anderson, Surgeon Captain C.W. Hunter (Hern names a Captain Haldane (?) that was involved with the manufacture of the notes) and 5 Lieutenants, including Lieut. Fradgley that we know was also involved. The name of Pte. J Maltman, who received one of the notes pictured above, is also on the roll – his regimental number on his medal is 31. In an article entitled Koffyfontein Siege Five Pound Note by D. Paterson (IBNS Vol. 14 No. 4 (1975) pp. 166-167) the author tells us that note number “3” was paid to Pte. Carter on 21/12/1900. He is also listed on the roll as Pte. W. Carter with 29 as his regimental number.

In an article written by R.F. Kennedy entitled South African Paper Money in Africana Curiosities (1973:92) he names a person by the surname of Querl who was paid on 20 December 1900 with one of the siege notes. Kennedy says that there are three examples of these notes (in 1973) in the Africana museum and two of them are endorsed on the back to whom the money was given.

More Questions

The exact dates regarding the period that the mining town was besieged are a bit sketchy. It would seem that Commandant Visser and his commando were reported to be near the town on 4 October 1900. Visser demanded the surrender of the town on 12 October but was ignored. Hertzog's commando attacked the town on 24 October, but the tiny garrison held out until relief arrived on 3 November 1900. The first note that we are aware of was issued on the 16th of October, the day the miners barricaded themselves at a nearby mine. The printing of the notes must have been done earlier, and we suspect that all the notes were printed in one run.

We will remember that note number 42 was paid out on 16 October, while the other two notes that we are aware of were paid on 20 October (number unknown) and 21 October (number 3) respectively. We thus speculate that the notes were printed, then numbered and then paid out in no particular order regarding their numbers. Because the three notes were paid out on different days (a Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday), we find it difficult to believe that they were soldier’s pay checks.

However, during that period, skilled white miners at the De Beers diamond mines in Kimberley earned between £18 and £22 per month (or roughly £4.50 to £5.50 a week). Could the notes have been used to pay the miners' salaries? At that stage, the large mine was owned by the British Industrialist Alfred Mosely, who started Koffyfontein Mines Ltd. in 1893. So, people like Jimmy West and Jack Fradgley, who were instrumental in the manufacturing of the notes, were in the mine’s employ, and not military men.

Postscript

In 2003, Zoë Henderson wrote an article entitled “A Miner’s Graveyard in Koffiefontein” in CULNA, a publication by the National Museum in Bloemfontein. Between April and July 2002, the Archaeology Department of the National Museum excavated an informal graveyard in the De Beers Mine at Koffiefontein. A total of 36 skeletons were found. These were the remains of what is thought to be black mine workers buried there in early 1896, 3 years before the start of the Anglo-Boer War. None of the bodies had been buried in coffins but had been wrapped in hessian or red cloth blankets.

Coins were found on four of the skeletons. Three of the coins were mine compound tokens while a shilling and florin (2/-) were found on two other skeletons. The most spectacular find for the archaeological team was a leather armband found on the fourth skeleton, which was found to contain 27 shilling coins.

From a numismatic view, the finding of the mine compound tokens is of significant importance: South African numismatists like Brian Hern, Dr. Morgan Carrol and Dr. G.P. Theron have listed various Koffiefontein Mine Tokens in their catalogues ranging from 3d (3 pence) up to 10/- (10 shillings). However, none of them could date these tokens — only venturing a guess that they were struck before 1911. Now we know that they date from at least the year 1896, with the first issues probably struck in 1893 when Koffyfontein Mines Ltd. was founded.

For our purposes, the question must be asked why the locals did not use these tokens as currency during the siege, and the answer is that they probably did, but not to pay the salaries of either the miners or militia. These were store tokens used for purchasing items at the mine store and probably mostly used by the black labourers.

Lastly, a question the author simply cannot answer is the following: - In the case of the Mafeking siege notes, the first issues were printed in January 1900, almost 3 months after the siege started on the 13th of October the previous year. What was the reason that the Koffiefontein siege notes were printed hardly a week after the first Boer Commando arrived in the vicinity? Some historians argue that the actual siege of the town only started when General Herzog’s commando arrived on the 25th of the month. All the notes were then most probably already issued.