Lady Trader - A Biography of Mrs Sarah Heckford

Lady Trader - A Biography of Mrs Sarah Heckford

by Vivien Allen, ISBN:9781869193577, R225.00

Quoted from http://www.vivien-allen.co.uk/lady_trader.htm:


'It is not an extravagance to call Mrs Heckford one of the most extraordinary women to whom the British nation has given birth.' Obituary, The Times, London, April 21, 1903.
In her own words, she 'leaped the barriers of young-ladydom, though they were high and armed with sharp spikes.'

Why I wrote Lady Trader

I first encountered Sarah Heckford while living in Melrose House. I found her book A Lady Trader in the Transvaal in my great grandfather George Heys' library and read it with interest. Who was this extraordinary woman? She became one of the subjects of my second Pretoria News series, 'They Came To Pretoria'.
Later I was sent on newspaper assignment to a farm, Nooitgedacht, west of Pretoria which had been the scene of an important battle in the Second Anglo-Boer War. The same family still lived there and the grandmother showed me round. I was surprised to see a picture of Sarah Heckford hanging in their sitting room and asked how they came to have it. She replied, "Because she was my governess."
This happy coincidence led to the writing of my second book and this picture is reproduced in Lady Trader, opposite page 183.