The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-15
A REn1ARKARLE W0MAN-

death," a correspondent writes, comes as a terrible shock to all who knew her: and even those who know tenth of her adventures and achievements will feel that her country is much the poorer for her loss. It is not an extravaganza, indeed, to describe her as one of the most extraordinary women to whom the British nation has given birth. Sarah Golf, who belonged to a good Irish family, was born about sixty seven years ago. In the cholera epide- mic of 1866 she and her sister (who still survives) volunteered to act as nurses in East London: and it was there inthe Mapping Cholera Hospital, that she met Dr. Nathaniel Heckford, who had volunteered from the London Hospital for the same cause. When the epidemic Twas over they married: but instead of the life of comfort which Mrs. Heck ford's wealth would have made easy they devoted themselves of strenuous sacrifice among the poverty stricken population they had already served so we'll. Obtaining possession of an empty warehouse at Ratcliffcross, they furnished it with ten little beds, and put over. the door the inscription East London Hospital for children and Dis lpensary for Women The sign caught the eye of Charles Dickens on one of his eastern rambles, and he has left on record the deep impression made upon him by the couple he met within. There they dwell,'' he wrote with eve ry qualification to lure them away, with youth and accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance insepara- ble from such a neighborhood. They live in the hospital itself, and their rooms are on it's first floor. Sitting at their dinner table they could hear the cry of one of the children in pain That was the origin of what is now one of the most beneficent hospitals in Lon- don. However, before the present building at Shadwell came into exis- tence, Dr. Rockford had died; and his widow, overwhelmed by her loss, left the work in the hands of strong com- mittee, and went away with an adop- ted daughter to Naples. There she lived for several years, devoting her. self not only to the bringing up of the child, but to the task, nowhere more needed, of mitigating the cruelty to an- imals which she saw around her. On the marriage of her adopted daughter to Neapolitan barrister, Mrs. Heck ford went to India, and after travel ing a good deal in unfrequented parts, she settled down for year or two as medical attendant to the Begun of Bhopal.
 Returning to England about the time when the Transvaal was first an- nexed, she made up her mind to go farming in the new colony. The hard ships she underwent, trekking up country in the wet season, sleeping on the ground under a wagon, and with no company but that of young Eng lishmen of the pioneering variety, might have discouraged the sturdiest of her sex. Mrs. Rockford was the oppo- I site of sturdy except in spirit-being, as a matter of fact, very slight and very lame. After some time spent in an English burghers's family, teaching his children and learning his business, she took a farm on her own account, and worked it entirely with native held and the strength of her own hands. Il Her enterprise was ruined by the Boer rising, and she, herself, was one of the unfortunate Britons who were besieged in Pretoria in 1SS0-81 After the war she left her new home, and passed l few years in England. Returning to her South African farn she diversified her agricultural operations with long trading expeditions, a lively account of which she embodied in a book called "A Lady Trader in the Transvaal' AL ways thinking of others more than of herself, she has succeeded in building up home for a family in whom she was interested, when the second war broke out. She was by no means per- soma grata with the Transvaal author Eities for she was an out-sspoken critic 1 of their corruption, and, moreover, had exposed in the English press their cruel oppression of the natives in her neighborhood. Long before hostilities were over her home had been de- stroyed. The first part of the war she spent in an isolated region about forty miles from Pretoria; but, as soon as she heard that the British had occu- pied that town, she got horse and covered the forty miles in one ride to give Lord Roberts all the information she possessed as to the movements of the enemy. Her intimate knowledge of the Boers she resolved to utilize in an attempt to dispel that dense ignorance of the underworld which, she was con- vinced, lay at the root of their nation al failure, and would, if it continued, be the cause of plentiful trouble in the future. She was the moving spirit in a "Transvaal Education Union,' in which she has enrolled such women as she could influence; and she came to England about eighteen months ago to further programme which should in- clude not only self-supporting farm schools for Boer children, but a scheme of itinerant lantern lectures on history and geography for the instruction of the adult Boers all over the country. She has divested herself, in the inter- ests of others, of nearly all her prop erty; she was plainly in failing health; one of her eyes had been destroyed, and she had nearly lost the sight of the other; yet last autumn she insisted on going back to the Transvaal with her lanterns and her slides, in the hope and faith that if she did not live to use them, some one else would. It is greatly to be hoped that this will be