(d) Diseases and deaths according to Official Gazette.
II.—Although the returns are not complete through absence of returns for whole weeks in the official publications, we may arrive at the following conclusions:
1. That the death-percentage in the Camps surpasses all hitherto-known proportions.
2. That the death-rate amounts to 14 times that of Pretoria, which has, according to Dr. Stroud, an average of 25 per thousand per year.
3. That the death-rate among the children confined to the Camps has increased to an alarming extent.
The Committee, basing their verdict partly on the repeated assertions of public opinion, on the communications of eye-witnesses, on the evidence given by certain witnesses in a case before the Military Court at Pretoria, and finally on the personal observations of four members of the Consular Corps, to whom permission was granted to visit the Camp at Irene, feel compelled to believe the principal causes of diseases, carrying in their train such an abnormal death-rate, to be:
1. The difficulties and misery and privations to which the Boer families are subject after having been driven from their farms (their journeys often lasting about 20 days).
2. The insufficient quantity and frequently even bad quality of articles of food distributed among them. Often the food given to the children is in every respect inadequate to their wants.
3. The great fall in temperature during the night.
4. The insufficient protection against cold experienced in the tents by the healthy population, and all the more by the invalids.