Breaker Morant

Harry "The Breaker" Morant
Harry "The Breaker" Harbord Morant
Birth name	Edwin Henry Morant
Nickname(s)	Harry, The Breaker
Born	9 December 1864 Bridgwater, Somerset, England
Died	27 February 1902(1902-02-27) (aged 37) Pretoria, South African Republic
Allegiance	British Empire
Years of service	1899 – 1902
Rank	Lieutenant
Unit	South Australian Mounted Rifles Bushveldt Carbineers
Battles/wars	Second Boer War

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Photo of the grave of Morant and Handcock. Source:Genealogical Society of South Africa

Harry "Breaker" Harbord Morant (9 December 1864 – 27 February 1902) was an Anglo-Australian drover, horseman, bush poet, and military officer.

While serving with the Bushveldt Carbineers during the Second Anglo-Boer War, Lieutenant Morant was arrested and court-martialed for war crimes- one of the first such prosecutions in British military history. According to military prosecutors, Lt. Morant retaliated for the death in combat of his commanding officer with a series of revenge killings against both Boer POWs and many civilian residents of the Northern Transvaal.

He stood accused of the summary execution of Floris Visser, a wounded prisoner of war and the slaying of four Afrikaners and four Dutch schoolteachers who had been taken prisoner at the Elim Hospital. Lt. Morant was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Lts. Morant and Peter Handcock were then court-martialed for the murder of the Rev. Carl August Daniel Heese, a South African-born Minister of the Berlin Missionary Society. Rev. Heese had spiritually counseled the Dutch and Afrikaner victims at Elim Hospital, indignantly vowed to inform Morant's commanding officer, and had been shot to death the same afternoon. Morant and Handcock were acquitted of the Heese murder, but their sentences for murdering Floris Visser and the eight victims at Elim Hospital were carried out by a firing squad drawn from the Cameron Highlanders on 27 February 1902.