Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson

Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson (née Spencer-Churchill; 4 July 1865 – 22 October 1929) became one of the first female war correspondents in 1899, when she was recruited by Alfred Harmsworth to cover the Siege of Mafeking for the Daily Mail during the Second Boer War.

Family

Born on 4 July 1865 at Blenheim Palace, Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill was the youngest of the eleven children of John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, and his wife, the former Lady Frances Vane, daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. Her eldest brother was George Spencer-Churchill, 8th Duke of Marlborough, and another brother was Lord Randolph Churchill, father of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Anne, Duchess of Roxburghe, was her elder sister.

She married Gordon Chesney Wilson of the Royal Horse Guards, son of Jennie Campbell and Sir Samuel Wilson, MP. Her husband was killed in action on 6 November 1914, at the First Battle of Ypres. They had one son, Randolph Gordon Wilson (1893–1956).

Siege of Mafeking correspondent

The Daily Mail newspaper recruited Lady Sarah after one of its correspondents, Ralph Hellawell, was arrested by the Boers as he tried to get out of the besieged town of Mafeking to send his dispatch. She was in the right place at the right time to step into the journalistic breach, having moved to Mafeking with her husband, Captain Gordon Chesney Wilson, at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Col. Robert Baden-Powell, the commanding officer at Mafeking. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison. This she duly did, and set off on a madcap adventure in the company of her maid, travelling through the South African countryside. Eventually, she was captured by the Boers and returned to the town in exchange for a horse thief being held there.