(the former Flora Shaw), who was probably a member of the Rhodes secret society on
The Times and appears to have been passing from The Times to the Milner Group, when
she was really passing from the society to the Milner Group. She and her husband are of
great significance in the latter organization, although neither was a member of the
innermost circle.
Frederick Lugard (Sir Frederick after 1901 and Lord Lugard after 1928) was a regular
British army officer who served in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Burma in 1879-1887. In
1888 he led a successful expedition against slave-traders on Lake Nyasa, and was
subsequently employed by the British East African Company, the Royal Niger Company,
and British West Charterland in leading expeditions into the interior of Africa (1889-
1897). In 1897 he was appointed by the Salisbury government to be Her Majesty's
Commissioner in the hinterland of Nigeria and Lagos and commandant of the West
African Frontier Force, which he organized. Subsequently he was High Commissioner of
Northern Nigeria (1900-1906) and Governor of Hong Kong (1907-1912), as well as
Governor, and later Governor-General, of Nigeria (1912-1919). He wrote Our East
African Empire (1893) and The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), and also numerous articles (including one on West Africa in The Empire and the Century). He was
one of the chief assistants of Lord Lothian and Lord Hailey in planning the African
Survey in 1934- 1937, was British member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of
the League of Nations from 1922 to 1936, was one of the more influential figures in the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, and is generally regarded as the inventor of the
British system of "indirect rule" in colonial areas.
Flora Shaw, who married Sir Frederick Lugard in 1902, when he was forty-four and
she was fifty, was made head of the Colonial Department of The Times in 1890, at the
suggestion of Sir Robert George Wyndham Herbert, the Permanent Under Secretary of
the Colonial Office. Sir Robert, whose grandmother was a Wyndham and whose
grandfather was Earl of Carnarvon, was a Fellow of All Souls from 1854 to 1905. He was
thus elected the year following Lord Salisbury's election. He began his political career as
private secretary to Gladstone and was Permanent Under Secretary for twenty-one years
(1871-1892, 1900). He was subsequently Agent General for Tasmania (1893-1896), High
Sheriff of London, chairman of the Tariff Commission, and adviser to the Sultan of
Johore, all under the Salisbury-Balfour governments.
When Miss Shaw was recommended to The Times as head of the Colonial
Department, she was already a close friend of Moberly Bell, manager of The Times, and
was an agent and close friend of Stead and Cecil Rhodes. The story of how she came to
work for The Times, as told in that paper's official history, is simplicity itself: Bell wanted
someone to head the Colonial Department, so he wrote to Sir Robert Herbert and was
given the name of Flora Shawl Accordingly, Bell wrote, "as a complete stranger," to Miss
Shaw and asked her "as an inexperienced writer for a specimen column." She wrote a
sample article on Egyptian finance, which pleased Bell so greatly that she was given the
position of head of the Colonial Department. That is the story as it appears in volume III
of The History of The Times, published in 1947. Shortly afterward appeared the
biography of Flora Shaw, written by the daughter of Moberly Bell and based on his
private papers. The story that emerges from this volume is quite different. It goes
somewhat as follows:
Flora Shaw, like most members of that part of the Cecil Bloc which shifted over to the
Milner Group, was a disciple of John Ruskin and an ardent worker among the depressed
masses of London's slums. Through Ruskin, she came to write for W. T. Stead of the Pall
Mall Gazette in 1886, and three years later, through Stead, she met Cecil Rhodes. In the
meantime, in 1888, she went to Egypt as correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette and
there became a close friend of Moberly Bell, The Times correspondent in that country.
Bell had been employed in this capacity in Egypt since 1865 and had become a close
friend of Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), the British agent in Egypt. He had also become
an expert on Egyptian finance and published a pamphlet on that subject in 1887. Miss
Shaw's friendship with the Bell family was so close that she was practically a member of
it, and Bell's children knew her, then and later, as "Aunt Flora."
In 1890, when Bell was transferred to Printing House Square as manager of The
Times, Baring tried to persuade The Times to name Miss Shaw as Egyptian correspondent
in Bell's place. This was not done. Instead, Miss Shaw returned to London and was
introduced by Bell to Buckle. When Buckle told Miss Shaw that he wanted a head for the
Colonial Department of the paper, she suggested that he consult with Sir Robert Herbert.
From that point on, the account in The History of The Times is accurate. But it is clear, to
anyone who has the information just mentioned, that the recommendation by Sir Robert
Herbert, the test article on Egyptian finance, and probably the article itself, had been
arranged previously between Moberly Bell and "Aunt Flora."
None of these early relationships of Miss Shaw with Bell, Buckle, and Herbert are
mentioned in The History of The Times, and apparently they are not to be found in the
records at Printing House Square. They are, however, a significant indication of the
methods of the Milner Group. It is not clear what was the purpose of this elaborate
scheme. Miss Moberly Bell apparently believes that it was to deceive Buckle. It is much
more likely that it was to deceive the chief owners of The Times, John Walter III and his
son, Arthur F. Walter.
Miss Shaw, when she came to The Times, was an open champion of Lord Salisbury
and an active supporter of a vigorous imperial policy, especially in South Africa. She was
in the confidence of the Colonial Office and of Rhodes to a degree that cannot be
exaggerated. She met Rhodes, on Stead's recommendation, in 1889, at a time when Stead
was one of Rhodes's closest confidants. In 1892, Miss Shaw was sent to South Africa by
Moberly Bell, with instructions to set up two lines of communication from that area to
herself. One of these was to be known to The Times and would handle routine matters;
the second was to be known only to herself and was to bring confidential material to her
private address. The expenses of both of these avenues would be paid for by The Times,
but the expenses of the secret avenue would not appear on the records at Printing House
Square.(5)
From this date onward, Miss Shaw was in secret communication with Cecil
Rhodes. This communication was so close that she was informed by Rhodes of the
plot which led up to the Jameson Raid, months before the raid took place. She was
notified by Rhodes of the approximate date on which the raid would occur, two