Emma Krogh

(b. 25/10/1874 - d. Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, **/**/1960). Actress. Emma (Emmarentia Susanna Catharina) Krogh, the daughter of a Deputy State Secretary in the administration of Paul Kruger’s Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, could claim to have been the first identified actress in a South African film. She played the heroine in The Great Kimberley Diamond Robbery, filmed and directed by R.C.E. Nissen for Rufe Naylor’s Springbok Film Co., first shown on 11 December 1911 at the Tivoli (afternoon) and the Orpheum (evening) in Johannesburg. She was a music teacher, the first female head of a school in Pretoria and also the mother of Stella Blakemore, the author of extremely popular Afrikaans children’s books, notably the Maasdorp series for teenage girls and the Keurboslaan series for boys, the latter written under the pseudonym of Theunis Krogh, which was the name of her maternal grandfather. Though a document in the National Archives Repository identifies Emma Krogh as “very anti-British”, she nevertheless married English-born Captain Percy Blakemore, who came to South Africa as a trooper in the ranks of the Strathcona Horse, but ended up as officer commanding the 1st Squadron of the Kings' Colonials during the South African War. He remained in South Africa to become one of three officers running the Orange River Colony Settlers Association, but later deserted his wife and daughter to return to England, reportedly to become a professional gambler.

For some time Emma ran a music and drama school in Pretoria where her daughter, who had married David Owen, a Welshman who was in the British colonial service in Swaziland, took over some of her duties. When Owen was transferred to the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana), the couple’s adopted children were sent to school in Wales, where their grandmother joined them. In 1954 they all moved to Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland, where Emma died in 1960. (FO)

(Note: Though her gravestone in Warrenpoint is clearly engraved 1880-1960, her father’s estate papers give her date of birth as 25 October 1874)

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