Charles L. Lindley

Educated at an American medical college, Dr. Charles L. Lindley’s career was a mixture of professional practice and military adventure. His experience as soldier did not occur in the larger wars with which people are nowadays familiar, but in England’s South African campaigns, in which he was able to render an unusual service. Born in Natal and attended in his childhood by a Zulu nurse, he spoke the native tongue fluently, and became the intermediary between the British officers and the tribesmen in the Zulu war. Twenty years later, he again joined the British army in the same capacity during the Transvaal conflict of 1899. He remained for a time in South Africa in official practice, but passed the long subsequent period of quiet retirement in America.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1932 Century Association Yearbook