Cetshwayo, son of Mpande - Source: Cape Archives, E3248

What were our ancestors doing in 1882?

Who was making the headlines and What did they talk about around the supper table?

Here is a look at some of the people, places and events that made the news in 1882.

Huguenot Memorial School

The Huguenot Memorial School (Gedenkschool der Hugenoten) was opened on the 1st February 1882 on the farm Kleinbosch in Daljosafat, near Paarl. It was a private Christian school and the first school with Afrikaans as teaching medium.

The school was under the auspices of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners. Past pupils included the writers Andries Gerhardus VISSER, Daniël François MALHERBE and Jakob Daniël DU TOIT (Totius). The first classes were given in a small room but soon an old wine cellar was converted into a two-storey building which housed two classrooms downstairs and the boarding school upstairs. The first Afrikaans newspaper, Die Patriot, as well as the first Afrikaans magazine, Ons Klyntji, came from this school.

The Coat of Arms of "Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners"

The school was closed down in 1910 as by then Afrikaans was taught in government schools. In 2001 renovation work was started after a fundraising campaign brought in more than R1-million. Most of the money came from readers of the Afrikaans newspapers, Die Burger and the Volksblad. Naspers, the Stigting vir Afrikaans and KWV also made important contributions. The renovated building was opened in March 2002. It has an Afrikaans training centre upstairs and guest rooms downstairs.

The main people behind the renovation project were writer Dr. Willem Abraham DE KLERK (1917 – 1996) and Fanie THERON (chairman of the Simon van der Stel Foundation and the Huguenot Society, deceased 1989). Others who were also very involved included Sr. C.F. ALBERTYN (Naspers director), Van der Spuy UYS and Dr. Eduard BEUKKMAN. In 1985 they launched the Hugenote Gedenkskool Board of Trustees and with a R10 000 donation from the Helpmekaarfonds, a servitude on the building and land was bought. De Klerk’s wife, Finnie, and Theron’s wife, Anna, were at the official opening as their husbands did not live to see their dream come to fruition.

Dutch as official language

After the second British occupation of the Cape in 1806, English became the only official language. In 1856 J.A. KRUGER, the M.L.A. for Albert, asked for permission to address Parliament in Dutch. His requested was denied, and this started a campaign to get Dutch recognised as an official language in Parliament. On the 30th March 1882, Jan Hendrik HOFMEYR (1845 – 1909), also known as Onze Jan, appealed for the use of Dutch as an official language in Parliament alongside English. He was supported by Saul SOLOMON, a Jewish newspaper publisher and printer in Cape Town. On the 9th June the campaign finally got a positive result when an amendement was made to the Constitution allowing the use of Dutch in Parliament.

Official status was granted on the 1st May and the Act was later passed. On the 13th June, Jan Roeland Georg LUTTIG, the Beaufort-West M.L.A., was the first to officially deliver a speech in Dutch. There is no official record of the speech in Dutch, but the English version was published in the 14th June 1882 Cape Argus newspaper. The other version is in the Cape Parliament Hansard.

It was a short speech – “Meneer die Speaker, ons is baie dankbaar dat die opsionele gebruik van die Hollandse taal in albei huise van die parlement toegelaat is. Wanneer ek sê dankbaar, dink ek praat ek namens diegene wat die twee huise met hul petisies vir dié doel genader het. Ek put vreugde daaruit dat my Engelssprekende vriende die voorstel nie teengestaan het nie, my komplimente gaan aan hulle.

Ek hoop om die raad in die toekoms ook in Engels, in my ou Boere styl, toe te spreek. Sodoende kan dié Engelse vriende wat nie Hollands verstaan nie, die geleentheid hê om te verstaan wat ek probeer oordra. Ek vertrou ook dat alle nasionale verskille in die toekoms sal verdwyn en dat mense van alle nasionaliteite en standpunte hand aan hand sal beweeg om die welvaart en vooruitgang van die kolonie te bevorder”. According to the Hansard, the Speaker pointed out that the Act had not yet been proclaimed, so members could not yet make speeches in Dutch, but that the House would accommodate him this time.

On the 15th June, Cape school regulations were amended to allow the use of Dutch alongside English.

On the 26th and 27th June, the town of Burgersdorp celebrated the use of Dutch. The celebrations were organised by Jotham JOUBERT (M.L.A. and later a Cape Rebel ) who also proposed a monument to mark the occassion. A country-wide fundraising campaign was launched. The monument was built by S.R. OGDEN of Aliwal-North for £430. It consisted of a sandstone pedestal on which stood a life-size marble statue of a woman. She points her finger at a tablet held in her other hand on which the main inscription reads “De Overwinning de Hollandsche Taal “. The monument was unveiled on the 18th January 1893 by D.P. VAN DEN HEEVER, with Stephanus Jacobus DU TOIT (1847 – 1911) delivering the main speech.

During the Anglo-Boer war, the monument was vandalised by British soldiers who took parts of it to King William’s Town where they buried it. After the war, Lord Alfred MILNER had the rest of the statue removed from Burgersdorp. After much protesting, the British eventually provided Burgersdorp with a replica in 1907. This one was unveiled at ceremonies on the 24th and 25th May 1907 when former President M.T. STYEN and the author D.F. MALHERBE addressed the crowd. The original monument was found in 1939 and returned to Burgersdorp. In 1957 the damaged original monument was placed next to the replica.

In 1883 knowledge of Dutch was compulsory for some government positions. In 1884, it was permitted in the High Courts and in 1887 it became a compulsory subject for civil service candidates. Afrikaans only gained equal status with Dutch and English as an official language in South Africa via Act 8 of 1925. Dutch remained an official language until the 1961 Constitution stipulated the two official languages in South Africa to be Afrikaans and English.

Goosen and Stellaland republics

In 1882 a group of Boers established the short-lived republics of Stellaland and Het Land Goosen (aka Goshen ) to the north of Griqualand West, in contravention of the Pretoria and London conventions by which the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek had regained its independence.

On the 1st April the republic of Het Land Goosen was declared. The terms of the Pretoria Convention of August 1881 had cut away part of the Transvaal. This led to problems as local Chiefs disputed the boundaries. Britain did not help matters by acknowledging Mankoroane as Chief of the Batlapin and Montsioa as Chief of the Barolong, both beyond their traditional territories. Supporters of Moshete, under the leadership of Nicolaas Claudius GEY VAN PITTIUS (1837 – 1893), established Het Land Goosen. One of the co-founders was Hermanus Richard (Manie) LEMMER, who later became a General in the Anglo-Boer War. Het Land Goosen later merged with the Stellaland republic to form the United States of Stellaland.

Stellaland was also a short-lived republic established in 1882 by David MASSOUW and about 400 followers, who invaded a Bechuana area west of the Transvaal. They founded the town of Vryburg, making it their capital. The republic was formally created on the 26th July 1882, under the leadership of Gerrit Jacobus VAN NIEKERK (1849 – 1896). In 1885 the British sent in troops under Sir Charles WARREN, abolished the republic, and incorporated it in British Bechuanaland.

Shipping accidents

Shipping accidents (wrecks, groundings, etc…) were common along the South African coast. In 1882 there were quite a few:

January – James Gaddarn, a barque, off Durban

February – Johanna, a barque, off East London

March – Poonah, off Blaauwberg

March – Queen of Ceylon, a barque, off Durban

April – Gleam, a barque, off Port Nolloth

April – Roxburg, off East London

April – Seafield, a barque, off East London

May – Francesca, a barque, off East London

May – Louisa Dorothea, a schooner, ran aground at Mossel Bay

May – Clansman, a schooner, off East London

May 28 – two ships, the Agnes (Capt. NEEDHAM) and the Christin a (Capt. G. LOVE), run ashore at Plettenberg Bay

June – Bridgetown, a barque, off Durban

June – Louisa Schiller, a barque, off Cape Hangklip

June – Ludwig, a schooner, off Algoa Bay

June – Gloria Deo, a barque, off Quoin Point

July – Elvira, a barque, off Durban

July – Erwood, off Durban

December – Adonis, a steamer, off Portst Johns

December – Zambezi, a schooner, off Durban

Smallpox

A smallpox epidemic broke out in District Six in 1882. This led to the closure of inner city cemeteries, and the construction of drains and wash-houses in the city. These improvements didn’t go as planned. The cemetery closures led to riots in 1886. The cemeteries along Somerset Road were not in a good condition, so Maitland cemetery was built. As the Muslim community carried their dead for burial, Maitland was too far for them, and along with the Dutch, they protested against Maitland for two years. Once the inner city cemeteries closed, the Dutch compromised but the Muslim community did not. They buried a child in the Tanu Baru (first Muslim cemetery) in protest. About 3 000 Muslims followed the funeral procession, as police watched. After someone threw stones at the police, a riot started and volunteer regiments were called out. One of the Muslim leaders, Abdol BURNS, a cab driver, was arrested. In the end, neither the Dutch nor the Muslims used Maitland. They found a piece of ground next tost Peter’s cemetery in Mowbray and used it as their cemetery.

The smallpox threat was felt further afield. It was believed that smallpox could be beaten by whitewashing the walls of homes, and for this reason lime and carbolic acid was distributed free to residents in Beaufort West. At Modder River, about 35 km from Kimberley, the settlement was used as a quarantine station to keep smallpox away from Kimberley. Travellers enroute to Kimberley had to produce a valid vaccination certificate or be vaccinated at the station.

Zulu King in London

Cetshwayo reigned as King of the Zulus from 1873 to 1884. He made an alliance with the British in order to keep his long standing enemies, the Boers, away. The alliance collapsed when the British annexed the Transvaal and supported Boer land claims in the border dispute with Zululand. This led to the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War where the British suffered defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana and Zulus at the Battle of Ulundi. Cetshwayo was captured and taken to the Cape. In 1882 he travelled to London where he met Queen Victoria on the 14th August. On his return he was reinstated as King in a much reduced territory and with less autonomy. He died on the 8th February 1884.

Sporting moments

Ottomans Cricket Club was founded in the Bo-Kaap in 1882. The Rovers Rugby Club was founded in Cradock on the 6th September 1882. The first rugby match in Mossel Bay was played on Saturday, 2nd September 1882. Mossel Bay Athletic Club played against George Athletic Club. The first bowling green was laid out in 1882 when a club was established atst George’s Park in Port Elizabeth. In 1882 the Jockey Club was founded by 10 horse-racing members at a meeting held in the Phoenix Hotel in Port Elizabeth. The first South African soccer club was Pietermaritzburg County. On the 17th June 1882, its delegates met at the London Restaurant in Durban ‘s West Street and the Natal Football Association was founded.

Transit of Venus

The transit of Venus was observed from stations in Durban, Touws River, Wellington, Aberdeen Road (a railway stop) and at Cape Town ‘s Royal Observatory.

Banking

District Bank was established in Stellenbosch in 1882. It paid between 5 to 6% on fixed deposits and 2% on current accounts, compared to the Standard Bank which paid an average of 3.5% on fixed deposits and no interest on current accounts. The District Bank did not charge cheque fees or ledger fees. It was later taken over by Boland Bank. The Natal Building Society (NBS) was also established in 1882, in Durban.

New brewery

The Old Cannon Brewery in Newlands was established in 1852. In 1882 it merged with Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries.

Steel industry

South Africa ‘s industrial development has heavy roots in its mining industry. With virtually no steel industry of its own, the country relied on imported steel. The first efforts to introduce steel production dates back to the creation of the South African Coal and Iron Company in 1882. The first successful production of pig iron occurred only in 1901, in Pietermaritzburg.

Mariannhill Monastery

The monastery near Pinetown was founded as a Trappist monastery by Father Francis PFANNER in 1882. It became a renowned missionary institute with schools, a hospital, an art centre and a retreat.

Boswell’s Circus

The BOSWELL family has been involved in the circus business since the 1800s in England. James BOSWELL was born in 1826 and went on to perform in various English circuses as a clown, horseman and equilibrist. He died in the circus ring of Cirque Napoleon in Paris in 1859 while performing a balancing ladder act. He had three 3 children, all of whom performed in circuses. His eldest son, James Clements, opened his own circus, Boswell’s Circus, in 1882 in Yorkshire.

Boswell’s Circus toured England and was very popular until it closed in 1898. James Clements and his five sons – Jim, Alfred, Walter, Sydney and Claude – continued performing in theatres and music halls, and eventually put their own show together called Boswell’s Stage Circus. Madame FILLIS, who owned Fillis’ Circus in South Africa, saw one of their performances and signed them up for a six-month contract. In 1911 James Clements, his sons, Walter and Jim’s wives, six ponies, a donkey and some dogs set sail for South Africa. The family and their animals were stranded when Fillis’ Circus closed down some months later. Fortunately for generations of South African children, this did not stop them and they went on to build a successful business that is still in existence.

Pretoria

A public sale on Church Square, Pretoria, in the 1890's

Church Square was created in 1855, on the orders of M.W. PRETORIUS. The DEVEREAUX brothers, town planners, designed a square for market and church purposes. Pretoria expanded around Church Square. During its early days the square was also used as a sports field and in 1883 the long-jumper Izak PRINSLOO set the first world record by a South African. The first church on the square was completed in 1857, but burnt down in 1882. Burgers Park was established as Pretoria ‘s first park in 1882. On the 14th June 1882, the Transvaalsche Artillerie Corps was formed under the command of Cmdt. H.J.P. PRETORIUS.

Stephanus Johannes Paulus KRUGER, later President of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek, was born on the 10th October 1825. He was so respected by his people that the first Kruger Day was celebrated on the 10th October 1882. The following year it was declared a public holiday. After the Anglo-Boer war it lost official status, until it was again declared a public holiday in 1952. In 1994 the day again lost its official status.

Kimberley

On the 2nd September Kimberley became the first town in the southern hemisphere to install electric street lighting. It was an initiative of the Cape Electric Light Company. Electric lighting was also installed in Parliament in 1882, and an arc-lighting installation was commissioned in the harbour. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Christmas 1882 saw the world’s first electrically-lit Christmas tree installed in the New York house of Thomas EDISON’s associate Edward H. JOHNSON.

The Kimberley Club was founded in August 1881 and opened its doors on the 14th August 1882. Cecil John RHODES was one of the men behind the club’s establishment. Amongst the first members were Charles D. RUDD, Dr. Leander Starr JAMESON, Lionel PHILLIPS and J.B. ROBINSON.

Knysna

The farm Melkhoutkraal was laid out in 1770. In 1808 George REX, who arrived at the Cape in 1797, bought the farm. In 1825 Lord Charles SOMERSET decided to establish a town on the lagoon, to make use of the surrounding forests for ship building. George REX donated 16 ha of land for the new village, named Melville for Viscount MELVILLE, First Sea Lord from 1812 – 1827. Knysna was formally founded in 1882 when the two villages, Melville and Newhaven (founded in 1846) amalgamated.

Muizenberg

In 1882 the railway line reached Muizenberg. The area was originally a cattle outpost for the VOC before it became a military post in 1743. It was named Muijs se Berg after the commander Sergeant Willem MUIJS. Muizenberg was a staging post between Cape Town and Simon’s Town. After the railway line was extended, the area developed fast and became a popular holiday destination.

One of Muizenberg’s prominent residents was Professor James GILL. He was born in Cornwall in 1831 and came to the Cape in 1860, where he took the post of professor of Classics at Graaff-Reinet College. In 1871 he moved to Cape Town as Classics professor at the Diocesan College. He was an opininated man who did good things throughout his career but was also involved in many controversies. He was dismissed from the College in 1882. He opened a private school in Muizenberg and became the editor of the Cape Illustrated Magazine. He died in Muizenberg on the 1st February 1904.

Villiers

The town of Villiers, on the Vaal River, was established in 1882 on the farms Pearson Valley and Grootdraai. It was named after the owner, L.B. DE VILLIERS. In 1882 the Volksraad was requested to open a post office there, and this led to Villiers being proclaimed in 1891. In 1917 it acquired municipal status.

Newcastle

The first government school in Newcastle was established in 1882 as a junior primary school with 47 boys and 30 girls.

Okiep

The Cornish Pump House was built in 1882. It was used to pump water from the mine and this pump house is the only remaining one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

East London

A view of East London in the 1880's

The prison in Lock Street was built in 1880, replacing the old one on the West Bank. It was built by James TYRRELL and comprised an officers’ quarters, administration block, hospital, kitchen and two single-storey cell blocks to hold 100 prisoners. The first execution happened in 1882, for which a drop gallows was placed in the hospital yard. St.Andrew’s Lutheran Church was established by German settlers in 1872. It is the second oldest church in East London and was dedicated on the 30th November 1882.

Grahamstown

City Hall was officially opened on the 24th May 1882 by the acting Mayor Samuel CAWOOD. The foundation stone was laid on the 28th August 1877 by Sir Henry Bartle FRERE, Governor of the Cape.

Durban

Durban Girls’ High School was established in 1882. The old theatre Royale was built in 1882 and had seating for 1 000. It was closed in 1937. The Natal Herbarium was started in 1882 by John Medley WOOD, then Curator of the Durban Botanical Gardens. It was initially known as the Colonial Herbarium but changed its name in 1910 when it was donated by the Durban Botanical Society to the Union of South Africa.

Port Elizabeth

South End Cemetery in Port Elizabeth was started. The country’s oldest art school, Port Elizabeth Art School, was founded in 1882. It later became the College for Advanced Technical Education, originally situated in Russell Road, Central. In 1974 it moved to Summerstrand and became the PE Technikon in 1979.

Kaapsehoop

In 1882 gold was discovered in the Kaapsehoop valley. When a larger deposit of gold was found near the present day Barberton, most of the prospectors moved there. The first payable gold was mined at Pioneer Reef by Auguste ROBERTE (aka French Bob) in June 1883. Barber’s Reef was the next big find in 1884. Sheba ‘s Reef, the richest of all, was discovered by Edwin BRAY in May 1885.

Port Shepstone

Port Shepstone came into being when marble was discovered near the Umzimkulu River mouth in 1867. It flourished from 1879 when William BAZLEY, one of the world’s first underwater demolition experts, blasted away rock at the mouth to form the Umzimkulu breakwater. The town was named after a Mr SHEPSTONE, one of the area’s prominent residents. Before 1901 the area depended solely on a port that was developed inside the river’s mouth. Boats were often wrecked and blocked the harbour entrance, but it provided a vital transport link for the tea, coffee and sugar cane grown by farmers along the river’s banks.

Supplies were brought in on the return voyages from Durban. With the arrval in 1882 of 246 Norwegian, 175 Briton and 112 German settlers, this shipping service became more important. The Norwegians arrived on the 29th August aboard the CHMS Lapland. The new settlers were offered 100 acre lots around the town at 7 shillings and 6 pence an acre. Port Shepstone was declared a full fiscal port in 1893 and, after Durban, became the region’s second harbour. Eventually, with the ongoing ship wreckages and the arrival of the railway, the harbour was closed down.

Harding

In 1882 the first hotel was opened in Harding. The village then consisted of three trading stores and four private homes.

Dundee

Dundee was established on the farm Fort Jones belonging to Peter SMITH, who had bought it from a Voortrekker settler, Mr DEKKER. He named the town Dundee, in memory of his original home in Scotland. By 1879, as a result of the Anglo-Zulu War, a tent town had sprung up on a portion of the farm. British soldiers attracted traders, missionaries, craftsmen and hunters but after their departure the tent town ceased to exist. With his son, William Craighead; son-in-law Dugald MACPHAIL; and Charles WILSON, Peter proclaimed the town in 1882.

Dewetsdorp

The Anglican Church was inaugurated on the 17th December 1882 by the Anglican Bishop of Bloemfontein. It was named St. Bartholomew’s. Before this, Anglicans held services in the town hall. The church’s foundation stone was laid on the 18th August. It cost £395 to build and seated 60. Rev. L.A. KIRBY was the first minister. The first baptism was on the 7th January 1883, that of Arthur SKEA. The church was declared a national monument in 1996.

Fort Hare

Fort Hare was built in 1847. It was named after Lt.-Col. John HARE and remained a military post until 1882, when part was given to Lovedale and part to the town of Alice.

Kuruman

The London Missionary Society (LMS) established the Moffat Institute in Kuruman in 1882, as a memorial to Robert and Mary MOFFATT and in the hope that it would revive the mission station.

Upington

Upington’s history starts with Klaas Lukas., a Koranna chief, who asked for missionaries to teach his people to read and write. In 1871 Rev. Christiaan SCHRODER left Namaqualand for Olyvenhoudtsdrift as the Upington area was then known. He built the first church, which today houses the Kalahari-Oranje Museum. In 1879 Sir Thomas UPINGTON visited the area to establish a police post, which was later named after him.

In 1881 SCHRODER, Abraham SEPTEMBER and Japie LUTZ helped build an irrigation canal. Abraham (Holbors) SEPTEMBER, said to be a Baster and the son of a slave from West Africa, was farming in the area in 1860. He was married to Elizabeth GOOIMAN. He devised a way to draw water from the river for irrigation purposes. In 1882 he was granted land facing the river. In 1896 Abraham and Elizabeth drew up a will, bequeathing the land to the survivor and thereafter to their three sons. Abraham died in 1898. In 1909 Elizabeth appeared before the Court in Upington on a charge that squatters where living on the land. It was here that she heard that Willem DORINGS, a smous, was claiming the land as his. This claim was to have repercussions, even in 2000 when the great-great-grandchildren of Abraham were still fighting for the land in the Land Claims Court.

Elizabeth and her sons owed Willem £326, but Willem produced documents that they sold him the land for that sum. The family were under the impression that they had a debt agreement with Willem. They refused to leave the farm and Elizabeth died there in 1918. In 1920 the family were removed from the farm by the new owners who had bought it from Willem. According to Henk WILLEMSE, Abraham’s great-great-grandson, the family started action in 1921 to get their land back. He has documents dating back all these years, which also show that Willem DORINGS was William THORN. Part of their land claim was for the land on which the Prisons Department building stands in Upington’s main road. This belonged to Abraham’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who lost it when service fees were not paid. In 1997 Nelson MANDELA unveiled a memorial plaque to Abraham.

The Waterfront

A view of East London in the 1880's

The Victorian Gothic-style Clock Tower, situated near the site of the original Bertie’s Landing restaurant in Cape Town, has always been a feature of the old harbour. It was the original Port Captain’s office and was completed in 1882. On the second floor is a decorative mirror room, which enabled the Port Captain to have a view of all activities in the harbour. On the ground floor is a tide-gauge mechanism used to check the level of the tide. Restoration of the Clock Tower was completed in 1997. The Robinson Graving Dock was also constructed in 1882, as was the Pump House. The Breakwater Convict Station was declared a military prison in 1882. This allowed military offenders from ships and shore stations to be committed for hard labour.

Sources:

Drakenstein Heemkring

Afrikanerbakens; Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge publication

Burgersdorp: http://www.burgersdorp.za.net/burgersdorp_photos.html

Maritime Casualties: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/2216/text/MARITIME.TXT

The Will of Abraham and Elizabeth September: The Struggle for Land in Gordonia, 1898-1995; by Martin Legassick; Journal of African History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1996)

Land Claim Case: http://www.law.wits.ac.za/lcc/wp-content/uploads/jacobs2/jacobs2.pdf

Rapport newspaper, 23 Jan 2000

Boswell’s Circus: http://www.boswell.co.za/

Article researched and written by Anne Lehmkuhl, June 2007

Representatives of the free burghers on the Court of Justice (the supreme court of judicature) and later on the Council of Policy at the Cape. In the exercise of their functions the burgher councillors were not confined by any standing orders. It was, however, customary for the Council of Policy to confer with them on legislation affecting the burghers, and in some instances retired burgher councillors were also invited to attend preliminary discussions in this regard. Only since about 1780 did the burghers regularly have representation in the Council of Policy.

The first burgher councillor was Steven Jansz Botma, appointed in 1657 to serve on the Court of Justice for a term of one year. After the first year the free burghers were directed to submit a list of names from among which Botma’s successor could be designated. Hendrick Boom was the nominee, but the authorities having increased the number of burgher councillors to two, Botma was retained. One of the two members was to retire in rotation every year. In 1675 the number was increased to three, and in 1686 to six. From the time of Jan van Riebeeck trivial matters came within the purview of the ‘Collegie van Commissarissen van Kleine Saken’, in which two burghers sat with two officials and a secretary.

It had become customary to leave punitive expeditions against the Bushmen in the hands of burgher commandos, and in 1715 the burgher councillors were required to levy the costs of the expeditions from the citizens of Cape Town, the heemraden being responsible for the levy from burghers in the hinterland.

By 1779, under the governorship of Joachim van Plettenberg, agitation among a group of colonists for greater representation in the management of their affairs had gathered considerable momentum. These burghers already referred to themselves as ‘Patriotten’ (patriots). Among the measures they proposed was the appointment of a sufficient number of elected burgher councillors to counterbalance the officials. A strongly worded petition was taken by Tieleman Roos of Paarl and others to the Netherlands . Although this document was even submitted to the States General, it proved of no avail, the Dutch ‘Patriotten’ being at that time in the minority.

The only notable success attained by the petitioners was the concession made by Van Plettenberg in his reply to the Council of Seventeen, that an equal number of burgher councillors and officials could be appointed to the Court of Justice. Neither Van Plettenberg nor the Seventeen would tolerate a position in which the Council of Policy would virtually be dominated by the burgher councillors. The system of burgher councillors continued until the first British occupation, and in 1796 the Burgher Senate took the place of burgher councillors.

BIBL. C. Beyers: Die Kaapse Patriotte 1779-1791 (1930); Cambridge history of the British Empire , vol. 8 (1936); G. M.

Theal: History of South Africa , vol. 3, 4 (‘964); Eric A. Walker: A history of South Africa (1928).

The first British in SA
Sir Francis Drake rounded the Cape in 1580 and was probably the first Briton to see what he called “the fairest Cape in all the world”. But the first Englishmen to go ashore, a party led by James Lancaster, only landed at Saldanha Bay 11 years later. The Dutch and the English were interested in the Cape’s strategic position on the sea route to the East, and it was inevitable that one or the other would annex it.

In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe attempted to land some deported British criminals, but those who were not drowned or killed by Khoi were soon removed. In June 1620 captains Andrew Shillinge and Humphrey Fitzherbert formally annexed Table Bay for King James I, naming the Lion’s Rump King James’ Mountain. Their sovereign refused to confirm the act. It was left to the Dutch to act, after the wreck of the Haarlem in 1647. A previous visitor, Jan van Riebeeck, returned in 1652 to administer the territory for the benefit of the Dutch East India Company.

During the 18th century the rich Cape flora excited the interest of several British botanists who made long, arduous journeys through the interior in search of plants. Francis Masson, a Scot from Kew, arrived in 1772, a few months after the Swedes C P Thunberg and A Sparrman. Many plant species which Masson collected and classified remain European favourites. His work was continued by several British researchers, including W J Burchell, who arrived in 1810, after the Cape had become a British colony. About 8 700 South African plants are recorded in Burchell’s Catalogus geographicus plantarum.

William Harvey, who arrived in 1835 and later became Treasurer-General of the Cape Colony, produced his Genera of South African Plants in 1838. In collaboration with the German Otto Sender he produced the first three volumes of Flora Capensis, the work being taken over by the staff of the Kew Herbarium, London . This monumental work on the flora of the Cape was completed in England in 1933. British-born botanist, Professor H Pearson founded the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch in 1913. In its first half-century all three directors of Kirstenbosch, Profs Pearson, R H Compton and H B Rycroft, were of British descent.

The British occupied the Cape in 1795, but it was administered by the Batavian Republic from 1803 to 1806, before reverting to British control. The objective was to secure the trade route to India but British army units also kept Xhosa tribes at bay and allowed British influence to spread. The army was a safety net allowing government and education to develop and its presence encouraged the growth of eastern frontier towns such as Port Elizabeth, Cradock, Grahamstown, King William’s Town and East London.

Various governors attempted to keep the frontier peaceful, the most successful being those who sought to establish settlements as a barrier to incursions. The first group of settlers for this purpose arrived in 1820. It is a tribute to their courage that, knowing nothing of the country, they remained after the Voortrekkers had left. Many of their descendants are established in the Eastern Cape, where a distinct British culture is rooted.
This holds true for much of KwaZulu-Natal, where British settlement dates to 1824, when Lieutenant Francis Farewell obtained a grant of Port Natal and the surrounding country from the Zulu king, Shaka. This settlement was mainly for the purpose of trading. In 1835 the township of Durban was laid out on the site of Port Natal.

Two years later the first Boer settlers arrived, but their short-lived republic ended in 1843, when British sovereignty was proclaimed over Natal. Large parties of British settlers arrived in Natal from the late 1840s onward.

The British of the Eastern Cape and Natal were not content merely to settle. They adapted to a completely new environment and, imbued with the progressive spirit of 19th-century Britain, were often eager to alter and improve their new homeland.

South African agriculture benefited immensely. Agricultural machinery was introduced to a country which had few. The 1820 Settlers realised that the Eastern Cape and adjacent karoo were potentially good sheep country and merino wool became a leading export.

The British introduced sugar to the KwaZulu-Natal coastal belt and developed it into a major industry. Although deciduous fruit and citrus had long been grown in South Africa , the British were primarily responsible for the rise of commercial fruit-growing at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

British explorers
British explorers played a major part in opening up Africa’s interior. Early in the 19th century John Barrow traveled widely in the arid parts of the Cape Colony. Burchell reached the Vaal and Orange Rivers, and John Campbell explored north of the Orange. In the 1800s Farewell, James King, Henry Fynn and others explored Natal, and in 1835 Allen Gardiner became the first to describe the Drakensberg.

Robert Moffat established a settlement north of the Orange River and surveyed the greater part of the river’s course. In 1836 William Cornwallis-Harris and Richard Williamson journeyed through Bechuanaland and the western Transvaal. Francis Galton was apparently the first European to reach Ovamboland, and his friend Charles Andersson, the Anglicised son of an English father and a Swedish mother, traveled through the desert of the Kaokoveld to reach the Okavango in 1858.

The meeting between Gen Louis Botha (second from left, front row) and Lord Kitchener (third from left, front row). After the Anglo-Boer War hostility between the Boers and the British continued. Transvaal and the Free State lost their independence and were governed as British crown colonies.

The greatest of all explorers was the Scottish missionary, David Livingstone. In 1849, accompanied by W C Oswell, he arrived at Lake Ngami, and in 1851 reached the Zambezi River. In 1855, while traversing the continent from Luanda to the Zambezi delta, he was shown the Victoria Falls . Later he explored and mapped lakes Malawi and Tanganyika. Henry Hartley discovered gold in what is now Zimbabwe in 1867, and shortly afterwards the hunter Frederick Selous began his explorations from there.

British missionaries
British missionaries played a major part in the development of South Africa. They preached the gospel at a time when religious fervour ran high in Britain and they believed that Christianity and European civilisation were inseparable. They strove to introduce western ideas, including the inherent equality of man before the law, a notion which found expression in Cape law even before the emancipation of slaves in 1834. Five years later civil rights were extended to all in the Cape, a principle kept after responsible government was granted in 1872.
The breaking down of the legal colour bar was the greatest striving of the missionaries in the Cape. Exploration was an important second. English missionaries were early travelers to the Free State and former Transvaal, which Thomas Hodgson and Samuel Broadbent reached in 1823 coincident with a period of deep unrest. They settled among the Barolong who later helped the Voortrekkers after their cattle were stolen by the Matabele.

Missionaries founded many schools, including famed East Cape institutions such as Lovedale and Healdtown. Settler education was not neglected. Scottish missionaries and teachers resisted the plans of Governor Somerset to use the schools to anglicise pupils. Andrew Murray, Alexander Smith, William Ritchie Thomson, Henry Sutherland, George Morgan and Colin Fraser had an important part in strengthening and developing the Dutch Reformed Church. Of schoolmasters recruited by Somerset, James Rose Innes became the Cape’s first Superintendent of Education in 1839 and set about providing a firm educational grounding for people of all races. John Fairbairn and James Adamson founded the South African College in 1829, later to become the University of Cape Town.

English media
The first South African newspaper, The Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser, appeared on August 16, 1800 during the first British occupation. It was published in English and Dutch and later became the Cape Government Gazette, which has continued in modified form to the present day. The first unofficial newspaper, the South African Commercial Advertiser, was founded in 1824 by Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn, settlers of Scottish descent. George Greig, the printer, was also a British settler.

The establishment led to a dispute about censorship which had far-reaching effects for the South African press. The paper was suppressed by Governor Somerset, but in 1829, an ordinance removed from the Government the power of interfering with the Press and made newspapers subject only to the law of libel.

This success led to the first unofficial Dutch newspaper, De Zuid-Afrihaan, being established in 1830. The following year the Graham’s Town Journal was launched in the East Cape. Press freedom was later accepted in other parts of South Africa, with the result that newspapers played an important political role.

Government
The Cape developed a system of parliamentary government modeled on Westminster. In 1834 it received its first bicameral governing institution with the creation of a Legislative Council and an Executive Council. For the first time a clear distinction was drawn between legislative and executive functions.

John Campbell

As a result of agitation for a form of representative government, mainly by British colonists, the Cape in 1854 was granted an elected parliament. Another 18 years elapsed before the constitution was changed to provide for an executive chosen from the party which commanded the majority in the lower house, to which it was also responsible.

In 1834 the Cape received its first bicameral governing institution with the creation of a Legislative Council and an Executive Council. Until the end of the 19th century, in both the Transvaal (ZAR) and Free State republics, there was an elected Volksraad and an Executive Council with an elected President. Thomas François Burgers (above) was the second president of the ZAR.

The other territories also had representative governments. In Natal the colonists got theirs in 1856 and responsible government in 1893. Until the end of the 19th century, in both the Transvaal and Free State republics, there was an elected Volksraad and an Executive Council with an elected President. With Union in 1910 it was the Cape and Natal form of responsible parliamentary government which had served as the model for parliament.

Politics
English-speaking South Africans played a far greater role in politics prior to Union than afterwards. Between 1872 and 1910 all but one of the prime ministers of the Cape were of British descent. The influence of two, Cecil Rhodes and Dr Leander Jameson, was felt far beyond the borders of the Cape. By contrast, between 1948 when the National Party took office and 1990 when a decision was made to negotiate a democratic future the number of English-speakers who reached cabinet rank numbered barely the fingers of a hand.

An ambitious British imperialist Rhodes had by 1890 made Bechuanaland and the territory north of the Limpopo River part of empire. Most British immigrants to the Transvaal were denied full franchise rights. Rhodes used Jameson to raid the Transvaal in 1895 to stir rebellion but the venture was easily crushed. At the national convention of 1908-09 to draft a constitution for South Africa, English-speakers were well represented, among them being John X. Merriman, Jameson, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, Sir Frederick Moor and Sir Thomas Smartt.

Infrastructure
Road-building was a great contribution of the British. The arrival of the settlers and the many frontier wars made good roads essential. The route to Grahamstown was the Cape’s main thoroughfare. An early engineering feat was the Franschhoek Pass, begun in 1823, followed in 1830 by the road over the Hottentots Holland range and named for the governor, Sir Lowry Cole.

In 1837 Scotsman Andrew Geddes Bain began to build an excellent military road across rugged terrain between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort . The so-called Queen’s Road, was a continuation of the main route from Cape Town. The work led to Bain making palaentological fossil finds, many of them new to science.

John Montagu, who arrived at the Cape in 1843, helped establish a central and divisional road boards. Both were involved in systematically extending the road network. In the Free State and Transvaal road building awaited the revenue which accrued from gold mining.

Ports and coasts
In 1824 the British built the first lighthouse and in 1860 a start was made on a breakwater and docks at Cape Town. They were also responsible for the construction of all other harbours along the Cape and Natal coast.

Railways
The first railways operated privately around Durban and Cape Town. By 1885 there was a railway from Cape Town to Kimberley, built by British engineers to serve the diamond-fields, then being developed chiefly with British capital. The Transvaal and Orange Free State were without railways, and it was the progressive extension of railways by the colonial governments which led to rail development in the Boer republics.

By September 1892 Johannesburg was linked to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, two years before the line, sponsored by President Paul Kruger and built by the a Dutch company, was completed to Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.

Mineral Revolution
Diamond-mining led to the establishment of South Africa’s first capitalist concern organised on a national basis, and very largely dependent on capital from Great Britain. This was De Beers Consolidated Mines, stated by Rhodes, son of a Hertfordshire parson, whose chief rival had been Barney Barnato, a London-born Jew.

The nature of the gold deposits of the Witwatersrand also favoured capitalist concerns. Were it not for the advanced technology and chemistry of the predominantly British Uitlanders, the finely disseminated gold could not have been extracted from the hard quartzite conglomerate of the Witwatersrand, the richest gold-field of the world.

Gold-mining revolutionised the economy of South Africa. They gave birth to manufacturing industries and boosted agriculture. Factories established directly or indirectly through British capital have drawn millions to the cities, transforming the demographic landscape.

Law
The common law in South Africa is Roman-Dutch, derived from the 17th century law of the Netherlands. When the Cape was ceded to the British in 1806 the common law remained unaltered. In certain fields, however, English law, being seldom in conflict with Roman-Dutch law, was gradually absorbed into the South African system.
Reference has already been made to the role of the British missionaries in the field of South African law. They succeeded in persuading the Cape government to open the courts to people of all races, a policy eventually adopted throughout South Africa.

The British were always a minority group and their influence has come to be expressed through their control of major mining and industrial concerns rather than politics.
Source: South African Encyclopedia

Aided Immigration from Britain to South Africa

Mother & Baby

The first White baby was born at the Cape to the wife of the sick-comforter Willem Barentz Wijlant on 6 June 1652. At the time an epidemic of a serious type of dysentery affected many of the available helpers, but of the three women who were not ill, the wife of Adriaen de Jager, the first senior surgeon at the Cape, probably would have assisted at the delivery. Such married women with experience in deliveries were the midwives of the day, and it is recorded that the gates of the Fort were opened at 4am on 4 September 1660 to admit the midwife and other women to assist the wife of Abraham Gabbema at the birth of her son. That it was customary for Europeans to have help at the time of childbirth is clear from the surprise of Van Riebeeck at a delivery near the Fort of a Hottentot woman ‘without assistance from man or woman’. She cleaned the child herself, rubbed it all over with cow-dung and put it to her breast.

19th century
This contrast between the European and the indigenous population continued with little change for more than two centuries, except that the Dutch East India Company always endeavoured to provide sworn midwives in Cape Town and that, during the second British occupation, in 1807, further control regarding competency of midwives was instituted. The same was done for doctors and apothecaries. That this control was necessary is clear from the fact that there was at that time no sworn midwife in Cape Town and ‘any Hottentot woman, free woman of colour, and even slaves, presuming to act as midwives’, might do so. This led to ‘extensive evils and frequent misfortunes’.

In 1810 Dr. J. H. Wehr, a qualified man interested in obstetrics, was appointed colonial instructor in midwifery. At his instigation the Midwifery School was established by the Earl of Caledon, this being the first professional school of any kind in South Africa. Seven pupils qualified in 1813, having been well trained both from the scientific aspect and regarding the moral and social significance of the work of the midwife. The custom was then, as in many places still today, that the midwife should manage normal confinements and call in a doctor at any complication.

First Caesarean section

Dr James Barry

On 25 July 1826 obstetrical history was made at the Cape in what is said to be the fourth such case reported in the world, when Dr. James Barry was called in to see a Mrs. Thomas Munnik, who was in distressed labour. He performed a Caesarean section on her in her home (and there were no general anaesthetics in those days.) Both she and her baby son survived. The grateful parents named their son James Barry Munnik, a name well remembered, because James Barry Munnik Hertzog, who became Prime Minister of South Africa, acquired it from his godfather, James Barry Munnik.

Great Trek
During the Great Trek the ‘ouvrouens’ (old wives) played the same role in midwifery as they had done in the country districts of the Cape. Of particular interest is the part played by the wife of Pieter Uys on their trek. On the well-known day when the sympathetic English-speaking settlers of Grahamstown presented old Jacobus Uys with a Bible, this young woman was given much valuable advice by Dr. John Atherstone on how to cope with problems in childbirth. Being impressed by her courage, he also gave her a considerable quantity of medicines.

Registration of midwives
It would appear that South Africa was to a certain extent spared some of the bitter friction between doctors and midwives in the handling of obstetrical cases. In Europe, at the beginning of the 16th century, doctors were still rigidly excluded from the birth chamber. During that century, however, Ambroise Paré, a great French surgeon, and William Chamberlen (both Huguenots), who devised the obstetric forceps, made major contributions to the practice of obstetrics, which brought the doctor into this field. This, however, rather accentuated the friction, which lasted until about the end of the 19th century. The small number of doctors and midwives was probably one reason for the lack of obvious friction in South Africa, and at the time when the matter might have come to a head the country was blessed with nurses and doctors possessing such insight that South Africa became the first country in the world to introduce State registration of midwives (1891).

The prime mover seems to have been the great Sister Henrietta Stockdale of Kimberley, who interviewed Dr. W. G. Atherstone, chairman of the Cape select committee on medical reform, insisting that ‘this country needs properly trained and qualified midwives, intelligent women who are able to lay the foundation for a healthy nation’. All the medical men in the Legislative Assembly gave this part of the Bill their unanimous support.

Wise men and women in the medical and nursing professions have assured progress in the field of obstetrics, so that today there is teamwork instead of friction. This is shown not only in the sphere of practical medicine, but also by the fact that there is representation of nurses on the South African Medical and Dental Council and of doctors on the South African Nursing Council.

School of midwives
The foundress of modern midwifery education in South Africa was Mary Hirst Watkins, who trained under Sister Stockdale, Sister Catherine Booth and the local doctors at Kimberley. She established the school for midwives there in 1893. Her work was well known not only in South Africa but also in England, where she was offered an appointment in 1905. The letter reached Kimberley on the day she died.

Elizabeth Marais

First beds for midwifery
The first beds were set aside for midwifery cases in Albany Hospital, Grahamstown, in 1858. The Provincial Hospital, Port Elizabeth, admitted their first ‘accouchement case’ in 1865. Because these cases were complicated deliveries, the authorities found it necessary in the course of time to provide beds for emergency midwifery cases of an abnormal nature. This arbitrary division between normal and abnormal cases (the normal for a long time apparently being no concern of the authorities) has been responsible for many deaths of mothers. In addition, the division of responsibility in South Africa between the central government and the provincial administrations has proved a most unfortunate one, more so in obstetrics than other fields of medicine, as at first the provinces were given the responsibility for abnormal obstetrics only. As a result there has been much delay in providing for ‘normal’ cases, which may become seriously abnormal in a matter of minutes.

Maternity hospitals
The centres in which maternity hospitals have been established have mainly been the centres where medical schools are situated, as this is essential for the training of medical students and midwives (and from a later stage the nurses completing an integrated general nursing and midwifery course). The best-known of these are the Peninsula Maternity Home in Cape Town and the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital in Johannesburg. In Pretoria the old Moedersbond Hospital was taken over by the Province and is now part of the H. F. Verwoerd Hospital complex. At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town a large maternity block was added in 1961. In other centres obstetrics is dealt with as a section of a general hospital, not infrequently as a separate block.

The first non-White obstetrical case given hospital treatment in South Africa was admitted to Grey Hospital, King William’s Town, in 1872. The previously disadvantaged now also receive top obstetrical care at large maternity sections at hospitals, such as King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban and Chris Hani – Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg, where many thousands of deliveries are done each year.
Source: Standard Encylopeadia of South Africa

Have you ever considered that your Ancestors marriages in Cape Town during the 2nd British Occupation were not valid ? as well as hundreds of baptisms that took place, all by one minister who faked his identity. One of the strangest characters at the Cape of Good Hope during the first decade of the nineteenth century, was the Rev. Dr. Laurence Hynes Halloran (1765-1831). Little is known of his early life. Born in Ireland at Ratoath, he appears as a schoolmaster in Exeter at about the time when his first two volumes of poems were published, in 1790 and 1791.

Search Ancestry24′s marriages and baptisms here.

Next we find him in the Royal Navy as a chaplain, and present at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 while serving in H.M.S. “Britannia”. Two years later, on 7 December 1807, he arrived at the Cape of Good Hope to take up his position as chaplain to the garrison, and, a little later, he became chaplain to the navy as well. His extraordinary career at the Cape has been described at some length by Theal in his History of South Africa since 1795, vol. 1, p. 237-240, and also by Laidler in his Tavern of the Ocean, Cape Town, Maskew Miller, p. 128-130, but nothing seems to have been known about his final years in New South Wales to which he was sentenced to be transported for seven years in 1818.

Now, thanks to the recently published Australian Encyclopaedia, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, vol. 4, the missing information has been supplied, together with a few details in regard to his early life and his literary work which do not seem to have been recorded elsewhere. Halloran’s career at the Cape during 1808 and 1809 seems to have been fairly uneventful. He served not only as chaplain to both the military and naval forces in Cape Town, but also held Anglican church services for the civilian population in the Dutch Reformed church, in Cape Town, which was lent for that purpose. He also established a school for boys, and another for girls which was conducted by his daughters. The trouble began when, as Theal puts it, he ” annoyed ” Lt.-Gen. Henry George Grey, commander of the forces in the colony, and as a result was ordered to remove himself from Cape Town to Simonstown, there to continue his clerical duties. Halloran resigned his chaplaincy and a few weeks later he was suspected of having written anonymous, threatening and defamatory letters to Grey, was arrested and brought to trial for libel.

The story which lay behind the hostility between Grey and Halloran is briefly described in The Australian Encyclopaedia, is treated a little more fully by Laidler, while Halloran presented his own account at great length in the book in which he pleaded his cause in England in 1811. This fat volume of over 700 pages was printed by T. Harper, jun., Crane Court, Fleet Street, in 1811, and is entitled: Proceedings, including original correspondence, official documents, exhibits, duly attested, and authenticated, as correct extracts from the records of the Court of Justice, at the Cape of Good Hope, in a criminal process for a libel, instituted at the suit of Lieut.-Gen. the Hon. H. G. Grey; and by order of the Right Hon. Earl of Caledon, Governor of that Colony, against Laurence Halloran, D.D. Late Chaplain to His Majesty’s Forces, etc., in South Africa.

On Christmas Day, 1809, Captain R. Ryan and Paymaster Patullo fought a duel in which Patullo was slightly wounded. As a result of this, Ryan and his second, Captain W. Burke Nicolls of the 72nd Regiment, were arrested by Gen. Grey and court-martialled. Halloran undertook their defence, because, he states in his book, the only barrister in the colony was engaged by the prosecution, and because ” these gentlemen had long been my most intimate and valued friends ” (p.2). According to Laidler, Ryan was also Halloran’s prospective son-in-law. Gen. Grey reprimanded Halloran for doing so at the time of the court martial for he wished to suppress duelling and felt that a clergyman should not have concerned himself in the affair.

He charged Halloran with encouraging discord and duelling. Halloran’s temper was fully aroused and he evidently expressed his feelings in a most unclerical fashion on several occasions during the months that followed. He is even said to have preached a sermon at the expense of the Governor himself. Meanwhile he applied for and was appointed to the headmastership of the Latin school in Cape Town, a position he intended to fill in addition to his other duties. On the very day on which he was to commence in this new post, in June 1810, (Theal gives the date as 1 June, while Grey’s letter in Halloran’s book is dated 18 June) he was ordered by the General to remove himself to Simons Town on or before 14 July.

The day after he received these orders Halloran resigned his military chaplaincy, pending the pleasure of the king. It later transpired that his (letters] of ordination had been forged, and this could have meant that the marriages he had solemnized in Cape Town were invalid. They were, however, declared valid by the Cape government. Back in England … under aliases, [he] continued his career of deception, appearing in various places as a clergyman, but eventually confessed all his impostures to the Bishop of London” (Giliomee). Found guilty of defrauding the Post Office of ten pence, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales. What had evidently brought matters to a head was Paymaster Patullo’s election to the Harmony Society, upon which Halloran promptly resigned from his membership after expressing himself most intemperately both in his speech and in the letter addressed to the Society on 11 June 1810. Gen. Grey’s reaction was to order him to Simons Town.

In the weeks that followed Gen. Grey, as well as other persons at the Cape, received unpleasant, threatening, anonymous letters. On 22 July 1810, in a letter which denied authorship of the anonymous letters, Halloran informed Grey that he had ” written for publication, several ` poetical bugbears,’ as well as ` prose strictures,’ on various parts of your conduct both public and private.” One of the letters in question had included one such ” poetical bugbear ” and this helped to confirm Grey’s suspicion that Halloran was the author. Judging from the exchange of signed letters between the two, Halloran seems to have lost all control of his anger and so hastened his undoing. He was arrested, brought to trial for libel, found guilty and sentenced to be banished from the colony.

His appeal failed and after some five weeks in gaol he was placed aboard a ship for England. It is only fair, however, to show that this difficult but most able man was not without his supporters at the Cape. That he won the friendship and respect of his civilian congregation in Cape Town can be assumed from the two testimonials presented to him, even though they were drawn up on 7 December 1808, and 25 December 1809, before his quarrels with authority. Both of these are printed in his book (p. 18, 20) and were signed by thirty-six and twenty-four members of the English church congregation, respectively. In 1808 he was lauded for the manner in which he ” discharged all the professional duties of ` Colonial Chaplain ‘ for the civil inhabitants of this town.”

The second testimonial was also couched in the most complimentary terms with regard to his ” character and exemplary conduct, and .. . his zeal, and exertions, for the promotion of religion in this Colony.” It made him a Christmas offering of one thousand rix-dollars, for the purchase of a piece of plate, as he received no emoluments for his work for the civilian congregation. While he was in prison, he also received a very kind letter (Proceedings, etc., p. 602) from the Fiscal, Mr. J. A. Truter, who was so closely concerned with the trial, expressing ” my sincere gratitude, for the useful and manly instruction, which my son has received at your establishment, and under your care, the future interruption of which I verily lament … your name shall always remain in thankful remembrance in my family.” At the same time forty-nine English inhabitants of Cape Town addressed a memorial (p. 605) to the Governor, the Earl of Caledon, in which their high regard for Halloran was recorded, together with a plea for clemency. Among the signatories appear such names as J. B. Ebden, Hamilton Ross, Alexander Tennant, and Robert Stuart.

The same petitioners also presented him with 1,200 rix-dollars (p. 644). The sentence, however, was carried out and Halloran left for England in March 1811. There he busied himself with the publication of his appeal which merely led to his further undoing because an inquiry into his past life disclosed the unfortunate fact that his certificate of ordination was forged. His degree of Doctor of Divinity from Aberdeen University had, indeed, been obtained through favour and not by examination. Consternation reigned at the Cape where many couples feared that their marriages were invalid. The authorities hastily set their fears at rest. Undaunted by this unwelcome exposure, Halloran pursued his clerical career in England under various assumed names and armed with spurious documents. His career there came to an abrupt end in 1818 when his rector had him prosecuted for franking a letter in the name of a Member of Parliament and defrauding the Post Office of ten pence. He was sentenced to be transported to New South Wales for seven years. For his career in Australia we turn now to The Australian Encyclopaedia.

When he reached Sydney in June 1819, he was fortunate enough to find in Governor Macquarie’s secretary an old friend from Cape Town-John Thomas Campbell, who, incidentally, was one of the men who signed the testimonial presented to Halloran in 1808. Campbell, who was one of those concerned in the founding of the Bank of the Cape of Good Hope, had accompanied Macquarie to Sydney in 1809. Campbell recommended that Halloran be granted a ticket of leave, but this was cancelled when the courts decided that certain charges brought by him against the master of the transport “Baring,” which had brought him to Sydney, were “false and malicious.” Fortunately for him he was assigned as a servant to Simeon Lord, with whom he had already found favour. A second ticket of leave having been granted, Lord permitted him to open a school. Halloran appears to have been an admirable school-master and received unstinted praise from both Governor Macquarie of New South Wales, who described him as the best and most admired school master in the colony, and Commissioner Bigge, who admitted that the school was well conducted, very efficient and preferred by the principal residents to one kept by the official schoolmaster.”

In 1825 Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane also reported very favourably on the manner in which the school was conducted, and in a private letter referred to Halloran’s “assiduity, ability and success,” not to mention his good conduct as a citizen and a journalist. In the same year a free grammar school was established by free settlers and military officers and Halloran was invited to be the headmaster. Once again misfortune came his way, for the school failed and Halloran was jailed for debt. On his release in 1827 he asked Governor Darling to support his proposal to set up another free grammar school, and when this support was refused he began to publish a newspaper, the Gleaner which lasted from April to September 1827. Darling’s comment in a dispatch to the Colonial Office brings to life the Halloran of the Cape-” he writes well, though intemperately.” In 1828 the Governor made Halloran coroner, but this was cancelled in September because of a quarrel with Archdeacon Scott in the course of which Halloran threatened to publish defamatory documents about him. ” In this case, at any rate,” states the Australian Encyclopaedia,” Halloran had extreme provocation; because he had prefaced his Sunday lectures at the court-house with prayers from the Anglican liturgy, not having obtained permission from Scott to do so, his lectures were prohibited, his pew in St. James’ church was taken from him, and an appointment with the Australian Agricultural Company … was withheld through Scott’s interference.

As a last resort Halloran opened in 1830 a ` memorial office ‘ where-in persons with a grievance against the Government might have their wrongs persuasively set forth for official perusal in London.” Halloran died in Sydney on 7 March 1831. His son Henry Halloran, 1811-1893 is also given an entry in the Australian Encyclopaedia. Henry was born on 6 April 1811 in Cape Town a few months after his father’s disgrace and banishment to England. He was educated at his father’s school in Sydney and rose to the position of principal under-secretary in the public service. He was created C.M.G. on his resignation in 1878. He also wrote verse, evidently not of the same standard as that of his more talented father, who produced in all, four volumes of poems and a play before going to Australia.

Acknowledgment: Africana Notes and News September, 1961 Vol. 14, No. 7 Acknowledgement: Messengers, Watchmen and Stewards. A biographical register of clergymen licensed, ordained for service, or otherwise active, in the Anglican diocese of Cape Town prior to the death of Archbishop William West Jones on 21 May 1908. Andries William de Villiers Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 1998. Image Acknwlodgment: Danny Hellman http://www.dannyhellman.com Richard.

Ryan born in Tipperary, Ireland c. 1776 and married in Cape Town on 4th November 1810 to Maria Theresia HALLORAN from County Meath, Ireland. Source: SA Genealogies www.gisa.org.za

To Jan van Riebeeck goes the credit for having made the first attempt to provide services for the travelling public in South Africa. Barely two years after the establishment of the settlement at Table Bay, in 1654, he submitted for the consideration of Geraert Hulst, Director-General of the Dutch East India Company, whose ship Parel was lying in the bay, a request that he (Van Riebeeck) provide, for those visitors for whom facilities could not be furnished at the Fort, ‘a boardinghouse (ordinaris), the keeper to be supplied from the Company’s stores and gardens . . .’ 

Within another two years the Council of Policy, presided over by Van Riebeeck himself, approved a request from ‘the housewife Annetje de Boerin, wife of the Company’s gardener, Hendrick Boom, on account of her eight children, to take out the family income by opening an inn for the feeding and accommodation of men going and coming in passing ships’. The principal condition attached was that she must buy all her liquor from the Company’s own store – the first instance in South Africa of what is today called a ‘tied house’.

On 20 Sept. 1656 Annetje’s establishment met with its first competition when Jannetje Boddijs, of Doesburg, wife of the garrison sergeant, was permitted to open another tavern on similar terms. A fine was to be imposed on any member of the community who, during his working hours, indulged in ‘debauches’. From that date the liquor trade has played a major part in the South African hotel industry.

On a visit to the Cape in Oct. 1657, the Commissioner Rijckloff van Goens sr. confirmed the grant of an innkeeper’s licence to Sergeant Jan van Harwarden, to whom was allocated ‘part of an old sheepfold’ at the Fort as accommodation for travellers. From then on, the number of inns increased, most of them being of a primitive type. Among them may be mentioned De Gouden Anker, De Witte Swaen, De Laatste Penning.

As a rule the lodgers were sailors or soldiers whose demands were modest and who expected shelter for a few slivers a night. Drunkenness and violence were so frequent that the more law-abiding and prosperous strangers, unwilling to use these facilities, usually found lodging in private homes. Not only were the standards higher there, but a steady increase in the demand frequently led to the conversion of such homes into boardinghouses. Describing conditions during the 17305, O. F. Mentzel wrote: ‘Board and lodging can be obtained at these small hostelries for 34 slivers a day; wine is extra, unless it is supplied as part of the meal . . . What has been said above of humble townsmen applies even more forcibly to prominent wealthy burghers, at whose houses captains, superior officers and distinguished visitors sojourn temporarily. The charges and consequently the profits are higher, but the methods are very much the same. At these fashionable houses, board and lodging costs one rix-dollar per diem, with the style of accommodation and the quality of the table of a high standard. Here again extras make the bill mount up.

‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the famous French novelist, visiting the Cape in 1768, describes the efforts of rival hosts to secure lodgers from passing ships by sending representatives in boats out into the roadstead. Few records survive of these early hostelries, but we know that the Abbe De la Caille patronised a boarding-house in Strand Street, the site of which is today marked by a memorial tablet. Captain James Cook, the explorer, when he visited the Cape in yes, procured quarters for himself and members of his staff with one Brand, at the rate of half-a-crown a day, ‘for which we were provided with victuals, drink and lodging’.

Hotels in the modern sense made their appearance at the Cape soon after the first British occupation in 1795, the earliest being the Old Thatched Tavern, facing Greenmarket Square, which, despite the disappearance of the original straw roof early in the 19th century, survived, at any rate in name, until 1970. The oldest existing hotel in South Africa seems to be the Houw Hoek Inn in the Houhoek Pass (between Sir Lowry’s Pass and Caledon), which, according to tradition, was founded about 1834.

Very well known in those days in Cape Town was the London Hotel in Hour Street, as well as Morison’s.

Hotel at No. 6 Keizersgracht (now Darling Street), established about 1800 by a Scot of that name. William Wilberforce Bird, in his ‘Notes on the Cape of Good Hope’, described his stay at Morison’s in 1820: ‘We are moderately comfortable, and at a somewhat reduced cost. The charge is six rix-dollars a day, including all expenses. The house is upon the plan of an English boarding-house. A public breakfast at nine; luncheon or tiffin, as it is called, after the Indian fashion (a most essential meal, consisting of meats hot and cold, fruits, wine, etc.) at one; dinner at half-past six. This method is usual at the Cape.

‘Standards of comfort were raised with the opening in 1821 of the St. George’s Hotel at the foot of St. George’s Street, which lasted until the end of the century. Countless others followed, notably Poole’s Hotel in New Street (now Queen Victoria Street), particularly frequented by officials and parliamentarians; Widdow’s Masonic Hotel in Grave Street (now Parliament Street), the resort of Freemasons; and a number of others in the suburbs, notably the Vineyard (on the site of the present Vineyard Hotel in Newlands) and Rathfelder’s, on the way to Constantia. Several early hostelries even gave their names to suburbs, for instance, Drie Koppen, forerunner of Mowbray. Farmer Peck’s Inn at Muizenberg, opened in 1825, was one of the first seaside hotels. Renamed the Grand during the Second Anglo-Boer War, it survived into the 20th century. This had, of course, no connection with the Grand Hotel in Cape Town.

Improved amenities were to be noticed in Cape hotels during the course of the 19th century, especially after the introduction of railways had given a stimulus to travel. In 1893 the Union Steamship Company led the way by opening its own hotel in Cape Town the Grand in Strand Street repeatedly rebuilt and finally demolished in 1973. The establishment of the Grand Hotel led, six years later, to an even more ambitious undertaking by the Castle Steamship Company, headed by Sir Donald Currie, who established a first-rate hotel on the Mount Nelson estate in the Gardens. Designed by English architects and managed at first by a Swiss expert, Emil Cathrein, the Mount Nelson from the outset attracted an exclusive clientele and during the Second AngloBoer War was the unofficial headquarters of the British army and harboured prosperous refugees from the Witwatersrand (hence its nickname ‘The Helots’ Rest’).

Development of hotels in other parts of the country proceeded more slowly, but as early as 1808 there was already an inn beside the warm baths at Caledon. The arrival of the 1820 Settlers gave an impetus to English names and to such customs as the ‘ordinary’ (defined as a fixed-price meal in a public eatinghouse) in the Eastern Province. Among the earliest hotels in Port Elizabeth was the still existing Phoenix, dating back to 1840, while in Grahamstown the Cheshire Cheese (the hotel no longer exists) and similar names reminded the emigrants of the ‘Old Country”

The Boer tradition of private hospitality inhibited the development of hotels in the republics and, although by degrees this factor receded, for a long time both Durban and Pietermaritzburg were in advance of Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Pretoria in this respect. The Plough Hotel was one of the earliest in the Natal capital, while, in honour of Prince Alfred, Durban’s leading hostelry was, in 1860, named the Royal, an appellation which persists with great frequency elsewhere.Wayside hotels throughout South Africa were notoriously bad, primitive in their facilities and usually constructed of corrugated iron. Their condition became even more noticeable after the discovery of diamonds, and strangers arriving in Kimberley were frequently offered nothing but canvas. None the less, some of the earlier hotel-keepers there, such as Mrs. Jardine, acquired a reputation for good service and good food. Rough-and-ready were the conditions at early mining centres like Pilgrim’s Rest, Barberton and Johannesburg. In 1886, within a few months of the founding of Johannesburg, the Central Hotel opened in Commissioner Street. It was one of the first brick structures on the gold-fields. Height’s Hotel, one of the leading establishments on the Witwatersrand, dated from 1887, but was demolished some eighty years later. Another early Johannesburg hotel, the Great Britain, in the suburb named City and Suburban, was erected in 1888 and demolished in the 1960s.Barnato and Rhodes helped to produce a revolution in hotel-keeping standards – the former by starting the enterprise which developed into the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, the latter by causing De Beers to put up a fine hotel on the outskirts of Kimberley and the Chartered Company to sponsor the Grand Hotel at Bulawayo. Equipped in 1906 by the famous London firm of blaring & Gillow at a cost of £750 000, the Carlton’s 200 rooms set an entirely new standard. In Durban, too, there were radical changes, following the opening, about 1880, of the original Beach Hotel, forerunner of the array that today lines the Marine Parade. Here the construction of the Hotel Edward in 1909 further improved the situation, helping to attract the investment of large sums in modern buildings.Hotel development proceeded more slowly in Bloemfontein, where the first hostelries included the Vrystaat Hotel in the 1860′s.

At Pretoria, too, the first hostelries were almost rural in their simplicity, notably L. Taylor’s Edinburgh Hotel in the seventies. Polley’s, originally the Transvaal Hotel, was for many years the premier rendezvous in the Transvaal capital. A still existing early hotel there is the Residentie. Mention must also be made of individual enterprise in unusual places, such as the Hotel Milner, opened by J. D. Logan at Matjiesfontein in the 1880′s, which became a resort popular with many eminent travellers.

After a lapse of generations, the place underwent rejuvenation in the 1970s.In 1882 Anders Ohlsson took over the brewery of the Chevalier Jacob Letterstedt in Newlands, Cape Town; this he modernised and greatly expanded. Ever since his time large South African breweries and liquor firms have been active in the hotel-keeping field, more especially through financial support of lessees; this was the system of ‘tied houses’. Chains of hotels have been relatively few in South Africa until comparatively recent times. Here a milestone was the founding, about 11930, of African Amalgamated Hotels Ltd., owners of leading establishments in Johannesburg and coastal cities.Attempts to improve the standards of hotel-keeping by official action go back to the beginning of the present century, but no practical steps were taken for many years. In 1936 Prof A. J. Norval, of Pretoria, prepared an authoritative survey of the situation in South Africa, published in London under the title. The tourist industry – a national and international survey. This helped to stimulate interest, but not until 1945 was the South African Tourist Corporation established, and only in 1965 was compulsory inspection and classification of hotels introduced. This is now universally enforced, being indicated by grading with varying numbers of stars (up to five) by the Hotels Board. Largely because of this, the rising numbers of well-to-do tourists, and the general influx of capital, even from the United States of America, there has been a sudden upsurge of hotel-building throughout the country. This is still in progress and in it many large companies are involved. 

Source SESA Copyright Naspers

One of the consequences of the deeply felt need for preparation and strength through faith has been the appointment in the army of men able to give spiritual support. Clergymen were on board the ships of Bartholomew Dias (1488), Vasco da Gama (1497) and the Dutch merchant ships which were in operation before the formation of the Dutch East India Company, in the form of parsons and sick-comforters, that they might provide spiritual comfort and ministration to those on board and at trading posts. In 1652 Willem Barentsz Wylant ministered as the first sick-comforter at the Cape. In 1665 the Rev. Johannes van Arckel made his appearance as the first minister to be settled at the Cape, where he and his successors also ministered to members of the garrison.

With the First British Occupation (1795-1803) the first Anglican military chaplain, fleet chaplain J. E. Attwood, arrived at the Cape in 1795. He was succeeded by four army and navy chaplains who held divine service in the Castle and cared for the spiritual needs of the British military. During the Batavian period (1803-1806) the military were ministered to as part of the local parish. The spiritual needs of Roman Catholic soldiers were taken care of by three priests brought to the Cape.

During 1806-1814, under the Second British Occupation, there once again appeared at the Cape Anglican military chaplains who were responsible also for the erection of church buildings in Simonstown (1814), Wynberg (1821) and Cape Town (1834). During the Sixth Frontier War (1834-35) military chaplains accompanied the British troops. At the request of the governor, Sir Harry Smith, three military chaplains were sent to British Kaffraria (1848), Natal (1848) and King William's Town (1850). British military chaplains made their appearance in Natal in 1843, in the Orange River Sovereignty in 1848, and with the British troops in Pretoria in 1877.

Both during the war of 1880-81 as well as during the Second Anglo Boer War military chaplains of various denominations accompanied the British troops. At the time of the Second British Occupation of the Cape and for some time after that the Anglican Church and the Dutch Reformed Church were the only two officially recognised religious denominations. Lay preachers of British origin, such as the Methodist Ireland John Irwin and Sergeant Kendrick – followed later by recognised British military chaplains – gave spiritual care to members of their faith in the military forces at the Cape and later elsewhere in South Africa. In 1812 the Rev. G. Thom was appointed as the first part-time military chaplain to the Presbyterians among the British troops. During the Second Anglo-Boer War other denominations such as the Roman Catholic and Baptist Churches permitted their chaplains to take part in the campaign. The spiritual care of British troops by British military chaplains in South Africa ended with the departure of the last imperial troops from Roberts Heights, Pretoria (1915), and the British contingent from Simonstown (1957).

Among the Voortrekkers the Rev. Erasmus Smit and the Rev. Daniel Lindley also attended to the spiritual care of the armed burghers in time of war. During the Basuto War of 1865-66 the Free State government made provision for spiritual care in the field. During the Sekhukhune War (1876) the State President, the Rev. T. F. Burgers, held religious services in the field, while during the war of 1880-81 Transvaal ministers served as field and/or commando preachers. During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) there were on the side of the Boers 156 chaplains, with whom a number of theological Students co-operated, in the field as well as in prisoner of-war and concentration camps. After the creation of the Union Defence Force (1912) followed by the participation of the Union in the First World War there were about 155 military chaplains, mostly fulltime, concerned with the spiritual care of the Union troops at the military bases in South Africa and on the various military fronts (German South-West Africa, German East Africa and Europe).

In 1920 the Rev. John Neethling Murray of the Ned. Geref. Kerk and the Rev. Alfred Roberts of the Anglican Church were the only two full-time chaplains in the Union Defence Force. They were assisted by a number of part-time chaplains. During the Second World War (1939-1945) 517 White and 38 non-White chaplains, representing the Afrikaans, Anglican and Roman Catholic as well as the Free Churches and the Jewish faith, laboured among perhaps 350 000 troops on the battle fronts and the home front and in prisoner-of-war camps.

In 1946 the South African Corps of Chaplains came into existence as a unit of the Active Citizen Force, while the Rev. C. F. Miles-Cadman served as adjutant chaplain-general. From 1950 to 1953 South African military chaplains were active in Korea. In 1957 it was laid down that the military chaplains, except for administrative purposes, would no longer fall under the Adjutant-General of the Defence Force, but would come directly under the Commandant General. In 1968 the Chaplain Services of the South African Defence Force, under their Director of Chaplains, began to function as a separate entity. In 1970 the rank Director of Chaplains was changed to Chaplain-General, while during the period 1960-70 the number of spiritual workers among the South African military increased to sixty.

It was decided in 1914, in imitation of British military usage in regard to military chaplains, that the Union Defence Force chaplains should not wear specific military badges of rank and should not be addressed according to rank. During the period 1914 to 1966 the badge worn was the Maltese Cross with the motto In hoc signo. During the Second World War the chaplains in the field removed their badges of rank, while in 1968 distinctive South African class C badges of rank were introduced for military chaplains. At the same time it was laid down inter alia that all chaplains would hold tile status of colonel, that they would be addressed, by their ecclesiastical titles and that the distinguishing rank badge would be a gilded Christ monogram (insert Image) on a triangle of brass with the upper surface of the triangle of purple enamel. On the cap of.a chaplain appears the cap badge, and the cap is provided with a purple cap band. The shoulders of the chaplain's uniform bear the word `Kapelaan' -for Afrikaans-speaking chaplains and `Chaplain' for English-speaking chaplains. The Maltese Cross design remains the corps badge.

Before the Union in 1910 each volunteer unit had its own regimental chaplain, and in 1914 chaplains to the forces were appointed at Roberts Heights (now Voortrekkerhoogte) on a full-time basis in what was termed the Chaplains' Department. With the outbreak of the Second World War full-time chaplains were again appointed, and since 1946 there has been a South African Corps of Chaplains in the Defence Force, with chaplains for the Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Free Churches and the Jewish faith.