A different view on current affairs & history
Blogs on Port Elizabeth
These five structures, the Campanile, Mosenthals Building, Richardsons Building, the Reserve Bank and the City Hall represent the essence of Port Elizabeth in terms of its history. Now some have been demolished or blocked out and some replaced with ahistorical buildings with no connection to its past or in fact its future.
Main picture: The majestic quintuplets – Campanile, Mosenthals, Richardsons, Reserve Bank, City Hall
Continue reading
In the book “Memoir of the Hon John Geard of Port Elizabeth,” published in 1904, Hanesworth provides one with a vivid picture of the state of Port Elizabeth. Without a local council, the hamlet had grown for the most part without “let or hindrance” and furthermore without a vision. But this would soon change.
This blog is a verbatim quote from that book.
Main picture: Port Elizabeth in 1840. The non-descript building on the right is the original iteration of St. Mary’s church
Continue reading
For the most part the upper echelons of Port Elizabeth’s society possessed more than a modicum of civic pride. Whether it was the improvement of the town itself or the upliftment of its residents, all such efforts would ultimately bear fruit and produce the town that it would become. Amongst such people was the Geard family. Starting with the initial Geard in Port Elizabeth, Charles Geard, through to his son, John, and his grandson, Charles, for three generations they bore the mantle for the improvement of the technical skills of its residents.
This is the story of more than a physical institution but also the dedication of a caring elite and was an eloquent testament to their passion and public spiritedness.
Main picture: Donkin Street. Above C Frames’s premises is the Mechanics Institute, designed by Percy Strutt and opened 23 January 1865. The land was a Government grant & after the Institute closed in June 1954 it reverted to it & became a Post Office.
Continue reading
Walmer Heights is a residential area of Walmer and according to Redgrave, “Mr. Geard purchased in Walmer 100 acres [40 ha.] of the estate known as Walmer Heights which he converted into a magnificent country residence”.
Main picture: Walmer Heights
Continue reading
The name Daisy de Melker is well known in South Africa mainly due to the fact that she had murdered her husband by means of poison. Port Elizabeth also possessed its own home-grown female poison murderer yet her name is unknown to anybody in Port Elizabeth.
Main picture: Margaret Rheeder
From 1939, when she was married at the age of 18, until Tuesday, May 6th, 1958, 19 years later, when she had a date with the hangman, Margaret Rheeder was beset by domestic problems. Three years after their marriage, her husband, Benjamin Fredenman, walked out on her, leaving her with two small children.
Lacking qualifications, Margaret survived by “making a living” by means of the oldest profession, prostitution. Later when she met a man of 70, who moved in with her, she continued to take in clients. One of them was in bed with her when her estranged husband came home. Incandescent with rage, he severely beat Margaret, while the client made good his escape.
On the morning of 27 April 1957 Rheeder went to a pharmacy in Kempston Road, Port Elizabeth to buy a bottle of Antexit ant-killer. Before she left the pharmacy, Rheeder signed the Poison Register and the owner who served her, a Mr A. Redhouse, warned her about the danger of the product to human beings and pets. Two days later her husband fell ill and died.
A doctor recorded Death by natural causes on the Death Certificate, but he was mistaken. Following dark rumours which reached the ears of the police in Port Elizabeth, the body was exhumed and at the subsequent post-mortem was found to be riddled with the arsenic that a vengeful Margaret had bought to kill him. Despite indisputable evidence confirming and corroborating her guilt, Rheeder vehemently denied poisoning her husband.
Despite a mercy plea by the jury on account of the ill-treatment which she had suffered at the hands of many men, the judge was unmoved. Her final journey in her lifetime, a meeting with the hangman at the Pretoria Central Prison, was set for Tuesday, the 6th of June 1957. It was during her final walk from her condemned cell to the gallows that the guilt-ridden Rheeder confessed to the crime making her guilt indisputable. Finally her troubled conscience had compelled her to admit the truth in spite of all the previous denials
Sources
During the 1930s in South Africa, the right-wing politicians emulated their brethren in Germany and Italy by adopting the stance that all of the evils visited on their country were as a consequence of the Jews. They even adopted a similar form of attire except that it was grey in hue hence they adopted the nomenclature The Greyshirts. They embraced all the odious memes and rhetoric of their European counterparts accusing the Jews of all manner of perverted acts.
This blog covers their activities in the Port Elizabeth region.
Main picture: The Gryshemde – South Africa’s Nazi Party
Continue reading
To the great relief of the shipping industry, after almost a century of exhortations to the authorities to provide a harbour comprising a breakwater and quays, on the 28th October 1933, the new harbour was commissioned. Without a breakwater, the old piers were subject to the vagaries of the weather with loading times often being as long as 25 days.
Now Port Elizabeth was able to compete with Cape Town and Durban
Main picture: The warship the HMS Dorsetshire on the 28 October 1933 at the opening of the Charl Malan Quay. It was sunk by Japanese dive bombers in April 1942 near Ceylon..
Continue reading
As my father was raised in Schoenmakerskop, the family was compelled to swim there every weekend. Not for us the pleasures of swimming at Pollock Beach, Willows or, heaven forbid, Humewood. It was Schoenies yet again. As he knew the area intimately and it resonated with him, especially the old days, he would not waver in our destination except on the rare occasion. Deviating was a forlorn hope. Not once did we swim at Humewood. It never cracked a nod.
A taciturn man, he seldom spoke but on the odd occasion he would make a remark about what Schoenmakerskop used to be like. To him it was nirvana. But what did paradise offer the family when in 1913, and my dad was 2 years old, offer them that was so much peace and serenity?
Being compelled to discover the history of Schoenmakerskop for a blog some time ago, this question raised a bemused head. How would I classify existence in the early two decades of the village’s existence?
Main picture: Schoenmakerskop in 1907
Continue reading
The Port Elizabeth Bowling Club, the oldest Bowling Club in South Africa, was founded on the 14th August 1882 and is located on the St George’s Park grounds. The blog is based almost solely on the St George’s Park website and the book The Social Chronical of Port Elizabeth to the end of 1949 by Margaret Harradine.
Main picture: St George’s Park in 1900. The Club House of the PE Bowling Club
Continue reading
On Sunday afternoons in the McCleland’s household we performed our familial duty by visiting the family’s matriarch, Elizabeth Daisy McCleland. She lived with her daughter, Thelma, at 99 Albert Street . One of the roads down which we drove bore a unique but odd name: Heugh. What puzzled me over the years was the origin of the word Heugh. Even though it sounded to be Germanic in origin, it clearly was not Afrikaans.
And so the mystery would remain unsolved for another 60 odd years, until, in the midst of my research into Port Elizabeth’s history, I have tracked it down. It is the derived from a successful merchant of Danish origins, Johannes Pieter Heugh.
Main picture: Castle Hill showing Prospect House formerly Stanley House
Continue reading