The Casual Observer

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Margaret Rheeder – The Spousal Murderer

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 8 May 2023 0 Comment

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 6^th 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

https://www.truecrimelibrary.com/crimea…/margaret-rheeder/

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Antisemitism and Nazi Acolytes

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 5 May 2023 0 Comment

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

Port Elizabeth of Yore: The first ships to use the new quay

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 5 May 2023 0 Comment

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 28^th 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..

A Quick SMAC #1: Inspector Clouseau

By Blaine McCleland in Opinion Pieces 3 May 2023 0 Comment

When Russia invaded Ukraine with massed forces, the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO) rightly condemned it. Within 24 hours they obsequiously changed their position to plead for negotiation even though Russia was in complete contravention of the UN Charter regarding the vivisection of sovereign member countries. Their attempts at justification ran the gamut from the moral equivalence of the US con job – the Iraq War – to ‘we have shown the world the way of negotiation to solve problems’. It maintained that it was non-aligned but was actually aligning itself to China and Russia to help create a bipolar world. Along the way it allowed a Russian ship to dock in Simonstown with its transponder turned off and surreptitiously load unknown cargo in the dead of night. It followed this up by taking part in naval wargames with their newfound buddies, Russia and China. A bit of navel gazing would have been more appropriate. SA has also been all at sea with how to deal with Putin if he arrives for the planned BRICS conference later this year. All the while, SA repeatedly abstained from numerous votes in the UN condemning Russian aggression.

Suddenly, on 2 May, SA abstained as per normal in the UN – ho, hum – but their ‘non-aligned’ buddies; China, India and Brazil, threw them to the wolves by voting to condemn Russian aggression.

Oops. SA has found itself naked and clueless.

Quo vadis SA?

Schoenmakerskop of Yore: Is it Misplaced Nostalgia?

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 25 April 2023 0 Comment

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

Port Elizabeth of Yore: The P.E. Bowling Club

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 24 April 2023 0 Comment

The Port Elizabeth Bowling Club, the oldest Bowling Club in South Africa, was founded on the 14^th 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

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Origin of the name of Heugh Road

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 21 April 2023 0 Comment

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

A SMAC in the Face #52: Catch Me If You Can

By Blaine McCleland in Jokes 21 April 2023 0 Comment

Thabo Bester put the con into convict. The convicted rapist and murderer, led a fantastic (using the original meaning related to fantasy) life until now. While serving his life sentence at the Mangaung Correctional Centre, he managed to first ensnare the beautiful Dr Nandipha Magudumana and inveigle her into his conman lifestyle. He then proceeded to create a fake persona, one Tom Mosepe, a fake business empire, 21st Century Media, and successfully run a massive scam from a zoom studio within the prison! This starts to put the original ‘Catch Me If You Can’ protagonist in the shade. He then went one step further. He escaped without anyone knowing about it.

By bribing several prison officials and getting his beloved Nandi to do the grunt work, he managed to get a dead body burnt in his cell in the dead of night and slipped out unnoticed into something more comfortable on 3 May 2022. I can just imagine the advert that Nandi would have placed in the Jobs section of Gumtree.

WANTED: Body double wanted for a remake of The Crypt which is about the undead. A once in a lifetime opportunity to make easy money. No experience required.

CONTACT: dr_strangelove@nandi.con

That was part un of the greatest South African pantomime ever. Part duh is what the official organisations did about it.

The next 9½ months witnessed a bizarre dance between the DCS (Department of Correctional Services), G4S (the private security company who ran the prison, oops, correctional centre), the SAPS (South African Police), JICS (Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services) and the DoJ (Department of Justice). All that was missing in the mendacious menagerie was the DOOS (Department of Officious and Odious Supernumeraries).

On 11 August, SAPS provided JICS with a copy of the autopsy stating that the body did not die in the fire and that it’s DNA did not match Bester’s. Did SAPS open a case? No!

The buck passing by the five groups involved, and the failure by any party to admit that Bester was actually dining out with Nandi’s at home enjoying her hot sauce, is too Byzantine to relate. Suffice to say, it took the investigative team of GroundUp to elicit routine denials when they published their first article on 8 November. The official response was a profound insouciance (the antidote to Nandi’s hot sauce), if not outright denial. This laissez affaire attitude continued with GroundUp grinding them down until 15 March 2023 when the DCS finally admitted that Bester was in the wind.

The silly saga was not yet played out. After Thabo and Nandi were captured in Tanzania, another three-letter acronym had the final say. During the subsequent parliamentary inquiry, the DHA (Department of Home Affairs) revealed that far from being undead, Thabo was, in fact, unborn as they have no records of him!

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Charles Lovemore’s Last Year, 1885

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 20 April 2023 0 Comment

This blog is an extract from the excellent book simply entitled The Lovemore Story by Bernard Johnston. Unlike his father, Henry Lovemore, who married four times over his life, Charles only married once, being the norm for the era. Charles’ occupation was that of a farmer and had inherited Bushy Park from his father Henry. In addition, he had acquired a great deal of other farmland and town property in his lifetime. Besides being a Justice of the Peace, he was an active member of the Divisional Council and the Licensing Court.

Harradine describes him as a “kind friend and genial companion” and “his voice and burly form will be missed from the morning market.”

This blog is enlightening as it covers the contemporary social and economic issues. Ironically many of the issues correlate with those under discussion today such as the closing time of drinking establishments.

Main picture: Charles Lovemore

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Shipping Activity of 13^th April 1935

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 13 April 2023 0 Comment

During the first half of the 20^th century, one major service, now in severe decline, occupied a prominent place in the city’s commercial life. That was shipping and its ancillary services. It was fortunate to represent both major industries in Port Elizabeth: the export of wool and the importation of motor vehicles’ parts to be assembled in the two major motor plants viz General Motors and Ford.

To satisfy the interests of commerce and the general public in these activities, The Eastern Province Herald ran various articles regularly on these activities. Interestingly these articles even listed the names of passengers.

My uncle, George Wood, the representative for Mitchell Cotts in Port Elizabeth, kept copies of these newspaper clippings especially where they mentioned him. This is an example of such an article published on the 13^th April 1935 and provides an insight into a vital aspect of commercial activity.

Main photo: Port entry of PE photographed on the 5 Jan1938 from the bridge of the German battleship training ship – SCHLESWIG HOLSTEIN during its 6 months cruise around Africa.