East London

"Willie and I look forward to our first born towards the end of April/beginning of May and we both pray it will be a lover of all that is beautiful in nature. Willie wants it to be a botanist — I want it to be a lover of birds and animals." Eric Latimer’s diary, 25th November 1906

Marjorie Eileen Doris Courtenay-Latimer (1907-2004) is ubiquitously remembered and celebrated for her part in recognising that the large fish trawled by Capt. Hendrik Goosen and the crew of the Nerine in December 1938 was an astonishing find. This was to be identified as the first live coelacanth known to Western science. JLB Smith, the ichthyologist who first described it, named it Latimeria chalumnae after Marjorie, and the Eastern Cape river mouth near which it was found.

Commemorative postcard on the “re-discovery” of the coelacanth (Sally Schramm)

Reading the Border Historical Society’s The Coelacanth journal Commemorative edition in honour of Dr Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer (2004) we find a life dedicated to a great deal more than that single event. Her contributions to the Eastern Cape town of East London, and to the Museum in particular, were immense.

Born two months prematurely, surviving practically every childhood disease known — and the Flu Pandemic (1918-1920) — the apparently frail Marjorie’s interest in “all...

In 1967 I was one of the Surgical Chiefs at the Frere Hospital in East London, a 1000 bed State General Hospital very well managed with top class Professional Medical and Nursing standards. My appointment was on a part time Consultant basis. Unfortunately, the remuneration for part timers was very low at that time, so I was compelled to open a private Practice in order to make ends meet. The work load was brutally high, so I got partners in to help.

In the 1960’s in South Africa, Doctors were required to have separate waiting rooms with separate entrances. This I refused to do, so from day one it was one set of rooms and one service for all. This attracted some criticism from colleagues and officialdom but nothing serious happened.

To get on with my story, in 1973 a police Captain came to see me as a patient. On investigation he had Cancer of the stomach. I had to do a very extensive gastric (Stomach) resection to remove it. Post operatively Capt. Venter (not his real name) did extremely well. I continued to see him for regular follow-ups for years so we got to know one another quite well. He regained his former health so quickly that I began to question the pathologist’s diagnosis. Stomach cancer is one of the nastier malignancies yet he recovered faster and better than expected. A repeat scrutiny of the Histology (tissue slides examined under high power microscopy) confirmed the diagnosis was correct.

1977 was...

The town of East London, located in the South African Eastern Cape Province, received its name on 14 January 1848 when Sir Harry Smith proclaimed the Buffalo mouth area as the “Port of East London”.

East London was one of the last Eastern Cape towns to boast a residential photographer. Many early Eastern Cape based photographers however visited some of the surrounding towns. Although recorded that the early Grahamstown based photographer, William Waller, toured the area during 1854, his itinerary did not include East London, which was again neglected when Arthur Green photographed the Eastern Cape outposts during September 1857 (Denfield, 1965).

Recorded however is that the King Williams Town based photographer, Carl Bluhm, was a visiting photographer to East London during 1869 (on invitation). Bluhm took the first professional photographic views of East London during May 1869 and returned to East London on a number of occasions thereafter (Click here to read the article on Bluhm).

Carl Bluhm

During 1858, King Williams Town had two permanent photographic establishments whereafter it was never without a resident photographer.

By the end of 1860, permanent photographic establishments had also been set up in Queenstown, Fort Beaufort and Alice, but East London’s photographic history did not begin until 1875, when GR Hobson set up East London’s first...

This article is based on the combined resources of the two authors. Carol Hardijzer has an avid interest in 19th Century photography in South Africa and his research and collection of Carl Bluhm photographs compliments the fairly extensive family research conducted by Margaret Addis, great-great granddaughter of Carl Bluhm, an early photographer based in King Williams Town (Qonce today). Together, they have amassed a significant number of Bluhm’s images, the originals in Hardijzer’s collection, as well as many digital copies of photographs captured by Bluhm, which Addis either extracted from the internet or obtained from various local and international archives, correspondents and local Cape based museums and libraries.

Carl Bluhm (1827 – 1897) – Photograph reproduced from Secure the Shadow

The surname Bluhm was first found in Lower Saxony (Germany), where the name emerged in medieval times as one of the notable families of the Hanover region. From the 13th century the surname was identified with the great social and economic evolution which made this territory a landmark contributor to the development of the German nation. From the 14th century the name was associated with a Patrician family (part of aristocratic lineage) that possessed estates in the Calenberg and Minden region (houseofnames.com).

Whilst various spelling variations of the surname exist, the meaning of...

The last few years have not been kind to the Gately House Museum in East London. Due to ongoing security problems the museum is no longer open to the public and artefacts have been relocated for safekeeping (click here for details). Despite the depressing current situation it is fascinating to look at some of the history of the house and the battle to save it a half a century ago. The article below appeared in the 1975 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.

Seen within the context of the history of the Cape Colony's eastern frontier, East London, founded in 1848, has a relatively short history. Beginning as a military settlement on the west bank of the Buffalo River, it remained under military government until 1860.

The arrival in 1858 of the German settlers and the granting of land to some of them on the east bank of the Buffalo gave rise to the village of Panmure, named after the then British Secretary of State for War. In 1877, the English writer, Anthony Trollope visited East London and described it thus: "At present East London is not a nice place. It is without a pavement, almost without a street... Opposite to the town of East London on the east bank of the Buffalo River, and connected with it by ferries, is the township of Panmure...

A few years ago we were involved in a battle to save historic Nedbank documents that were being thrown away by the company. For a while the future of the documents looked bleak but thankfully the story had a happy ending when top Nedbank executives got involved. The documents were moved to the Sandton head office and the execs committed to hire an archivist to go through the collection.

During the early stages of the saga we found an old booklet compiled to celebrate Nedbank's 50th birthday (1938). The publication contained photographs of a number of Nedbank branches which we have reproduced below.

Benoni Branch

Bloemfontein Branch

Durban Branch

East London Branch (main image as well)

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A few years ago a wonderful collection of old documents was found in the basement of a Johannesburg inner city building while the tenant (Nedbank) was moving out. One of the boxes we looked at contained details of Nedbank's 50th anniversary celebrations (circa 1938). It was here we found a remarkable set of images of a few Town / City Halls around the country. It appears as though the photographs were taken in the late 1930s. Enjoy...

Old Raadsaal Bloemfontein (so not officially a Town Hall)

Durban Town Hall

East London Town Hall

Johannesburg Town Hall

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In the first installment of the series on the history of Southern African railways, Peter Ball described some of the earliest railways in the country and the extension of a number of lines into the interior. In this article he looks at the fascinating politics and economics of the 'Race for the Rand'.

Johannesburg was literally and figuratively built on Gold, the discovery of which in 1886 was to change the entire economic and financial structure of South Africa. The inconvenient truth for Britain was that the Rand Goldfields were in another country, to be exact the Transvaal Republic (a.k.a. South African Republic), which had regained its independence, after the Battle of Majuba Hill, Natal on the 27th February 1881.

Johannesburg, springing up as it did in the midst of a rural, land locked Boer republic, was situated 345 miles (555 km) inland from the nearest harbour (Delagoa Bay); it had grown, within four years, from a mining camp into a boom town (second only in size to Cape Town) and urgently needed good communications to develop further.

Johannesburg in the early 1890s (Seventy Golden Years, Johannesburg City Council)

The Race to the Rand was a three (iron) horse race over many physical and political hurdles and the riders wore the colours of the Cape...

Below is a short but interesting article about German mercenaries who settled in the Eastern Cape in the 1850s and left behind some fascinating relics. The article appeared in the August 1976 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.

Queen Victoria's Secretary for War, Lord Panmure, recruited German mercenaries to fight in the Crimean War. After the war the mercenaries (known as the British German Legion) were sent with their wives and children as military settlers to British Kaffraria, the area beyond the frontier of the Cape Colony. They arrived at Panmure (now East London) in 1857.

Sir George Grey, Governor of the Cape Colony, persuaded the British Government to agree to a scheme of assisted emigration of Settlers, mostly agriculturists and general labourers, from the Prussian Provinces of the Uckermarck and Pomerania. These German Settlers, who were attracted from European feudalism by the promise of ownership of land and homes of their own, arrived in British Kaffraria in 1858 and 1859.

The families of both the German Legionaires and the German Immigrants suffered great hardship in those early days. At first the German Settlers were provided with tents until they built their settler homes which had sod-walls under thatch without ceilings. Due to the primitive conditions many of the babies and children died of pneumonia and other illnesses. Gardens were cultivated...