Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab
About this episode
The episode explores the early gold digging efforts in the Witwatersrand region during 1886, focusing on key figures and their struggles in the mining industry.
Onwards! Or more accurately - downwards! Because we’re continuing the saga of early gold digging around the farm Langlaagte, and the other farms like Turfontein, it is 1886, hundreds of treasure hunters have descended on the empty veld just south of the Witwatersrand Ridge. First a quick note about Kimberley, where the mining magnates were locked in a struggle for supremacy trying to secure control over the lucrative industry. As you heard last episode, one of these, JB Robinson, had run into cash difficulties but was determined to travel to the Witwatersrand to assess for himself just how much gold could be mined in the Main Reef discovered by the two Georges. He’d borrowed 20 000 pounds from another Kimberley magnate Alfred Beit, and along with Beit’s partner Maurice Marcus, launched the Robinson Syndicate with a total capital of 30 000 pounds. Then he leapt aboard a stagecoach for the gruelling four day trip between Kimberley and Potchefstroom where he arrived on the 22 July 1886. When this archetype converged on the Witwatersrand in 1886, they encountered a landscape defined by absolute physical indifference. The main reef was not an easy vein of rich quartz waiting for a…
People in this episode
Host: Desmond Latham
Topics covered
- gold mining
- Witwatersrand
- historical figures
- 19th century South Africa
- economic struggle
- mining industry
Keywords
- gold mining
- Witwatersrand
- JB Robinson
- Alfred Beit
- 19th century
- South Africa
- economic history
Mentioned in this episode
Places: Witwatersrand, Langlaagte, Turfontein, Kimberley, Potchefstroom
More episodes of History of South Africa podcast
- Episode 291 - The Miracle of South Africa’s Railways: Navvies, Gangers and Granny Mavis
- Episode 290 - Africanders, Afrikaners and the Sprigg/Hofmeyr/Rhodes Voter Disenfranchisement of 1887-1892
- Episode 289 - Black Velvet Opskop, De Beers’ Trojan Horse, an Historic Trick and a Multi-Racial Miner Protest
- Episode 288 - Squabbling Europeans Dissect Africa and the Sultan of Zanzibar gets Shafted
- Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg
- Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette
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