Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Trending
  • Fables of the past to speak to the present
  • Waya-Waya: sculpting out of the wasteland 
  • When you look at me, what colour do you see?
  • Where past and present collide
  • Don’t be late! Top tips for getting to your NAF show on time 
  • Never underestimate an apology
  • The magic of Village Green
  • A new stage for the National Arts Festival
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Grocott's Mail
Cue Media
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Grocott's Mail
You are at:Home»Uncategorized»A year in the life of Grahamstown, 1876
Uncategorized

A year in the life of Grahamstown, 1876

_Gr0cCc0Tts_By _Gr0cCc0Tts_September 2, 2011No Comments4 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Ever wondered what Grahamstown was like in the late 1800s? Records from this long ago tend to be sketchy, but a complete year’s worth of The Journal, a popular local paper back then, offers some fascinating insights into what life was about for Grahamstonians in 1876. Grocott’s Mailreporter Ian Macleod thumbed through these old reports to find out.

Ever wondered what Grahamstown was like in the late 1800s? Records from this long ago tend to be sketchy, but a complete year’s worth of The Journal, a popular local paper back then, offers some fascinating insights into what life was about for Grahamstonians in 1876. Grocott’s Mailreporter Ian Macleod thumbed through these old reports to find out.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first ever telephone call, Custer and the 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Big Horn River in America, and The Wanderers won the FA Cup. Far away from all of this, the bustlings of tiny Grahamstown in colonial South Africa may not have been as auspicious, but were nonetheless rich with characters and tales. A rare surviving record of this quaint time and place reveals a town with all the peculiarities one expects from a bygone era.

One striking feature of the stories in the dusty and flaking collection of 1876 editions of then-popular newspaper, The Grahamstown Journal, is just how brutal life was in those slow and mechanical days. For example, one pithy report from a September issue simply reads: “John Cooper, the famous ploughman, has been accidentally burnt out of his place at Kuils River, and is penniless.” Just like that. One June issue reports an “unfortunate hunting incident” where one Mr. Pretorius, while out shooting giraffe, got a thorn in his thigh and was left “lying dangerously ill”.

It seems Pretorius hadn’t heard of the miraculous cures that abounded at the time, and surely wasn’t aware of the regular newspaper adverts for Holloway’s Ointment. Makers of this “cure for all” proclaimed if would remedy “bad legs, bad breasts, ulcers, abscesses, wounds and sores of all kinds,” so one imagines a simple thorn fell comfortably within its abilities. Failing that, “Clarke’s world-famous blood mixture,” would surely have done the trick. “Cleansing and clearing the blood from all impurities,” this must have been a real bargain at 2s. 6d. a bottle.

But amidst the hardships of the time, sport and games were the delight of village life. Billiards and rifle matches were popular, and tales of rich horse races in Cape Town were favourites on the sports pages. One particularly physical nearby football match between the Grasshoppers and Olympic received especially excited reviews, and in regional cricketing circles, teams such as True Blue and Livingstone wowed fans with their gentlemanly tussles in multiple-innings matches. One of the few titbits from overseas lauds the exploits of one W.G. Grace who had recently scored 177 for Gloucestershire against Nottingham, and directly afterwards “played for his county against Yorkshire and made 318 not out”.
One also shouldn’t ignore those quirks that may have sounded sensible enough at the time, but can only amuse decades later. A fine case in point is a September story explaining the workings of a fire-proof dress. The Swedish-made outfit was said to feature an “india-rubber [sic]” inner and “moleskin lined with stout cotton cloth or some other non-conductor of heat”. Coupled with an incomprehensible system of tubes and pumps, it was claimed that the colourful inventor could survive half an hour in the suit in a blazing inferno.

Other narratives display a timeless lunacy. One traveller recounted a scene from early October where he spotted “three wild ducks flying down wind at a rapid rate” when one “suddenly fell to the ground”. His examination of the floored bird revealed its throat had been cut “as clean as if it was made by a sharp knife,” and he concluded he had witnessed that uncommon phenomenon of “duck-icide”.

Previous ArticleKeiskamma Trust wins top award
Next Article Colourful quilt wins international award
_Gr0cCc0Tts_

Related Posts

Johan Carinus tree planting

Learn music fit for a king

First place for Malawian journalist- Need to upload Pix

Comments are closed.

Cue for you!
Cue for you!
Cue for you!
Tweets by Grocotts
Newsletter



Listen

The Rhodes University Community Engagement Division has launched Engagement in Action, a new podcast which aims to bring to life some of the many ways in which the University interacts with communities around it. Check it out below.

Latest video

Weather    |     About     |     Advertise     |     Subscribe     |     Contact     |     Support Grocott’s Mail

© 2022 Maintained by School of Journalism & Media Studies.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.