|
Prostitution flourished in Joburg's early days and, with its brothels, bars and canteens, Johannesburg was the swinging capital of the country.
 A FAUX pas last week - I wrote: "What came to be known as the Witwatersrand was the site of 25 farms with a population of about 200 people." My apologies; what I should have said was that were approximately 200 settlers in the area - there is clear evidence of pre-colonial occupation although, up to now, this has been inadequately researched.
As was pointed out to me: "Oral historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, however, are revealing that Sotho-Tswana, Bafokeng and Ndebele people had settled and/or passed through since the Iron Age, and there is a rich history beginning to emerge at last. And, of course, the Melville Koppies provides evidence of metal workings more than 500 years ago, not to mention the Lone Hill settlement and many other examples. The work of those cited give fascinating accounts of the pre-colonial human societies and - of great interest and relevance to us early 21st century Joburgers - the climate changes that affected their history."
Thank you for that, it is something I knew intellectually, but I fell into the "history started with the white settlers" syndrome.
I thought we'd break from last week's tale of "likker" to the third of what Charles van Onselen (New Babylon, New Nineveh) described as "central in the lives of thousands of skilled and unskilled miners - drinking, gambling and whoring". Again I have drawn heavily on his research. From an urban background point of view, the diggers' camp was to make way for a miners' town and then to a more settled working class city. As it did so, it's sexual composition changed from almost exclusively male in 1886, to one that was still male dominated 10 years later (25 000 white and 13 000 black males; 14 000 white and 1 250 black females) leading to a male:female ratio of 10,5:1 and, thereafter, increasingly to a more "normal" gender ratio.
The first two periods thus provided fertile ground for prostitution to flourish.
Ladies of fortune
The establishment of the mining camp drew diggers initially from the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek's neighbouring states, the Cape Colony and Natal, and, among them, were the first "ladies of fortune". They were encouraged not only by the obvious prospects of a male-dominated society, but also through the Contagious Diseases Act passed in the Cape in 1885 and by the extension of the railway line to Johannesburg in 1892.
The Act required the registration of all prostitutes and their compulsory medical examination, and it was obviously not popular with those at whom it was aimed. Johannesburg, clearly, was a better alternative. The first prostitutes operating on the Witwatersrand, drawn as they were from the ZAR's southern neighbours, were thus ethnically quite mixed - black, white and so-called Cape coloured.
Many of the "full-time workers" located themselves in rooms behind the bars or canteens while the more part-time "vendors of vice" also worked as bar-maids. The bar-owners recognised that many miners would be more attracted to bars that had "female accompaniments" than those without and that they would benefit from the resultant increased liquor consumption.
Acting collectively, these bar-owners sought to discourage the authorities from taking any action against prostitutes and prostitution was, therefore, "more or less openly tolerated". Prostitution between 1886 and 1895 was also not "organised", with most prostitutes being individual operators who conducted their trade "largely on their own initiative, and certainly without the professional assistance of pimps or madams".
The population continued to explode - from 26 000 in 1890 to 74 000 in 1896, helped to a large extent by the opening, in 1895, of the railway link between Joburg and Lourenço Marques (Maputo). Its capacity was fully used through the sheer numbers of persons entering from Mozambique, thanks to the low fares of the German East African Shipping Line.
But it was not only males who were attracted by this relatively cheap and easy route to the goldfields. The Great Depression of 1873 to 1896 created a movement of poverty stricken rural women - Austro-Hungarian, German, French, Belgian - into urban prostitution. Then localised xenophobia forced many to leave Europe for the Witwatersrand.
Russian connection
This international group swelled the numbers of southern African locals. But they were soon to be further expanded and the industry dramatically changed through the entry of "Russian" prostitutes with their New York pimps. Odd combination? Well, the story goes that from 1881, thousands of men and women had been forced to flee parts of western Russia and its neighbouring Hapsburg provinces because of pogroms and dire poverty. Arriving in the United States, many females were "tricked, recruited or forced into the trade of vice".
Prostitution was then thriving in New York under a corrupt municipal government, until a series of commissions exposed the level of corruption of both the politicians and police. As a result, in 1894 a large number of the "Russian" prostitutes and their New York pimps decided to relocate. Their move to London was not a great success; London was well served by its own vice infrastructure.
So, the new immigrants decided to move to more lucrative places and South Africa and South America became their new targets. From 1895 to 1897 their numbers increased constantly. There were, for instance, between 200 and 300 pimps alone (collectively known as the macquereaux). They were as international as the women they represented - the majority being the New Yorkers, the French (souteneurs) and the Germans, with a smattering of English, Australian and one known Afrikaner.
An influx of French prostitutes predominantly serviced cheaper non-racial brothels which had a high clientele of miners and generally had local black pimps - the French prostitutes charged 10 shillings and paid their touts a sixpence.
Disease
Prostitution led to a number of other activities in Johannesburg - firstly, the so-called medical specialists in sexually transmitted diseases. These "medical practitioners" offered "special treatment with guaranteed success in all kinds of syphilitic diseases".
The treatment was, however, hardly a success - the test for syphilis was only discovered in 1907. They also made a great deal of money issuing medical certificates to the prostitutes while the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea soared. Secondly, white slavery - the luring of young servant women particularly from Paris and Brussels to Johannesburg, where they would be either seduced or raped before being turned on to the streets - became another source of income for the local mafia, known as the American Club.
So, where did all the action take place? The area between Bree Street in the north and Anderson Street in the south, Sauer Street in the west and Kruis Street in the east, contained most of the town's brothels and became known as Frenchfontein. Van Onselen, quoting from various media sources, says: "From the doors, windows and verandahs of brightly painted houses with large distinctive numbers on their gate posts, women - in various stages of undress - called out endearments and invitations to passing men. Other equally unambiguous offers came from the ladies employed in the large number of 'cigar-shops' in that quarter of town."
Sylvio Villa
The most famous brothel was known as Sylvio Villa and was situated on one of the corners of De Villiers and Rissik streets. Detectives who kept surveillance on Sylvio Villa recorded that, between approximately 8am and 1.30am in one week, there were 21 customers on Monday, steadily increasing over the week to 96 on Saturday and dropping to only 8 on Sunday - the gentlemen were presumably in church!
Other "houses of ill-repute" included the Greenhouse, which was located at 19 and 20 Sauer Street and, among many others, the Monte Christo, Phoenix and Spire House.
With not only the highest concentration of brothels but, as Keith Beavon (Johannesburg - the Making and Shaping of the City) points out, together with the large number of bars, Frenchfontein became the "swinging" part of the city. In fact, Beavon goes on to say that businesses in the whole Frenchfontein area "were devoted almost exclusively to organised vice, and the business day for downtown Johannesburg extended from just after breakfast through to very late at night. The significance of those revenue-earning hours soon translated into higher rentals ..."
Property owners were, of course, delighted with the higher returns they were earning - and we are not talking about slum-lords! The newspaper, The Critic, commented that the properties were often "registered in the names of persons of repute, of banking corporations and eminent firms". Higher rentals eventually forced working-class and lower-middle class families, whose income was moderate, out of the CBD.
Necessary evil
The official policy over these years was one of accepting prostitution as "a necessary evil". While a number of laws were enacted, they were all made sterile because of high levels of bribery and corruption. It wasn't until 1898 that a Morality Act was introduced that made provision for possibly banishing moral offenders from the ZAR.
But it also made intercourse between "black males and white prostitutes" an offence. However, at that time, the young state attorney, Jan Christian Smuts, realising that the police, including the public prosecutor, were accepting bribes, developed a new legal team that put some of the ringleaders of white slavery and prostitution into jail.
But the real turning point came not through enforcement, but rather with the declaration of war, when thousands of prostitutes and pimps left Joburg for the safety of Cape Town. This resulted in the Cape passing the Betting Houses, Gaming Houses and Brothels Suppression Bill in 1902, based to quite a large extent on the previous ZAR legislation. So, many prostitutes and pimps left the Cape, some returning to the Transvaal but others going to Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
As a result, in mid-1903, Natal introduced its own Immorality Act and Joburg again became the magnet for vice. It now had a substantial population of black and white miners, a large number of Chinese indentured labourers and thousands of British troops. As Frenchfontein bounced back, white slavery was again introduced, with Paris dominating this "export trade".
In fact, when the Chamber of Mines was negotiating in China for labour for the Witwatersrand mines, organised prostitution was simultaneously negotiating to bring out Japanese prostitutes (known as Karayuki-San), who subsequently joined forces with other Japanese prostitutes who had been operating out of Fordsburg since 1894.
Immorality Act
Milner, as the new administrator of the Transvaal, was put under pressure from various sources to introduce and enforce new legislation and in mid-1903 introduced a new Immorality Act, which went further than the previous legislation that had banned sexual intercourse between "black males and white prostitutes". It now outlawed all sexual intercourse between "African males and European women".
While this aspect of the law seemed to have been enforced, Milner was not concerned with the operation of brothels allowing those that had up to 10 prostitutes "to operate openly, provided their business was conducted in a suitably restrained and discreet fashion".
Once again, prostitution boomed in Frenchfontein, which, along with the buoyant liquor industry, regained Joburg's reputation as "the swinging city". It was 1905 and the city was just 19 years old!
I hope you had a great weekend.
Regards, Neil
Tours
There is a tour planned by the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust.
Sunday, 20 April
"Battle of Nooitgedacht" - bus tour
This exciting new tour is to the South African War site of the Battle of Nooitgedacht, on a beautiful private game farm in the Magaliesberg. The farm is still owned by the descendents of the original settler family and the tour will visit a church built by them, as well as two family cemeteries.
While being bussed to the top of the mountain, the tour will pass a vulture colony and a black eagles' nest. Visitors may be lucky enough to see some of the wildlife on the game farm. To fully appreciate the views and the battle sites, will require some walking on flat but rocky terrain - please bring sun screen, a hat, sturdy walking shoes, plenty of water and a packed lunch. There are no toilet facilities.
For information telephone Eira Bond on weekdays between 9am and 1pm on 011 482 3349.
Related stories:
|
