TODAY IN KIMBERLEY’S HISTORY 23 SEPTEMBER Theatre Royal in Dutoitspan Village opens, 1871 The Queen’s Theatre opens, 1887 The first case of Spanish Flu in Dutoitspan Mine compound detected, 1918 Colonel Sir David Harris (pictured), cousin of Barney Barnato dies, 1942 DID YOU KNOW October and November 1918 - there have never been two months quite like it in the short history of Kimberley, and hopefully, there never will be again. In that short period, 4483 citizens of Kimberley, or 8.85% of the entire population of 50 666 , died from the Spanish Flu epidemic, which was sweeping the world. Some 40 000 people in the Kimberley urban area would be stricken with the influenza, the greatest natural disaster the city has ever seen, and the majority of the people affected were blacks, in particular those living in the mining compounds. The Diamond Fields Advertiser reported that the Flu ‘had a firm grip of nearly half the population, the deaths among the native element being nothing short of appalling’. The Flu had reached South Africa in September 1918, allegedly brought in by two ships, the “Jaroslav” and the “Veronej”, which had stopped at Sierra Leone. The first cases in Kimberley were detected in the mine compounds as early as 23 September 1918, and by the beginning of October the town was firmly in the grip of the dreaded disease. Kimberley was not the first inland town to be infected, that dubious honour going to Johannesburg. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, the epidemic in Johannesburg took root in the mining compounds and spread outwards from there. The first inkling of the epidemic in Kimberley was a small paragraph in the ‘Day by Day’ column on Page 8 of the daily Diamond Fields Advertiser, the column usually reserved for gossip and other interesting snippets of local happenings. It said, matter of factly, that there had been an outbreak of Spanish Flu in Kimberley, and that it had spread to the Dutoitspan Mining Compound where there were hundreds of cases. ‘Kimberley Gaol officials are suffering some inconvenience as a result of over 100 prisoners being laid up.’ The brief chronicle ended by saying it was understood there were some cases in town. Within a week, the Spanish Flu would push the final days of World War I into a secondary story on the pages of the Diamond Fields Advertiser.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 02:27:18 +0000
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