I. D. B.
POPULATION OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS.—KAFIR EATING-HOUSES AS DECOY
PLACES.—RUMORS OF TRIBUTE IN DIAMONDS BY NATIVES TO THEIR
CHIEFS.—INGENUITY OF NATIVE THIEVES.—CELEBRATED CASE, QUEEN _VS._
VOGEL.—“HAPPY CHILD OF HAM.”—GRADES THROUGH WHICH A STOLEN DIAMOND
PASSES.—SPURIOUS NOTES AND GLASS DIAMONDS.—CASE BEFORE MR. JUSTICE DWYER
AT BEAUFORT WEST.—HIGH HANDED CONDUCT OF DETECTIVE DEPARTMENT.—TWO
BISHOPS AND A SENATOR SEARCHED.—FREETOWN AND OLIPHANSFONTEIN.—A
STARTLING EXPOSURE.—TRIAL OF NOTORIOUS HIGHWAYMEN.—SOCIAL GRADES OF I.
D. B.’S, OR ILLICIT DIAMOND BUYERS.
The diamond, from its value, its portability, and the ease with which it
can be secreted, has offered in India, Brazil and the Cape, at all
times, a great temptation to dishonesty to those engaged in winning it
from the soil.
Whether we refer to the works of the English traveler, William Methold,
who visited the mines near Golconda in 1622, (where there were 30,000
laborers then at work) and mentions that it was impossible to prevent
the abstraction of diamonds; those of Tavernier, the French traveler,
who visited the Indian mines in 1766; Mawes’ description of the
Brazilian diggings in the same century, where, in spite of the strict
watch maintained over the slaves employed, they managed to steal half of
the diamonds produced, or we study contemporary literature with regard
to the mines of Griqualand West, we find that although most severe
punishments have always been inflicted with a view to stamp out theft,
they have never hitherto been completely successful.
With this subject, however, I shall deal in a future chapter; in this I
intend to treat of the rise and progress of the I. D. B. (illicit
diamond buying) trade, and describe the various devices adopted by the
black thieves and white receivers.
On the Vaal River diggings there was very little thieving. The
semi-patriarchal state of society existing there was not conducive to
such a crime, and moreover the natives had not yet acquired a knowledge
of the value of diamonds or “klips”[36] as they were then termed. Each
digger had brought from the Cape Colony, Natal, the Free State, or
Transvaal, his own servants, hired for a stated time; he lived in their
midst, gave them both food and physic with his own hands, temptation
they were delivered from, as they dared not roam about, and they
generally remained honest and faithful.
This state of things, however, did not last long, as dishonest white men
and cute natives soon put the unsophisticated savage in the way they
wished him to go; but it was not until a large population had gathered
round the dry diggings, composed of the Du Toit’s Pan, Bulfontein, Old
De Beers and the New Rush, or Kimberley mines, in 1870 and 1871, that
diggers began to be alive to the enormous losses they were sustaining
through the robberies of their native servants. At this time the white
population might roundly be estimated at from 20,000 to 25,000, and the
natives and colored people at from 40,000 to 50,000 souls, or to be
within the mark say 60,000 altogether.
Now it could not be expected that this motley crew, gathered from all
the four quarters of the globe, would be without some black sheep among
them. This quickly became alarmingly apparent, for although the early
diggers, attracted by the chance of sudden fortune, were mostly old,
respectable colonists, Boers owning farms, and men who had lived in
South Africa many years, yet very soon “camp followers,” as debased as
any who ever hung on the rear of an army, began to arrive, drawn from
the purlieus of European cities; London sending from Whitechapel and
Petticoat Lane her quota of fried-fish dealers, old clo’ men, quondam
fruit merchants, and “vill you buy a vatch” gentry, who speedily brought
their home experience into profitable use.
The South African native, especially the Zulu, is, as a rule, naturally
honest. The fact irresistibly forces upon us the conclusion, however
reluctantly we may accept it, that the natives were first taught to
thieve by white receivers of stolen goods.
In those days the Basutos, the Shangaans, the natives from the
neighborhood of the Zambesi and the Limpopo, left their kraals and their
happy hunting grounds in the far interior (allured by the glorious
reports of the money which they could earn) to trudge hundreds of miles
on foot for work in the mines, imbued with but one object, the height of
their ambition, which was to become the proud possessor of a rifle or
other gun.
The quicker this could be effected the sooner they could return to their
homes; consequently the unscrupulous white man found apt scholars enough
to his hand in these poor blacks, who rapidly learned to steal all the
diamonds on which they could lay their fingers.
Then again, as another inducement to thieving, the raw native was
enticed to the canteen to spend his money, and although at this time a
strict law existed which prohibited any native being served with liquor
without an order from his master, the keepers of low grog-shops evaded
the law by keeping on hand a stock of false orders to suit any
emergency, whilst the villainous compounds[37] they retailed lit up a
fire which could be kept blazing by dishonesty only.
At that time also (and even now, though in fewer numbers) eating-houses
were kept by white men specially for natives. Among such of course were
honest men who stuck to their legitimate business, but the greater
number were suspected, and in the majority of cases rightly, of keeping
such houses simply to facilitate and conceal their illicit transactions,
supplying free food merely to induce natives to bring them diamonds.
The business done in eating-houses of this description was reduced to a
system. A native of one or the other tribes, whether a Shangaan, a
Basuto, a Zulu, or a Ballapin, was kept in the pay of the proprietors,
according to the _habitués_ of their houses. These various touts would
remain most of the day, especially at meal times, sitting at the
different tables prepared for native customers eating or pretending to
eat with them. These men were chosen for their shrewdness, and any
strange native coming in for a meal would immediately be accosted in a
friendly manner by an astute rascal of his own nationality. Where did he
come from? what was he doing? who was his master? in what claim was he
working? what diamonds was he finding? were questions the answers to
which were soon wormed out of him.
If the native had any diamonds for sale he was at once introduced to the
private room of the master, which was at the back. If the replies to the
various questions put to him were not considered satisfactory, or if he
were suspected of being a “trap,” the “tip” was very soon given. The
tout would rap on his plate and call out for “inyama futi” (more meat)
which was the signal generally agreed upon, when the suspected native
would be summarily ejected. Sometimes the native (although offering a
diamond for sale) would not give the name of his master, which was
enough in itself to excite suspicion of his being a “trap.”
“Woolsack,” a clever native detective in the employ of a Mr. Fox, who
was at the time the head of the diamond detectives, was several times
caught in such attempts to “trap.” I remember on one occasion seeing him
professionally after he had been beaten and tortured by one of these
Kafir eating-house keepers until he revealed his master’s name. “Baas
Fox.” having at last been wrung out of him, and the fact of his being a
“trap” found out, he was, after being barbarously treated, tauntingly
told to go and show his marks to his master.
His brutal assailant, though all the time inwardly chuckling over his
narrow escape, was loud in his public expressions of satisfaction that
he had caught and thrashed a nigger who had had, as he said, “the
imperence to fancy that a respectable man like him would buy a
‘goniva.’”[38] The detectives, though well aware of everything, but not
willing to expose their hand, had to look on, grin and leave unavenged
this assault on their native servant. If brought into court, they knew
too well it would merely be a case of white evidence _versus_ black. The
injuries shown would simply be the marks of condign punishment meted out
to a native for imputed and apparent thieving, inflicted under a natural
outburst of indignant honesty incapable of restraint. The magistrate, in
the meantime, let him think what he might, would on the evidence have to
discharge the prisoner, or at most inflict but a nominal punishment.
It has been stated, I may add, that certain chiefs required their
subjects on their return home to bring them a tribute in diamonds. This
I do not believe ever occurred to any great extent, if at all, as in
1872 a party of diggers to test this rumor, taking the law into their
own hands, made a tour through a large portion of the Transvaal and Free
State, overhauling thousands of natives homeward bound, without finding
a single diamond on any one of them, although on one party numbering
some 200 they found 197 guns, £3,000 in gold, and nearly two tons of
gunpowder. In contradiction to this, however, the late Sir Bartle Frere
told a deputation of the Kimberley Mining Board, which waited upon him
during his visit to the Fields in 1880, that in coming down through the
Transvaal several traders and other trustworthy people on whom he could
rely had informed him that most of the chiefs, and in fact all the great
ones, had stores of beautiful diamonds, which had been brought to them,
a few at a time, by their young men on their return home from work at
the Fields.
The native laborer at the present time through contaminating influences
has become an adept, and will steal with an adroitness which almost
defies detection.
In the Brazilian mines every precaution is taken to prevent thieving,
but without entire success. A slave on finding a diamond is compelled at
the moment of its discovery to notify the fact by holding it up between
his finger and thumb. No slave is allowed to remain for any length of
time at any one part of the long trough in which the soil is washed for
fear he should plant a diamond for subsequent removal. In addition, all
are narrowly searched, but in spite of this care the slaves hide
diamonds in the sores on their bodies, which they produce by cutting
nicks in their skins for this purpose, and ofttimes also swallow them,
though when a negro is suspected of doing so the administration of
strong purgatives, confinement in a bare room and severe punishment
invariably follow.
Our free nigger is not a whit behind his South American cousin; he uses
his nose, mouth, stomach, ears, toes and hair to conceal the diamonds
that he steals, and at nightfall walks home from the mine or from the
sorting table singing with an air of _abandon_ which would “deceive the
very elect,” the diamond being all the while secreted on his person.
This, previous to the passing of the last Act, he could do with
impunity, for the searching of servants, although it had been for years
permissible to masters, _vide_ Government Notice No. 14, 1872, was not
as it is now conducted by a government staff. This was especially the
case when native labor was scarce, for then any individual master was
afraid to make an exception which could give offense, and which might
deprive him at once of the whole of his laborers.
Again, if in working on the depositing floors, where the blue ground
which contains the diamonds is exposed to the action of the atmosphere,
a diamond should happen to be turned up which could be seen at a glance
was too large or which there was no opportunity to secrete, the wily
savage would cover it up quite nonchalantly, but at the same time would
arrange the lumps of “blue” around in such a way that when night came
and he returned, he could easily find the spot and secure the precious
stone for himself.
Sometimes in the mines when they were worked deep another dodge would be
resorted to. Suddenly, at a given signal, the whole of a gang working in
one of the claims would yell out, and jump as if the reef surrounding
them were falling. The overseer in charge would instinctively look up,
while the boy who had given the false alarm would coolly stoop down and
pocket some large diamond which he had just unearthed. Many a beautiful
diamond, too, has frequently been recovered from a native’s pipe, which
was diligently being puffed with all the air of innocence, and I have
even heard of goats, feeding near the floors set apart for the
depositing of “blue stuff,” being turned into accessories (after the
fact!), the hair of these animals affording a hiding place for stolen
diamonds which were thus carried into the “veldt” beyond, and refound by
the thief (his day’s work being over) without any danger whatever of
searching or detective interference.
The receiver, however, is worse than the thief. The devices by which the
white scoundrel saves his skin are quite as curious a study as those
resorted to by the original thief.
This trade gradually resolved itself into a fine art as the law against
it became more penal.
Before the company mania commenced at the end of 1880, and when the
mines were worked by individual diggers, many unprincipled persons, both
black and white, used their digging operations and the fact of their
possessing claims as cloaks to account for the possession of diamonds
which they otherwise obtained by illicit dealing.
About 1876 a _cause celébre_ brought this prominently before the public.
At that time claims in Bulfontein and Du Toit’s Pan cost little money in
comparison with claims in the Kimberley mine, and a great many were
owned by natives and colored people. This case, which attracted great
public attention, was that of John Vogel, a colored man, tried on April
22d, 1876, before his Honor, Mr. Recorder Barry, and a jury. This man
was charged with contravening section 17 of ordinance 27 of 1874: “The
said John Vogel being then a registered claim-holder, and the said
diamond (79¾ carats weight) not being found in ground worked by him,
although sold by him in his name as a claim-holder.”
According to evidence brought forward it was proved that Vogel received
£20 only from the white man who bought the diamond, whilst another Kafir
who accompanied him received £305 in payment for the stone, Vogel
evidently lending his. name as a registered claim-holder for the sum of
£20. Vogel was proved to have been largely engaged in this “trade,” and
on several occasions to have sold to the same buyer.
He was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ hard labor. After
sentencing the prisoner, the recorder then called for the white diamond
buyer, a well-known merchant, and said: “Your own register shows that
you have been in the habit of buying from this man, by which you have
encouraged him in his acts, while at the same time you have kept no
books sufficient to prevent me from saying that your conduct is above
suspicion.”
It will be seen that even at this time opportunities were taken to evade
the law with every show of legality.
Some again would lease their claims to “swell niggers” (both white and
black having an equal government right to obtain digging licenses and
possess claims) with an understanding that they, the claim-holders,
should receive a percentage of the finds, at the same time well knowing
that the percentage would be a large one, most of the diamonds in fact
thus obtained being stones illegally bought from natives with money
these dishonest claim-holders would advance, nominally for honest
enterprise, but virtually for illicit purposes.
Others would give an extravagant reward to their native servants for
each diamond they brought as a reputed find while working, which was of
course merely another mode of buying from natives without fear of
detection.
In late years it has become a very general practice even among
respectable diggers and companies to give a percentage to native
servants on the value of any diamond which they may bring.
One company at Du Toit’s Pan in particular by this means increased their
returns to such an extent that they found it paid them to promise each
“Happy child of Ham” twenty-five per cent. commission on whatever gem he
might unearth. This was brought to general notice by a well-known writer
in the local press in the following verses, which were much quoted at
the time:
I would not be a digger; No,
Nor yet an I. D. B.
In digging oft your moneys go,
The other’s felony.
But then, upon the other hand,
I should be quite content
If I only was a nigger, and
Got 25 per cent.
I’d not be a shareholder, or
Hold Atlas’s or Frere’s;
I am not even pining for
The scrip of great Be Beer’s.
In Kimberley the debts expand,
The loan, it isn’t lent;
So I’d rather be a nigger, and
Get 25 per cent.
I would not be a Chairman, or
Director of a Board,
For then I could not buy nice pipes,
Nor good Cape Smoke afford;
I might get nasty writs perhaps
When all my coin was spent;
I’d rather be a nigger, and
Get 25 per cent.
I wouldn’t be a Searcher, and
I wouldn’t be the Chief;
I wouldn’t hold the contract for
Removal of the reef;
I wouldn’t be Izdebski,[39] and
I wouldn’t crimes prevent;
I’d rather be a nigger, and
Get 25 per cent.
I wouldn’t be a Secretary
nor a Manager,
To be a toiling Overseer
I’d very much demur;
I wouldn’t build a crusher,
Nor such paltry things invent;
I’d rather be a nigger, and
Get 25 per cent.
I wouldn’t be proprietor
Of far-famed Kamfer’s Dam.[40]
Nor even Chairman of the French,
For all’s not real jam,
I’d scarcely purchase Centrals,
But I never should repent
If I only was a nigger, and
Got 25 per cent.
* * * * *
[No, ladies and gentlemen, many and many a time my mother has said:
“’Arry, my angel-hearted boy, don’t let nothing never persuade you to
be a Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, or a digger, or an England’s
Only General, or a writer of novelettes in the “Independent,” or a
Duke or a Marquis, or an Admiral of the Blue, or a Grand Old Man, or a
President of the United States of America. Don’t you ruin yourself by
being a Mayor or a Banker, or throw away your chances by marrying a
Baroness Burdett-Coutts—or purchasing a 900 carat diamond found by an
unknown Dutch farmer on an unknown Dutch farm when there is no secrecy
about the matter from beginning to end.” “No, my beaming boy,” said
the old lady, bless her heart! “You be a Christy Minstrel, and go work
in the claims for your wages and 25 per cent.” I took the old lady’s
advice, and—all together, if you please, gentlemen]
“I would not be an Hemperor,
I would not be a King,
I would not be a Hadmiral
Or hany sich a thing;
I wouldn’t be in Lowe’s Police
And live inside a tent;
I’d rather be a nigger, and
Get 25 per cent.”
To resume, when the company mania set in, the number of individual
diggers gradually decreased. Further restrictions were also placed upon
those remaining, as well as upon the managers and lessees of companies,
by the passing of a new law in 1882, which law is at present in force.
By this act the digger or lessee is compelled to make a monthly return
of all his finds, in which any discrepancy is detected at once by
comparing it with a return (also required) from the various licensed
buyers of their monthly purchases; and an excessive return of diamonds,
or a succession of astounding washings up from notoriously poor or
insufficiently worked ground, at once serves to arouse suspicion, and
has already in several instances led to a conviction, especially as the
private and moral character of each digger or lessee is more or less
known to the detective department.
Some white men run the risk of buying direct from natives, and to those
knowing Zulu, which is the language of which all natives gain a
smattering, the conversation becomes highly amusing. The word diamond is
never mentioned; for instance, an illicit will accost a native with the
question: “Ipi inkonyama?” (where is the calf?) The native replies if he
has no diamonds: “Inkonyama yalukile no mina” (the calf has strayed with
its mother), or the white man asks: “Tzinyamazana zi kona na?” (are
there any bucks?) and the native, having some diamonds secreted about
him, replies: “Zi kona” (there are some). In this manner the secret of
their being engaged in illicit traffic is kept from all but the
initiated.
These various phases of the crime, and others that I shall describe,
have been for years brought to the notice of the public by the local
press. The Diamond Fields _Advertiser_, in a leading article once
stated: “There is something terribly revolting about the extent of crime
arising out of the I. D. B. calling in all its ramifications. Inducing
servants to steal, murder, perjury, receiving stolen goods, white women
prostituting themselves to Kafirs for payment in diamonds, little boys
employed by mining companies taught to steal and supplied with false
pockets in which to conceal the gems, bribes attempted on officers of
law, and a thousand other crimes are practiced and gloried in by gangs
of ruffians, whom the law seldom reaches.”
But it must not be supposed that many white men were or are foolish
enough to buy direct from the raw native; unless the illicit buyer has
“planted” his own gang of natives, or in other words educated thieves,
on some company to bring him all the diamonds they can steal, he is very
wary. One very curious case in point came to light in 1876, when the
detective officers, searching among the “goods and chattels” of a man
convicted for I. D. B., found, from memorandums in his possession, that
he had no less than sixty natives “planted” on different claim-holders,
whose sole object was to rob and bring the diamonds to their real
master, who had engaged them for that purpose.
A diamond passed, in most instances, through four hands before it
reached a legal holder.
1st. The raw Kafir—the thief.
2d. The swell native, or tout of
3d. The low white man, generally agent of
4th. A licensed diamond buyer.
On analyzing this series, it will be seen that the raw native, who is
generally the worker in the mine or on the depositing floor, has only to
evade the attention of the overseer to enable him to swallow or secrete
about his person any diamond he may chance to expose. The lynx-eyed
observation of his “brothers” is to him of no moment, for they are, as a
rule, so true to each other that they never inform—brothers both in
color and in crime. His work done, on returning home to his evening meal
our subject’s real fun and excitement begin, in other words, the second
scene of the illicit play now commences. His swell “brother” arrives,
transmutes his ill-gotten diamonds into gold, leaving him to carouse far
into the night and then “dream the happy hours away,” until the morning
gives him again fresh opportunities for thieving.
Our low white man, in the meantime, with perfect confidence and
security, is awaiting his native tout, “building castles in the air” on
the possible profit of the night’s venture.
Now for the sequel, the last act of the drama. This man has an intimate
friend, a licensed diamond buyer, a more cold-blooded but less plucky
rascal than himself, whose honesty (!) and respectability (!) can be
gauged by the fact that he buys next morning in his office, without any
haggling and without even demanding the necessary permit, a collection
of stones which he introduces in ordinary course to the trade as a
“digger’s mixed parcel.” Sometimes, however, the raw native,
unfortunately for himself, sells a diamond directly to the low white
man, who (if the native be not a regular _customer_) takes advantage of
his ignorance and pays him in frequent instances partly in good and
partly in base coin. In this way spurious bank notes, of which the
accompanying engraving is a _fac-simile_, and gilt medals in imitation
of sovereigns with the inscription “Gone to Hanover,” are palmed off,
and get into circulation. Again, some very _honest_ licensed buyers
would advance money to others lower in the social scale, but also
licensed, who would run the risk of purchasing diamonds for them from
any one, whether legally qualified to sell or not. Of course if any of
these were trapped and the stone traced, the monied men could never be
punished, as all their transactions, having been with licensed men, were
perfectly legal. I may mention _en passant_ that a great trade was done
in gold at this time; certain well-known men, afterward company
promoters and directors, trading in and selling on a Saturday night all
the gold coins they could gather together during the week, at a premium
of three or four per cent., to a class of men who could have no other
but an illegal object in view. Such ramifications had this trade!
[Illustration]
This is the game as it used to be played; now with the new law there is
more difficulty, and the process is somewhat altered.
This law, passed in 1882, is more stringent than any of its
predecessors. Its main feature is that the onus of proof of the legal
possession of diamonds is thrown upon the individual in whose custody
they may be found, and any person within the confines of Griqualand West
may anywhere, at any time, be searched by the detective department, and
if diamonds are found on his or her person must give an account of their
legal ownership or be liable to fifteen years’ imprisonment, with hard
labor. The detective department at the time when this law came into
force received information which led it to the arrest of a most
notorious illicit diamond buyer, who both in Kimberley and at
Jagersfontein[41] (a celebrated mine in the Free State) had suffered for
this crime. Acting on their information, the officers thought that, on
searching this man, they would make a grand haul, when much to their
disgust instead of finding diamonds galore they found simply pieces of
glass most skillfully prepared in exact imitation of real stones, when
of course their prize was lost, and the man, to their chagrin, had to be
liberated.
These sham diamonds at first were brought out from Europe in all sizes,
shapes and colors, but at the present time this internecine illicit
trade, or fight among diamond thieves themselves, is waged to such an
extent that the detective department know of at least four individuals
on the Fields who are engaged in the manufacture of these spurious
stones.
Fluoric acid is employed, so I am told, to partially dissolve the glass
of which these are made into the shape required. As a matter of course
the sale of these sham stones when effected in Griqualand West is hushed
up.
The man taken in by purchasing a spurious diamond of this kind fondly
imagines at the time that he is buying a real although stolen diamond
under its value. He knows, if he be a licensed buyer, that he is
contravening the law in buying of an unlicensed seller, and
consequently, on finding out the deception which has been practiced upon
him, dare not give the seller into custody for obtaining money under
false pretences. He is well aware such a proceeding would merely reveal
to the public his illicit connection; again, if an unlicensed diamond
buyer, he naturally desires to keep the whole affair a secret.
It was not so, however, in the Cape Colony proper, Natal, Transvaal or
the Free State, where the operation of the act was not in force prior to
recent enactments, and the remark still applies to Natal and the
Transvaal, where any one, morality being out of the question, can buy or
sell a diamond legally. I use “legally” in the sense that the law cannot
touch him. Of course buying goods well knowing them to be stolen is a
crime in every civilized community, but in this particular instance,
without the special enactments of the Cape Colony and Free State, one
almost impossible to bring home to the criminal.
A curious case was tried in Beaufort West in 1884, which ended in the
acquittal of the accused, a man well versed, not only in the mysteries
of the I. D. B. trade, but also in the punishment attendant upon its
detection. This man offered a certain Jew residing there one of these
spurious diamonds for sale. This Jew would not purchase on his own
judgment, but asked a friend to value the stone for him, which after
buying on his advice for £280 he found out was merely a piece of glass
not worth a farthing. Not living, however, in Griqualand West, where an
unlicensed purchase would have been a crime, which might have consigned
him to the Capetown Breakwater for fifteen years, but in the Cape
Colony, where no restriction was then in force, he called in the
assistance of the law, charged the man with obtaining money under false
pretences, and the case came ultimately before Judge Dwyer at the
circuit court held in that town.
The sale by the prisoner was of course duly proved. Judge Dwyer,
however, directed the jury that as the purchaser had been guided in his
opinion by his friend, it was a question for them to decide whether he
had been misled or not by the statement of the accused. The jury, as I
said before, acquitted the prisoner.
It is certainly a curious phase in this glass, or in thieves Latin
“snyde diamond,” question, or, as I term it, in this internecine
struggle for unlawful gain, that in this province neither the
manufacturer nor the possessor of these spurious articles can be brought
to justice. It is simply with them a game of “heads I win, tails you
lose.”
The arts and sciences were also called into play to forward the ends of
this nefarious trade.
The science of chemistry was even as far back as 1872 requisitioned by
both legal and illegal sellers of diamonds. It had been discovered that
the boiling of yellow stones in nitric acid would give them a frosted
white appearance, and by this means increase their apparent value by
twenty to forty shillings a carat, according to the size of the diamond
operated upon.
Many very knowing ones were taken in by this at the time, _the_ diamond
buyer of the day, one Moritz Unger, even falling a victim to the
deception. During the past thirteen years this imposition has been
spasmodically revived, although at the time (1872) it was thought that
the exposure would once and forever warn the diamond burner that his
“little game was up.”
Although no community can hope to succeed whose prosperity depends upon
unlawful enterprise, yet it is a fact that this new law, although it has
failed to diminish diamond stealing one iota, has yet driven away the
very men who formerly used to extravagantly patronize the retail stores,
hotels, and theatres of the place, whilst Capetown and Port Elizabeth
until quite recently (session of 1885) reaped the profits of this
disgraceful and debasing trade.
Immediately on the promulgation of this law (48, 1882) the detective
department was stimulated to fresh energy, which was shown by rash and
indiscreet action. For a month or two the passenger coaches leaving for
Port Elizabeth and Capetown were searched at Alexandersfontein, a noted
hostelry about five miles distant from Kimberley, and the luggage of the
passengers overhauled. On one occasion this indignity was thrust upon
the Bishop of the Free State, the Bishop of the Transvaal and the Hon.
A. Stead, who were all traveling by the same coach to Capetown. I
believe I am correct in stating that only on one occasion was any arrest
ever made. This outburst of detective enthusiasm, however, soon
exhausted itself, and passengers now leave Kimberley as heretofore,
without let or hindrance, either by coach or rail. At this time, the
passage to the Colony being dangerous, and the outlet through the Free
State being considered insecure, the illicit trade was removed to
Christiana, in the Transvaal, and diamonds run in that direction were
shipped through Natal.
When the judges in the Free State, however, gave a decided opinion that
their law extended only to acknowledged diggings, and trapping was
abolished by the Volksraad in that country, the trade was again brought
to our very door, just as suddenly to recede when the Free State passed,
in the last session of their Volksraad, a diamond law containing the
_onus probandi_ clause.
A new village called Free Town sprang up on the boundary, a mile or two
distant from Du Toit’s Pan, inhabited chiefly by men whose acquaintance
with the diamond law of Griqualand West had been of too intimate a
character, while both there and at Oliphansfontein, another Free State
village close by Griqualand West, diamonds were openly bought and sold.
One or two Dutch homesteads in the neighborhood over the border, within
easy reach of our mines, were rented by gangs of Griqualand West
illicits in order to ply their trade with ease and impunity.
The detective department was again seized with another fit of zeal, and
many mounted men patroled the roads to these villages, searching all
comers and goers, whether male or female, whom they suspected of
connection with this traffic. In spite of this diamonds were “run the
blockade” in large quantities. The I. D. B. fraternity were not lacking
in devices. The book post conveyed many a parcel. A large hole was cut
in the pages of some novel or ready reckoner and the space filled with
diamonds carefully packed. The parcel being properly wrapped and posted
attracted no attention from the postal authorities.
Kafirs were employed as runners at night, in the day white horsemen
nicknamed “troopers,” were paid to face the risks, the diamonds they
carried being wrapped in lead so that they could be dropped in the grass
if danger loomed in the distance and then recovered again at leisure.
Others of this ilk again having swallowed the precious stones ran the
gauntlet safely, in open defiance of the detectives, with the diamonds
in their stomachs. Horses were fed with balls of meal containing
diamonds, driven across the border before the very eyes of the
detectives, where, in course of nature, the diamonds were restored to
the hands of their keepers. Dogs, too, were starved until they bolted
lumps of meat in which diamonds were imbedded. The value of these poor
brutes not being great enough to save their lives their stomachs were
soon ripped open on their arrival at Free Town, over the border. The
tails of oxen and wings of fowls were often utilized, passing the border
unsuspected and unexamined, while carrier pigeons instead of carrying
valuable information were used to transport valuable diamonds to Free
Town, in the Orange Free State, and Christiana, in the Transvaal.
Astonishing ingenuity in trying to run illicit diamonds out of the
territory was displayed by some. One man named Phillips, an instance in
point, was found guilty by the special court of illegal possession. The
reports of the case supply the accompanying particulars.
Phillips showed great cleverness. He had the heels of his boots made
hollow and filled up with rough diamonds, sealing them down with wax.
The handles of his traveling trunk were also made to remove, empty
spaces behind being constructed for the same purpose. In fact the man
thought himself safe enough. The detective department, however,
suspecting him, and failing in all efforts to trap, engaged a man to
form a _pseudo_ friendship with him, or in other words, to play the part
of a Judas. To keep up the deception and disarm suspicion this secret
agent was rushed and searched by a well-known detective, thus creating
an apparent reason for a fellow feeling between the two. The result can
easily be guessed—Convict No. — for ten long years to come has now
seclusion and opportunity enough afforded him by the government to
ponder over the folly of confiding too much in his fellow creatures.
These boots were exhibited in the Capetown Industrial Exhibition of 1884
and excited much interest.
I have learned since, however, that similar devices were used in
Australia during the gold mania.
The dishonest licensed buyer at this time adopted another dodge. In
order to evade the law, show the detective department a correct monthly
return as regards weight of diamonds, and so avoid suspicion, he would
keep on hand a large stock of boart nominally accounted as diamonds, but
worth some three shillings to five shillings only per carat. Thus,
supposing he bought a large illicit stone, of course under its value, he
would throw away a corresponding weight of boart, which he could easily
afford to lose. By this means he was enabled to produce a correct
register to the authorities and have as well the proper weight of
diamonds on hand supposing the detective department at any moment
demanded a search.
But toward the end of 1884 and the beginning of 1885 the so-called
“legal” traffic at Free Town and Oliphansfontein, in the Free State, was
seriously interfered with.
A number of desperadoes formed themselves into a gang to attack and rob
the buyers in the Free State, the argument by which they justified
themselves being that it was nothing but fair play to rob men of
property which they had no right to possess, and thus mete out to such
characters, unofficial, but at the same time retributive justice. In
other words, they knew the diamonds which they might steal were simply
illegal purchases from thieves working for companies in Griqualand West
mines.
The head of this gang was an ex-police sergeant and detective named
Mays. He committed many highway robberies on the border, but diamonds
were his sole object, he despised money and other valuables as booty
beneath his notice.
These, he argued, would simply reduce him to the level of an ordinary
thief, which he prided himself he was not. The men he robbed were always
treated well, and generally had the opportunity given them of buying
back their diamonds at a cheap rate, which, knowing full well they
themselves were thieves, they generally did, not courting publicity.
This was not always the case. A celebrated trial at Boshof, in the Free
State, in March 1885, showed otherwise. One of these gentry who
“speculated” in that country, named Kemp, caring nothing for the
exposure of his nefarious trade, on being robbed near Oliphansfontein of
2,073 carats weight of diamonds, worth £4,000, which he was taking to
Capetown, gave such information to the Free State authorities as led to
the capture, trial, and conviction of the thieves, who proved to be
rival “speculators” in the same line of business. So far, Kemp missed
his object, which was more the recovery of his diamonds than the
punishment of the highwaymen. The revelations on the trial were simply
startling, implicating as they did supposed honorable men in Griqualand
West.
Chief Justice Reitz, on sentencing the culprits, who were all found
guilty, did so in plain words. Addressing each in turn, after asking
them whether they had anything to say, said in Dutch, of which the
following is a literal translation (to Scotty Smith): “It is a pity that
a man of your appearance should deal in stolen property. There is no
excuse for you; it is a gross crime. The boundary line is getting
dangerous for our people. It is quite an accident that Kemp was not
killed. I took you for a man who knew better. I will punish you
severely.”
To Leigh he said: “You are a sergeant in the police, you are a protector
of the public, and you come into another land to commit a robbery. You
come with a dished-up story; better you had not told such a thing. You,
a sergeant in the police, using a knobkerrie and revolver. You might, in
the strict letter of the law, be hanged; but now-a-days a more lenient
view is taken. You were stopped by an accident from being hauled up for
murder.”
To Herman: “You are a mean little scoundrel, acting in that way whilst a
fellow co-religionist was being robbed, and perhaps all but murdered;
such a little fellow you are. You get used for paltry, mean things, and
here you assist in a mean way in a serious crime.”
To Welford: “The evidence against you, I think, is conclusive, although
you have a right to say there is a conspiracy against you; those can
believe you who like. I believe you are the man who started the whole
thing. I would not wonder if you first originated the matter. You see
the result of commencing by virtually doing a business of theft, because
you think the law here could not touch you. Such action leads me to be
more severe in your case. I think you are all sensible people; you knew
it all well; there is no plea of ignorance.”
The four prisoners were then sentenced to four years’ imprisonment each;
with Scotty Smith and Arthur Gerald Leigh twenty-five lashes in
addition.
So far as Kemp was concerned, the chief justice, adding injury to
insult, refused his application for the return of the diamonds, giving
as his reason that “Griqualand West was a civilized country with
competent courts, and if these were his diamonds he could go to
Kimberley, prove them to be his lawful property, and no doubt get them.”
Kemp, as Chief Justice Reitz advised him, in the following December
brought an action against the chief of the Griqualand West detective
department for the recovery of the diamonds, which resulted in a
judgment of “absolution from the instance” with costs, the diamonds
remaining in the care of the detective department. Judge President
Buchanan, in giving this decision, distinctly stated that he did not
believe Kemp, but allowed him another opportunity, if he chose, to prove
the diamonds were not stolen property.
Kemp then noted an appeal, which came before the appeal court in January
1886, at Capetown. The Premier, Mr. Upington, who appeared for the
detective department, said there was no proof that the diamonds were
Kemp’s. He was another’s servant—a noted Free State (!) diamond
buyer—had never been in possession of the diamonds, and was not entitled
to sue. Mr. Leonard, the attorney general under the former (Scanlan)
ministry, who appeared for Kemp, said he “would not ask the court to
believe, as was attempted in the court below, that a thief could recover
stolen property, but there was no proof that the diamonds in question
were stolen.” The court, in giving judgment, held that there was no
proof that the diamonds were Kemp’s property and dismissed the appeal,
and the diamonds were forfeited to the Crown.
This decision was hailed with delight by the mining community, as it
tended to overthrow a clique of _pseudo_-legal and illegal buyers, who
had long worked in concert; therefore, at the present time, the
Transvaal and Natal are the only territories where transactions in
stolen diamonds are capable of not being criminally brought home to
those engaged in them.
This so far is a faithful account of the I. D. B. trade and its various
ramifications.
Sir Jacobus de Wet, when recorder of our high court, once solemnly
termed this trade the “canker-worm of the community.” The truth of his
words time has over and over again but too truly established, as this
canker-worm is gnawing away the very vitals of Diamond Field society.
To fully explain my meaning, men in some instances, I am sorry to say,
occupying a fair status in commerce, mining or society are introduced to
the new arrival; they have an ostensible business, and nothing in their
manner would betray, save to one endowed with all the concentrated
astuteness of Scotland Yard, that they were mixed up directly or
indirectly with the nefarious business. They are not incapable of
showing acts of kindness to the tyro on the Fields even without an
ulterior motive, and the new-comer does not find out the real character
of his kind acquaintances very often until he has been the recipient of
favors from them, when even if he would wish once for all to sever his
connection with them, custom and gratitude alike tend to prevent the
separation. Positive proof of their being implicated in the traffic,
from the very nature of the case, is not forthcoming, and so the young
man gives his friends the benefit of the doubt, continues the
acquaintance, and though he may not be actually drawn into absolute
crime or abnormal vice, is certain to prove a living example of the
truthful saying: “Evil communications corrupt good manners.”
Business relations too, like poverty, make us acquainted with strange
bed-fellows in this part of the world, and the well-paying client,
patient or customer is not readily rejected, or shown that his fees or
payments are unacceptable, without so deliberate an insult as most men
would shrink from offering, without stronger grounds than the suspicion
that they are not entirely clean-handed. Hence, before a man knows where
he is, he may have become the daily associate of unconvicted criminals.
Men who themselves would not risk any direct meddling with the traffic
are strongly tempted by offers of large percentages for the loan of
money, which they may shrewdly suspect, though they do not _know_, will
be devoted to the purposes of the illicit traffic: needless to say, such
persons are morally accessories before the fact. I have elsewhere
mentioned how those who in former days were themselves recipients of
stolen diamonds are in some instances now the loudest in condemning
their successors in the business, and this is brought forward as an
argument to prove that free trade in diamonds is justifiable, an obvious
and pitiable fallacy which I am only too sorry to say imposes upon many.
The disgrace attached to the jail-bird in other parts of the world,
however truly he may have repented of the wickedness that he had
committed, here amidst the great body of the population is rarely
imposed on the I. D. B. who has served his time, and men of
comparatively high standing feel no shame in hobnobbing with them in
public bars. While I would be the last man in the world to cast in a
man’s teeth the sins which he has expiated in prison, or to frustrate
him in his effort to earn an honest living, yet it is manifest that
there is an opposite extreme, and that to exalt a convicted felon into a
martyr, or even to make him a bosom companion, can scarcely be regarded
as a sign of high integrity.
There is no doubt the receivers of stolen diamonds have made the most
money out of the mines. There is no moral difference between the
Whitechapel old clo’ Jew who “runs the klips,” the Hebrew swell who
keeps his carriage at the West End, by purchasing diamonds at half their
value in Hatton Garden, the Christian who lends money for the purchase
of stolen goods, and who every Sunday thanks God he is not as other men
are, and the respectable (?) colonial merchant “buying on the quiet.”
They are all as much thieves as the veriest pickpocket of St. Giles’.
The moral condition of the diamond fields is such that, although a man
may be known to be habitually engaged in _the trade_, he is openly
received until the jail’s portals are some day suddenly thrown back at
the bidding of the special court to receive yet another victim, an
example of the old, old story.
In a succeeding chapter I shall give some individual cases illustrative
of my theory, in the next I shall deal with the treatment that this
increasing disease has demanded and received.
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