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:
[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]
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.
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!
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.