UPDATED: 05/07/2024
5 July 1853, Cecil John Rhodes born at Bishop’s Stortford, England.
5 July 1873, The settlement known as “New Rush” is named Kimberley.
5 July 1873, Klipdrift re-named Barkly West.
5 July 1915, John Misherley, Greek owner of the Union Hotel on North Circular Road, fatally wounded by three members of the Ninevite gang.
Cecil Rhodes died at nearly 49 years of age and had, in his short life span, taken virtual control of the world’s diamond industry, got a reasonably major share in the gold industry, had colonised an area of land north of the Limpopo area, been a member of the Cape parliament from 1880 until his death, and was the Premier (Prime Minister) of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896.In both Great Britain and southern Africa, he was treated with tremendous respect and honour.
Like all of us, he had bad and good points. Some may point out that his bad points outweigh his good ones quite considerably. They may indeed. The bad points of course would always include the war and defeat of the Matabele nation in 1893, the Jameson Raid of 1895/96 and the Anglo-Boer South African war of 1899-1902. There are others, and there are good points too.
He had many friends, and he had just as many if not more enemies.
He was not a slave trader nor did he deal in slaves as several people have intimated.0Slavery had been finally done away with in the British Empire in 1833, thus finished with in southern Africa at the same time.
Rhodes was a businessman first, and then a politician.
Like many an extremely successful businessman, he got his own way most of the time. He had a brilliant mind, was a great orator, had a magnificent memory and was a visionary.
The point of this short piece on Cecil Rhodes is that no-one really knows his background, do they? That he worked his way up from absolutely nothing to what he became. In other words, he was one of us mere mortals except he became successful.
Unlike many of today’s millionaires and billionaires in South Africa he was not just given the money and made a director of one or more companies and living happily evermore, he made his businesses, he made them work and he appointed the directors. Oh yes he did, google it if you can get past the politically led diatribes against him. One of the directors he appointed was Royal Naval Captain HM Penfold. He liked Penfold, Cape Town’s harbour master and could sit and drink and talk with him for hours. Penfold also taught Rhodes how to sail a small boat, and was appointed a De Beers Director.
In brief, Rhodes was born in Bishop’s Stortford England on 5 July 1853, the 7th born of 11 children to the Reverend Francis Rhodes and his second wife Louisa. His paternal grandfather was a farmer.
So he was a member of Britain’s middle class, lower middle class, but still middle class. As the fifth boy child he would have been expected to get a career in the ministry, like his father before him. Or perhaps in a legal firm.
He was a sickly child and basically home taught by his mother, and then his father. When he was well enough he would attend the local grammar school, our equivalent today of a South African government school. Nothing exciting except perhaps he loved cricket and played for the school 1st XI when feeling well which explains his support of cricket and other sports later in his life.
At the age of 17 years, having been advised he would die soon should he remain in England, he left the wet climate and arrived in South Africa to join his brother Herbert who was farming at Umkomaas in what is now Kwazulu-Natal.
He stayed there for a time and then left for the diamond fields, in 1871 joining his brother Herbert on his diamond claims in what is now the famous Big Hole of Kimberley.
This is the point of this story.
He was a nobody, just one of many thousands of nobodies working hard in the claims. This continued for some years and eventually he could afford to go to Oxford University to study and he paid his own way. No scholarship, bank or student loans for him unlike many others today. At the same time as all this was happening he was wheeling and dealing in business ventures, many of which failed. Some were a great success – such as making and selling ice cream and ice cubes in the heat of Kimberley, and pumping under contract the water out of two Kimberley open pits.
He worked hard. I do not think he played as hard as he worked but he rose from the bottom of the mining industry to get to the top of his chosen world of business.
Physical work too. Not just sitting around in meetings waiting for his monthly payout. He controlled his own destiny. Please to remember I am not writing about his foibles and bad points or how he may or may not have treated people on his way up the ladder. I am merely pointing out that he worked his way up from a nothing to a very important something in the world.
From a nobody to a somebody. Worked for his money. It was not given to him and it was not inherited.
An absolutely amazing and meteoric rise from a sickly and poor teenager to a financial and economic success in a matter of 32 years.
Just trying in a small way to clear some of the mud around Cecil Rhodes, a Kimberley teenager who did well, and very well too.
UPDATED: 05/07/2023
5 July 1853, Cecil John Rhodes born at Bishop’s Stortford, England.
5 July 1873, The settlement known as “New Rush” is named Kimberley.
5 July 1873, Klipdrift re-named Barkly West.
5 July 1915, John Misherley, Greek owner of the Union Hotel on North Circular Road, fatally wounded by three members of the Ninevite gang.
New Rush named Kimberley 150 years ago today
Earl of Kimberley, John Wodehouse
The name Kimberley evokes thoughts of the early days, of boisterous diggers in one of the many saloons or pubs that studded the winding roads of the canvas and corrugated iron diamond town, swigging draughts and singing along with high-kicking can-can girls. Great fun indeed, these early days of New Rush on the farm Vooruitzicht, except for the fact that the Colonial Secretary in London detested both the term New Rush – too vulgar – and Vooruitzicht – he could hardly spell it, let alone pronounce it! So the problem of renaming the town was passed to Richard Southey, then Lt-Governor of Griqualand West, who in turn, passed it on to John Blades Currey, the government secretary.
A very worthy diplomat, Currey made very sure that the Colonial Secretary would be able to spell and pronounce the new name chosen for the town…by naming it after the secretary himself, Kimberley! The name was obviously approved by His Worship, so Kimberley was born, but it can be certain that the diggers did not care two hoots at the time. The new name was proclaimed on 5 July 1873, the very day the relatively poor diamond digger Cecil Rhodes celebrated his 20th birthday in the just-named town.
The story of naming Kimberley is fairly well known, but what is not well known is who Lord Kimberley was, and what did he do that even today his name is as well remembered as that of his monarch, Queen Victoria?
Earl of Kimberley, John Wodehouse
John Wodehouse was born in Wymondham, Norfolk, on 29 May 1826, the eldest son of Harry and Anne Wodehouse, and a relative of Sir Philip Wodehouse, Governor of the Cape Colony 1861 – 1870. At the age of 20, while still a student at Oxford University, he inherited his grandfather’s title of Baron Wodehouse, his father having predeceased him. Five years later he was appointed Under secretary for Foreign Affairs, holding this post from 1852 to 1856, after which he became the British Ambassador to Russia.
In 1858 he resumed his former position until his promotion of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1864, a post he held for two years. Queen Victoria conferred an earldom upon him in 1869. He and his wife, the former Lady Florence Fitzgibbon, were living at their country estate, called Kimberley House, in the village of Kimberley in Norfolk, hence the choice of title.
The name Kimberley is derived from the Anglo Saxon word Cynburgh-leah, which means “women were entitled to own land”. (In England, there is yet another village Kimberley older than South Africa’s Kimberley, about ten kilometres from the city Nottingham).
Two years later Lord Kimberley became a member of Gladstone’s first cabinet and from 1870 he served as Secretary for the Colonies. As his appointment coincided with the discovery of diamonds on the ‘dry diggings’ he was prominent in the dispute over the ownership of Griqualand West, and the negotiations for its annexation as British territory.
Although he resigned his post in 1874, he was re-appointed by Gladstone as Colonial Secretary from 1880-1882, one of his major feats during the period being the peace settlement after the battle of Majuba in 1881.
He lived long enough to hear about the siege and relief of the town named after him and died on 8 April 1902.
(Pictured is the Earl of Kimberley, John Wodehouse).
UPDATED: 05/07/2018
5 July 1853, Cecil John Rhodes born at Bishop’s Stortford, England.
5 July 1873, The settlement known as “New Rush” is named Kimberley.
5 July 1873, Klipdrift re-named Barkly West.
5 July 1915, John Misherley, Greek owner of the Union Hotel on North Circular Road, fatally wounded by three members of the Ninevite gang.
(Pictured is the house where Rhodes was born, and Cecil as a young boy.)
DID YOU KNOW
House in which Cecil John Rhodes was born
Cecil John Rhodes was born on at 7.30pm on 5 July 1853 in a semi-detached house in the small village of Bishop’s Stortford, England – some 48 kilometres north of London – the fourth surviving son of the Reverend Francis William Rhodes and Louisa Rhodes (formerly Peacock). The union would eventually produce 11 children, two of whom died in infancy. It was Reverend Rhodes’ second marriage, his first marriage being to Elizabeth Sophia Menet, a woman of Swiss descent. Elizabeth, whom he married in 1833, died giving birth to Cecil’s half-sister, Elizabeth, in 1835. Baby Elizabeth survived, and married a cousin, Thomas William Rhodes, thus retaining the surname. She died in 1886. They had children of whom no information can be found, barring an brief account in the family biography of Charles Rudd that states Cecil’s nephew, William Rhodes, married Charles’ widow Corrie (nee Wallace) in the late 1910s. The marriage did not last long. Knowing that his siblings had no sons, the nephew is quite likely the son of Elizabeth.
Cecil John Rhodes as a child
Reverend Rhodes married Louisa six years later in 1841.
Rhodes’ father was the Vicar of Bishop’s Stortford for 15 years and a reverend for some 27 years before retiring in 1876, two years before his death on 25 February 1878 at the age of 72. The vicar, described as “…a tall spare man, of polished manners and the strongly-marked mobile features that indicates a muscular habit.” He was also a man of “undeviating method, if any deduction may be drawn from the length of his sermons, which was invariably 18 minutes…”
His father had hoped that at least one of his sons would follow in his footsteps and become a vicar. Cecil wrote from his home when on vacation from university – “I came home and found my younger brothers of such a size and age that they continually hammer me. There are three of them. They are all going into the army. My father was anxious that they should enter the church as a preliminary step to becoming angels. They prefer becoming angels through the Army, and I don’t blame them. I think I shall end in being Jack of all trades and master of none.” Many years later Cecil was given a colour photograph – probably touched up, as was the norm – of his father in clerical robes. Gazing with fondness on the photograph, he said, “There he is! the old vicar of Bishop’s Stortford.”
Reverend Francis Rhodes
His mother, Louisa, came from Lincolnshire, England, and died on 1 November 1873.
5 July 1853, Cecil John Rhodes born at Bishop’s Stortford, England.
5 July 1873, The settlement known as New Rush is named Kimberley.
5 July 1873, Klipdrift re-named Barkly West.
5 July 1915, John Misherley, Greek owner of the Union Hotel on North Circular Road, fatally wounded by three members of the Ninevite gang.
(Pictured is CJ Rhodes and the house where he was born).
DID YOU KNOW
Cecil John Rhodes was born on at 7.30pm on 5 July 1853 in a semi-detached house in the small village of Bishops’ Stortford, England – some 48 kilometres north of London – the fourth surviving son of the Reverend Francis William Rhodes and Louisa Rhodes (formerly Peacock). The union would eventually produce 11 children, two of whom died in infancy. It was Reverend Rhodes’ second marriage, his first marriage being to Elizabeth Sophia Menet, a woman of Swiss descent. Elizabeth, whom he married in 1833, died giving birth to Cecil’s half-sister, Elizabeth, in 1835. Baby Elizabeth survived, and married a cousin, Thomas William Rhodes, thus retaining the surname. She died in 1886. They had children of whom no information can be found, barring an brief account in the family biography of Charles Rudd that states Cecil’s nephew, William Rhodes, married Charles’ widow Corrie (nee Wallace) in the late 1910s. The marriage did not last long. Knowing that his siblings had no sons, the nephew is quite likely the son of Elizabeth.
Cecil John Rhodes
Reverend Rhodes married Louisa six years later in 1841. The children born to the liaison were:
Herbert, (Known in Africa as ‘Roza’), was born eight years before Cecil in 1845. A tall, lean hatchet-faced man whose strength was considerable, and a splendid boxer. A born leader, Herbert would go for long walks and rides with Cecil. Their mother would say that Herbert had every sense except common sense. At school he was considered clever, volatile, “…with a face like indiarubber, and extraordinary command of expression.” He was a member of the Transvaal Volksraad for Pilgrim’s Rest in 1874, but died quite tragically in Nyasaland in 1879 when a spark from his pipe exploded a demijohn of gin from which he was busy pouring a drink. Despite putting the flames out by jumping in the nearby Shire River, he succumbed to the burns shortly afterwards on 21 October. Many years later Cecil erected a headstone over Herbert’s grave.
Louisa Sophia Margaret was “small and dark, quiet, rather prim and old-maidish” and lived most of her life at Iver in England. She was born in 1847 and died in 1923 at age 76.
Edith Caroline was similar to Cecil in many respects. An undated photograph of shows the facial and physical similarities to Cecil but it was in her character that they were most marked. She was “careless in attire…displayed splendid disregard for conventionalities…freely asserted her right to independent action.” Edith once suggested to Cecil that she move into Groote Schuur with him. He was less than delighted and instructed his secretary, Gordon le Sueur, to write back declining the suggestion. “I am very fond of my sister,” he said to Le Sueur, “and it would be very pleasant to have her here, but I am afraid the house is not big enough for two of us!” She was born in 1848, and died in 1905.
Francis William (Frank), born on 9 April 1850. Probably the most well-known of Cecil’s brothers through his participation in the Jameson Raid of 1895-1896, his subsequent death sentence (later commuted), and in the siege of Ladysmith and relief of Mafeking. Frank, or Frankie as he was popularly known, served with the 1st Royal Dragoon Guards and reached the rank of Colonel, having fought at Tel-el-Kebir in 1882 as well as in Uganda. Served with Lord Kitchener in 1896 in the Sudan. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1891, and made Commander of the Order of Bath (CB) during the Anglo-Boer War. He was also the Managing Director of the African Trans-Continental Telegraph Company, and at one stage was the military secretary to the Governor of Bombay. Was Administrator of Rhodesia for a short period, and inherited Dalham Estate on Cecil’s death, but was not to enjoy it for long as he contracted blackwater fever while visiting Victoria Falls, and died at Groote Schuur on 21 September 1905. A book of Questions and Answers dated 14 October 1866 when Cecil was 13, where one player writes the questions and another the answers, shows that Frankie was the most loved by Cecil of all his siblings. The question on whom he loved best in the world gives his answer as “My brother Frank”, while the question as to whom loves him best, is answered “I do not know.”
Frank also lost his commission in the British army for the role he played in the Jameson Raid fiasco. In July 1898, Cecil, knowing that his brother was upset about the loss of his commission, wrote to the then General Horatio Kitchener in Cairo: “My brother’s one idea is to regain his Commission. I do not like asking favours but please do what you can for him after Khartoum is taken.” Frank did regain his commission, Kitchener acknowledging the fact with a reply telegram, stating plainly “Frank Well. Reinstated”, and he served with distinction during the siege of Ladysmith and on the relief of Mafeking. Undoubtedly, Rhodes was extremely fond of his eldest brother Herbert and upon his death, was heartbroken. Frank, who was never serious and made friends with all, then became the closest of all the family, and wrote to his mother from New Rush in 1872 that “Nobody believes that I am older than Cecil – I don’t know whether to take it as a compliment or not.” At that early stage it can be seen that Cecil had already moved ahead of his brother in life.
Basil, who died as an infant in 1851 aged 11 days;
Ernest, the only child (barring Elizabeth), who married; He had two daughters, Georgia and Violet, both of whom never married. His siblings knew Ernest as ‘Binfield’. He resigned his commission in the British army and planned to immigrate to Australia, but was persuaded to come to South Africa. He was used by Cecil and Charles Rudd as their agent in England in order to pay off creditors, buy and sell shares as well as to smooth the progress of capital transfers, and later became Manager of the Consolidated Gold Fields Company. Kind hearted and generous, he was also a sound businessman. On the death of Frank he inherited Dalham estate, but like Frank, did not live too long to enjoy the inheritance, dying in 1904. He was born in 1852.
Cecil John, born a year later in 1853.
Baby Francis Frederick, born and died in 1854.
Elmhirst, who joined the Berkshire Regiment in 1878, specialised in signaling. He served with Lord Methuen in the Anglo-Boer war initially, and became Inspector of Signaling. He was awarded the DSO in 1886. He was born in 1858 and died aged 73 years in 1931. Considered independent and admired by Cecil for his perseverance.
Arthur Montague, who farmed ostriches in Oudtshoorn – and failed – settled outside Bulawayo and farmed in Matabeleland for many years with land at Bembesi. Cecil would tease and argue with Arthur, his “irresponsible brother” regularly, and Arthur would not often be bested with his quick wit. Sarcastic, facetious, and eloquent, he was a ladies man and most popular. Born in 1859 and died in 1935. Arthur was considered by Cecil to be a loafer, the worst of his brothers. After the Matabele Uprising of 1896, Arthur put in a claim for damages done to his property in Matabeleland. On the claim form, Cecil wrote, “This is the most impudent claim that has yet been submitted.”
Bernard Maitland. The youngest, and according to Cecil, the laziest. “Ah, yes! Bernard is a charming fellow; he rides, shoots and fishes; in fact, he is a loafer.” He also served in the army during the Anglo-Boer war. He was born in 1861 and died in 1935.
Thus, the only direct line of descent within the Rhodes family is with his half-sister, Elizabeth.
From Kimberley Calls and Recalls on Facebook By Steve Lunderstedt
Shortlink for this post: https://www.kimberley.org.za/?p=9720
