History Red Light Citichat 11 April 2008

CITICHAT 14/2008 - 11 April 2008


History Red Light


“Frenchfontein”

Two ‘faux pas’ last week! Firstly the date was wrong - should have been 4 April and not the 28th. Secondly, I wrote: “What became to be known as the Witwatersrand was the site of 25 farms with a population of about 200 people.” My apologies, what I should have said was that were approximately 200 settlers in the area – there is clear evidence of pre-colonial occupation although, up to now, inadequately researched. As was pointed out to me

“Oral historians, archaeologists and anthropologists however, are revealing that Sotho-Tswana, Bafokeng and Ndebele people had settled and/or passed through since the Iron Age, and there is a rich history beginning to emerge at last. And of course the Melville Koppies provides evidence of metal workings more than 500 years ago, not to mention the Lone Hill settlement and many other examples - the work of those cited give fascinating accounts of the pre-colonial human societies and - of great interest and relevance to us early 21st century Joburgers - the climate changes that affected their history.” Thank you for that, it is something I knew intellectually but fell into the “history started with the white settlers” syndrome.

Thought we’d break from last week’s tale of ‘likker’ to the third of what Van Onselen (New Babylon, New Nineveh) described as “central in the lives of thousands of skilled and unskilled miners - “drinking, gambling and whoring” Again I have drawn heavily on his research. From an urban background point of view, the digger’s camp was to make way for a miners town and then to a more settled working class city. As it did so, it’s sexual composition changed from almost exclusively male in 1886, to one that was still male dominated ten years later (25 000 white and 13 000 black males;14 000 white and 1 250 black females) leading to a male/female ratio of ten-point five to one and, thereafter, increasingly to a more ‘normal’ gender ratio. The first two periods thus provided fertile ground for prostitution to flourish.

The establishment of the mining camp drew diggers initially from the ZAR’s neighbouring states, the Cape Colony and Natal and, amongst them, were the first “ladies of fortune”. They were encouraged not only by the obvious prospects of a male dominated society, but also through the Contagious Diseases Act passed in the Cape in 1885 and by the extension of the railway line to Johannesburg in 1892. The Cape’s CD Act required the registration of all prostitutes and their compulsory medical examination and was obviously not popular with those to whom it was aimed. Johannesburg, clearly, was a better alternative. The first prostitutes operating on the Witwatersrand, drawn as they were from the ZAR’s southern neighbours were thus ethnically quite mixed - black, white and so-called “Cape Coloured”. Many of the ‘full-time workers’ located themselves in rooms behind the bars or canteens whilst the more part-time ‘vendors of vice’ also worked as bar-maids. The bar-owners recognised that many miners would be more attracted to bars that had ‘female accompaniments’ than those without and that they would benefit from the resultant increased liquor consumption! Bar-owners, acting collectively, sought to discourage the authorities from taking any action against prostitutes and prostitution was therefore “more or less openly tolerated”. Prostitution between 1886 and 1895 was also not ‘organised’ with most prostitutes being individual operators who conducted their trade “largely on their own initiative, and certainly without the professional assistance of pimps or madams.”

The population continued to explode – from 26 000 in 1890 to 74 000 in 1896, helped to a large extent by the opening, in 1895, of the railway link between Joburg and Lourenco Marques (Maputo). Its capacity was fully used through the sheer numbers of persons entering Mozambique thanks to the low fares of the German East African Shipping Line. But it was not only males who were attracted by this relatively cheap and easy route to the goldfields. The Great Depression of 1873-96 created a movement of poverty stricken rural women - Austro-Hungarian, German, French, Belgian - into urban prostitution. Then localised xenophobia forced many to leave Europe for the Witwatersrand.

This international group swelled the numbers of southern Africa locals. But they were soon to be further expanded and the industry dramatically changed through the entry of ‘Russian’ prostitutes with their New York pimps. Odd combination? Well, the story goes that from 1881, thousands of men and women had been forced to flee parts of western Russia and its neighbouring Hapsburg provinces through pogroms and dire poverty. Arriving in the United States, many females were ‘tricked, recruited or forced into the trade of vice”. Prostitution was then thriving in New York under corrupt municipal government until a series of Commissions exposed the level of corruption of both the politicians and police. As a result, in 1894 a large number of the ‘Russian’ prostitutes and their New York pimps decided to relocate. Their move to London was not a great success, London was well served by its own vice infrastructure! The new immigrants decided to move to more lucrative places and South Africa and South America became their new targets. 1895 to 1897 saw their numbers increase constantly. There were, for instance, between two and three-hundred pimps alone (collectively known as the macquereaux). They were as international as the women they represented – the majority being the New Yorkers, the French (souteneurs) and the Germans with a smattering of English, Australian and one known Afrikaner. An influx of French prostitutes predominantly serviced cheaper non-racial brothels which had a high clientele of miners and generally had local black pimps – the French prostitutes charged ten shillings and paid their touts a sixpence!

Prostitution led to a number of other activities in Johannesburg. Firstly so-called medical specialists in STDs. These ‘medical practitioners’ offered ‘special treatment with guaranteed success in all kinds of syphilitic diseases’.

The treatment was, however, hardly a success – the test for syphilis was only discovered in 1907! They also made a great deal of money issuing medical certificates to the prostitutes whilst the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea soared. Secondly, white slavery - the luring of young servant women particularly from Paris and Brussels to Johannesburg, where they would be either seduced or raped before being turned onto the streets – became another source of income for the local mafia, known as the ‘American Club’.

So, where did all the action take place? The area between Bree Street in the north and Anderson Street in the south, Sauer Street in the west and Kruis Street in the east, contained most of the town’s brothels and became known as “Frenchfontein”. Van Onselen, quoting from various media sources says “From the doors, windows and verandahs of brightly painted houses with large distinctive numbers on their gate posts, women – in various stages of undress – called out endearments and invitations to passing men. Other equally unambiguous offers came from the ladies employed in the large number of ‘cigar-shops’ in that quarter of town.”

The most famous brothel was known as ‘Sylvio Villa’ and was situated on one of the corners of de Villiers and Rissik streets. Detectives who kept surveillance on ‘Sylvio Villa’ recorded that, between approximately 8.00 am and 1.30 am in one week, there were 21 customers on Monday, steadily increasing over the week to 96 on Saturday and dropping to only 8 on Sunday - the gentlemen were presumably in church!

Other ‘houses of ill-repute’ included the ‘Greenhouse’ which was located at 19 and 20 Sauer Street and, amongst many others, the Monte Christo, Phoenix and Spire House.

Not only the highest concentration of brothels, but as Keith Beavon (Johannesburg – the Making and Shaping of the City) points out, together with the large number of bars, ‘Frenchfontein’ became the ‘swinging’ part of the city. In fact Beavon goes on to say that businesses in the whole Frenchfontein area “were devoted almost exclusively to organized vice, and the business day for downtown Johannesburg extended from just after breakfast through to very late at night. The significance of those revenue-earning hours soon translated into higher rentals ……….” Property owners were, of course, delighted with the higher returns they were earning and we are not talking about slum-lords! The newspaper, The Critic, commented that the properties were often “registered in the names of persons of repute, of banking corporations and eminent firms” Higher rentals eventually forced working-class and lower-middle class families, whose income was moderate, out of the CBD.

The official policy over these years was one of accepting prostitution as ‘a necessary evil.’ Whilst a number of laws were enacted, they were all made sterile due to high levels of bribery and corruption. It wasn’t until 1898 that a “Morality Act” was introduced that made provision for possibly banishing moral offenders from the ZAR. But it also made intercourse between ‘black males and white prostitutes’ an offence. However, at that time, the young State Attorney, Jan Christian Smuts, realizing that the police, including the Public Prosecutor, were accepting bribes, developed a new legal team who put some of the ringleaders of white slavery and prostitution into jail. But the real turning point came not through enforcement, but rather with the declaration of war, when thousands of prostitutes and pimps left Joburg for the safety of Cape Town! This resulted in the Cape passing the ‘Betting Houses, Gaming Houses and Brothels Suppression Bill’ in 1902, based to quite a large extent on the previous ZAR legislation. So, many prostitutes and pimps left the Cape, some returning to the Transvaal but also to Durban and Pietermaritzburg. As a result, in mid-1903, Natal introduced its own Immorality Act and Joburg again became the magnet for vice. It now had a substantial population of black and white miners, a large number of Chinese indentured labour and thousands of British troops. As Frenchfontein bounced back, white slavery was again introduced with Paris dominating this ‘export trade’. In fact, when the Chamber of Mines was negotiating in China for labour for the Witwatersrand mines, organised prostitution was simultaneously negotiating to bring out Japanese prostitutes (known as Karayuki-San) who subsequently joined forces with other Japanese prostitutes who had been operating out of Fordsburg since 1894.

Milner, as the new Administrator of the Transvaal, was put under pressure from various sources to introduce and enforce new legislation and in mid-1903 introduced a new ‘Immorality Act’ which went further than the previous legislation which had banned sexual intercourse between ‘black males and white prostitutes’, now outlawing ALL sexual intercourse between ‘African males and European women’. Whilst this aspect of the law seemed to have been enforced, Milner was not concerned with the operation of brothels allowing those that had up to 10 prostitutes “to operate openly provided their business was conducted in a suitably restrained and discreet fashion.”

Once again, prostitution boomed in Frenchfontein, which, along with the buoyant liquor industry, regained Joburg’s reputation as ‘the swinging city’ It was 1905 and the city was just nineteen years old!

Have a great weekend, regards, neil