#WilliamHills: Hills gives up the simple life in PE for the goldfields
Even though they had landed on shore with only 30 shillings between them, they were never really short of money.
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Life was simple in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha) for Benoni City Times founder William Hills and his teenaged brother George in the 1890s.
Even though they had landed on shore with only 30 shillings between them, they were never really short of money: rent was low and foodstuffs cheap, credit was extended without note, there were no radios, no motor cars, no refrigerators, no picture houses and no chain stores.
ALSO READ: #JourneyTo100Years: Part 1 of our series on William Hills, founder of the City Times
Hills had his job at the Port Elizabeth Advertiser. His brother, after employment at a store in Uitenhage, had started tutoring on an ostrich farm, the baby ostriches he took to tending, flapping all around him while he sat under an umbrella with a book in his hand.
“Few people now living on the Rand have any idea of the great lure of the goldfields in the days of their early development,” William Hills wrote. “People poured into South Africa from all the other goldfields in the world. Every ship was packed to capacity.”
Hills left Port Elizabeth in April 1897 to take up a journalistic position on the Rand goldfields at Krugersdorp.
His account is contained in the story of his life as a journalist, which City Times readers convinced him to write in 1940 despite his belief that autobiographies were often rather boring.
“The favourite topic of conversation in the towns of the Old Colony was the rapid rise to fortune of this or that citizen.
“And when the former citizen returned from Johannesburg what envious or admiring glances were cast in his direction!
“When he left the village to go north to seek his fortune, he may have been shy but he certainly was not shy when on his return he stepped off the train at Port Elizabeth with his pocket and belt full of Kruger sovereigns,” Hills wrote, adding that the fortune finders boasted to admiring audiences in bars of making a thousand pounds in a fortnight in shares or claims.
“It is hardly any wonder then that Bay youth was generally much unsettled … and felt the lure of the north irresistible. It promised excitement, adventure, possibly wealth.”
Next time: Hills experiences “anxious moments” in Vereeniging
(Article: Carol Stier).
ALSO READ: William Hills: ‘A South African reporter must be able to turn their hand to anything’
