Part 23 in our series on William Hills: staking claims during the Rand gold rush
Anyone was allowed to peg a claim if the claim licence had lapsed because of non-payment.
William Hills rose before the sun had risen one morning to help his boss, newspaper owner Charlie Deecker, peg gold claims.
“I had to be up very early and not breathe a word to a soul,” he wrote in an account of his life as a journalist during the gold rush of the 1890s.
A two-horse cab was waiting for them and they set off up the valley through morning mists in the direction of Witpoortjie, which is now in Roodepoort.
“To our relief, the field was clear. I carried the pegs and Mr Deecker hammered them in after roughly striding off the area he wanted to peg. Then a rush to the Claim Inspector’s Office to register.”
In those days, anyone was allowed to peg a claim if the claim licence had lapsed because of non-payment by the due date.
ALSO READ: Part 22 in our series on William Hills: when fortunes were made in a day
“As claims might be worth anything from £10 each to several hundreds of pounds, there were great opportunities for early birds who knew where worms might be forthcoming. Claim licences didn’t cost much, but most peggers aimed to resell their claims rather than to work them. “…
It was therefore possible for an enterprising man to peg out a block of lapsed claims and sell them again within a week for one or more thousand pounds, at a cost to himself of not more than a pound or two for licences.
“No wonder he felt like a millionaire and that champagne, at 25 (shillings) a bottle, flowed freely, although both he and his friends would really have preferred beer or whiskey.
“But you couldn’t depart from the custom of the Reef and for the first round at least it had to be champagne.” Indeed, Hills once saw champagne and whiskey combined.
“A stiff tot of whiskey in a tumbler had been poured out for a Scottish mine engine driver and the glass was filled up with champagne. I will draw a veil over the effects.”
Everyone was keen to become a partner in a claim-owning syndicate in those days and loved to give them important titles.
“But the controllers of gold mining began to get tired of paying large sums for claims and used to let the syndicates pay licences until they were tired and then buy up the rights for a song.”
(Article: Carol Stier).
Next time: Oom Paul’s gold claim lottery
ALSO READ: William Hills part 21: How “Coffee Jacobs” drove South Africa’s first motor car
