IN SEARCH OF SIR WILLIAM - URBEX PHOTOGRAPHY
Gary Oldman is a great actor who, like John Malkovich and Johnny Depp often plays slightly odd and sometimes very scary roles. In 1995 Oldman appeared in the excellent Murder in the First. The movie is about Henri Young, played by Kevin Bacon, a petty criminal who at the age of 17 steals $5 from a post office to feed himself and his little sister. He’s sentenced to prison, later transferred to Alcatraz and spends three years in solitary confinement for trying to escape. Solitary confinement usually doesn’t last for more than 19 days. Young slowly loses his mind, experiences a psychotic episode after his release into the general population and stabs another prisoner to death with a spoon.
Oldman’s portrayal of Warden Milton Glenn in Murder in the First and the hell and despair of Henri Young gave me the shivers when I watched the film. Murder in the First flickered through my mind when I photographed the deserted and abandoned William Porter reformatory on an overcast afternoon deep in Cape Town’s Tokai forest recently.
The disquiet I experienced was mirrored in the scrawled messages appearing on the walls of this sad and sorry place; “Make that move and I’ll show you the way.” “Durban boy was here for armed robbery - The Young Destroyers” and “Please wear the clothes you stole, cunt” in one of the small detention cells. Walking through the derelict and abandoned reformatory it felt as if it oozed helplessness, hopelessness and despair and yes, evil.
Porter reformatory could never have been a happy place and I wondered why “Sir William” Porter bequeathed £20,000 ‘for the establishment and maintenance, at the Cape, of one or more reformatories’ way back in 1878. I doubt if anyone was ever reformed in the more than a century when hundreds of boys spend time there. The road to the hell of others was paved with Porters good intentions.
“Who was William Porter and why a reformatory here?” I wondered. It took some careful hunting through the blue nowhere of cyberspace before a clearer picture of Porter and his legacy emerged. The reference to nobility (Sir William) quoted in some sources threw me off track, he actually declined a knighthood
Porter was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland on 15 September 1805. His father was a Presbyterian minister. He was called to the Irish Bar (Bar not pub) in 1831. His strong liberal convictions led to his appointment as Attorney General of the Cape of Good Hope in 1839.
He had ‘an unspeakable hatred of oppression of every kind.’ As Attorney General he insisted on equal justice for all, blacks and whites, masters and servants. He also used his role to promote, and win acceptability for his liberal convictions. He drafted a constitution in 1854 making provision for a parliament elected by blacks and whites on equal terms. After retiring in 1865 he was elected to parliament and strived for responsible government, religious freedom, the abolition of capital punishment and the higher education of women.
Porter declined all offers of honours and promotions including a knighthood, the chief justiceship, even the opportunity to become Prime Minister of the Cape. In 1873 he returned to Ireland and lived in Belfast until his death in 1880. In his will he left large donations to institutions in the Cape. The small town of Porterville established in 1863 was named also after him.
http://www.booksireland.org.uk/store/ulster-biographies/new-light-at-the-cape-of-good-hope-william-porter-the-father-of-cape-liberalism/
In January 1882 Sir Hercules Robinson, the then governor, proclaimed a reformatory at Valkenberg. This reformatory was moved to Tokai, adjacent to the Tokai Manor house in June 1890 and named after William Porter. If Porter knew what travesty of justice and heartache his bequest lead to it would have done less harm if he blew the bucks on wine, women and song back in Ireland I swear.
I suppose the upstanding citizens of Cape Town wanted the young offenders relocated a bit further away from town to protect them from murder, rape and pillage. Out of sight, out of mind? The reformatory made provision for the detention and “rehabilitation” of juveniles of all races under the age of 16 years. At the end of the 19th century this was the only one institution of its kind in South Africa.
The Tokai Manor house was built for Andreas Teubes in 1795. The property changed hands several times and in the late 1800’s the Cape Colonial Government wanted to use it as an asylum. Neighbouring farmers objected and the property was then used by the Department of Forestry for the establishment of the country’s first commercial forest.
The Porter School, where the first schoolmaster lived, was at first housed in the outbuilding of the Manor House. According to a study titled “The Heritage significance and Vulnerability of Tokai and Cecilia” in “1890 new complex of buildings, designed by Sir Herbert Baker was erected”
http://tinyurl.com/3ha728v
Baker was one of the most influential architects in South African history and his crowning glory, in my opinion, is the grandiose Union Buildings in Pretoria which is the official seat of the South African Government.
According to another source, http://www.artefacts.co.za - Baker “began his career in South Africa by designing a small extension to the Tokai Reformatory for James Rose-Innes, Minister of Justice in 1893” The Artefacts comment makes much more sense to me - what remains of the reformatory is a hodge-podge of different styles and additions which as a whole holds little charm or cultural significance.
After reading a African Studies paper titled “The Pedagogy of Porter: The Origins of the Reformatory in the Cape Colony, 1882-1910” presented by Dr. Linda Chisholm (currently special advisor to the Minister of Basic Education) at the University of Johannesburg in April 1985, http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/8524 , I feel it would be better to raze the place to the ground and spread salt on the earth than trying to restore it to as a cultural heritage site.
This paper highlights the plight of juveniles hidden away in a forest far from what the definition of civilization was at the Cape a century and a bit ago. I’m sure that a number of them were guilty of petty crimes but there is no way that the conditions at the reformatory could have changed them for the better. It was a brutally hard and inhumane hell-hole where youngsters had no protection against maltreatment by their peers or the brutality of their keepers.
Boys apprehended for petty crimes, such as stock-theft on farms, housebreaking, theft and pilfering ended up in this isolated place surrounded by forest far removed from normal society.
They were sentenced here to break down 'wild and reckless’ habits and instill obedience and willingness to work, honesty and cleanliness into a generation that was unlikely to receive much schooling. It was believed that young delinquents would have a better change of reform if they are placed in the correct disciplinary context removed from the influence of adult criminals with whom they were previously incarcerated.
Porter reformatory was surrounded by thick wire fencing. Two dormitories, flanked by the superintendent and warders' rooms overlooked an enclosed yard that also served as a playground. The boys spend two hours in the yard each day come rain or shine where they had their meals and spent their leisure time. All windows were barred and there were a number of isolation cells for the solitary confinement of recalcitrant offenders.
The youngsters were crowded into a harsh prison-like environment under constant surveillance by warders. Judas windows were fitted into the dormitory doors which were placed in a way that allowed warders to see the whole length of the building. What struck me was the single open toilet in each dormitory which afforded no privacy at all.
The Warders were men 'accustomed to discipline', many unemployed or ex-convicts. Arbitrary brutality and violence against juveniles was a regular feature of reformatory life. There was no room for sentiment - a warder either played by the rules of domination and subordination of inmates or lost his job.
Many juveniles, before incarceration, had little control was exercised over them, either by families or the state. To eradicate independence and autonomy these 'gangs of young thieves’, as the reformatory superintendent labeled them, were drilled into docility by a time-table similar to army discipline. Life inside was rigidly structured and tightly controlled.
The boys was let out of the dormitories at six o’clock in the morning and locked in again six at night. The scariest of all is that wardens removed all lights by 20h30. One doesn’t need a vivid imagination to know what took place in these deepest darkest nights of the soul when juveniles were most powerless and vulnerable.
Homosexual rape initiated newcomers into the 'under-life’ of the reformatory while younger boys were soon drafted into service, sexual and otherwise, for older boys. Masturbation and homosexuality was common as was fagging, a common boarding-school phenomenon. The culture of harsh discipline and violence was unendurable is indicated by reports of mental derangement, self-inflicted injury and even suicide.
Locked in at night with little supervision juveniles used the cover of darkness to establish the pecking order and planning escape. Brutal treatments by other boys and warders often lead to attempted escape. One Peter Abrahams fled to avoid punishment when he stole some bread from the warders' mess room. Others bolted into the Tokai forest after repeated beatings. Escapees were often recaptured due to the reformatories isolation and harshly punished. Boys could expect fifteen cuts from the resident magistrate and a spell in isolation on a diet of bread and water.
The majority of the boys arrived at the reformatory Illiterate. What little schooling there was, was a travesty lasting about three hours a day. Only a few possessed rudimentary skills of literacy and numeracy. At first the superintendent and the warders, the latter barely literate themselves was responsible for “education”
During the planting and harvesting seasons all other activities, including schooling, were abandoned. Porters aim was to remain self-sufficient and which took precedence over its disciplinary function;
It was felt that boys could be reformed of criminal and undisciplined habits by work (in other words free child-labour) and be 'brought within the ranks of wage-earners and become a valuable asset to the Colony' meaning as unskilled manual farm labourers. Industrial training, which involved tailoring, carpentry and blacksmithing was intended to teach boys 'some useful handicraft by which they can earn their living after their release'.
This was a disaster as no consistent training was provided; only a handful of boys were employed for short periods in each activity. Industrial training meant that they made the uniforms for their fellow-inmates and repairs to the reformatory buildings and equipment. Their training was directed by warders, themselves untrained and ill-equipped to teach.
Reformatory boys were also apprenticed as farm labourers. A contract of apprenticeship was signed by a 'Master’ stipulating the length of the apprenticeship, generally two years, which included instructing the apprentice in a calling or trade, providing for his education and religious instruction, clothing, lodging and food.
No records were kept of the boys either during or after their apprenticeship. No provision was made for inspection of their working conditions. John Graham, secretary of the Law Department, admitted in 1891 that some of the clauses, like those dealing with education and religious instruction were unenforceable.
What is uncontestable is that reformatory boys did not relish the prospect of being apprenticed for almost half their sentence. It was not unusual for boys to abscond during their apprenticeship. The fact that the brutal and inhumane treatment in the reformatory was preferable to apprenticeship is an indication of the arduous working conditions on farms.
Racial segregations started happening in the early 1890’s. A Rev. Marchand who was appointed 'to apprise the Minister of matters affecting the moral control of the reformatory’ was approached by a delegation of boys. They complained that Head Warder Hartley was 'rough with them in hurrying them over the gravel in the morning’. They had no boots the stones hurt their feet. The Superintendent was directed to equip all white boys with boots and socks, while the black kids received no such luxury.
Dear John Graham recommended in 1892 that black and white juveniles should be segregated, both in the dormitories and in their education.
A dormitory for white boys was completed at the end of 1892 and the Superintendent General of Education, Langham Dale, affirmed a particular direction for black education: White boys were channeled into industrial training and blacks into manual labour - 'gardening, milking, tending cows, working with horses ... and general farm labour'.
White boys were also granted extra privileges. From 1893 they could remain in the dining room up to 8.00 pm (instead of being- locked up at 6.00 pm. as the black boys continued to be) where games such as draughts and dominoes were permitted. A small library of books was made available to them.
There is little information about the lives of boys once they left Porter. They were given 1-5 shillings (depending on their conduct inside), a suit of discharge clothing made at the reformatory and their fare to the railway station nearest to their ultimate destination.
In a later paper Dr Chisholm wrote about the findings of a Select Committee reported in June 1921 to Parliament on the conditions at the Porter reformatory, its findings were not altogether surprising.
The Committee had four main criticisms:
- The institution was too much of a prison and too little of a reformatory.
- There was no proper classification of inmates, either according to age or character, with the result that older inmates of a "criminal and vicious type" had opportunities of bullying and corrupting younger and more innocent inmates
- That the present buildings rendered any system of classification impossible.
- That there were many boys in the reformatory who ought not to be there at all.
I used Dr Chisholm’s papers extensively as a source for this post and learned a lot about the Porter Reformatory. This is the beauty of Urbex photography. It leads one into the highways and byways of long forgotten history. My Flickr set of the Porter Reformatory and those of other appears in the UrbexSA Flickr group;
http://www.flickr.com/groups/urbexsa/