Browsing by Author "Davey, Arthur"

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    Public health and society in Cape Town, 1880-1910
    (1989) Van Heyningen, Elizabeth; Davey, Arthur
    This thesis is a contribution to the social history of medicine and to urban history. It attempts to examine the impact of public health reform on Cape Town society between 1880 and 1910. Accepting the argument that the control of disease is one of the means by which a dominant establishment may assert its authority and impose its ideology in a society, it contends that ideas about the organisation of society were transmitted from metropolitan Britain to the Cape Colony partly through the implementation of public health reform but that such notions became modified in the process. It concludes that health reform was one means by which imperial control was maintained in South Africa and a segregated society was implemented. The "sanitation syndrome" was more than a metaphor. It was a powerful agency for change because it was deeply embedded in the consciousness of Victorian society and provided a scientific rationalisation for the separation of the races and the assertion of white, British, dominance. Topics include the creation of a medical profession at the Cape; the effect of health panics caused by the smallpox epidemic of 1882 and the plague epidemic of 1901 on social relations in the city; the impact of the closure of the cemeteries and the introduction of the Contagious Diseases Acts on different communities in the city; the creation of bureaucracies in local and central government; and mortality in the early twentieth century.
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    Sir Richard Southey, Lieutenant governor of Griqualand West 1872-1875
    (1973) Minott, Lorraine Lukens; Davey, Arthur
    The idea for using Southey's letters as the basis for a study of his administration or Griqualand West was suggested to me by two historians, one South African and one American, almost simultaneously. Thus inspired, I spent many hours in the Cape Archives where I became fascinated by Southey, his friends and his numerous adversaries. Southey was a tireless correspondent, and from his detailed accounts of the day to day happenings in Griqualand West and his definite opinions on people and events, a vivid picture emerges of Southey as a man. Stubborn, irascible, protocol minded and disorganized on one hand, humanitarian and imperialistic to the point of being almost visionary in his dreams for Africa on the other. The difficulty was to present Southey in depth without drowning in detail. Certain aspects of Southey's administration I have deliberately omitted, for instance, the complicated issue of ownership of the land which became Griqualand West and the endless boundary squabbles with the OFS and the SAR. Others, such as Southey's relations with Barkly, Carnarvon and Froude I have only touched upon from Southey's point of view as they have been dealt with in great detail by Mr. Goodfellow and Mrs. Macmillan. I have concentrated on the specific issue of Southey's administration and why it tailed. Southey's attitude towards the natives, which affected his views on the arms trade, complicated the settlement of the land problem, and soured his relations with the diggers was one factor. There were others as far flung as the fluctuation of the world diamond market, and as near as Southey's inability to compromise and his knack of making both warm friends and bitter enemies.