Livingstone Hospital
Korsten, Port Elizabeth
by
Mike Oettle
ARMS registered in the name of the Livingstone Hospital Board, in terms of a certificate issued by the Bureau of Heraldry on 14 April 1971. They are blazoned:
Azure, a pyramid Argent charged with a campanile
proper.
The pyramid is clearly more sharply angled than those found at Gizeh in Egypt, since it is not modelled on those pyramids. It is the memorial erected in 1820 to Elizabeth Frances Donkin (née Markham, died August 1818 at Meerut in India), wife of Sir Rufane Donkin, on the Donkin Reserve in Port Elizabeth.
Donkin selected the site for the pyramid in August of that year. “Settler draughtsman Thomas Willson made drawings for a pyramid similar to that of Caius Cestius in Rome, and William Reed supplied the stone. The builders were soldiers from the Fort.[1] In June 1821 [Johann] Knobel surveyed 5 morgen 535 sq roods of land around the memorial which was to remain an open space in perpetuity.”[2]
The Donkin pyramid is also to be found in the arms of Pearson and Lawson Brown High Schools. The campanile is also a specific one, namely that erected alongside the Port Elizabeth railway station (close to the harbour entrance) to mark the centenary of the arrival of the 1820 Settlers. It is ironic that British settlers were honoured with the erection of an Italian-style bell tower. Nonetheless, the Campanile,[3] as it is called, has also found its way into use as a symbol of Port Elizabeth. The image shown here of the
Campanile is taken from the seal of the Port Elizabeth Philatelic Society.
While the seal depicts not only the Campanile itself but also the pyramid
(alongside the old lighthouse on the Donkin Reserve) with some accuracy, the
placement of the figures in the landscape is fanciful, since the Campanile is
some distance from the Reserve. Nurses trained at Livingstone
Hospital traditionally wore these arms as an enamelled brooch. About Korsten and the hospital: The association between Port Elizabeth and
the name Korsten goes back to 1812, when a Dutch merchant, Frederick
Korsten, purchased (with a company) the opstal of the farm Papenkuilsfontein.[4] He later renamed
the farm Cradockstown or Cradock Place, after Governor Sir John Cradock. Harradine writes:
“Korsten had won a contract to supply 300 barrels of salted beef to [Fort
Frederick]. In partnership with C F Pohl he established the first trading
post in the Eastern Cape. His concerns included beef salting, tanning, sheep
breeding, whaling, milling and barrel making. “He leased the
Santa Cruz[5] and Bird islands for sealing and fishing, and owned his own ships (the Uitenhage Packet was the first ship to enter the Zwartkops River) and a number of farms on which he grazed his stock. He was known for his hospitality. “Korsten’s only
daughter, Maria, widow of John Damant and second wife of John Centlivres Chase,
inherited Cradock Place, but the land was subdivided and sold, and in 1909 the
house was destroyed by fire.”[6] In the 1850s
subdivisions of Cradock Place were increasingly used as country residences by
well-to-do Port Elizabethans, especially in the area now known as Korsten.
However, as the century advanced these were increasingly subdivided and sublet.
By the early 20th century it had degenerated into a slum, where Coloured people
predominated. Towards the end of
the South African War (1899-1902) several locations in Port Elizabeth were
found to be ridden with bubonic plague. There were 136 cases officially
reported, of which 57 were fatal. The locations were cleared, and their
inhabitants moved to a new location at New Brighton. Black people who
did not want to be subjected to the strict rules of the new location chose
instead to move to Korsten. Black people continued to occupy homes in Korsten
until the application of the Group Areas Act in the 1950s, when they were
forcibly removed to New Brighton. Long before the
Second World War the slum conditions in Korsten were a matter of concern to the
Port Elizabeth city council, especially following the incorporation of the
village into the city in 1924. In 1940, thanks to the efforts of councillor
Adolf Schauder, 100 houses were erected on the hillside above Korsten, the
beginning of Schauder Township, later known as Schauderville. On 31 December
1937 Dr A J Crenstein and Sir Edward Thornton, following a visit to Port
Elizabeth, reported that the city needed a new hospital to serve the
Non-European[7] population. The site eventually chosen and donated for the purpose by the City Council was an area of 33 acres (13,35ha) where Stanford Road[8] crossed the Papenkuils River.[9] The land was
handed over on 7 February 1940. Construction, delayed by the Second World War,
was eventually undertaken by Siemerink and Brink, and the hospital was opened
in October 1955. The hospital was
named for the missionary-explorer Dr David Livingstone, who was sent out to
South Africa by the London Missionary Society, which had a station at Bethelsdorp. He first arrived
in South Africa in March 1841, landing at Cape Town and travelling from there
by sea to Port Elizabeth. He was accommodated in one of the historic dower
houses at Bethelsdorp (still standing today) until he had managed to acquire
wagons and provisions for his journey to Kuruman. The hospital
entrance is 6km from Port Elizabeth’s Market Square (from which distances have
traditionally been measured), and about halfway to Bethelsdorp, following the
route on the plain at the foot of the plateau on which much of Port Elizabeth
(from the Donkin Reserve on Central Hill to beyond Newton Park) is built. At the time of
writing (2008) the hospital is being demolished in stages and replaced by an
entirely new hospital, ready for use during the Soccer World Cup in 2010.
[1] Fort Frederick, on a bluff overlooking the lagoon of the Baakens or Kabega River, erected in 1799, the first permanent structure in the heart of what was to become Port Elizabeth.
[2] Quoted from Port Elizabeth: A social chronicle to the end of 1945 by Margaret Harradine.
[3] While the Italian pronunciation of the word campanile has four syllables (kam-pa-ni-le), Port Elizabethans generally pronounce it with only three: kam-puh-neel, kam-puh-nile (rhyming with the River Nile) or even kam-puh-naal.
[4] Information on Frederick Korsten and the village of Korsten taken from Margaret Harradine’s book.
[5] As mentioned here, this island was named Santa Cruz by Bartolomeu Dias, but is generally known as St Croix.
[6] The foundations of Cradock Place have been preserved, and from time to time there has been talk of re-erecting the buildings. So far nothing has come of it.
[7] This patronising blanket term was used at the time to cover anyone not belonging to the white (“European”) population group – Coloured, Indian and Bantu-speaking (or black), without distinction.
[8] Stanford Road, named for Sir Walter Stanford, is the main thoroughfare of the northern areas of Port Elizabeth, running north-westwards through Korsten and past Gelvandale to Bethelsdorp.
[9] The Papenkuils River rises in the vicinity of Parsons Vlei, a large marshy area which Governor Sir George Grey granted to the rector of St Mary’s Church, in the heart of Port Elizabeth, as a glebe.
One leg of the river runs northward through Van der Kemp’s Kloof to Bethelsdorp, and then westward towards Algoa Park. The other leg runs to the south of it, between Westering and Malabar, running down a deep valley past the Moregrove Quarry and Livingstone Hospital.
The two legs meet near Cradock Place, from where the last part of the river (which is canalised) runs to the sea, and is popularly known as Smelly Creek. The Creek Interchange, where the Settlers Way freeway into the city meets the N2, is at its mouth.
The hospital stands alongside the southern leg.
The river is named for the farm Papenkuilsfontein, which in turn takes its name from bulrushes that grow near the hospital. (See this page for more about this plant.)
Vir
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Image of arms by Barrie Burr.
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Comments, queries: Mike Oettle