Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital: A Historical Overview

The Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital is located between Club Street, the N3 highway and Modderfontein Road in Johannesburg. The hospital was built in 1895 and was initially known as the Rietfontein Lazaretto. It treated patients suffering from tuberculosis, leprosy and smallpox, among other infectious diseases. Originally, Rietfontein was in a remote location, a full day’s cart ride from the centre of Johannesburg, established that far away as a safety measure against the smallpox epidemic sweeping the town. Its last smallpox patient was treated in 1965. By then it was treating tropical diseases, and in 1995 its name was changed to the Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital. The hospital now treats mainly drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV patients.

The first smallpox victim was confirmed as Mr HUNTER on 26 January 1893. He was a valet to the recently arrived Lord Algernon Gordon-Lennox and contracted the disease while staying at a Johannesburg hotel. He was put in a tent at Hospital Hill. Lord and Lady Gordon-Lennox into quarantine. Mr Hunter and a friend stayed in the quarters at the back of the hotel. Both had smallpox and were cited as the source of the outbreak that was only contained in 1895. More cases were discovered, and one tent became several tents and wood and iron houses. A committee, the Kinderpokken Komite, and a sanitary board responsible for the lazaretto (isolation facility) were established. The disease spread, and two other lazarettos, at Geldenhuys Estate and Luipaardsvlei, were created. In 1893 2,215 patients were treated at the three lazarettos, under the authority of the Kinderpokken Komite.

In 1895, the Transvaal government bought the farm Rietfontein, of about 700 hectares, from Mr KEISER. Only 320 hectares of the original farm remain; the N3 to the east has broken up the farm on that side, now containing the suburbs of Marais Steyn Park and Dowerglen.

The first superintendent of the hospital was Dr John Max MEHLISS, an expert on the treatment of smallpox and venereal diseases. He was appointed to Rietfontein in 1895, where he stayed until his death in 1927. Dr. Mehliss lived with his family in a house about a kilometre west of the hospital, constructed in 1900. The house was renovated in 1995 and is now a nurses’ training centre. His tombstone, originally in the hospital’s unkempt cemetery, was moved in 1995, together with those of Matron Mary MIDDLER and nurse Emily BLAKE, to the front of the administration block. Emily contracted bubonic plague after kissing one of the infected children of Dr MARAIS goodnight. She died on 30 March 1904 at Rietfontein. Dr. MARAIS, his wife, and three of their four children all died of plague. The doctor had attended cases in the Indian location when he contracted the plague. He passed it on to his wife, then their children and a male lodger, A.R. McNEIL. Dr Marais, his wife, and the lodger died.

In 1897 a leper asylum was built in the top north-east corner of the farm, consisting of wood and iron structures, surrounded by a 12-foot iron fence, and patrolled by armed guards. In 1900 the patients were moved to Westfort Hospital in Pretoria, and 20 000 sheep captured by the British from the Boers were kept in the deserted building. Chronically sick patients were moved into the leper building on 14 July 1903. The hospital has a dozen blue and red iron-roofed, wrap-around veranda buildings in a Victorian style. Scenes from Cry the Beloved Country were filmed at Rietfontein.

Once the smallpox epidemic subsided in 1898, the hospital’s focus shifted to venereal diseases, and all prospective mineworkers, including Chinese labourers, were examined.

In 1904, when the plague broke out in Johannesburg, more than 1,000 patients were treated at Rietfontein. Those who died were buried in a separate plague cemetery in the grounds, in graves demarcated by numbers only.

The Rand Plague Report from 1905 identifies the Indian location where the plague was first reported. On 18 March 1904, Mahatma GANDHI sent a note to Dr Charles PORTER, medical officer for health for Johannesburg, asking for help to be sent, as there were at least 15 Indians with plague. He also asked for a vacant stand where he could set up a temporary hospital to be partially funded by Indian donations and assisted by Dr GODFREY. While waiting for a reply, Gandhi went to the location and, with a policeman, opened one of the vacant houses and moved the patients in there. Dr Godfrey came out to help, and Gandhi recruited four of his clerks. They nursed the patients overnight, but by early the next day, 17 were dead or dying. On 19 March 1904, it was officially announced that there was plague in Johannesburg. Later, the surviving patients and the newly infected and suspected patients were removed to tents at Rietfontein Lazzaretto. The city council declared the Indian location overcrowded and insanitary. Gandhi represented those who were seeking compensation after the city council moved people to Klipspruit. Gandhi played a role in identifying the outbreak of the plague, and his quick intervention in isolating the victims and bringing it to the attention of the authorities at the time helped prevent a catastrophic situation. He mentions Emily BLAKE in his work The Story Of My Experiments With Truth.

In 1909, veranda beds were allowed. The total accommodation was then 163 beds – 33 for women, 100 for men and 30 on the verandas. When the 1922 strike ended, Jimmy GREEN, a prominent politician in the Labour Party and one of the strike leaders, was found in a Rietfontein bed. In 1914 electric lights and water-borne sewerage were installed at the hospital. In 1923 a ward for epidemic diseases was added, and in 1936 a pulmonary tuberculosis hospital was also built. In the 1930s portions of the farm were made available for the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation, now the National Institute of Virology, and a hostel and school for the juvenile delinquents, called Norman House. A retirement village, called Tarentaal, has also been built on the grounds. In 1939 another outbreak of smallpox in Johannesburg led to two more wards being built, but they were soon inadequate, and tents were erected. Patients were dying at the rate of 20-30 a day, and eight gravediggers were kept busy. As a precaution against the disease lingering, quicklime was poured into the graves.

In 1947-1948 one of the tuberculosis patients was Desmond TUTU, who recovered from the illness and went on to become a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. When the hospital celebrated its 100th anniversary, Tutu wrote a letter for the centenary publication, recalling “gentle and compassionate care from dedicated and skilled doctors and nurses.”

There are more than 6,000 graves on the grounds of patients who died from infectious diseases ranging from anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague, syphilis and leprosy between 1895 and 1957. The cemetery was divided into black, white, Jewish and infant sections. The deceased include many nationalities. Three of the original five cemeteries have been found, but the Jewish cemetery and the leprosy cemetery have not been discovered. Inscriptions found in Chevrah Kadisha documents recorded the names of Jewish patients who died at the hospital until 1919 and were buried at the Rietfontein Lazaretto. Rietfontein’s burial registers have been missing for many years. Dirt and rubble cover many of the graves today, making it difficult to locate them. In 1945, the Guthrie family lost three family members in two days: John Alexander GUTHRIE, Leonard Allen GUTHRIE, and Edna Isabella GUTHRIE (wife of Ronald Percival DAVIES). In 1958, the hospital stopped burying the dead on its grounds. There are two crematoriums on the grounds.

The oldest graves lie on swampy riverside ground, where victims of an 1895 smallpox epidemic were first buried on-site – then a full day’s wagon ride from town. Causes of death for the estimated 730 individuals buried at the riverside include bubonic plague. The burial site was moved up the hill after flooding brought bodies to the surface. The remaining graves spread from the Jukskei River to Linksfield Road. Many victims of smallpox, plague, Spanish flu, syphilis, tuberculosis and typhoid, who were buried according to disease and separated by lines of trees, were paupers, buried without a tombstone. Metal markers indicating and numbering the graves were stolen years ago for scrap, while fire destroyed wooden crosses that marked some graves.

In 2011 there were plans for a large housing and commercial development on Rietfontein 61-IR, the vacant land adjacent to the hospital. The Linksfield Mixed Use Development would comprise 5 000 settlements, public schools and shopping facilities. The surrounding community raised concerns regarding heritage sites, graves and the natural environment. In late 2017, the development was put on hold indefinitely.

DR MEHLISS

John Max MEHLISS was born on February 5, 1868, in Grahamstown. He was the son of Captain Otto MEHLISS and Karolina Katerina ARBEITER. His parents were married in 1856 in Cheriton, Kent, England. Otto served with the British Foreign Legion in the Crimean War, and at the end of the war he and other officers of the Legion were offered grants of land around Stutterheim in the eastern Cape. They were known as the 1853 German Settlers. Otto was not a farmer, so he joined the staff of St Andrew’s College in Grahamstown as a mathematics master. During the 8th Frontier War, Otto joined the Kaffrarian Rifles and was in command of the Grahamstown garrison. Karolina was the daughter of Countess Ermentrude von Schonhausen. John and his brother Frederick Edmund Werner attended Dale College in King William’s Town as boarders. After graduating, John was sent to Germany to study at the universities of Munich and Göttingen, where he graduated with the best academic results in Germany.

John returned from Germany in about 1893 and joined his family in the new mining camp of Johannesburg, where his father had moved. Otto had previously joined the Cape government as a land surveyor and thereafter proceeded to the Transvaal, where surveyors were in demand. He and Colonel VON BRANDIS laid out Johannesburg.

After working in private practice for some years, John was appointed district surgeon in Krugersdorp. He was assigned to Rietfontein Lazaretto in 1895, and in 1896 he was promoted to full-time medical superintendent. John took up arms against Dr. Jameson and his followers prior to their surrender on January 2, 1896.

When the Anglo-Boer War broke out, John joined the Staats Artillerie as a medical officer with the rank of major and left for the front in his Cape cart mounted on a flat railway carriage. He was present at the siege of Ladysmith as commander of the military hospital at Pepworth’s Farm and later campaigned with General Jan SMUTS in the Cape Colony.

He married Henrietta BARRETT on 14 September 1896 at St Mark’s Chapel in Krugersdorp. She was born in 1875 in Middelburg, the daughter of Henry BARRETT and Mary WRIGHT. Henrietta died on 26 October 1918 during the influenza epidemic.

John and Henrietta’s children:
1) Heinrich Frans Max MEHLISS, 1898–1917, England (twin)
2) Carl Otto Werner MEHLISS 1898–? (twin)
3) Freda Clarchen MEHLISS (1902–1965), Johannesburg. Her first marriage was to Lionel CARTER in 1923 in Benoni. Her second marriage was to William Henry MURTON in 1948 in Johannesburg.
4) Mary MEHLISS 1909–1945. She married Leopold Robert Echerias VELERIS in 1935 in Johannesburg. She was a social worker.
5) Ruth MEHLISS, 1912–1981, England. She married Montague Seymour DOVE in 1937 in England.

In 1905 a 27-year-old English missionary, Edith Theodora WILLIAMS, arrived at Rietfontein on a bicycle. She asked Dr Mehliss to hold a prayer service at the hospital. He gave her permission, and until 1914 she visited Rietfontein two or three times a year. Edith had immigrated to South Africa in 1902 as a missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. She cycled from Randfontein to Springs, holding services in mine compounds and the living rooms of Cornishmen, running a hostel for single black women at Buxton Street, Doornfontein, and being paid £20 a year. She was fluent in Sesotho. When World War I broke out, Edith returned to Europe and served as a nurse in France, where she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and later in Russia with the Red Cross, she was awarded the Czarist Cross of St George. She learnt how to speak Russian. She returned to England in late 1918. In 1919 Edith received a cable from Johannesburg: “Marry me without delay, Max.” He met her in Cape Town, and they were married at the Wynberg magistrate’s court on August 6, 1919. Despite their differences, they had a love for people and helping to ease human suffering. She was a teetotaller who hated smoking, while he loved a glass or two of wine and chain-smoked cigars. John was fluent in English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Sesotho. John Max died on 30 July 1937 in the General Hospital in Johannesburg, following a stroke.

Edith was born on 22 June 1878 in Northallerton, Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Charles WILLIAMS and Edith OATES. Her mother was an aunt of Titus OATES who took part in Scott’s Polar Expedition in 1912. After John’s death, Edith opened and ran a church bookshop in the Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg. She lived with her son in Irene for a few years and in Swaziland for a short time. When Goldfields sent her son to Bulawayo, Rhodesia in 1949, she relocated there. She taught scripture in Bulawayo’s senior schools for about eight years. After retiring, she looked after stray cats and established catteries. Edith died on 14 January 1969 in Bulawayo and was buried at Bulawayo Cemetery.

John and Edith’s child:
Dr Arthur Theodore (Max) MEHLISS 1921–1994. He was a geologist and lived in Irene, Pretoria.

EMILY BLAKE

Emily BLAKE was born in 1877 in England. She arrived in South Africa in May 1901 with a group of recruited doctors and twenty nurses sailing on the Tantallon Castle. She first worked at the Uitvlugt Plague Hospital, then moved to Port Elizabeth before moving to Johannesburg. When Emily died, her sister was listed as S.E. BLAKE of 13 Sheen Park, Richmond, Surrey.

MARY MIDDLER

Mary MIDDLER was born in 1885 in Scotland. She died on 20 December 1945 in the Transvaal Provincial Hospital in Germiston. She was unmarried.

THE MARAIS FAMILY

Dr Francois Paulus MARAIS was born in 1855 in Wellington, the son of Francois Paulus MARAIS and Johanna RETIEF. He died on 17 March 1904 at home: 22 Lilian Road, Fordsburg, Johannesburg. He married Jane Wright GILLISON in 1884 in Cape Town. Jane was born in 1861 in Scotland. She died on 21 March 1904 at home.
Francois and Jane’s children:
1) Johanna Gertrude MARAIS born 1885, died 22 March 1904 at home.
2) Agnes Brooch MARAIS born 1887, died 24 March 1904 at Rietfintein.
3) Francois Claude MARAIS born 1889, died 24 March 1904 at Rietfintein.
4) Jessie Mary MARAIS born 20 April 1892, died 07 September 1978 in Nottingham, England. In 1919 she was a missionary in Ceylon. She married the widower John Somervell HOYLAND in 1921 in Makoriya, Bengal, India. He was a Quaker missionary, writer and lecturer, who worked in India from 1912 to 1926.