- Title
- The case of James Erith, 1820 settler, and his struggle for compensation
- Creator
- Woods, Timothy Phillips
- ThesisAdvisor
- Maxwell, W A
- Subject
- Erith, James, 1790-1869
- Subject
- British settlers of 1820 (South Africa)
- Subject
- Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Emigration and immigration
- Date
- 1969
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MA
- Identifier
- vital:2618
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013451
- Description
- James Erith, a freeholder of the country of Kent, was one of the “1820 Settlers" who emigrated to the Cape and were settled mainly in the Zuurveld in the present district of Albany. This investigation was prompted by the fact that though he was by no means the settler to suffer misfortune and injustice, he was the only proprietor of a small party who eventually secured compensation. The case was the case of James Erith but the initiative and persistence was that of his wife, Jane Erith, who made in all five voyages spread over twelve years, before she secured some at least of the ends she sought and the family settled in Cape Town. The Eriths fought their case with the respective Colonial Offices for twelve years in all, and in the case of the Colonial Office, London, confronted no less than four Secretaries of State in five successive Cabinets. In the course of their struggle the Eriths received (a) the balance of their deposit; (b) cash compensation for cattle stolen by the Xhosa, and in the fina1 arbitration in 1832 the sum of £500 cash. James Erith, master baker, remains a rather shadowy figure, sharp-sighted to his own interest, querulous and not very effective. The triumph of 1832 was in the main the triumph of Jane, his wife, an amateur and robust Portia. Shrewd, tenacious, deft in argument this importunate woman knew how to stand her ground; there can have been few women who secured passage on a naval vessel and then allowed the Admiralty to submit its account to the Colonial Office. How the Eriths subsisted between their eviction from Waaye Plaats in 1823 and the arbitration award of 1832, has not been established. On occasion in London Mrs. Erith stayed with the Rev. R. Stewarts, Rutland House, Black Heath Road in Greenwich: in Cape Town it is believed that Erith plied his old trade. When he died there, in 1869 at the age of seventy nine, he left a house and three cottages to his daughter Ellen: mortgaged property in the district of Caledon, to his son-in-law George Budge : a house and three mortgaged properties in Simon’s Town to his daughter Anne Budge. He left an income of £24 per annum to his daughter Jane Moodie, widow of the late John Powell. The records used in this study, in addition to those printed in Theal, were the series C.O. 48 from the Public Record Office, London, now available on microfilm in the Cory Library at Rhodes University and records of the District of Albany in the Archives, Cape Town. The investigation has, it is thought, thrown new light on the background to the emigration scheme of 1819, on the mishandling of the Settlers in the Zuurveld after their arrival in the Cape, and on the punctilious attention to detail given by the Colonial Office, London. While it is true that the interests of the Eriths were probably smothered in the Tory endeavour to damp down the attack on Somerset in l826-1827, the Secretaries of State are by no means discredited by this analysis. It sasys much for any pattern of administration that in the thick of the Reform Bill crisis, the efforts of a single obscure member of Parliament, Mr. J O Briscoe, could secure a final arbitration award.
- Format
- 176 leaves, pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, History
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Woods, Timothy Phillips
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Collections
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