3-075-008 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Robben Island, Capetown Harbour, the Colonial Government Asylum for Lepers, 1890. '1. Crossing to the Island. 2. Male Leper Wards. 3. The Lighthouse. 4. The Church. 5. Windmill Pumping Water. 6. Visitors returning...This island has been used for some time for the location of male and female lepers, chronic sick paupers, and as an asylum for idiots. Formerly it was the place of exile for the vanquished Kaffir chiefs...for so small a spot, no place has witnessed such suffering and misery...Blackwood's Magazine states that...[the] population of 550 comprised 130 lepers, 230 lunatics, thirty convicts, and 160 of the warders and police and their families, with two resident medical officers, the senior being Governor of the community, and two clergymen. The lepers were then lodged in...buildings, which were miserably furnished and overcrowded, with...foul mattresses, and dirty rags to cover them, no floor but the bare earth, infested by vermin and large snakes...and no convenience for washing except buckets. We have no doubt that all this has been changed since the account was written...Most of the lepers were half-breed, partly Hottentot and partly Malay, with a mixture of the white race'. Illustrations from sketches by Mr. B. A. Lewis. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.