3-075-104 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Liquor Traffic in Delagoa Bay: flogging a kaffir, 1890. African being whipped by a white man in punishment for breaking a flask of gin. 'Our correspondent, Mr. Wallis Mackay, writes: "The liquor traffic that goes on at Delagoa Bay, or rather the Portuguese town of Lourenço Marques, is a matter that cannot but arrest the attention of anyone who may sojourn there for even a short period. The enormous quantities of the most virulent kind of Hollands gin that are unshipped there, for sending up the country to be consumed by the natives, are truly astounding - not to say alarming - to those who know the terrible effects of such poison on the susceptible Kaffir...My Sketch represents the carrying of demijohns of this gin to shore...from the outlying ship, the cargo of which on that occasion was 9000 of these huge bottles. Considering that the stuff is 56 over proof, and the traffic constant, it is small wonder that the Kaffir becomes, from a rather noble child of nature, a debased and cunning brute. The punishment with the 'Shambock,' a heavy whip of thick hide, is a very cruel form of correction...the Kaffir's Portuguese master, or even a common soldier, can chastise him to his heart's content".' From "Illustrated London News", 1890.