Sidney William Frampton COTTY

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: had grocer's store, De Beer's Road (De Beer's Terrace), Kimberley with brother Alban named S & A Cotty (in existence 1891).

THE S.A. MINING AND ENGINEERING JOURNAL. Johannesburg, October 8, 1921.
Early History of De Beers.
COTTY'S— CECIL JOHN RHODES AND BAXTERS GULLY— A LADY DIGGER.
(By W. P. Taylor.) (William Peter Taylor)
The name Cotty may mean little, or it may mean much. It came from the old country a good many years ago, and there are still a few who remember "Cotty." Cotty and De Beers went together in the seventies, and Cotty was as well known as De Beers itself, for Cotty was De Beers; at least when you went to De Beers you found Cotty. Sidney Cotty was the universal provider of De Beers. He provided the diggers and their wives with practically all they required; he provided the diggers themselves with drinks at "Cotty's Bar," and then he provided John Birbeck with geld, and not only John Birbeck, but all those that ran out on Saturdays, for Saturday was a golden day, not only at De Beers, but everywhere at the mines. The Kafir boy bad to get his 10s. on Saturdays, and there was always a rush at the banks. Gold ran to a premium. Men came to town in their best clothes, and those that sold their diamonds late had to be provided with plenty of gold to pay boys, and that's why Cotty was always terribly busy on Saturdays and spent most of his hours counting gold. Cotty was English. He lived English, eat and drank that way, and died sound English as he was born. He never could have competed in the Taal. First ot all. he ran on strictly English lines; one of the most conservative of men. After he had been many years in Africa he lost nothing of his English mannerisms or speech; never answered a question without long moments of deliberation; never discarded his black bowler hat. If he could have continued life in his grandfather's collars and black stock, he would never have wean other; but in a white shirt and black tie — a small stiff bow tie, and sound English clothes, Cotty came to stay at De Beers. In course of time he sent for (?) his father, and there was an earlier edition of Cotty: a Gladstone collar, a black stock, and a Gladstone face shaved clean, and under his chin, there, reminiscent of Pegotty, was the old, old fringe of hair that men wore when Charles Dickens wrote his glorious descriptions of British character in the forties of last century. There were other members of the Cotty family; they were all more or less up to the old conservative British standard. Miss Cotty answered to a Dickens maid, who reticiently went through life with silent purpose and unchanging garb. She was one of the few who we admired for industriousness; but, I fear, beyond that there was no note of romance. Amongst these Cottys we moved for many seasons. In this atmosphere, there were men who responded nationally. There was a Swede, an American, and some Australians, but Cotty's daily course, like a vessel sailing under the Union Jack, had passengers and crew logged British.
It is fitting that I should introduce the chief character that for several years dominated Cotty's. Cecil John Rhodes first took an interest in De Beers when "Baxter's Gully," a long triangular depth cut into part of the mine by one Richard Baxter, was flooded. Baxter worked this claim in De Beers, on shares, for William Dudgeon. The ground was fabulously rich, but a great spring of crystal water suddenly flooded his workings and gave him and De Beers a long rest. It was then that Rhodes became interested. He concluded a contract with, the Diggers' Committee, and Johnnie Ramsbottom brought his engines and started to pump out water. There was more water than they thought, and incidentally, there were more diamonds. The contract lengthened, and as the water subsided and the ground became workable, William Dunsmure secured Dudgeon's ground, Rudd and Rhodes bought claims adjoining, and very soon the nucleus of the great De Beers Company came into life. Like all mining concerns, it had its viscissitudes, but its origin was simple and essentially British.
John Birbeck's office adjoined Cotty's Bar. John was a handsome Welshman, tall of stature, and with a great soft beard. If he had lived a few thousand years ago he would have worn the old true Welsh garb and carried a mighty club, but as it was, he showed his nationality in his face, just as a Scotchman does in his shaggy beard and brow, or an Irishman in his tongue's wit. In the mornings the sunshine poured into office and bar, and when the shadows moved to the east a Cape cart invariably brought two men from Kimberley. One was thin and had a scanty beard; he had long been associated with Rhodes, and in the partnership I had marked him down as the silent member. If one heard conversation between Rhodes and Rudd. it was invariably Rhodes' falsetto pressing a point or arguing from various facets. Rudd invariably was silent, but monosyllably answered Rhodes' appeals. The Cape cart stopped at Cotty's, and Rudd and Rhodes walked to the headgear and peered down the mine. I have seen these two men stand silently gazing into the mines of Kimberley and De Beers: Rhodes in a brown coat with white flannel trousers; a characteristic brown bowler hat — it was not a hat that could have come out of the hunting field, but it had never come from the city, or even the West End; it was simply Rhodes' hat, and from what I recollect of it, I should never accuse it of ever having been new. I don't think Rhodes liked new hats. I'm certain he hated new clothes, and like my old master of the pack I hunted with, had no great love for new people. Rhodes, as I knew him, was reminiscent of old-fashioned English county. If he had followed his father and been a parson, he would have stuck to old county fashions. I rode next to an old country squire in the "Old Berks" for several years. He always were a brown hunting coat; it might have been twenty or thirty years old, and showed its wear, but it showed its historic master in alienable country colouring. Rhodes' coat and hat matched dear old Squire Lenthal's coat. In all the years that I knew Rhodes, he never lost his county colouring. I saw him on the mine, in the town, on the veld, and, lastly, in the House of Parliament at the Cape. Wherever he was there was not only that commanding air that was his throughout, but there was ever a something reminiscent of an English county. All the Rhodes showed public school characteristics, and perhaps none of them more so than Colonel Frank Rhodes.
Cotty's had a yard as well as a bar. In the yard was a quoit pitch. It was customary not to "stand drinks " as we do at the Rand Club. From 4 to 6 the gathering played four-handed quoits for drinks. Captain Stanley Louw, C. D. Rudd, and one or two others invariably looked on, but most of them took their turn and played. William Anderson, Rhodes' partner, had a glass eye. He never played quoits but once. Thinking himself alone at the pitch, he ventured to throw a quoit, and his glass eye, not seeing Myers, who was at the opposite end, caused the direful tragedy of Myers' death, for the quoit fairly caught him on the brain, and he succumbed. In Birbeck's office a good many important matters connected with the early business of De Beers was transacted. Birbeck had Rhodes' confidence, was as close as a clam, and never speculated. 1 never knew him to own a claim or a share. Rhodes had the greatest regard for Birbeck's judgment and often acted on his advice. As De Beers developed, so did Birbeck's business, for until the eompanv opened its offices in Kimberley, Birbeck bought all its finds. I am afraid I have not given as clear a picture of those days as I should. Some years earlier we sifted and soiled the soft yellow ground. There was a lady, a little lady, who had a table on a high mound of gravel. Every day, she would walk to it from her tent, a coloured sunshade shading an old-fashioned print sun-bonnet, old-time mittens c. vering her hands, and a rather fat King Charles spaniel following in her wake. When too tired to sort, she would ____ from the winch, where they hauled up the ground. I often wondered what her dreams were. For although diamond digging serves you with the most delicious dreams, I cannot always go on with the same old dream. It was, however, a delightfully quiet life - for hours and hours, your mind could wander where as long as as your eye kept on the spread of gravel that flung over a clean spade. But though out ___ has brought ever; disturbing contraption that ad manufacturers could devise for man's aim. ...days of dust and gravel.
I left the fair lady looking down into the depths of her claim. It was a rich claim: not large, but it served its purpose. She worked it well for several years. John Birbeck bought her diamonds, and when he went to sell a parcel, ____ the boys hung around, she had a slim figure; it might have been the waist of a girl of eighteen I have no information or ____ her name, but she was our one lady digger. Many a time have I ___ scraper and helped. Many a time have I walked up and down the little footpath that led from tent to mine.
She was not of the modern mining class, nor of its day, and _____ us over wide fields: And then, when she was no more, I sold her claim to Alfred Bell. It was the first that De Beers ____. I bought many claims for him, but none richer. This purchase was the first rung on his ladder of fortune. It was her all. She died without fortune; she died without debt; her ____ went to found the fortunes of a millionaire — a little stepping stone such as this has often led to greatness. Faded in memory with the many parting years, and as you fade, little lady. I still see journeying to your claim the mince (?) figure shaded with sunshade, the kerchief's colouring, and mittened hand. What your heart carried during those years I will not tell. Creditors claimed your all. and they were satisfied. You took your greatest asset with you; it was worth more than the dial all the mines to you, and you kept that wealth. Man may amass gold — mountains of it — and when he dies his soul - a ___ plane cannot take even its shadow with him; but a heart that can cherish carries love, and the burden of it is so light that it will travel to eternity, and beyond, with what is called the soul.
Age had not yet marked their brows. In rudd ____ crossed the quoit. They quaffed with health and mirth. The quoits' clink will sound there no more; the sunshine glinting through the narrow passage will never touch ___ forms. Think not as Man pass by that in these shadows there lurk nought hut deadly ghosts. ___ should be deadly. And those that have gone from that old were of his kin. We cannot bring it all hack again, but there is a joy in reviving old recollections, and though their sounds are silent, there is in memory the one connection that alone can take you back, and these old friends who still live and remember can glance back to Cottys and Rhodes, Dunsmure, Palmer, Maine, Wright, Rowe, Slatter, Robinson, Meyer, Alderson, Rudd, Birbeck, English, Compton, Gardner, Ted Slatter, Breda, Stirling, Rivas, Niekerk, Hull, Shields, Anderson, Wolhuter, Harris, Parker, Gray, and Walter Ward, the mine inspector, on his grey Basuto pony — that flea-bitten grey. His master, with a great wide pith helmet, incessantly cantering over dumps from mine to mine. There were two ponies that had ___ friends — one was Walter Ward's, the other O. J. Skill's. Dear old O. J. ; whenever you met him he said. "You haven't such a thing on you, perhaps, as a match? " Then, when you gave him the match. "Oh. I say, I forgot, you haven't such a thing as a pipeful of tobacco'? " Skill and Cator smoked from many pouches.