madmen and their treatment

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rabbittoh

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not sure where to put this so *Prized Possesions* will do

my collection of antique bottles primarily consists of codd hybrids and coloured hamiltons from such countrys as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom......and quite a few have an interesting story attached to them

i will start with the most prized of all of my collection

...............the coloured lip codd hybrids, of which there are only 14 different types known



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rabbittoh

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got a lot more photos to put up....but have no idea how to do it

....anyone able to help
 

capsoda

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I have been trying to get my hands on one of the cobalt hybids for years. They always seem to be a few more dollars out of reach.[&o]
 

rabbittoh

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testing testing



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rabbittoh

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MADMEN AND THEIR TREATMENT

I think I can now post a photo on this forum, which leads me to these 6 that I was recently fortunate enough to acquire from a South African collection

These 6 codd hybrids come from a dump in Westend Kimberley, which no longer exists. It is now a developed suburb with tarred roads, infrastructure etc. Sadly, this seems to be the lot for our old rubbish dumps. They call it progress.
these 6 actually have a story attached to them...a story about "MADMEN & THEIR TREATMENT - a hospital dig"

Imagine a hot and dusty town with rough and ready diamond diggers, pubs, ballrooms and the largest manmade excavation in the world. (known as the "Big Hole"), and you would be in Kimberly, South Africa. This city has so many claims to fame:
- it's well known figures, Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Baronet, to name but two.
- the Siege of Kimberly and the battle at Magersfontein, during the Boer War, to name a few events.
The mine was discovered on the 16th of July 1871 and it was rushed from 18th July. The town, then known as "New Rush" was occupied by people from all over the world, hoping to make their fortunes. It is argued that those who succeeded lit their cigars with bank notes and the women bathed in champagne. Rumor has it that the Kimberly Club, established in 1881, had more millionaires under its roof than any other roof in the world.

It is with this background that this story begins.

A colored man (some of them dig for bottles etc. for a living) was walking through the bush on the outskirts of Kimberly when he spotted shards of glass. Well, this was the start of a dig that many of us dream of...and my friend, Brian White was to become a central figure of the dig.

Brian lives in Bloemfontein, which is 170km from Kimberly, and had heard that a dump had been discovered. Locals were tightlipped about the exact location. With the help of a friend living in Kimberly Brian was able to get in on the act two weeks after digging commenced. Brian spent a number of weekends over the ensuring months digging the site with his friend.....and the digging was not a leisurely walk in the park...in Kimberley, in mid-summer, you can break an egg on the bonnet of a car and watch it cook. You can do the same thing on the tarred roads with similar effects. It gets that hot.

When Brian could not dig he arranged to purchase all of the finds from his friend and from the colored diggers who frequented the site and collected on his behalf.
Well concealed from the road by bushes and trees this was by no means a dump of large proportion. You had to dig down to below two meters by using a pick as the ground was hard. At around this depth you would find a band of ash 150mm wide. You then followed this band, hoping that it would widen up. In many cases it would peter out to nothing. You then started a new hole all over again, with great expectations. It seemed as if trenches had been dug, refuse dumped, then covered and a new trench dug whenever refuse needed to be disposed of. When finding pot lids (there were plenty of these) they were either intact with their bases, or the bases were in close proximity to the lids. Brian's initial opinion was that this was not a dump used for general town use but rather the private dump of a hotel or brothel....in fact foundations of a structure could be seen fairly close to the dump site.

Other than the pot lids there were many medicinal and poison bottles that came from the site.....including several of the fabled gilbertsons wedges, in two different sizes.

...For all of its treasures, without a doubt the crowning glory for this little dump was the colored lip hybrids that it gave up....red lips, green lips, blue lips (reliance patents, acme patents, one way pours)....and Brian got most of them all by one means or another

However, the question remained as to who had made use of this little dump so many years ago. Brian consulted the Kimberly African Library and with the help of several librarians searched through the 19th century maps and antique books of the town. Eventually they found what they believed to be the answer...in a book called "Incadi Yamwai (printed in 1887), under the sub heading "Madmen and Their Treatment". In this book, the author provides a critical account of the incorrect diagnosis of patients, for example being treated for smallpox, who never had it anyway. The author mentioned that the "Lazaretto Hospital" for contagious diseases had been moved from Dutoitspan (a suburb of Kimberly) to Westend, which is in very close proximity to the dump, sometime during the mid 1880's.

"Lazaretto" is defined in the dictionary as meaning "a hospital for people having a contagious or loathsome disease"

Unfortunately this dump only lasted six months before being totally dug out. Will another one like it ever be found again? Who knows? What is known is that the Kimberly of today is partially built on dumps making it highly unlikely that those dumps will ever be dug....keeping their many secrets.

The colored lip hybrids that the little "Lazaretto Hospital dump" gave up were as follows:
 

rabbittoh

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MADMEN AND THEIR TREATMENT cont.

RED LIPS


1 x 10oz acme patent from Henderson Bros., Kimberly...the only known example and it currently resides in my collection

Henderson Bros / Kimberley
———————
Acme Patent / 4 / Sole Makers / Dan Rylands Ld / Barnsley
———————
H B
———————
10oz Acme Patent

2 x 6oz acme patent from Henderson Bros., Kimberly......three examples have been accounted for with the 3rd being found on Kimberly's "Kamfersdam" dump (the largest and most well known dump in Kimberly). This 3rd example unfortunatly recieved a crack in the chamber during transport to a new owner in the UK in 2006 and was subsequently destroyed with a hammer when returned to it's south african owner...leaving only the two that had been found on the little "Lazaretto Hospital dump". The 2nd remaining example currently resides in a UK collection

Henderson Bros / Kimberley
———————
Acme Patent / 4 / Sole Makers / Dan Rylands Ld / Barnsley
———————
H B
———————
6oz Acme Patent


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