The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  Bishops also had a museum, started in 1887 by the Debating Society, which was developed over the next two decades by a series of passionate curators (McIntyre, 1950; Gardener, 1997). Its collection included an eclectic array of items, from a box of copper ore and minerals and stones to fossil ferns, plant seeds, seashells from Madagascar, insects, the sword of a swordfish, stuffed snakes and iguanas, the skeleton of a ‘sea-pig’, and ethnographic artefacts. By June 1888 it was reported that the museum ‘was beginning to attain very respectable dimensions’.

  RND ‘Barty’ Sutton, JLB Smith’s first chemistry teacher.

  The museum soon outgrew the space available to it, a situation that was exacerbated in 1910 when an appeal was made for the donation of items ‘to remind Bishops boys of the honourable history of their school’ (Gardener, 1997). As a result, cultural archival items soon took precedence in the museum and, in 1910, the natural history specimens ‘were removed to a garret to make room for the College washing’ (McIntyre, 1950). JLB Smith discovered this ‘treasure trove’ in the garret and, according to McIntyre (1950), ‘It fired his imagination and spurred him to inquiry’. He also apparently volunteered to assist in the restoration of the specimens, many of which were by then somewhat damaged and decomposed. Today Bishops has an excellent archive and museum of cultural artefacts relating to the proud history of the school but the few remaining natural history specimens have been dispersed for display in subject classrooms and laboratories.

  Brooke Wing, Diocesan College, where JLB Smith’s chemistry classes were held, ca 1914.

  So JLB Smith entered a school in transition, an institution with fine traditions but an uncertain future, and he made the best of the opportunity. But he was not the only famous scientist to emerge from Bishops: other important scientists and technologists who were graduates of Diocesan College include James Greathead (1844–1896, at Bishops from 1859 to 1860), inventor of the ‘Greathead Shield’ that was used to drill the tunnels for the first London Underground trains (Bruton, 2010, 2017) and Alexander Logie du Toit (1878–1948, at Bishops from 1889 to 1896), the geologist who helped propagate the theory of continental drift and the formation of Gondwanaland (Gardener, 1997). In 1953 the research of JLB Smith and Alex du Toit was selected to represent Bishops at the South African Schools Science Festival at Rhodes University (letter from JLB Smith dated 4th July 1953, Rhodes University Archive).

  Alexander Logie du Toit.

  There is little mention of JLB Smith’s extramural involvements at Bishops in school magazines between 1912 and 1914. He was not a high achiever in sports and apparently did not make his mark in the Debating Society, except by contributing to the museum, which this society had started. It seems that he focused mainly on his academic studies at Bishops.

  We do know that Smith had a serious bicycle accident when he was about 17 years old, speeding down a dusty farm road at high speed and colliding with a gate ‘that wasn’t there before’. He catapulted over the handlebars and landed heavily on his back, knocking himself out in the process. Many years later his medical doctors concluded that this accident might have been the cause of the kidney and other internal organ problems that he experienced for the rest of his life. It was only after he died that it was found that he had only one functional kidney, which must have contributed to his health issues. Furthermore, the doctors realised that his radical diets and vigorous exercise regimes might not have been beneficial for someone with only one kidney (J Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  Having passed his Junior Certificate (second class) at the end of 1912 and his Senior Certificate (second class) in 1913, he matriculated (first class) at the end of 1914, winning the Gorham Prize and the History Prize.

  In JLB’s matriculation year the First World War broke out and, under the mobilisation order issued by the South African Defence Force on 8th August 1914, he was briefly drafted to the Cape Town Highlanders’ Regiment and then, as Quartermaster Sergeant, to the Standerton Commando (Diocesan College newsletters, March 1914, March 1915). He served with the citizen force only from early August until September 1914 when, along with most school boys, he was discharged.

  Cover of The Diocesan College Magazine, 1914.

  A fellow draftee from Bishops recorded a typical day’s routine in the citizen force in 1914 in his diary: ‘6 a.m. Reveille. 7 a.m. Roll call parade. 8 a.m. Breakfast (dry bread and slop water tea). 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Drill order. [Lunch]. 2 to 4.30 p.m. Drill order. 5 p.m. Tea (same as breakfast). 10 p.m. Lights out. 10.1 to 11 p.m. Fight with insects. It is getting jolly monotonous.’ (The Hindoo, Diocesan School Magazine, September 1914, p. 10).

  JLB’s life up to this point – his dysfunctional home circumstances and fragmented schooling – reflects what many survive on their path to adulthood. And his performance at school, while showing promise, perhaps did not immediately set him apart as the remarkable figure he was to become. But the difficulties of his early years must surely have helped to build the steely determination and fire that characterised his later career.

  CHAPTER 2

  Young whippersnapper

  Studies and pranks in Stellenbosch

  IN 1915, after his matriculation examination, Smith was refused re-enlistment on account of his youth, and so he enrolled at Victoria College in Stellenbosch, a college of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. Victoria College would become Stellenbosch University on 2nd April 1918. At the end of that year he passed first in the Union of South Africa in the Intermediate Examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope and was awarded several bursaries and exhibitions, including the coveted Croll Exhibition.

  Although he had already made arrangements to travel abroad to join the Royal Flying Corps, he responded to an appeal to join the campaign in East Africa and instead enrolled in the 12th South African Infantry Battalion as a machine gunner (MM Smith, 1969). This decision was fortuitous (for science) as the survival rate of Royal Flying Corps troops was very low. After only cursory military training he was despatched to German East Africa (today Burundi, Rwanda and mainland Tanzania), where he became embroiled in the gruelling military campaign that was later to be led by General Jan Smuts. Smith loathed the military, hated the British, and blamed Smuts for the military imbroglio that they found themselves in (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017). He did, however, achieve something in the military, an early example of his exceptional organisational ability: he and a small team broke the British record for the fastest time to assemble and then fire a field artillery gun (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  The young scientist-turned-soldier contracted various tropical diseases, as did many others; and, after several months in hospital, he was discharged as permanently medically unfit for further service. He retained his sense of humour, though and, according to his friend Ernst Malherbe (1981b), he regaled incredulous ladies who visited him in Wynberg Hospital with tall tales of giant mosquitoes, ‘… worse than the Germans. We had to fight them with our bayonets – they were huge creatures almost like little aeroplanes’. The aftermath of these diseases would, however, affect him for the rest of his life.

  JLB Smith as a student at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, ca 1918.

  Smith returned to Victoria College in the third term of 1916 and resumed his studies. Although he was handicapped by repeated bouts of malaria, he quickly made up for lost time and graduated with a Batchelor of Arts degree in chemistry from the University of the Cape of Good Hope at the end of 1917 (Shell, 2017). Despite going fishing in the weeks before the final examinations (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017), he once again achieved the highest marks for chemistry in the Union of South Africa and won the Bartle Frere Exhibition and the Stellenbosch University Exhibition (MM Smith, 1969).

  While at Victoria College, and notwithstanding his physical limitations, Smith engaged actively in sports. At the time he was the best student golfer, although he normally used only one club, and he played rugby and tennis. He was also an avid cyclist; in January 1919, he embarked on a ‘cycle tour around
the Cape Peninsula’ with four friends, including the future Cabinet Minister Eben Dönges (letter from EG Malherbe to Margaret Smith, 12th September 1968). He was keen on camping and mountaineering but his favourite pastime, after bee-keeping, was angling. Fishes became his new passion and he travelled to the coast by train, ox-wagon and bicycle to catch fishes, once cycling from Stellenbosch to Cape Point and back on unpaved, sandy roads. He also had a keen interest in classical literature and was apparently an authority on George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare.

  In his account of life at Victoria College, Smith (1956) does not mention the mischievous pranks that he perpetrated with three of his student friends, as they were all sworn to secrecy until the last survivor could reveal the truth. The ‘Heavenly Quartet’, as they were dubbed by a lady friend, Janie Nel, comprised four men who would all achieve fame in their professions: JLB Smith (chemistry and ichthyology), Ernst G Malherbe (Director of the National Bureau for Educational and Social Research and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Natal), Frikkie Meyer (Head of Iscor) and W Kupferburger (a pioneering mining geologist) (Malherbe, 1981a, b). Other fellow students at Victoria College who went on to achieve fame and fortune included Eben Dönges, Paul Sauer, HJ van Eck, AL Geyer and ET Schumann.

  The ‘Heavenly Quartet’ in 1917. From left, back: JLB Smith, W Kupferburger; front: Frikkie Meyer, Ernst Malherbe.

  Malherbe outlived the rest and, in his memorable autobiography, Never a Dull Moment, as well as in a Matieland article, he describes some of their outrageous pranks (Malherbe, 1981a and b). They decided that Stellenbosch was a ‘sleepy hollow’ and ‘needed from time to time a bit of a waking up’; on two separate occasions, they even gave the college an unannounced half-day holiday. One prank involved arranging for all the clocks in the university residences, as well as the clock on the main-building wall in the college quadrangle and the clock on the Dutch Reformed Church tower, to be reset one half-hour fast. This prank required meticulous planning and considerable climbing skill and risk taking. In particular, to move the handles of the clock on the main building, one of the pranksters was suspended by his feet, head downwards, from a window 10 metres above the ground (Malherbe, 1981a, b). This prank caused chaos on the campus and in town as ordinary people did not wear wrist watches in those days but relied on tower clocks; only clerics and high-ranking officials carried pocket watches. Students turned up early for their lectures and, in due course, left, as it seemed the lecturers were all late. People travelling to Cape Town by train missed their ‘Cape cart’ taxis, and pandemonium ensued. The culprits were never caught, thanks to their compact never to discuss their pranks with anybody (except for Janie Nel, who helped to turn back the clocks in the women’s residence, Harmonie, and later became Malherbe’s wife) (Malherbe, 1981a).

  About a year later they perpetrated an even more ambitious prank. After careful planning they managed, between midnight and 5 a.m., to barricade (from the inside) the whole of the main college building where the classrooms were located. The next morning students and professors wandered around the building, unable to enter, and eventually went home. It took the technical staff until midday to enter the building. ‘Despite an official enquiry by the authorities they never even remotely associated any of the four of us with these strange disruptions of the regular lectures in the college’ (Malherbe, 1981a, b).

  The pranksters also noticed that, in the residential area of town where most of the professors and elite of the town lived, the home owners displayed fancy names on their garden gates. Malherbe explained:

  ‘We decided that it would cause quite [a] stir if, during one night, we could interchange all these names. It took us a couple of weeks to study carefully how each one of these name plates was fixed because on no account did we want to damage them. … We worked in pairs, Meyer and I worked together while Smith and Kupferburger worked together, each pair having its own allocation of names to interchange. For example, we interchanged Avond Rust for Morgenson. Melrose we put on the gate of the house where lived a pretty girl called Rose whom we often visited. Bloemhof, which was the name of the Girls’ High School, we put a mile away on to the fence of a vineyard’ (Malherbe, 1971).

  The ‘Heavenly Quartet’ 20 years later, in about 1937. From left: JLB Smith, Frikkie Meyer, Ernst Malherbe and W Kupferburger.

  On another house they put the sign ‘Births and Deaths Registration’ from the Magistrate’s Office next to the Police Station, and they fixed the ‘Police Station’ sign to the gate of the Girls’ High School hostel. The outcome was further pandemonium.

  Their most outrageous prank involved placing large enamel chamber pots on the pinnacles of the towers above the prestigious boys’ and girls’ schools in town. A howling south-easter blew that night, making this a very hazardous undertaking that required all their considerable climbing skills. At the Boys’ School, Smith and Malherbe climbed up a long ladder and then hoisted themselves up ‘by trusting to the strength of the guttering’ (Malherbe, 1971). Near the top of the tower Malherbe climbed onto Smith’s shoulders and placed the ‘potty’ onto the tower pinnacle with a long bamboo pole. The next morning the students brought the school’s ‘new badge’ to the attention of the Headmaster, the formidable Paul Roos (South Africa’s first Springbok rugby captain). Roos was furious and ordered the caretaker to take the obscene object down. When this worthy failed to dislodge it, Roos instructed the school cadets to shoot the offending object off the tower. The Girls’ School did not have cadets and the chamber pot stayed on top of their tower for several weeks until the south-easter blew it off (Malherbe, 1981a). JLB Smith’s participation in these pranks demonstrates that, as a youth, he had a playful and mischievous side to his character, a trait that only his closest friends and relatives knew later in life.

  Cartoon from Matieland magazine (Malherbe, 1981a) showing cadets shooting at the chamberpot on the tower pinnacle at Victoria College, with a furious Paul Roos in the foreground.

  JLB’s predilection for pranks was passed on to his son by his second marriage, William, who later said that JLB enjoyed pranks because of the ‘precise planning’ that was necessary to bring them off (Weinberg, 1999). While studying for his Master of Science degree at Natal University, William, egged on by a group of students, felt that it was unfair that the screening of a film on the birth of a baby was for females only. He planted a stink bomb that cleared the theatre in a very short time, so that no-one could see the movie. When he was hauled up in front of the entire Senate, and the Vice-Chancellor (no less than JLB Smith’s student friend, Ernst Malherbe), they demanded to know what chemical he had used: ‘The same stuff [phenyl iso-cyanide] that you and my father used at Stellenbosch University as students to break up a political rally’ (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017). This riposte probably increased his punishment but, according to William, it was worth it!

  By the end of 1918 Smith had completed his MSc degree (with distinction) in chemistry, one of the most brilliant chemistry students in the early history of South Africa (K Breedt, pers. comm., 2017; MM Smith, 1969; Shell, 2017) and one of the first five students to achieve this qualification at Victoria College. Smith was awarded the British Government Research Scholarship and the HB Ebden Scholarship for overseas study. This represented a considerable fraction of the scholarships available to young South Africans at the time.1

  1Other South Africans who won the Ebden Scholarship include Sir Basil Schonland (1896–1972), famous for his research on lightning, his involvement in the development of radar during the Second World War and for becoming the first President of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR); and Hendrik van Eck (1903–1970), who became Chairman of the Industrial Development Corporation.

  CHAPTER 3

  Chemistry rules

  From student to senior lecturer

  AFTER A brief stint as a staff member of Victoria College in Stellenbosch, during which he also ran a paint factory, JLB Smith enrolled at Cambridge University in England on his Ebde
n Scholarship, becoming a scholar of Selwyn College and Demonstrator in Chemistry (MM Smith, 1969). Here he carried out pioneering research on mustard gases under the direction of Sir William J Pope and, later, on photosynthesising dyestuffs and related compounds, under the direction of the renowned Dr William Hobson Mills. This research later found application in photography (Rivett, 1996). Smith’s work was published in a series of scientific papers, and he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1922.

  While at Cambridge University Smith continued to be involved in student pranks. On one occasion he and his cronies noticed a group of municipal workers digging up the road outside their residence to lay a pipe. They told the workers that a group of students dressed up as policemen would approach them soon and demand to know what they were doing. They then went to the local police station and told the officer-on-duty that a group of students dressed up as municipal workers was digging up the road outside their residence. They then sat back and watched the mayhem (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  JLB Smith as a student at Cambridge University in 1920.

  On another occasion, during a discussion on gravity, Smith dropped a metal bucket full of water several storeys down the middle of a spiral stairway, just to see what would happen. The bucket, a prized possession of the janitor, gouged a 3-centimetre-deep hole in the cement floor but also, spectacularly, was concertina’d down to a fraction of its size. Smith then returned the flattened bucket to the janitor’s cupboard. The next day the perplexed janitor approached Smith, told him that he knew he was the perpetrator, and asked him how he had done it! Smith and his friends also investigated the chemistry of flatulence. A volunteer agreed to pass wind, which they lit with a match. The result was spectacular but the unfortunate volunteer couldn’t sit down for weeks (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017).