Simmer and Jack Mines Ltd (until 1924 known as The Simmer & Jack Gold Mining Co. Ltd.) is a South African company which was founded in 1887 by the German August Simmer and Scotsman

John Jack John Jack (9 March 1932 – 22 October 1988) was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic and Morton. At Celtic, where he spent nine years, he was mainly a reserve behind Jim Mallan, Alec Boden and Jock Stein, with Bobby Evans also being as ...

, shortly thereafter selling the majority shareholding to Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd. The company was listed until 2013 at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

History

In February 1886, the discovery of gold on the

Witwatersrand The Witwatersrand () (locally the Rand or, less commonly, the Reef) is a , north-facing scarp in South Africa. It consists of a hard, erosion-resistant quartzite metamorphic rock, over which several north-flowing rivers form waterfalls, which ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

led to the founding of the city of Johannesburg shortly thereafter. The farm Elandsfontein was about ten kilometers east and belonged to a farmer, Sarel Meyer. Simmer & Jack, a trading company in

Harrismith Harrismith is a large town in the Free State province of South Africa. It was named for Sir Harry Smith, a 19th-century British governor and high commissioner of the Cape Colony. It is situated by the Wilge River, alongside the N3 highway, abo ...

which ran a shop in

Chrissiesmeer Chrissiesmeer (Lake Chrissie) is a small town situated in Msukaligwa Local Municipality, in a wetland area of Mpumalanga province in South Africa, on the northern banks of the eponymous Lake Chrissie Lake Chrissie ( af, Chrissiesmeer) is a la ...

had, a year earlier, acquired half of Meyer's farm. In September 1886 John Jack registered the mining rights on the farm to Simmer & Jack. With the founding of the company in August 1887 Simmer and Jack took on board the entrepreneur Sir George Farrar, whose family imported drilling equipment to South Africa. Also added to the team was

Harry Struben Harry Struben born Hendrik Wilhelm Struben aka Henry William Struben (9 October 1840 Lower Rhine, Germany - 18 October 1915 Rosebank, Cape Town) was the brother of Frederick Struben, who together managed the first gold-mining operation on the Re ...

who from 1884 had run a small gold mine in Roodepoort. The town of Germiston was established and named after John Jack's birthplace in Scotland. The politician and entrepreneur

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his Br ...

, who had made a fortune in the diamond business, saw the gold finds as another opportunity and began, with his partner

Charles Rudd Charles Dunell Rudd (22 October 1844 – 15 November 1916) was the main business associate of Cecil Rhodes. Early life He was born at Hamworth Hall, Northamptonshire, the son of Henry Rudd (1809–1884), who had a shipbuilding business in Lo ...

, to buy up farms, mines and mining rights on the Witwatersrand. To finance their activities they founded the London-based company 'The Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd.' Simmer & Jack was one of the first mines to draw their attention. It soon became apparent that the gold deposits were very large indeed, but that gold could only be extracted from the pyrite with great difficulty and expense using contemporary technology. Contact with the Scottish chemist John Seward MacArthur, brought news of the cyanide process and made possible the success of the South African gold mining industry. The initial years of the company were against a background of political turmoil ( Jameson Raid,

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

), various economic difficulties and huge investments. By 1888 the company had built a crushing or

stamp mill A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operatio ...

with 25 stampers. The plant was further expanded to 100 stampers by 1895 and 320 stampers by 1899. Gold production at the mine reached its peak in 1922. By 1935 Simmer & Jack had processed 27,000,000 tons of rock and extracted 7.8 million ounces of gold for a gross profit of £10 million. In 1965 Goldfields sold their shares as the gold deposits were almost exhausted. The original mine was closed down in 1969.

External links

Stamp mill images

Bibliography

*The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited, The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937 *Roy Macnab, Gold Their Touchstone, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1987, *Eric Rosenthal, Gold! Gold! Gold!, The Macmillan Company, London, 1970 {{Witwatersrand companies Gold mining in South Africa History of Germiston Mining companies of South Africa Companies based in Germiston