Recently, I managed to buy a book at a sale written by Gauteng author Ted Botha, concerning the life of the Johannesburg murderer Daisy de Melker, who was executed in 1932 for her crimes.
Now, what has De Melker’s story to do with sport?
Most South Africans know only the barest details of her life and deeds. Although she was executed for the murder of her 20-year-old son Rhodes, using arsenic, Botha is convinced that she may have been guilty of murdering her two previous husbands while there was a possibility that she also killed her fiancé, as well as three young sons.
At the trial which lasted a month, huge crowds fought for seats each day while hundreds of disappointed spectators waited outside the courtroom to get the latest news of “the crime of the century”.
De Melker had been arrested for the deaths of her first two husbands using strychnine and for the death of her son but the judge reasoned there was insufficient evidence to convict on the death of the husbands.
However, she was found guilty of murdering Rhodes.
She was executed at Pretoria Central Prison on December 30 1932.
Sidney Clarence “Syd” de Melker was born at Kimberley in the Cape Colony on March 31 1884 and had been married before and had a daughter, Eileen. He married Daisy in January 1931 in Germiston.
He was a powerful running centre and was selected, at 19, to play a Test against the touring British Isles team. led by Scotland’s Mark Morrison.
The touring team lost their first three matches of the tour before settling down and then won five matches in a row but promptly lost their next three.
Two weeks before the first Test, De Melker had scored a try in Griqualand West’s 11-0 victory over the tourists and he made his debut in the second Test at his home ground, the Kimberley Athletic Club, on September 5 1903. The result was a 0-0 draw and SA won the rubber 1-0 with two matches drawn.
This was the first time SA had been victorious in a series. Thereafter they would not lose a series until 1956, when they toured New Zealand.
De Melker was selected for the first Springbok team which toured Britain in 1906-07. An extra unofficial game was played in Paris, France and won by SA 55-6.
The little centre played only one of the four Test matches, against England which was drawn 3-3, but the tourists lost their first overseas Test against Scotland in Glasgow 6-0. De Melker played in 13 matches on the tour.
A friendship between Eileen and Rhodes had led to the former Springbok meeting Daisy and he later proposed marriage. Eileen, though, considered Rhodes to be a lazy young man and had very little time for him. Rhodes had been pestering his mother to buy him a new motor car and did not like it when she refused. He was also under the wrong impression that he would obtain a sizeable amount of money for his 21st birthday present.
At the 1932 trial, the judge said, there was only one sentence he could give, that of execution by hanging.
The second Springbok to play a role in the life and death of Daisy de Melker was loose foward Nicolaas Jan Valkenburg “Jack” van Druten, who represented the Springboks at flank and eigthhman in four Tests against the British Isles in 1924 and four against New Zealand in 1928. Both series were played in SA.
Van Druten had a top position in the prisons department and it was he who had to supply a death certificate upon the death of Daisy de Melker.
Of interest, Syd de Melker remained convinced for the rest of his life that his wife was not guilty of murder.
However, when some of Daisy’s personal belongings were sold at an auction, the buyer of her gramophone found that it was faulty and decided to take it to a repair shop.
Inside the gramophone a technician found an envelope filled with a white powder and marked: “For dear old Syd.”
The powder was handed to the police, analysed and found to be arsenic.
Syd de Melker married again and he died in 1953 at the age of 69.
