No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge

Date: 10 Jun 1796
Updated: 30 Sep 2019

On 10 June 1793 C G Höhne, private secretary to the Governor, wrote a letter to Cape of Good Hope, about the conditions of enslaved people at the VOC Company Slave Lodge in Cape Town. He stated with grave concern that due to ‘increased labour’ performed by a ‘much reduced number of the East Company’s slaves’, enslaved people at the Lodge were not given enough time to wash their clothes or themselves as ‘for an extended period no Sunday or any day of cleaning themselves has been allowed them.’

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01Source: Prof. Robert C.H. Shell, From Diaspora to Diorama, (Cape Town: Ancestry 24, 2003) p. 1559.

Last updated · 30 Sep 2019

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South African History Online. (2016, June 10). No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge. South African History Online. https://sahistory.org.za/ref/E-0121153

South African History Online (2016) 'No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge', South African History Online, 10 June. Available at: https://sahistory.org.za/ref/E-0121153 (Accessed: 23 September 2026).

South African History Online, No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge [website], https://sahistory.org.za/ref/E-0121153, (accessed 23 September 2026).

"No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge." South African History Online, 10 June 2016, https://sahistory.org.za/ref/E-0121153. Accessed 23 Sept. 2026.

South African History Online. "No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge." South African History Online. June 10, 2016. https://sahistory.org.za/ref/E-0121153.