MORRO VELHO, GOLD MINING COMMUNITY

c 20008 JoJo

At the end of World War II, we moved from Recife to Morro Velho, a British owned gold mining company in the State of Minas Gerais (the Saint John del Rey Mining Corporation). The Company provided free housing to all its British employees, and we had the choice of several. Dad opted for a gorgeous large house, built on the top of a hill with fantastic views.

This house was built in the late 1890’s for mine superintendent George Chalmers. George was an eccentric bloke. Although he was married with children, he obviously liked to get away from his family because he had the house built with a separate room far from the rest of the house, almost like a separate wing. Such was his desire to get away from them, that he had a toilet installed in this room, so he wouldn’t even have to go into the main house to relieve himself. (Mum used it as an afternoon Bridge tea room and the first thing she did, was have that toilet uprooted and taken away.)

George also had another quirky hobby – he kept an enormous boa constrictor inside a huge cage, located in the garden.

Although I don’t know all the details, I believe Mrs. Chalmers eventually got pissed off with George and his weird ways, and she pushed off, taking the kids with her. From what I was able to determine from the locals, George didn’t notice her absence for weeks and when he did, he wasn’t much bothered by it! That’s good old George for you!

Understandably, having a boa constrictor in the garden put off the local folks and nobody wanted to work for him. Eventually he was able to hire a housekeeper named Dona Carolina and I think the only reason she agreed to work for him at all was because nobody else would hire her.

From what I heard about this poor lady,she was a truly hideous woman with a huge hooked nose, close set little beady black eyes, thin narrow lips, long gray hair, and just to complete the picture, she was a hunchback. Miners are superstitious folks and they all believed, to a man, that she was a witch.

Dona Carolina didn’t only cook for George and keep his home spotlessly clean, but she was also an avid gardener. I suppose it can be said that the whopping boa constrictor in its cage didn’t rattle her, because gardening was her passion. She planted huge beds of roses, some of which were still there when we took over this home in 1945.

There was only one main store in Morro Velho, which sold everything – food, clothing, furniture, they had it all. George had Dona Carolina order their supplies from this store, for home delivery. I was told that the store had a hard time getting any of their delivery boys to make deliveries to George’s home, because they were all terrified of Dona Carolina, being convinced that at any moment, she’d cast a nasty spell on them. This wasn’t helped by the fact that she had a habit of darting out from behind a rose bush when one of these hapless fellows had entered the garden and was in the process of going to the back door to drop off the order. She’d come up from behind, tap the young man on the shoulder just to get his attention, and that would be IT. He’d turn, see her standing inches behind him, and such would be his terror, he’d drop the groceries and dash out of their property at warp speed, and barrel down the road, screaming his head off.

George was Mine Superintendent – that meant he was the Big Cahuna and ran that mine with an iron fist. Miners were scared of him, but for all that, they were still stealing gold at the reduction plant. Their way of achieving this was ingenious. They’d put lashings of grease on their hair and after handling the gold, they’d rub their hands over their hair, and of course, the gold stuck to the grease. Then when they went home, they’d simply wash the gold off their hair and sell it. Naturally, back in the early 1900’s, they didn’t have the electronic equipment to monitor the miners, nor were there any metal detectors.

When George found out about this pilferage, he was enraged. Then he did the only thing he could. He installed showers with an undressing room on one side, and a dressing room on the other. Miners were required to take off the clothes they’d been working in, go through the shower, washing themselves from head to foot (closely supervised) then dry off and dress in their street clothes in the second room before going home. A second inspection would be carried out at the exit door, so there’d be no way for them to carry on stealing the Company blind.

George’s ire was roused, and George carried grudges, big time. Some time later, there was a huge mine fall in, trapping a whole shift of miners underground. George decided there was no way of getting the men out alive, so he had the mine flooded, so as to “spare them a slow and lingering death.” Well, at least that was his excuse. That mine was closed down and the second mine was kept operational.

My sister and I came across the adit, hidden behind lots of bushes and vegetation. Thank goodness we never entered it. I asked the locals about it, and that’s when I heard about what George Chalmers had done. Mind you, this is all hearsay, so I can’t state with certainty that the good village folks hadn’t made it up!

So we moved into what had been his house all those many years ago, and soon found out why it has been vacant for many years and why nobody would live in it. But that’s another story.