Johannesburg surged to 100,000 residents within a decade of its founding

Evidence

Johannesburg 1886, a long day’s hike to the south of the established boer republican government in Pretoria. The rush to gold wealth. Scarcely a city worldwide at the time that could claim such rapid rise. In a decade the population had surged to 100,000, tents giving way to corrugated iron, as Van Onselen has pointed out. Two decades later again the population had spiraled by 150 percent. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1451

Categorization

• CANDY: A city reaching 100,000 in ten years from a gold rush — a colorful historical snapshot.
• QUESTION: Worth checking Van Onselen’s account of Johannesburg’s population growth for the exact figures and sources.