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Martin was a boarder, and died in his third form year. He had visited the farm of fellow classmate Keir Struben, and if I recall correctly he was bitten by a spider during that visit. The bite turned out to be fatal. Martin's brother was a boarder prefect at the time.
Information provided by Stuart Clark
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Ewan Westgate
Stuart's recollection is accurate, except that it is suspected that Martin was bitten by a tick during the earlier part of the Christmas holidays and contracted tick-bite fever . He succumbed to the disease in the Fever Hospital in Johannesburg in very ealy January, 1961.
Despite this history, Keir and I became good friends and I was also privileged enough to spend a number of the shorter holidays and free-weekends during our school career visiting him and his family at their cattle farm in the foothills of Majuba. Fortunately, and despite all our schoolboy activities and other antics on the farm, the offending tick never made a re-appearnce during my visits!
Bill Judge
Even I knew it was a tick!
Stuart Clark
Quite right Bill, it was a tick. Ewan, the thing that most scarred me from a visit to the Struben farm was seeing how a sheep get castrated.
Stuart "Mossie" Clark