Port Elizabeth of Yore: Korsten vs Vagrancy and Trespassing in the 1830s

The most extensive and productive farm in the Port Elizabeth area over the first three decades of the nineteenth century was that of Frederick’s  Korsten’s Cradock Place. It covered the area from today’s Korsten, taking in swathes of today’s Algoa Park and swept down to the mouth of the Papenkuils River. Like most farms, it also experienced the twin depredations of vagrancy and trespassing.

In early 1833, probably after a spate of incidents, Korsten decided to take action.

Main picture: View of Cradock Place by Walford Arbouin Harries in 1860

Prior to the arrival of the white settlers, the indigenous inhabitants were the Khoi who were nomadic or peripatetic by nature. Concepts such as restricted areas demarcated by fences were alien to them. So when the Trekboere arrived, conflict inevitably arose between them and the Khoi. The extensive farms mitigated against their being fenced off. In Korsten’s case, an arrangement had been concluded whereby he would place whale bones on the most conspicuous parts of the property in order to indicate its perimeter.

Presumably, even this measure would not have discouraged the local inhabitants from taking shortcuts through his property. Placing warning signs at strategic points would also have been futile as few if any were literate. Advertising his intent to prosecute trespassers if caught on his property, was also ineffective as the only newspaper printed in 1833 was the Graham’s Town Journal. It would only be in 1845  when the E.P. Herald was first published.  

Cradock Place

The Graham’s Town Journal dated 3rd January 1833 carried Korsten’s warning as follows:“Sportsmen, Carriers, Wood Cutters, Travellers, and others to keep off his property because of the damage that they cause. No excuses because I am ‘independent of the Baakens as required by law, large whale bones are placed on the most conspicuous parts of the property’. All dogs, except those with permission and with their owners, will be shot and cattle impounded. J.A. Chabaud is authorised to prosecute trespassers on the Cradock Town estate and other land owned in the Uitenhage District, because of the continual depredations upon my property by vagrants and others; lost within the last few weeks my famous thoroughbred Saxon lamb imported by T.C. White. Also a  great number of his most valuable merino lambs.

Port Elizabeth, December 12th, 1832.

For the most part, such warnings must have been a constant refrain from the affected farmers but nonetheless futile. Responses see-sawed between the tepid and the passionate embrace of violent measures.

Source
Graham’s Town Journal dated 3rd January 1833

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