A different view on current affairs & history
Any criminal justice system, apart from the Wild West, comprises several independent components: the constabulary, the magistracy and the prisons. This chapter deals with all three elements during the early years of the town’s development.
Main picture: Commercial Hall which housed both the Magistrate’s Court and the Police Offices before their relocation. Ultimately this site became the public library.
Viewed through the sanguine eyes of nostalgia, Port Elizabeth in its formative years is naively seen as idyllic. This is not altogether true. Port Elizabeth not only exemplified a “frontier town” with all its attendant travails but it also bore the undesirable hallmarks of a busy, under-policed port.
This blog exposes the seamy, sleazy underbelly of that era.
Main picture: The sea wall from the north jetty in 1885. Beyond it was the Strand Street, the den of iniquity
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