Self-absorbed and engaged with their entrepreneurial spirit with a rampant desire to progress, the residents of Port Elizabeth in the first half century of the 1800s ignored the reality that they resided in a semi-dystopian world. Due to the lack of a local authority, the town lacked any form of central body to control its development. To do so would imply the imposition of rules and regulations. But conversely, it would enforce standards. Irrational behaviour conforms with the concept known as  – The Tragedy of the Commons. Examples abound. Crooked streets, different plot sizes hindering throughfares, vacant land becoming dump sites, dumping sewerage on the beaches and many more. The town was a veritable patchwork of order and disorder, utopia and dystopia.

It was only by awakening the awareness of the town’s residents via his newspaper, The EP Herald, that John Paterson sensitized the citizenry to the need for a local authority. Once they had established a Town Council, only then came the hard part, the implementation. Amongst the myriad of issues was the need to create a Fire Brigade. Budget constraints would shackle many initiatives on the path to create a professional Fire Department

Follow the town as it claws its way from makeshift equipment and volunteer firemen to a professional force in 1917. In a second blog on the Fire Brigade, I will deal with the later years post 1917

 Main picture: St Mary’s Church after its destruction by a fire on 9 March 1895

The Young Women’s Christian Association of Southern Africa (YWCA) was originally founded in Cape Town in April 1886. Thirteen years later in March 1899, moves were afoot in Port Elizabeth to establish another facility under the YWCA banner.

In 1988 the building, Lester House, was extensively renovated as chambers for the legal firm of Pagden and Christian.

This blog is a brief resume of the YMCA, its original home, Lester House to Pagdens Court.

Main picture: Lester House

During a visit to the town in 1861 – 1862, Thomas Bowler painted the Town Hall which was in the process of being erected with scaffolding surrounding the building. An insignificant yet unplanned feature was included in that painting; a small cupola supported by pillars. As it was never included in the design and never existed, why was this appendage depicted? The reason why was it included in the painting was only uncovered by Dr. Joseph Denfeld some hundred years later. The answer lay with a non-Port Elizabeth photographer by the name of William Roe.

If Denfield is correct, what did William Roe do that compelled Bowler to inaccurately amend his painting?

Main picture: Painting by Thomas Bowler entitled Main Street Port Elizabeth

This blog is based entirely upon an article entitled Christmas at Port Elizabeth from the defunct magazine An African City in 1913. What I have done is to insert comments regarding changes or to emphasize differences between then and now. In some ways it is familiar and in other ways so dissimilar.

Main picture:  Aerial view of Humewood#03 1935

David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone had a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.

Main picture: David Livingstone

South End, its people, its mosques and churches were all sacrificed on the altar of Apartheid. The people were relocated, a settled harmonious community was cast asunder, the buildings bulldozed. All except some places of religion escaped the carnage. Now in an island of destruction they represented no congregation as they had been transported to the northern most part of the metropole.

But survive they did. The Pier Street mosque suffered further threats as it forlornly stood erect in the path of the proposed freeway. It survived its near death experience as the route was amended to skirt the mosque but St. Peter’s Church barely survived as it was vandalised to within an inch of its life.     

Main picture: A wantonly vandalised St. Peter’s Church