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municipal works projects in England (including construction of water supply, sewerage
and road schemes). He came to the Cape Colony in 1903 when he joined the PWD, and

during this time chaired the Departmental Commission of Inquiry into the Kalk Bay
public utilities fiasco. He then, in 1908, became engineer to the Department of Public

Health. In 1910, he was appointed to the Union Irrigation Department. Whether it was

on account of incompetence or merely inter-personal jealousies cannot be determined,
but his application to upgrade to a full member of the Institution of Civil Engineers was

vetoed by both his boss F. E. Kanthack and another colleague. He outlived three of his
four children, and died in an old age home at Green Point in 1940.

References

Gutsche, T. (1972) The history and social significance of motion pictures in South
Africa, 1895 – 1940, Howard Timmins, Cape Town.

th
W. Macfarlane & Co. (undated) Illustrated Catalogue of Macfarlane’s Castings, (6
edition), vol. II, Glasgow.

Ken Donaldson (ed) South African Who’s Who, Social and Business, 1925 – 1926, Cape

Town.

A classified bibliography of published and archival sources consulted in researching this

paper is available on request from the Secretary of the Kalk Bay Historical Society for
readers who wish to make a fuller study of this interesting topic.