Page 177 - Bulletin 21
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when it rained.
By 1948 Council were looking to raise rentals as the project had cost far more than originally
estimated. A survey by Dr. F O Fehrsen, Medical Officer of Health, paints a realistic picture
of much improved living conditions but severe crowding and economic hardship among Flats
residents:
Average earnings, when fish were running, were £2 15s per week per adult fisherman
before deduction of 6/6d in the pound as boat share.
Many of the flats were very crowded as families had moved complete from a crowded
slum house into a flat. Some flats had parents and 10 children living in them. Between
4 and 6 children was not exceptional.
Wives and daughters earned what money they could washing clothes or as domestic
workers earning around 10/- per week.
The MOH estimated that only 12% of families could afford the weekly rent of 11/6d
and that 65% could not afford even this rental.
In the circumstances his recommendation was that rentals should not be increased.
The playground was not tarred and there were lots of problems with dust in summer and mud
in winter. In 1947 Sophia Fernandez wrote to Council on this and other matters, one of which
was the rats that continued to plague the area. Because holes in the walls on some of the
ground floor flats had not been closed properly, when pipes were put into the bathrooms, rats
were coming into the flats. In one case they were gnawing the back stoep roof of an upstairs
flat.
Council did react promptly to these issues and, among other things, sent the Council rat
catcher and his ferret to deal with this nuisance.
Many side issues cropped up. One of these was that in the demolition of the Wolfsohn
property at the corner of Harbour and Clairvaux Roads the greengrocer’s shop of David
(Dout) Junior had been demolished. He was a member of the well-known Muslim Junior
fishing family of whom Bob Junior was probably the best known. The demolition of what
was a corrugated iron building led to a petition from 77 residents of the Flats for its
