Page 221 - Bulletin 9 2005

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rounders on Sunday 11 October 1903. The paper was criticized for publishing the
complaint, and to protect their “journalistic reputation” replied:

“Everybody knows that rounders is a game which necessarily implies a considerable

amount of shouting and screaming and we are assured that the cries of "run", "go on",

"hurry up", etc. were audible and noticeably so, at a distance of perhaps two hundred
yards from the actual site of the game. The statement was corroborated by a commercial

gentleman of our faith who stated that the noise was unnecessarily great and such as to
outrage decorum and was well calculated to wound the religious susceptibilities of any

Christian gentry who might have been present at the bay on that occasion at seeing their
Sabbath so unnecessarily desecrated.”

The newspaper concluded, not unreasonably, that the participants desiring to use this
day for recreational purposes should not have chosen the most frequented portion of the

Camps Bay beach. However, how frequented could Camps Bay beach have been in mid

- October, how many gentry with religious susceptibilities would have spent their
Sundays on the beach, and is participating in sport so lacking “in reason and decency”?

The amount of newspaper space devoted to this petty criticism reveals considerable
insecurity.

Isidore Cohen

By the late 1920s Camps Bay was in the doldrums. Few showed interest in buying
houses or developing property in the area and Cape Marine Suburbs was running at a

loss. One who did was Isidore Cohen who had the vision to see that Camps Bay could
be more than just a summer place for tents and bungalows. He “realised that the city,

hemmed in by mountains and sea, had to develop outwards, particularly along the
Atlantic seaboard. Camps Bay was then a sandy waste covered with bush and blasted by

the south-east and north-west winds. But it nestled beneath the soaring grandeur of the

4
Twelve Apostles and was one of the loveliest spots in the Cape Peninsula."