Page 223 - Bulletin 9 2005

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where he became the first furniture dealer to institute the system of “lay-buy” - where
you paid off your purchase in interest free instalments and only took possession once it

was fully paid. This too was most successful. His profits he invested in property, but
bought for cash, refusing to have mortgages. Eventually he sold off all his interests in

furniture and concentrated on property. Here too he had the ability to see the

possibilities that lay beyond accepting the established wisdom and saw both the visible
beauty and the undiscovered gold that lay in Camps Bay. Cohen started buying up

shares in the struggling company that was Cape Marine Suburbs.

By 1936 Isidore Cohen owned Cape Marine Suburbs. The minutes of the extraordinary
general meeting of The Cape Marine Suburbs held on 13 April 1938 reveal that there

were only three shareholders present. Mr F Dearle held one share, Mr J Malcolm, the

secretary, another one, and Isidore Cohen 84 993 shares. Isidore Cohen now owned the
wind-swept sands of Camps Bay which he had bought for the proverbial song, and he

set about making a success of it.

The feelings of Mr Farquhar, then very ill, at this turn of events are not on record. His

refusal to sell land to Jews was well known, and preventing people he thought to be
undesirable from purchasing land in Camps Bay had not contributed to its growth. He

died a few months later, in September, unable to witness the phenomenal growth that
was to take place in the village he had loved so dearly.

Soon after Isidore Cohen took over Cape Marine Suburbs, he put thirty plots in the
lower part of Camps Bay up for sale. Public confidence in the property still reflected the

attitudes when the old company had been in charge. Jack Stern, Managing Director of
6
ITRO, one of Cohen's companies, recalled that :

“Everybody said to Mr Cohen, ‘Nobody will buy your plots because the South-Easter

blows you into the sea.’”