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THE RISE OF THE GENERAL POST OFFICE IN CAPE TOWN 1792-1910 In or about 1788 the Cape's Council of Policy was instructed by the directors of the VoC in Holland to investigate the possibility of establishing a postal service linking the colony to Europe. As a result, on 28 December 1789, the Council, under Governor Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff, resolved to establish a "post comptoir" for the Cape, with an office in the Castle. This became effective on 2 March 1792 when Adriaan Vincent Bergh was appointed the Cape's first official postmaster under Acting Governor Johan Isaac Rhenius. Much has been written about the early days of Cape Town. Perhaps one of the best descriptions was given by Sir John Barrow who accompanied Lord Macartney as his private secretary when the latter was appointed Governor of the Cape in 1797. He recorded that: "Cape Town, the capital, and indeed the only assemblage of houses that deserves the name of a town in the colony, is pleasantly situated at the head of Table Bay ... (it) is built with great regularity, the streets being all laid out with a line. The houses are generally white-washed, and the doors and windows painted green; are mostly two stories in height, flat-roofed, with an ornament in the centre of the front, or a kind of pediment; a raised platform before the door with a seat at each end. It consists of 1145 dwelling-houses, inhabited by about five thousand five hundred whites and people of colour, and ten thousand blacks ... The castle affords barracks for 1000 men, and lodging for all the officers of one regiment; magazines for artillery stores and ammunition; and most of the public offices of government are within its walls. (1797: 14-17, 1804: 340-1) Over the years Cape Town's postal establishment has been housed in a variety of premises, few of which, it would appear, have met its needs for either space or convenience. Initially it was located in the Leerdam bastion of Cape Town Castle, adjoining the original Commander's quarters (Gabriel Fagan, pers comm). At this time the Castle was the official residence of the Governor, and although it still retained its military character, a large portion of its space was given over to other government functions. Given the nature of the fortification, these were somewhat spartan in nature. Lady Anne Barnard was probably being quite charitable when she described the residential chambers as resembling "those we see in Monasteries and Convents abroad" (Barnard 1993: 174-5). Following the British annexation of the Cape in 1806, the Civil Service was gradually moved out of the Castle to new and more convenient premises in the town. In 1807 the slaves which the new British administration had inherited from the Dutch were sold and their quarters at the top of Adderley Street, formerly known as the Heerengracht, were converted to government offices. On 2 October 1809 the Post Office was moved from the Castle to the Old Slave Quarters, taking up residence in a portion of the building on the corner of Grave (since renamed Parliament) Street and the Government Gardens. In time the building also came to house the Supreme Court, the Master's offices, the Receiver of Revenue, the Attorney-General, the Government Secretary, the Fiscal, the Bank and the Public Library. On 16 August 1816 the Post Office was transferred to new premises in the same building, facing onto Neuwe (since renamed Bureau) Street, close to the Heerengracht (Jurgens, 1943: 23). When the Post Office was moved from the Castle in 1809, a branch office was established in Waterkant Street midway between the jetty and Justice Street, near the Custom House. It is not known whether this office ever had a formal name, but it does not appear to have been anything other than a receiving depot for overseas mails which never conducted any other postal business. The building was subsequently demolished and its site incorporated into the larger railway station complex. By the late 1860s the business of the Post Office had begun to outgrow the accomodation provided in Bureau Street and a proposal was put forward in 1868 for a new Post Office building to be located in Wale Street, on the site presently occupied by St George's Cathedral. The drawings show a large, two-storey structure under a mansard roof. The heavily ornamented facade was divided into five bays by pilasters rendered in a Doric order on the ground floor and Corinthian on the first. All openings were elaborately framed and the surfaces were panelled. History does not give reasons why this grandiose project was never realised, but it can be assumed that the depressed economic climate of the time was a major factor in its shelving (Radford 1979: 233). Instead in 1873 the Post Office leased new premises on the corner of St George's and Church Street. It is likely that these were owned by Saul Solomon, a businessman whose printing works at the time had extensive dealings with both the Cape Government and the Post Office. The refitting of the building was done under the direction of Charles Freeman, an architect employed by the Public Works Department who is probably better remembered for his design of the new Houses of Parliament (Radford 1979: 238). Writing in 1873 the Postmaster General stated that "the building afforded ample room for the requirements of general management and for the purposes of the Post Office for Cape Town". When the building was subsequently vacated by the Post Office in 1897 it was taken over by the Cape Times. By the early 1880s it was becoming obvious that there was a pressing need to provide the General Post Office with new headquarters designed to meet its specific operational needs. in 1883 the Chief Inspector of Public Works pointed out that the lease on the building in St George's Street was due to expire in December 1886 and that these premises would become inadequate for Post Office requirements "within a few years". He stated that the present location was "suitable" and that "it might be considered advisable to make fresh terms with the lessor early, and endeavour to obtain some adjoining property either on lease or by purchase" (PWD 1883). On 16 February 1885 the question of office space finally reached a critical point when the Telegraph Department was amalgamated with the Post Office. However this was not a sudden crisis, nor was it totally unexpected. George Aitchison had been appointed Postmaster General in 1873, at a time when the Post Office's annual income was 44,323 pounds, and under his management the postal affairs of the Colony had expanded considerably. On 1 October 1876 the Cape Post Office took over the running of the Ocean Mail service to the UK; registered mail, parcel post and postal orders were introduced in 1882; Travelling Post Offices began operating in 1883; and on 1 January 1884 postal notes were introduced and the Post Office Savings bank opened its doors. In addition the rapid development of the Kimberley diamond fields during the 1870s, wars in Pondoland in 1877-9, in Basutoland and Zululand in 1879, and in the Transvaal in 1880-1, and the discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields in 1886 all brought additional pressure upon the management of the postal service in Cape Town. By 1885 the combined income derived from postal and telegraphic business amounted to 235,720 pounds, an increase of some 532% over a period of twelve years, or an average of 44% per annum. This phenomenal growth inevitably meant that additional permanent staff had to be employed, with predictable demands upon existing office space. However, despite this increase in income, the Post Office's premises remained woefully inadequate for its use. In 1884 Aitchinson pointed out to Parliament that: "... the office accomodation ... has now become utterly inadequate, and the officers have in consequence been subjected not only to great inconvenience but have had to occupy rooms which ... are positively dangerous to health." (PMG 1884) In 1885 he stated that "the clerical staff are very much overcrowded at the expense of their health" (PMG 1885) and in 1886, writing in obvious exasperation, he descended to specifics, reporting that: "The (telegraph) instrument room is at present crowded by 30 occupants, 15 being as many as it should contain with due regard to the laws of health ... The accomodation in the General Post Office is not only too small, but a portion of it is situated over the yard of a neighbouring restaurant, from the urinals of which the smell is most offensive ... these rooms have had to be vacated and others in the neighbourhood hired at a rental of 60 pounds per annum." (PMG 1886) These problems were further compounded by the fact that, by that stage, the Railway Department was beginning to clamour for the return of the office space taken up by the Telegraph Department at the railway station. Despite the obvious urgency involved, the Government was slow in reacting. In 1887 it appointed a committee "to consider the question of improved accommodation for the Postal and Telegraph Department". Despite a request by Aitchinson that the Commercial Exchange be considered as the site for a new Post Office, the committee opted to make an extensive inspection of suitable buildings in the central city area. Unfortunately it found it impossible to obtain an existing structure which would meet all of the Post Office's operational requirements and instead recommended that the Government purchase premises on the corner of New and Wale Streets to house the Administrative Section, a building previously occupied by a Mr Marquard. Extensions were also made to the telegraph instrument room at the station, and although both of these measures were implemented almost immediately, the relief they provided was of short duration. Also the decision to separate the Circulation Branch from the remainder of the GPO was not a popular one with its management, and Aitchison almost immediately described it as a "very serious disadvantage" which "greatly hindered and impaired ... the efficiency of administration" (PMG 1887). By 1887 the General Post Office had extended its operations into five different locations in the city centre. The building in St George's Street had been handed over entirely to the Cape Town post office and to the Circulation Branch, while the Administrative Section had been moved to premises at the corner of New and Wale Streets. The new foreign and local Parcel Post introduced on 1 July 1882 was housed in a portion of the Cafe Royal, rented for this purpose by the Post Office and located a few doors from the Circulation Branch. The increased staff for the Post Office Savings Bank was housed in a temporary building in the back garden of the Wale Street offices. In 1885 an effort had also made to incorporate the management offices of the Telegraph Department with the Administrative Section at Wale Street, but the bulk of the telegraphic functions remained in their original offices at the railway station. However Aitchison's viewpoint appears to have prevailed and in 1890 the Cape Legislature passed Act No 28 of 1890 empowering the expropriation for public purposes of land and buildings known as the Commercial Exchange. The property was originally part of the Grand Parade, an open piece of land initially used by the military as a training ground, and later by the citizens of Cape Town for a variety of commercial and social functions. The site was bounded by Adderley, Plein, Darling and Strand Street and was probably identified for post office development because of its proximity to the railway station and its existing network of telegraph transmission lines. It also had previous associations with the Post Office, having been the location of the country's first telegraph office which had been erected in about 1860 on the corner of Adderley and Darling Street. It was intended that the new building, like the Commercial Exchange before it, would be freestanding, facing both Adderley Street and onto the Grand Parade. Its plan was formulated to follow the example set by the GPO in Melbourne, Australia, "to frame a comprehensive design which when completed will accommodate every branch of the Department for very many years to come" (PMG 1890). In July 1891 preliminary plans were submitted to the Government, but these were deemed to be too ambitious and in August Parliament passed Act No 32 of 1891 limiting the cost of the building to 60,000 pounds. The Post Office, on its part, declared this to be inadequate and a new set of proposals was submitted. Aitchison died after a brief illness on 26 January 1892 and leadership of the project then fell to Somerset French, an energetic and capable administrator who can be credited with many of the innovations initiated under Aitchison. The design of the building was started early in 1892 by Harry S Greaves, the Colonial Architect, and in November 1892 the tender for the erection of the new building was accepted. The old Commercial Exchange was demolished in January 1893, and construction on the new structure was begun shortly afterwards. It was originally intended that the building should be erected in two stages of two floors each, but as it turned out these followed each other quite closely and, to all intents and purposes, the building was erected as one (Radford 1879: 247). The fourth storey was reached in 1894, but the completion of the building was not expected much before 1897. In 1894 the business of the Post Office was being carried out from five buildings in the Cape Town city centre, namely the administrative offices in Wale Street, the Central Telegraph Office in the railway station, the Circulation Branch and Cape Town post office in St George's Street, the Parcel Office in Church Street, and the Telegraph Stores sited in two buildings in Dock Road. By 1895 this number had risen to nine, including a new counter in Church Street, adjoining the existing GPO. However, even at this early stage Somerset French was already expressing reservations about the amount of space which the new structure would provide. The first departments began to move in on 1 April 1897, the Post Office opened its doors to the public on 30 August, and the building was handed over at the end of that year. By all accounts the new GPO was an architectural showpiece, having been provided with all the most modern facilities available in its time. This included electrical lighting, an internal power supply, three lifts for passengers, mails and goods separately, a system of pneumatic tubes connecting the GPO to a number of Branch offices, a system of fire alarms, and a security network to monitor the movements of the night staff. The Postmaster General, Somerset French, was obviously delighted with his new premises, stating that: "The new building has fully answered all my expectations and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that the healthy, roomy and convenient surroundings which the staff now have, have given, in many cases, a fresh lease of life and have secured heartiness and satisfaction in the performance of the work." (PMG 1898) Nonetheless alterations to the internal office planning began almost immediately, and by 1901 French was already stating that "the question of increased space provision in several directions is requiring most serious consideration". Upon the outbreak of the South African War in 1899 the Army Post Office Corps and the Military Censors were allocated offices on the third floor of the building. Although they vacated this in 1902, their withdrawal made little impression upon the growing shortage of space. In 1902 the telegraph and telephone linesmen were transferred to a temporary structure erected on reclaimed ground at the foot of Adderley Street. In 1903 a small Printing Department was established on the third floor and reservations were beginning to be expressed regarding the weight of paper in the Stationery Store and the effect which this was having upon the floor slabs on the third and fourth floors of the building. By that stage the staffing component in the GPO had grown from 515 in 1897 to 1120, and French was already advocating that the Post Office be allowed to extend its premises onto adjoining land. A Bill to this effect was prepared in 1904, but was never presented to Parliament. That same year the Surveyor and District Engineer of the Western District was removed to the upper floor of the post office at Sea Point, and the Stores Section began to conduct some of its work on the roof. In 1909 maintenance work to the value of 194 pounds had to be carried out on the facade whose stonework of Saldanha Bay limestone had weathered very badly. The work of the General Post Office in Cape Town could be divided into two separate and distinct areas of management. The first was the Office of the Postmaster General, which was responsible for larger planning issues, as well as the formulation of post office policy for the colony and its implementation at a regional and international level. The second involved the day-to-day administration of the postal affairs of Cape Town. This separation of duties was initially defined in 1806 by William Caldwell when he appointed Dirk de Jong as the town's first postmaster. However the Civil Service Lists cease to make this distinction after 1827, and it is not known whether the post continued to exist as a separate position thereafter. In 1867 the postal establishment of the GPO was restructured and the administration of the Cape Town office was transferred to the Controller of the Circulation Branch, a department of the Colonial Post Office. This operated from the same building as the GPO, except for a brief period between 1887 and 1897 when pressures of office space forced their physical separation. The following officials were appointed to the position of Postmaster General of the Cape Colony: Bergh, Adriaan Vincent 1792 In addition the following officials are recorded to have served in Cape Town as the city's postmaster: De Jong, Dirk 1806 In 1866 the Post Office Establishment in Cape Town was rocked by a major financial scandal. As a result the Postmaster General, Mr JA le Sueur, was dismissed from his post and, although not personally responsible, was ordered to repay the GPO a shortfall of 1899 pounds 17s 1d. Three other officials in Cape Town were also discharged from service, and one, Mr JA Fischer, was subsequently convicted of defrauding the Post Office.
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