We don't know who took this photograph, nor exactly when it was taken, nor the names of the people pictured. We do know that it shows the balcony of the restaurant in the Cape Town branch of Stuttafords department store, frequented by fashionable folk of rounded means.
From the style of dress and the cars in Adderley Street below, we can deduce that this was probably the early 1960s. The Christmas lights strung across the road hint strongly at December, and we can guess that the elegant patrons are discussing either JFK's assassination and Jackie's Chanel suits, the Profumo scandal, the first woman in space, the new polio vaccine, the Beatles, Peter O'Toole's eyes, the annoying smiley-face stickers their children have plastered on bedroom walls, the rise of Capri pants, or, perhaps, the Rivonia Trial, which began on November 26 1963.
John Marwood's book, The History and Evolution of Stuttafords Department Stores of South Africa 1858 - 2015 (available on Kindle) starts, according to the summary on Amazon, "with Samson Rickard Stuttaford, his journey from Cornwall to Cape Town, his early ventures in the city, his eventual retirement to London, and his imprisonment there" and goes on to "the twilight years of the Cape Town store, and the Company's subsequent owners, the current focus on brands, and a return to relative stability."
A sad afterword will now have to be added: after 159 years of existence, Stuttafords is winding down its operations and - unless a Daddy Bigbucks steps forward to buy it - will shortly cease to exist.
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