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of Merit for public service and various accolades from three different mayors for public and

community service.

The Rudlophe Family and St. James Tea Room in St. James

Mike Rudolphe

Introduction

Due to a number of armed struggles between Greek and Bulgarian guerilla forces, revolts in

Crete against the Turkish overlords, a disastrous Thirty Day War against the Ottoman

Empire, the resultant required payment of a war indemnity, and large external debts, the then
Greek Prime Minister was forced in 1893 to declare the effective bankruptcy of the Greek

State.

Poor economic prospects at home underlay the wave of emigration, principally to the USA,

that got underway in the 1890s. Between 1890 and 1914 it is estimated that some 350,000

Greeks, almost all male and amounting to nearly one-sixth of the total population, emigrated.
The majority had the intention of returning to the homeland after working abroad for a few

years, but in the end most of them became permanently established in their adopted countries.

The remittances which the hard-working and enterprising migrants sent back to their families
constituted a key element in the balance of payments. Many of the contributions which the

young men sent home went towards providing dowries for their sisters.

One of the migrants was a young man, Ioannis Georgakopolous, who, as the only son in a

family of four children, was sent, much against his will, by his father to Cape Town to join an
uncle who had a prospering business in Woodstock and required an assistant. So distressed

was Yannis, or John, that he ran to the home of a friend the night before departure, and

begged them to hide him, but his father knew where to find him. He never saw his parents
again due to two world wars and a civil war in Greece.