21 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
This blog started in 2013, at the beginning of the project to research and write a new history of the University of Otago – now the book is here! The official launch is in March, as part of the 150th celebrations, but the book is for sale now in bookstores or through Otago University Press. Otago: 150 Years of New Zealand’s First University is an attractive 475-page hardback with jacket and includes numerous images; its price is $50. Happy reading!
14 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in buildings, student life
Tags
This post was researched and written by University of Otago history student Bree Wooller in 2017.
86 Queen Street 2016. Photographed by Bree Wooller.
North Dunedin has not always been occupied by students. For most of its history it has been just another suburb. Now, the houses are crumbling, and we risk losing the heritage and character that has become iconic to the area.
The gold rush of the 1860s made Dunedin the richest and most highly populated province in New Zealand.[1] This influx of wealth influenced the building of large, elegant, houses along the town belt. In 1880, David Henderson built a house at 86 Queen Street. In its early years 86 Queen was considered a charming, first-class, modern residence.[2] The early occupants were wealthy; regular adverts posted in the local papers look for domestic help, and furniture auctions reveal the occupants lavish lifestyle.[3] Walnut pianos, marble vases, and oil paintings were common furnishings in 86 Queen Street at the time.[4]
Professor Salmond had a brief occupancy till his death in 1917. Photographed by Morris, 1914. Image courtesy of Hocken Collections, P2018-013-005.
John Laing, a ‘foreign agent,’ owned the house from 1909 to 1924. He lived there with his wife Kathleen, son John Carroll, and daughter Katherine.[5] John Carroll Laing was killed in action in Italy, 1943.[6] Professor William Salmond, known for his position on the chair of mental and moral philosophy at Otago University, appears to have resided at the house for a brief amount of time up until his death in 1917.[7] Kathleen Laing’s brother, Dr Francis Hotop, a surgeon at Dunedin Hospital lived with the family for a period around 1922.[8] Their father, Lewis Hotop, a pharmacist and three-time Mayor of Queenstown, was also living at the residence until his death in 1922.[9]
House Interior 2016. Contrast of modern repairs and older features in balusters and stained window panes. Photographed by Bree Wooller, July 2016.
A new upstairs room was added in 1913, electricity was connected during the renovations.[10] In 1926, a garage was added at the front of the house.[11]
90 years ago, Dunedin was feeling the effects of the Great Depression.[12] Large houses along the town belt became too hard to maintain during this economic downturn, most were split into multiple dwellings. In the late 1930s, 86 Queen Street was split into a top and bottom flat.[13]
The house was rented in this period by a fast-changing array of occupants. Tenants included Miss Anna Glover, a spinster, who lived in the top flat 1940 to 1946, and an engineer named David Jack, who lived in the bottom flat from 1939-41.[14] The flat was owned by a retired salesman, Thomas McGoldrick, from 1944 till his death in 1969.[15] In 1958, the iconic yellow roughcasting replaced the houses traditional wooden exterior, making it resemble its present-day appearance.
Between 1969 and 1979, 86 Queen Street was owned and occupied by Richard Mulgan and his wife Margaret.[16] Mulgan was a professor of political studies at Otago University, known for his role on the New Zealand Royal Commission of 1985, which recommended the adoption of an MMP political system. Mulgan converted 86 Queen back to a single house, and remodelled the kitchen in 1976. From 1979, the flat was owned and occupied by Duncan Roper and his wife Mirrel.[17] Duncan was a tutor at the university while residing in the house.
50 years ago, the university roll was on a steady climb, and the number of students wanting to flat was on the rise.[18] In 1956, 17% of the student population lived in flats, and this rose to 39% of students in 1972.[19]
Student Occupation at 86 Queen Street. Photographed by Bree Wooller, October 2016.
The beginning of student occupation at 86 Queen Street is ambiguous. Names and dates in an upstairs room suggest students were living in the flat from 2001, if not earlier. 86 Queen Street became known as “The Yeast Infection” in 2008.
In 2017, we face the continued issue of degrading student flats. Maintenance and care is needed to preserve old houses such as 86 Queen Street. Without this, many historic flats will be demolished. Along with them, aspects of student culture, and landmarks of the first settler’s Dunedin will be lost forever.
Notes
[1] Erik Olssen, A History of Otago (Dunedin, N.Z. : McIndoe,1984), 69.
[2] Park, Reynolds and Co, “Charming City Residence and Choice Piece of Ground” Evening Star (Issue: 11528), 20th April 1901.
[3] Gow, “Wanted, Respectful General Servant”, Evening Star (Issue 11411), 1 December 1900.; Mrs Laing “Wanted, Young Lady”, Evening Star (Issue: 14150), 30th October 1913.; Mrs George Mackie, “Wanted, Young Girl” Otago Daily Times (Issue: 19225), 16th July 1924.
[4] Park, Reynolds and Co, “Superior Household Furniture”, Evening Star (Issue: 11528), 20th April 1901.
[5] Laing, “Birth Notices”, Otago Witness (Issue 3060), 6th November 1912; Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1909-1924.
[6] Northern Cemetery, block 191, plot 86, 85. New Zealand, Cemetery Records, 1800-2007. Ancestry.com.
[7] “Auctions – Estate of the Late Professor Salmond” Evening Star (Issue 16422), 12th May 1917.; Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1917.
[8] Dr F. R. Hotop, “Professional Advertisement – Commenced Practice”, Otago Daily Times (Issue 18518), 31st March 1922.
[9] Hotop “Death Notice”, Otago Daily Times, (Issue 18673), 30th September 1922.
[10] Electricity Records, 3rd July 1913. Register No. 3329. Dunedin City Council Archives.
[11] Building Plans, 1926. No. 8788. Dunedin City Council Archives.
[12] Olssen, 90.
[13] Electricity Records, 24th June 1940. Register No. 32313. Dunedin City Council Archives.
[14] Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1940, 1942, 1943, 1946.; Electricity Records Register No. 32313.
[15] Anderson Bay Cemetery, block 259, plot 27. New Zealand, Cemetery Records, 1800-2007. Ancestry.com; Electricity Records Register No. 32313; Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1947, 1950-1, 1953-4, 1955.
[16] Dunedin, Otago, 1978. New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853–1981. Auckland, New Zealand: BAB microfilming. Microfiche publication, 4032 fiche. Ancestry.com.
[17] Dunedin, Otago, 1981. New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853–1981.
[18] Debby Foster “No Mixing By Students” in Tower Turmoil: Characters and Controversies at the University of Otago, ed. Time Keepers. (Dunedin: Department of History, University of Otago, 2005) 129
[19] Sam Elworthy, Ritual Song of Defiance: A Social History of Students at the University of Otago, (Dunedin: OUSA, 1990), 199.
Bibliography
Auckland Museum Online Cenotaph. J C Laing. Record: C28301, Service Number: 600485.
Building Plans, No. 8788. Dunedin City Council Archives.
Evening Star. Dunedin, New Zealand, 1 December 1900 – 12 May 1917.
Electricity Records, 3rd July 1913. Register No. 3329. Dunedin City Council Archives.
Electricity Records, 24th June 1940. Register No. 32313. Dunedin City Council Archives.
Elworthy, Sam. Ritual Song of Defiance: A Social History of Students at the University of Otago. Dunedin: OUSA. 1990.
Foster, Debby. “No Mixing By Students.” In Tower Turmoil: Characters and Controversies at the University of Otago, edited by Time Keepers. Dunedin: Department of History, University of Otago. 2005.
McLeod, Catherine. “Halls of residence in the 1960s: curfews, couples and controversy.” In Tower Turmoil: Characters and Controversies at the University of Otago, edited by Time Keepers. Dunedin: Department of History, University of Otago. 2005.
New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853–1981. Auckland, New Zealand: BAB microfilming. Microfiche publication, 4032 fiche. Ancestry.com.
New Zealand, Cemetery Records, 1800-2007. Ancestry.com.
Olssen, Erik. A History of Otago. Dunedin: McIndoe, 1984.
Otago Daily Times. Dunedin, New Zealand, 31 March 1922 – 16 July 1924.
Otago Witness, Dunedin, New Zealand, 17 March 1898.- 6 November 1912.
Professor W. Salmond, by Morris Phot, 1914. Hocken Collections (c/nF189/1)
Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1898-1955. New Zealand, City & Area Directories, 1866-1955. Microfilm publication, 921 fiche. Anne Bromell Collection. Ancestry.com.
25 Thursday Oct 2018
Posted in student life
This blog post was written by University of Otago history student Rachel Tombs in 2017.
“Our most important function seems to be the “air freshening”: clearing the air on the foggy, obstructive concepts of Christianity.”[1]
“The Bible in one hand, a newspaper in the other and the critic in your back pocket.” Cartoon by David Hayward and Rachel Tombs 2017. Image courtesy of SCMO.
Since the first meeting of the Otago Christian Union in 1896, its members were determined to provide a fresh approach to Christianity on campus. As descendants of the OCU, in 2017 the Student Christian Movement is focused on that same purpose. The core values; openness, education, outward vision, a foundation in Christ and the formation of student leaders, have simultaneously kept the mission of SCMO up to date and linked together Otago SCMers through the years.
Jack Bennet wrote in the NZSCM magazine “Open Windows” in 1931, “our witness must be as broadly Christian as it is possible to make it”.[2] This openness is seen throughout SCM’s history in the “free flowing” membership, and its resolution to include all people and ecumenism. [3]
Originally the only prerequisite for joining was to acknowledge Jesus Christ as saviour and to agree to abide by the constitution.[4] In the 50s as long as you felt comfortable in an “atmosphere of questioning and openness…you came along”.[5] To this day SCMO has not required a formal sign up process to attend. Aleshia Lawson describes a place where, “you can be whoever you want, I’ve never encountered any boundaries”.[6]
Through the decades SCMO has been intentional about encouraging a diversity of voices to be involved. Advertising from the 1960s proudly reads, “meet people who may or may not share your views”. [7] The first membership roll includes students from across the schools of Arts, Medicine, Mining, and Divinity.[8] The Constitution of 1896 was amended four years later to insist if the President was not a woman, the Vice President should be.[9] This policy of gender parity has since been extended to all committees and is echoed in the national and global movement.[10] The commitment to inclusion applies also to a bicultural society, demonstrated in 1993 when SCMO affirmed the national movement’s decision to incorporate the Treaty of Waitangi fully into the constitution.[11]
The primary object of the Christian Union in 1901 was to strengthen the bonds among all Christian students.[12] Initially this meant the movement was interdenominational Protestant, but by the 1970s had widened to include Roman Catholics.[13] Even before this, in the 1950s, SCMO held annual combined events with the Catholic Students’ Association. Reflecting on these events, the President wrote in 1955 “SCM is a very important field for the ecumenical encounter”.[14] SCMO continues this legacy as a current member of the Combined Christian Group.[15]
The openness of SCMO applies as much to thought as it does to people. The application of critical thought and study to faith has always been a distinguishing characteristic. Within one month of their first meeting, the executive committee set up a lending library in May 1896.[16] Study circles were also a key part of the weekly routine from this time up until the 1970s. These circles provided a place for thinking, discussion and asking questions. Russell Thew reflects that students were encouraged to “see their discipline in a much wider context.”[17] A rolling programme of guest speakers bolstered this kind of thinking. Michael Wallace describes “wanting to get into theology and really tease out some ideas.”[18] Many of these guests were local clergy or academics, but some prominent New Zealanders also left their influence on the movement, for example Ormond Burton was a keen contributor to conferences in the 1930s.[19]
New Zealand Student Christian Movement Group gather for national conference at Knox College, ca 1970. Including James Baxter (seated left of centre) and Tim Shadbolt (back row right of centre). Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, Ref: PAColl-2173.
The motto adopted in 1906, “the evangelisation of the world in our generation” reflects the global aspirations of the movement. In 1896 members from the Otago Christian Union, travelled to Melbourne to attend a conference at which the Australasian Student Christian Movement was established.[20] These students were the first of many to enjoy and learn from the international connections SCMO brought. This internationalism quickly entered the discussions and activity back at home. The international friendships which developed from these conferences increased the feeling of solidarity with other countries, particularly those in the Asia- Pacific region.[21] As Peter Matheson says “there was an awareness that we weren’t just a wee blip belonging basically to Britain.”
This outward vision manifested in local activity. The Student Volunteer Movement was the dedicated branch for “mission work, especially for and by students” until the 1930s.[22] At this time the movement was split as some members felt politics and social work had ousted God and the Bible as the central purpose.[23] While the split caused the influence of the movement to wane, politics did not disappear from SCMO. After the First World War SCMers fundraised for European refugees. In 1959 they marched down George Street in Dunedin’s first anti nuclear protest.[24] Years later, during the occupations of the registry in 1993 and 1996, SCMers joined the crowds with their “God hates fees” sign and provided healthy snacks to keep energy up amongst protestors. [25] SCMO’s history is rich with campaigns like these.
Despite this activism, SCMO never strayed far from its Christian foundations. The very establishment of the Union was to enrich the lives of followers of Christ at the University. Russell Thew says that in his experience the Christian element was a major part. It was important to “take seriously the call for discipleship”.[26] Julanne Clarke-Morris recalls in the 1990s that while the group welcomed students outside the church with an interest in activism, “our constitution was very clear that we were Christian”. Although, particularly after 1930, this strand of Christianity was different to that of the conservative mainline of most churches. It was a group “prepared to be critical of its own tradition” with “a sort of impatience with traditional patterns of piety”.[27] A new member described this solid but unconventional discipleship in a 1968 newsletter, “Scmers built ungeometric and very shaky pyramids on pure faith”.[28]
Members of SCMO attend the National Conference in 2016. Spencer Park, Christchurch. Image courtesy of SCMA.
The same fresher added “scmers never stayed still or silent for long.” SCMO formed students into competent, confident and active leaders. It was a place where students were encouraged to think for themselves and develop into “adult Christians”.[29] In the 1950s one of the movement’s objectives was to earn members “the right to dissent”. [30] Julanne Clarke Morris echoes this “if it wasn’t for SCM I wouldn’t have that sort of confidence in my own interpretation.”
Student movements tend to be places where distinctive common characteristics are held.[31] In the case of SCMO the core values distinguish it from other student and Christian groups. SCMO does not wish to be church in a traditional sense, but could never be considered simply “a youth group”.[32] It is the interaction of these values: openness to people and thought, internationalism and social justice, student leadership, all with Christ at the centre, which combined together smell like the air freshener that is SCMO, throughout its 121 years.
Bibliography:
Berry, Christine. The New Zealand Student Christian Movement 1896-1996: A Centennial History. Christchurch.: NZ, SCMA, 1999.
Lineham, Peter. “Finding a space for evangelicalism: Evangelical Youth Movements in New Zealand”, in Voluntary religion: papers read at the 1985 Summer Meeting and the 1986 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed.W. J Sheils and Diana Wood. Oxford, UK.: Blackwell, 1986.
Otago University Student Christian Movement Records 1896-1973 (90-138, boxes 1-5) Hocken Archives Dunedin.
Interviews:
Peter Matheson, involved late 1950s and 1981- 2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 20th September 2017.
Russell Thew, involved 1966-1973, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 20th September, 2017.
Julanne Clarke-Morris, involved 1990 -1997, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27th September 2017.
Michael Wallace, involved 1989-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27th September 2017.
Aleshia Lawson, involved 2013-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29th September 2017.
John Graveston, involved 2013-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29th September 2017.
Endnotes:
[1] Geoff and Helen White, “A New Fundamentalism” for the SCMO Newsletter, ca. 1968, Student Christian Movement, 90-138, box 4, Hocken Collections Dunedin.
[2] Open Windows, vol.5 no. 2, April 1931, in The New Zealand Student Christian Movement 1896-1996: A Centennial History, Christine Berry (Christchurch.: NZ, SCMA, 1999), 1:8.
[3] Peter Matheson, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 20th September 2017. Involvement late 1950s, 1981 – 2017.
[4] Minute Book for the Executive Committee, 1896 -1910, Student Christian Movement, 90-138, box 1, Hocken Collections Dunedin.
[5] Peter Matheson
[6] Aleshia Lawson, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29th September, 2017. Involvement 2013-2017.
[7] SCMO Newsletters 1958-1972, Student Christian Movement, 90-138, box 4, Hocken Collections Dunedin.
[8] Record Book Otago Christian Union, 1896 -1904, Student Christian Movement, 90-138, box 3, Hocken Collections Dunedin.
[9] Minute Book for the executive committee, 1896-1910.
[10] John Graveston, interview by author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29th September 2017. Involvement 2013-2017.
[11] Berry, appendix 2.
[12] Record Book Otago Christian Union, 1896 -1904.
[13] Michael Wallace, interview by author, 27th September 2017. Involvement 1989-2017.
[14] Presidents Book 1955-1972, Student Christian Movement, 90-138, box 2, Hocken Collections Dunedin.
[15] John Graveston
[16] Minute Book of the Executive Committee 1896-1910.
[17] Russell Thew, interview by author, Dunedin New Zealand, 20th September 2017. Involvement 1966-1973.
[18] Michael Wallace
[19] Julanne Clarke-Morris, interview by author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27th September 2017. Involvement 1990-1997. Berry, 2:4.
[20] Minute Book of the Executive Committee 1896 -1910.
[21] Julanne Clarke-Morris, interview by author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27th September.
[22] Record Book, 1896-1904.
[23] Berry, 2:6-9. Peter Lineham, “Finding a space for evangelicalism: Evangelical Youth Movements in New Zealand”, in Voluntary religion: papers read at the 1985 Summer Meeting and the 1986 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed.W. J Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford, UK.: Blackwell, 1986), 485.
[24] Peter Matheson
[25] Julanne Clarke-Morris
[26] Russell Thew
[27] Julanne Clarke Morris. Lineham, 483. Peter Matheson.
[28] SCMO Newsletters 1958-1972
[29] Michael Wallace
[30] SCMO Newsletters 1958-1972
[31] Lineham, 477.
[32] Julanne Clarke-Morris
Note: Ian Dougherty’s ‘Whatever happened to the Student Christian Movement?’ in the University of Otago Magazine, 46, April 2018, drew on the unpublished work that Rachel completed for this blog in 2017.
04 Monday Dec 2017
Posted in buildings
The university’s first home, complete with ‘loungers’, photographed around 1877. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Library records, 96-111/15, S17-612b.
The University of Otago had its first home in Dunedin’s first Oamaru-stone building, designed by William Mason in neoclassical style for a post office. As the building neared completion in 1867, Dunedinites began imagining other uses for it; provincial superintendent James Macandrew suggested it ‘might be turned to much better account than that of a Post Office’. He convinced the government to turn the building over to the province in exchange for a more modest post office building. Locals were already using the ‘new post office’ for meetings and balls, but its first long-term tenant was the Otago Museum. It was the obvious accommodation for the university, and in 1871 – the year that classes began – it moved in. The building wasn’t perfect: the University Council reported it spent ‘a large sum in providing a new roof for the hall, in altering the staircase, and in adapting the building generally to the purposes of a University’. That was, however, cheaper and quicker than starting from scratch.
The Princes St location, right in the centre of town, was fitting for a university which modelled itself on urban foundations such as Edinburgh and London rather than ‘the sleepy cloisters’ of Oxbridge, but it did have its problems. The ‘footpath before its door was a favourite resort for loungers’, suggests George Thompson in the jubilee history, and parental concerns about sending their offspring to ‘the temptations and seductions of a town life’ were real. The biggest problem, though, was the lack of space for an expanding institution, which was sharing the building with the museum and art school and wrangled constant requests from citizens for use of the hall. The University Council wanted to develop residential accommodation for students and, though that didn’t happen for several decades, it did prompt the initial plans to move to a new site.
In 1874 the Otago Provincial Council granted the university a new site in part of the ‘old cemetery reserve’ (subsequently used for Arthur Street School and the Otago Boys’ High School). When, a few months later, the museum was allocated a new site in Great King Street, the Arthur Street location seemed less ideal; University Council member Donald Stuart argued ‘it was absolutely necessary that the Museum be situated in close proximity to the University, on account of the zoological, botanical, and medical classes’. In 1875, after the necessary legislation was passed, the cemetery reserve land was swapped for a new site, conveniently close to the museum and hospital, known as the botanical garden reserve. After delay finding a buyer for its original building, the council began construction on its new home beside the Leith in 1878.
The Colonial Bank became the proud owner of the Princes Street building. Unfortunately for the university, it failed to make its intention to transfer the clock to its new building clear in the sale contract and the Colonial Bank insisted on keeping it. The indebted university could not afford to purchase another and its new Clocktower Building had no clock until 1931, when one donated by the chancellor, Thomas Sidey, was installed. It was a fitting gift by ‘Summertime’ Sidey, the politician who succeeded after a long campaign in introducing daylight saving time to New Zealand. The original university building later became the Dunedin Stock Exchange; it was demolished in 1969 and John Wickliffe House now stands on its site.
Princes Street, featuring the Stock Exchange building with its clocktower, around 1926. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Sydney Charles Smith photographs, 1/2-046489-G.
From beginnings to endings: today is my last official day of work on the 5-year (part-time) project to write a new history of the University of Otago! That project is now in the capable hands of the excellent team at Otago University Press. They will publish the book late in 2018, in time for the 150th celebrations of 2019. This blog has been an important part of the project for me. It began in mid-2013 with weekly posts, but later became fortnightly, then monthly; this year it has been more sporadic as I have been preoccupied with completing the book. It has been wonderful to have the opportunity to share here some of the great stories I’ve encountered. My sincere thanks to everybody who has read the blog, and particularly to those who have responded with extra information, corrections and encouragement, along with those who have spread the word about the blog and the project. Not all of the 130 stories and accompanying images I’ve shared here will appear in the book – there simply isn’t room for all of them – but many will.
This blog will not die. We’re currently finalising arrangements for its new management and some Otago history students have been working on new stories – look out for those next year! I’ll still be at the University of Otago, continuing in my other role, in the archives at the Hocken Collections. You can still contact me there with queries about the fascinating history of New Zealand’s first university.
Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa,
Ali Clarke, December 2017
02 Monday Oct 2017
Posted in residential colleges
Tags
1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Aquinas, Dominican Hall, Wesley Hall
Otago has a great collection of residential colleges, some long-established and others quite recent; less well-known are those that flourished briefly but no longer exist. One of the most popular posts on this blog is about Helensburgh House, a ‘temporary’ hall of residence from 1984 to 1991. Today I explore the history of two others that have gone: Dominican Hall and Wesley Hall.
Dominican Hall. It was originally built in the 1880s for Robert Gillies, a businessman and amateur astronomer who included an observatory in the roof and named it Transit House in honour of the Transit of Venus. An OUSA listing of student residences for 1967 noted that at Dominican Hall ‘most necessary facilities are present although there is generally a theme of austerity’. Any austerity must have contrasted with the surviving ‘opulent elegant detail’ of the building, from embossed plaster ceilings to Minton floor tiles and ornate door handles. Image courtesy of Dominican Sisters archives, F15/5/1.
Like the other churches, Catholics saw a need to provide for their young people coming from around the country to Dunedin. In 1945 the Dominican Sisters, a teaching order at the forefront of Catholic education in Otago since arriving in 1871, purchased a grand stone home in spacious grounds in Park Street. In 1946 it began a new life as Dominican Hall, a residential college for 20 women students. One of them, Shona Scannell, later recalled that they formed a ‘lovely family … We went to the pictures together and had social sports groups. I thought it was wonderful’. In 1948 the sisters had additional bedrooms added atop the building; with that and other alterations plus the purchase of a neighbouring property in 1953, Dominican Hall expanded to house 48. Some women had single rooms but, as in most residential colleges of the day, others shared. Residents of the ‘dormitory’ reported on their exploits in the 1960 Dominican Hall magazine. ‘Life with seven in a room can be rather hectic’, noted Maureen Donnelly, but ‘a great sense of comradeship has grown’. They took part in all the social and sporting activities on offer, and ‘If there is any trouble we are all in it together, be it smoking in unlawful places, creeping in rather late, or just not sweeping the floor. We have formed a Rock’n Roll Recorder Group and at one stage our singing was of such quality it was mistaken for the radio’.
Students singing compline led by Father Ambrose Loughnan OP, Dominican Hall, in 1956. Religion was an important feature of Dominican life. The students were cared for by a small group of sisters and a resident chaplain; they hosted visits from the bishop and meetings of the Catholic Students’ Club, held retreats and had their own branch of the Children of Mary sodality. Image courtesy of Dominican Sisters archives, F15/8/2.
Not to be outdone by the Anglicans (who established Selwyn), Presbyterians (Knox and St Margaret’s) and Catholics (Dominican and Aquinas), in 1958 the Methodists joined the student accommodation business. Like several other institutions, Wesley Hall started with the purchase of a private residence. The Park Street home had room for 14 students – all men – and a resident matron, with the Methodist Central Mission’s superintendent acting as non-resident warden. The bedrooms were rather small and ‘no studies are provided’, reported the OUSA in 1967, ‘but there is a common room with piano and table tennis table’. The crowded conditions did not deter some residents. At the end of 1961 matron Elsie Maclean reported: ‘we seem to have some bright lads at present and the majority are anxious to return again next year … Several will be spending their fourth year here’. Their behaviour was generally ‘quite good till about midnight when apparently they become restive and noisy but as this seems to be the usual procedure in the student world, we patiently wait till the spasm subsides’. As a small institution Wesley Hall struggled for recognition by other colleges, though the residents organised events, such as ‘a very enjoyable’ hockey match and lunch with the women of Dominican Hall in 1964. The 1963 and 1964 presidents noted the perils of having too many residents from one district – in this case, Gore – which ‘tends to create a rather narrow range of acquaintances’. It could also ‘cause a certain amount of friction and suspicion ie “Who told my parents that I took so and so out last week?”’, suggested Kenneth Thomson.
The large Park Street home which became Wesley Hall was originally built in 1918 for lawyer Herbert Adams, but later run as a guest house. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, John McIndoe Ltd records, MS-3247/584, S17-564b.
Unlike several other residences with small beginnings, Wesley Hall did not grow larger, though that was the original plan. Methodist Superintendent David Gordon explained in 1970 that the Central Mission planned extensions for years, but on consultation with Otago VC Arthur Beacham concluded ‘with the rising running costs for a hostel, we should build nothing smaller than a 100 bed hostel’. As time passed and the ‘optimum size’ increased, the project grew ‘entirely beyond the resources of the Central Mission’. The government offered subsidies to organisations building student accommodation – that helped with the initial set up of Wesley Hall – but the cost of a new building was significant and the church had other priorities for social service funding. It ‘decided reluctantly’ to close Wesley Hall at the end of 1970; it had run at a loss throughout its 12 years. The building which had housed lively young men as a student residence was purchased by the Department of Health to become ‘a Hostel for the Rehabilitation of Alcoholics’.
An oversupply of accommodation for women led to the end of Dominican Hall; at the end of 1978 the Dominican Sisters announced it was closing. At its peak, it accommodated 50 residents, but by 1978 had just 28, though ’40 can be taken comfortably’. The decline was due to ‘the growth in larger, more modern hostels’, suggested Sister Bernadette (UniCol opened in 1969 and Salmond in 1971). As a small institution it could not afford to carry many vacancies in a period of rising expenses; the demand for improvements to meet DCC fire safety regulations was the final straw. For women who preferred a Catholic residence a new option was available, with Aquinas accepting women in 1979, but it also closed at the end of 1980 after a downturn in the university roll (the university purchased and re-opened it in 1988 after the roll surged again). In their day, Dominican and Wesley were obviously lively places which contributed to the welfare of their residents and the university; it was economics which spelled their end.
Dominican residents ready for a 1955 ball. Back row (from left): Clare Ryan, Judy Knight, Marlene Prentice, Bernadette Lloyd, Kathleen Kennedy. Front: Mary Horn, Pauline Burke, Clare Curran, Yvonne Young, Margaret Potts. Image courtesy of Dominican Sisters archives, F15/9/3.
My thanks to the Dominican Sisters for the wonderful photographs from their archives. I’d love to hear from anybody with photographs of Wesley Hall!
04 Monday Sep 2017
Posted in humanities
Tags
1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, arts fellows, English, linguistics, writers
The English Department staff outside their premises in Cameron House, a grand two-storeyed family home on Leith Street (later knocked down to make way for UniCol), in 1961. Until tutorials were introduced, the department fitted into a small room in the Clocktower Building. From left: Keith Maslen, Lenore Harty, Gregor Cameron, Alan Horsman, Margaret Dalziel and Bob Robertson. Dalziel later became Otago’s first woman humanities professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Image courtesy of the Department of English and Linguistics.
English is one of Otago’s founding subjects and has always been one of its most popular. In 1871 George Sale, the Cambridge-educated classics professor, taught an English class of 22, though it was an unfamiliar task for him. At his inaugural lecture Sale commented that neither Cambridge nor Oxford had a professor of English so he looked to the Scottish universities for inspiration; he concluded that their teaching encouraged ‘that very vice which it should be the especial object of a University to eradicate – shallowness and superficiality. He was therefore compelled to strike out a line for himself’. 1871 English students started the session with Chaucer, plunging straight into Middle English. When the class progressed to ‘the more modern language’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets after its ‘thorough and profitable perusal of the Canterbury Tales’, it earned a report in the ODT; perhaps the reporter was a student.
In 1881 Sale handed his English classes over to John Mainwaring Brown, another Cambridge graduate, appointed to a new chair of English, constitutional history (for law students) and political economy (economics). Brown was popular – and less intimidating than Sale – but his career ended tragically when he disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland at the end of 1888. With the arrival of Thomas Gilray in 1890, Otago had its first dedicated professor of English; a period of remarkable stability followed as the chair was held by just two men, both Scots, for three decades each.
Gilray was highly organised but not the most engaging lecturer: Muriel May, a student of the 1910s, recalled that he ‘taught by dictating at a relentless pace to his benches of scribbling students in the Lower Oliver classroom …. at the prearranged dates we regurgitated. There were no seminars, no discussions, originality was not fostered nor were personal opinions encouraged’. It didn’t help that he was bound by a national syllabus, with exam papers marked by strangers in the UK. Gilray’s death came as a shock: he collapsed while reading the lesson at the university’s jubilee church service, held in Knox Church in 1920. His successor, Herbert Ramsay, was ‘one of the university’s best lecturers’ and students delighted in his thoughts on Shakespeare. The course and teaching methods remained conservative. Ramsay boasted in a 1950 valedictory speech to the University Council that he never asked them for more staff. He and long-serving lecturer Gregor Cameron did all the teaching, with one additional junior lecturer from the late 1940s; they remained committed to the Scottish lecture-only system. John Greig, a Scot who taught in England, the US and South Africa, introduced radical changes as professor from 1952 to 1956. No fan of the conventional lecture, Greig introduced group tutorials; as a consequence, English’s academic staff jumped from three to seven, plus part-time tutors. He also modernised the curriculum, adding works by twentieth-century authors (Sean O’Casey, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf) and New Zealand poetry and short stories.
The inclusion of New Zealand literature in university courses was controversial. As Otago lecturer Robert Robertson explained, it was generally taught as ‘a dutiful recognition’ that first-year students should be aware of New Zealand poetry. There was an element of colonial cringe, but teaching local literature was hard work for staff, who had only ‘partial bibliographies, few collected works, no collected letters, not a standard biography, incomplete histories only and a scattered body of occasional criticism of varying merit’. Alan Horsman, a New Zealander who studied and taught in England, arrived as Otago’s new English professor in 1957. He recalls it as a significant year, with the publication of Janet Frame’s Owls Do Cry and Ian Cross’s The God Boy, novels which stood comparison with the best English writing; there was already poetry ‘of top quality’. He was reluctant, though, to introduce a paper devoted to New Zealand literature. Lawrence Jones, an American who arrived as lecturer in 1964, found Otago students responded more enthusiastically to Janet Frame than Thomas Hardy, and his research interests shifted to New Zealand literature. In 1977, in response to student demand, an honours paper fully devoted to New Zealand work was introduced; further undergrad courses followed and research expanded.
Burns Fellows received a year’s salary, a room in the English Department and complete freedom to write. Not all writers found the year easy, but others thrived during their first opportunity to write full-time. Cilla McQueen, the 1985 and 1986 Burns Fellow, is photographed in contemplative mood in the fellow’s office at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the fellowship in 2008. The office was then occupied by Sue Wootton. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.
Cross and Frame were both recipients of the university’s Robert Burns Fellowship for writers, commenced in 1959. In addition to providing some of the country’s greatest writers an opportunity to create without financial stress for a year, the fellowship was important for the English Department, which hosted the fellows. Staff and students interacted with them: ‘It was a very good thing for the department to have practising writers around, available to be talked with’, says Horsman. Some, like 1966 and 1967 Burns Fellow James K. Baxter, participated in classes. He ‘would come to a class occasionally and make his experience available. He would speak to the class about prosody in a way which, from a practising poet, was authoritative’, recalls Horsman.
Otago ventured into linguistics in the 1970s and in 1990 its small programme moved into the English Department; from 1994 students could major in linguistics. Another applied field which mushroomed in the 1990s was writing. It began when other departments expressed concern over students’ communication skills. In 1993 English introduced a paper on ‘the fundamentals of effective speaking and writing’; it was designed for health science students, for whom it was compulsory until 2006, but other departments at various times recommended or required it and other students also found it useful. It morphed into ‘English for university purposes’. Later the department expanded beyond the remedial or introductory with courses in advanced writing, writing for the professions and a creative writing paper in poetry.
Greg Waite (at centre, with beard), discussing the Textbase of Early Tudor English Project with participants at a conference in 1990. Waite and Alistair Fox started this early example of digital humanities in 1984, producing a machine-readable corpus of early Tudor literary texts, with particular focus on poetry. The project was largely completed by the late 1990s and transferred online in 2002. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.
Two new endowed chairs expanded the department in a Celtic direction. In 2006 Peter Kuch was appointed as Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies and in 2009 Liam McIlvanney became Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies. Both are literary scholars (and McIlvanney has a sideline as a crime writer). They provided intellectual stimulation to an English Department already a mix of the old and the new: along with esteemed scholars of historic writers (for instance, Jane Austen expert Jocelyn Harris) it employed up-and-comers with interests in digital literature, post-colonial literature and the avant-garde, among other fields. Its writing programme was also a ‘sizeable operation’. Meanwhile, Middle English, Old English and Old Norse were still spake here. Rick McGregor, a 1992 PhD graduate, came from Auckland to research the use of Icelandic sagas by a modern Swedish writer because Old Norse remained on offer in the south; Otago’s blend of conservatism and innovation has distinct advantages!
Chaucer, the English Department’s first text, has never gone out of fashion. Giving a Chaucer reading at Colin Gibson’s retirement function in 1998 are, from left: Greg Waite, Nicola Cummins, Bill Dean and Colin Gibson. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.
12 Monday Jun 2017
The crèche in its original premises in the old All Saints Church Hall. The notes on the back of this photo are difficult to decipher. The voluntary helpers are identified as Vivienne Moss (although that name is crossed out) and Jenny Heath. The child facing the camera at the centre is Rebecca, with Rachael nearest the camera. Please get in touch if you can confirm any names! Photo courtesy of the Otago University Childcare Association.
There is one organisation affiliated to the university which, although unknown to some students and staff, has had a big impact on the institution since it began nearly 50 years ago: the Otago University Childcare Association (OUCA). During the university’s first century there were few women academics, even fewer married women academics and scarcely any with young children. Microbiologists Margaret and John Loutit arrived at Otago from Australia in 1956; Margaret obtained part-time work as a botany demonstrator and then microbiology lecturer while working on a PhD. As a working mother she encountered considerable criticism. Her salary was mostly absorbed in paying for private childcare, but her hard work was rewarded with the completion of her PhD in 1966; she then became a full-time academic and eventually a professor. For many others, motherhood spelled the end of any academic career, while most students abandoned degrees when they gave birth. In the 1960s and 1970s, when many New Zealanders married young and, whether married or not, also had children young, that meant a lot of ‘academic wastage’.
Improving childcare provision helped the next generation of women. Several younger staff wives instigated the university’s first crèche, designed to provide part-time childcare for students. Since the university was unwilling to provide childcare, the founders set it up as a community venture; the vicar of All Saints Anglican Church offered the use of the old church hall. They invited women students to a meeting late in 1968 and ‘it was evident from the animated discussion that a nursery would fulfil a need’. The University Nursery Association – later renamed the Childcare Association – was a parent cooperative, with Jean Dodd as first president; she was a lecturer’s wife who previously set up a playcentre in Leith Valley. The nursery/crèche (both names were used at various times) opened in 1969 with kindergarten teacher Barbara Horn and Karitane nurse Ann Leary as its first supervisors; parents provided assistance according to a roster.
Outdoor play and learning in the 1990s. Photo courtesy of the Otago University Childcare Association
The new affordable and convenient crèche, together with new access to contraception, made a big difference to women, comments one student of that era, Rosemarie Smith: ‘gaining control over fertility and creating childcare revolutionised women’s access to education – and also to employment in the university’. She ‘graduated in 1971 with a BA and a baby thanks to that crèche’, and worked on the general staff for a couple of years. There was some resistance to the crèche. Most people in positions of authority in the university – generally men – saw no need for it, but there was also resistance from women uneasy about working mothers. There was, however, a demand for childcare and the association grew quickly, from 39 paying members in 1969 to 83 in 1971. That year it moved into the Cumberland Suite (an old house) of the University Union and in 1973 into a house at 525 Great King Street. That was provided by the university as temporary accommodation, since it intended to demolish the building to make way for a carpark. Instead it became a long-term home for the association, which expanded into two adjoining houses in the 1980s.
Childcare became more respectable as increasing numbers of middle-class married women joined the workforce. OUCA helped overcome some resistance in its early years by insisting it was a part-time service, but from 1980 it offered full day care. The service was increasingly used by staff, although students retained priority. In 1994 there were 138 families using university childcare; 71 were staff and 55 were students. It remained affiliated to, rather than owned by, the university, although the university provided its buildings – including splendid new Castle Street premises in 2014 – and small grants from the university and students’ association covered a small portion of its expenses. Unsurprisingly, given its clientele, OUCA attracted highly capable people to its management committee. Among the parents who served were some who subsequently held senior posts in the university, including future vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne; she was succeeded as president by historian Barbara Brookes, who suggests it ‘was perhaps the most important committee in the university in terms of the connections we made’. Brookes, her husband (also an academic) and children all made, through childcare, ‘deep friendships that nourish us today’.
Behind the facades of several villas in Castle Street, across the road from Selwyn College, Te Pā opened in 2014 as new premises for the Otago University Childcare Association. It incorporated four childcare centres, including a new bilingual centre, Te Pārekereke o Te Kī. The association also continued to run a centre at the College of Education. Graham Warman photographs, courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.
09 Tuesday May 2017
Posted in university administration
Tags
1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, classics, economics, education, English, French, geology, Higher Education Development Centre, history, medicine, philosophy, physics, psychology, teaching, technology
WR Morris lecturing in the ‘old anatomy lecture theatre’ – now the Gowland Lecture Theatre – in the Lindo Ferguson Building, 1949. Anatomical drawings and skeletons were popular visual aids from the medical school’s earliest classes onwards. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association archives, MS-1537/441, S17-550c.
The University of Otago’s founders followed Scottish precedent in their choice of curriculum and also in teaching methods: rather than the Oxbridge-style tutorial, teaching was based on the professorial lecture. That had the advantage of being economical and many subjects got by with just one staff member for the first few decades. The professor did all the teaching, except in the sciences, which were first to acquire assistants, necessary because of the laboratory classes which supplemented lectures. Humanities subjects had no tutorials until the 1940s, though in some cases the classes were small enough that professors became well acquainted with their students. As mentioned in a recent post about the history department, history professor John Elder told a young lecturer whose students showed marked progress after he introduced seminar discussions: ‘These young men like to hear themselves talk but you’re paid to lecture and you’ll therefore lecture. So long as I’m head of this department, there’ll be no discussions’.
Elder was not the only professor suspicious of tutorials. They eventually sneaked into arts subjects as the rehabilitation department funded tutorials for returned servicemen and women in the wake of World War II; they became standard additions to the lecture programme soon after that. Sometimes the impetus for this innovation came from students and sometimes from staff. In 1948 Frank Mitchell, the education professor, reported that ‘this year the Honours students on their own initiative organised tutorials for students taking Education I. I hope that it will soon be possible to conduct regular tutorials for all stages’. In the same year departing philosophy professor David Raphael noted that tutorials were ‘not just a desirable luxury’ in that subject, but ‘essential for adequate training. Philosophy is a way of doing things with one’s mind, not a set of facts to be learned, and consequently the student must be in a position to practise the accomplishment in question’. Tutorials required a bigger investment in staff, but the growing student roll justified that.
Academics of course varied greatly in their teaching styles. Founding classics professor George Sale, notorious for his disdain of students’ abilities, preferred the stick to the carrot. John Murdoch, in reminiscences of his own teaching career, wrote of meeting some of Sale’s honours students after a lecture in 1907: ‘They had just received their corrected Latin proses, and the most successful had gained a mark of “minus 300”. Sale deducted marks, 10, 50, 100 or more for a mistake, according to his estimate of its seriousness’. Murdoch had little respect for the methods of the early 20th century professors: ‘Otago University as I knew it was in effect a glorified coaching school’. Although the academic staff were ‘capable and well-qualified’, suggested Murdoch, their teaching was determined by a system whereby courses were ‘set by regulations applying to all four [University of New Zealand] colleges, and the success of their efforts was gauged by examiners in England’. Such conditions made ‘inspirational teaching almost hopeless if not quite impossible’, at least in English, ‘a notoriously difficult subject to teach’. Future high school principal Muriel May, an Otago student of the 1910s and 1920s, recalled that Thomas Gilray, the English professor, ‘taught by dictating at a relentless pace to his benches of scribbling students in the Lower Oliver classroom …. at the prearranged dates we regurgitated. There were no seminars, no discussions, originality was not fostered nor were personal opinions encouraged’. There were always, of course, some inspiring teachers. May also recalled that George Thompson’s French lectures ‘were invariably stimulating and enjoyable. (Latin students made comparable claims for the classes of Professor Adams.)’ Lecturer Agnes Blackie was in love with physics, which she found ‘brimful of interest’. ‘I can’t imagine a better subject for a lecturer’, she wrote in her reminiscences. ‘Lectures can be illustrated with fascinating demonstrations which bring the subject to life for the students and are fun for the lecturer to operate’.
From the 1950s, with greater local control of the curriculum and the widespread use of tutorials in addition to the traditional lectures, labs, clinical teaching and field trips, academic staff had greater flexibility in teaching. Their adoption of new technologies varied. Visual aids did not have to be high-tech: the beautiful anatomical drawings of John Scott, who was a skilled artist as well as first dean of the medical school, were used at Otago for many decades. Others used glass slides and a ‘magic lantern’ projector to show images. John Mackie recounted its use by Noel Benson in 1929 first-year geology lectures; it was ‘a contraption on a tripod which stood behind the lecture bench. Believe it or not, this projector incorporated an arc-lamp which spluttered, fizzed and made other dangerous noises, although as a source of light it was quite spectacular’. The notoriously absent-minded professor occasionally tripped over its wires ‘and the whole contrivance would crash to the floor’; that happened also on the day he rushed to extinguish the light after discovering students had replaced his first slide with a full-frontal nude. Slides remained a popular teaching tool, though shown through a more compact slide projector from the mid-20th century, with the slides themselves shifting from glass to film negative to digital format.
In 1940 the dean of arts and sciences, Robert Bell, reported that several departments took advantage of a new scheme for borrowing ‘sound-films’, finding them ‘an extremely valuable and effective addition’ to teaching methods. Not every academic liked new technology; John Howells, who retired from the economics department in the 1990s, commented ‘my major advancement in the technology area stopped with the biro pen’. The emergence of the Audio Visual Learning Centre (AVLC) in 1973 ‘was regarded with suspicion by some staff members who had visions of classes being handed over to various mechanical gadgets’, reported the staff newsletter in 1977. By then, the ‘prejudice’ was ‘disappearing’, with 30 departments already using the AVLC. Its use ranged from ‘tape/slide/workbook programmes’ for anatomy courses to a ‘film providing “evidence” for a simulated Supreme Court trial’ for law students. The impetus for the centre came from the medical school, which was concerned about how it would manage its larger intake of students; it provided space for AVLC academic director David Teather and his team, with a production centre in the Adams building and a study centre with library of audio visual resources in the Scott building.
By the time this photo was taken in 1983, medical school lectures had become much more relaxed and technology enabled the use of film and other audiovisual aids. Please get in touch if you can help identify the lecturer or class! Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit archives, MS-4368/086, S17-550b.
Academics using the AVLC ‘face some adjustment of their teaching methods and their attitudes’, noted the staff newsletter in 1975. There was already wider consideration of teaching and learning methods in the university, which new technology helped accelerate. In 1971 the lecturers’ association ran a well-attended seminar on teaching methods and suggested the university set up a research centre on higher education. In 1973 Otago appointed Terry Crooks as a lecturer in the education department, with half of his time devoted to research and advice on university teaching. He, the lecturers’ association and AVLC ran occasional sessions on teaching methods; for instance, a 1976 session looked at the use of film in university teaching, with staff discussing Otago-made films they had used in anthropology, physical education and medicine. Psychology lecturer Louis Leland ‘introduced a film which demonstrated the training of laboratory rats’. He made ‘a similar film each year with rats trained by the current year’s students and uses this to demonstrate to the following year’s students that training rats is within their capability’. In 1976 senate established a higher education research and advisory centre (HERAC) committee. HERAC and the AVLC often worked together and in 1978 they merged under a new acronym, this time destined to last: HEDC, or the Higher Education Development Centre.
Although HEDC had few staff in its early years, it performed a significant role; ‘there was growing awareness of the need for stimulating teaching’ reported the director, David Teather, in 1983. A recent two-day seminar on ‘helping students succeed’ had attracted 140 staff and ‘there was now hardly a department which did not make regular use of the resources at HEDC’ for producing teaching aids. That was just as well, since students ‘now came from school expecting to make use of technology in their work’. Computers became a significant part of that technology, and in 1986 Graham Webb joined the HEDC team; his ‘major responsibility’ was ‘to advise staff members on the educational uses of computers on campus’. Otago’s computing services centre also developed a team with expertise in computer-aided learning and in the 1990s HEDC’s audio-visual production section joined them as part of information technology services. HEDC continued to research and disseminate information on tertiary teaching, provide advice and run courses, notably for new academic staff; from 1996 staff could obtain a formal qualification – a postgraduate diploma in tertiary teaching – taught by the centre. The centre also supported Otago staff from other departments working on teaching-related research and new innovations. To help ‘enhance’ learning and teaching, the university offered special grants for research and innovation in teaching.
HEDC assisted with course evaluations, which gave students an opportunity to provide feedback on their teachers and courses. Staff could use them to identify weaknesses in their teaching which required work, or as evidence of their skills when seeking promotion. In an era of growing emphasis on quality assurance, they helped ‘measure’ courses in departments which were up for review. With a growing body of research from staff and postgraduate students on many aspects of higher education, plus a range of courses and support services for academics wanting to make their teaching more effective, Otago had travelled a long way from the days of Sale scoring papers at ‘minus 200’ and Gilray ‘dictating at a relentless pace’.
A class underway in the late 1980s or early 1990s in the Castle Lecture Theatres. The overhead transparency was a popular teaching tool for many years, later largely overtaken by Powerpoint digital slides. Unfortunately, the resolution of this old negative isn’t good enough to read what’s on the screen – if you can identify the class, lecturer or year, please get in touch! Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit archives, MS-4185/060, S17-550a.
10 Monday Apr 2017
Posted in humanities
Tags
1880s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, art history, economics, history, law, library, Maori, politics
Professor Angus Ross engaging another generation of potential history students at the Taieri High School breakup ceremony, 1965. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Taieri College archives, AG-629-015/060, S17-542a.
History has been around for a while! It first appeared at the University of Otago in 1881 when John Mainwaring Brown, the new professor of English, constitutional history and political economy, taught constitutional history to a class of two students. It was a subject designed for lawyers, covering ‘the development of the English Constitution, and of the Constitutional relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies’. The course, compulsory for the LLB degree, was also open to BA students. Mainwaring Brown’s career was cut tragically short when he disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland in December 1888. The university council recognised that it would be difficult to find somebody capable and willing to teach all of the subjects he had covered and appointed a new professor of English, with separate lecturers for constitutional history and political economy (economics). Alfred Barclay, one of Otago’s earliest graduates and a practising barrister, taught constitutional history for many years, except in the early years of the 20th century when the law school was closed and the subject wasn’t offered.
Harry Bedford, Otago’s first ‘English history’ lecturer. This photograph, taken by William Henshaw Clarke around 1902, was his official portrait as a Member of Parliament. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, General Assembly Library parliamentary portraits, 35mm-00168-f-F.
In 1914, history emerged as a subject in its own right with a new course in ‘English history’. It was taught by Harry Bedford, who had been Otago’s economics lecturer since 1907. Bedford had an impressive CV; he was a brilliant local graduate who started his working life in his father’s tailoring business, served a term in parliament, and practised law while lecturing at Otago. The syllabus for ‘English history’ included ‘a study of the outlines of the History of England, including the development of the constitution down to 1900’, with a more detailed study of a different period each academic year. Constitutional history continued as a separate course for law students, and Bedford also devoted two special lectures a week to ‘Modern History, as prescribed for Commerce students’ from 1916. Bedford was an inspiring teacher and his appointment to a new professorship in economics and history in 1915 came as no surprise. Sadly, he was another promising young professor destined for a tragic death; he drowned during a beach holiday in 1918. With the times still unsettled due to war, the council appointed Archdeacon Woodthorpe, the retired Selwyn warden, as acting professor. But they felt the time had now come to separate the growing disciplines of economics and history, and in 1920 John Elder of Aberdeen was appointed to a new chair in history, endowed by the Presbyterian Church.
Though the Presbyterians selected, appropriately enough, a ‘conservative and hard working Presbyterian’ from Scotland as Otago’s first history professor, Elder brought considerable innovation to the chair. He continued an extensive publishing career commenced in Scotland, producing both popular and academic works on New Zealand history at a time when ‘it was highly unusual for colonial professors to publish anything’. His developing interest in New Zealand’s history was also reflected in the curriculum, which expanded to include more coverage of this country and other colonies among the broad survey courses on offer. He valued archival research highly; this was made possible thanks to the resources held at the Hocken Library, and Elder required MA students to complete a thesis based on such sources. His dour manner didn’t endear him to students, though, and he soon put a stop to a young lecturer’s introduction of seminar discussions: ‘These young men like to hear themselves talk but you’re paid to lecture … So long as I’m head of this department, there’ll be no discussions’.
William Parker Morrell, photographed in 1930 while studying at Oxford. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Judith Morrell Nathan collection, ref: 1/2-197548-F.
In 1946 William Morrell – who featured in an earlier blog post on absent-minded professors – succeeded Elder as professor of history. He was a local graduate who studied and taught at Oxford and the University of London, and published widely on imperial and New Zealand history; he later took on the important role of writing the university’s centenary history! Morrell believed not only that history illuminated the present, but that the political state was worthy of study in its own right, and it was through his influence that politics joined the Otago syllabus, initially as part of the history department. Ted Olssen, an Adelaide graduate, was appointed to teach political science and classes commenced in 1948. Students emerging out of the war years and their clash of political ideologies demonstrated an appetite for the subject; it grew and became a separate department in 1967.
Like his predecessors, Willie Morrell believed that New Zealanders’ study of history needed to start with the histories of Britain and Europe, but an imperial framework meant that regions which had come under European control – including New Zealand and the Pacific – also appeared on the syllabus. Gordon Parsonson, who first joined the department as assistant lecturer in 1951 and remains an active researcher in his late 90s, was partly hired because of his interest and experience in Melanesia, acquired during World War II military service there. Angus Ross was another lecturer with expertise on New Zealand and Pacific history, though his distinguished war service had been in Europe. After many years in the department he succeeded Morrell as professor in 1965 and ‘steered the department away from the legacy of imperial history by making appointments trained to look at imperialism from the perspective of the colonised’. John Omer-Cooper, a specialist in African history, took up the newly-established second chair in history in 1973, while Hew McLeod, who became a world-renowned expert on Sikh history and culture, joined the department to teach Asian history in 1971. From 1975 a revamped curriculum gave students majoring in history broader choices; previously compelled to start with European history, they could now, if they wished, focus instead on New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific or Asian history.
Barbara Brookes and Ann Trotter at a Federation of University Women event at the Fortune Theatre, 1993. Image courtesy of Ann Trotter.
Under the umbrella of the histories of various regions, new themes began to emerge, often led by younger staff. Erik Olssen and Dorothy Page, both appointed in 1969 and both future heads of department, became pioneers of social history and women’s history respectively. Ross had a policy of appointing women where possible; although Morrell had also appointed a couple of women in the 1940s, men had long dominated the staff. The policy of recruiting good women academics continued and by the late 1980s they made up nearly half the department. In addition to Page, there were Barbara Brookes (another women’s history expert), Ann Trotter (who taught Asian history and subsequently became assistant-VC for humanities), Pacific historian Judy Bennett and long-serving lecturer Marjorie Maslen.
Angela Wanhalla and Judy Bennett in 2009. Photograph by Sue Lang, courtesy of the history and art history department.
As part of the new movement towards social history, Olssen embarked on the Caversham project, a long-running study of historic residents of southern Dunedin. Generations of honours and postgrad students mined the huge store of data for new insights into work, politics, gender, culture and society in New Zealand’s earliest industrial suburbs. Other new themes which became popular in the late 20th century included environmental history and intellectual history (the history of ideas, incorporating science and religion), while world history provided an antidote to specialism in particular places and eras. A growing – if belated – awareness of the significance of Māori perspectives of history saw the appointment of Michael Reilly to a joint position in history and Māori studies in 1991. He later became full-time in Māori studies, but in the 21st century the history department was fortunate to recruit two brilliant young Ngāi Tahu scholars, Angela Wanhalla and Michael Stevens.
History, like any other department, had its ups and downs through the years; funding was often tight and the trend towards lower enrolments in the humanities led to a loss of two staff in 2016. Art history joined the department in 2001, with a change in name to the history and art history department in 2008. Throughout, it remained a highly productive department with an excellent research record, ranking first in New Zealand for history and art history in the 2003 and 2006 PBRF rounds. It was no slouch in teaching either; in 2002, when OUSA gave its first teaching awards, history was the only department to have two people – Tom Brooking and Tony Ballantyne – in the top 10. As a proud graduate of Otago’s history department, I can testify to the great skills of its staff!
Recruiting a new generation of students, 2016-style. These secondary students, photographed at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, were attending a ‘hands-on history’ course run by the university. Photograph by Jane McCabe, courtesy of the history and art history department.
13 Monday Mar 2017
Posted in buildings, health sciences
Tags
1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, anatomy, biochemistry, library, medicine, microbiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, pharmacology, pharmacy, physiology, preventive and social medicine, surgery
An aerial view showing the medical school and hospital buildings, c.1970. The low-rise 1950s building replaced by the Sayers building can be seen between the Wellcome and Ferguson buildings, with cars parked in front. At the hospital, the clinical services building, opened in 1968, can be seen, but construction is yet to begin on the ward block, which opened in 1980. Several of the buildings in the block east of the hospital are now part of the university: the original Queen Mary maternity hospital now houses the surveying school and marine science department; the 2nd Queen Mary hospital is Hayward College, and the old nurses’ homes are Cumberland College. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/806, S17-517b.
There’s a significant university anniversary this year: it’s a century since the medical school opened its first Great King Street building. Otago medical classes started out in the university’s original building in Princes Street, but soon moved to the purpose-built anatomy and chemistry block (now the geology building) on the new site near the Leith. Opened in 1878, the new premises incorporated a lecture room, dissection room, preparation room, morgue, laboratory, anatomy room and professor’s office for the medical school. The facilities weren’t large – they were designed to cater for classes of a dozen or so – and the building was extended in 1883 and again in 1905, to provide for the expanding school and its first physiology professor. As medical student numbers continued to expand, from 80 in 1905 to 155 in 1914, space became desperately short and the medical faculty won government approval for further extensions to the anatomy and physiology departments, plus a new building to house the pathology and bacteriology (microbiology) departments, along with other subjects being taught in far from ideal conditions in the crowded hospital.
The site of the new building – in Great King Street, opposite the hospital – was controversial. Some university council members wanted all new developments to be on the existing campus, but medical academics wanted to be closer to the hospital, and the chancellor, Andrew Cameron, was on their side. Sydney Champtaloup, professor of public health and bacteriology, revealed the thinking behind the move during the 1914 public appeal for funds for the new building. After completing their studies in anatomy and physiology, which would still be taught at the university, said Champtaloup, ‘students are intimately associated with the Hospital. At present students attend some classes at the University, and have then to proceed to the Hospital for others, and to return to the University later. This involves a great waste of time and energy. All lectures and practical classes for senior students should be held in a suitable building near the Hospital’. He also pointed out that the hospital and university both required bacteriology and pathology labs, and ‘a combination of these requirements in one building makes for efficiency and economy, but that building to meet Hospital requirements must be either in the Hospital grounds or in its close proximity’. Although he didn’t mention it, Champtaloup would have to waste considerable time and energy himself if the new building wasn’t close to the hospital, since he was in charge of its bacteriology services.
The bacteriology and pathology building, later known as the Scott building, which opened in 1917. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Assocation records, MS-1537/636, S17-517a.
The public appeal raised the goodly sum of £8000 (over $1 million in 2017 values), which included £2000 from William Dawson (a brewer who made a fortune as one of the founders of Speight’s) and £1000 from members of the medical faculty. It was matched by the government, though the project ran considerably over budget thanks to ‘the presence of subterranean water, later found to characterise the whole area’, along with rising prices due to war conditions. The new building, designed by Mason and Wales and built by Fletcher Brothers, opened in 1917. Of brick with Oamaru stone facings, its neoclassical style seemed quite plain to contemporaries; the Evening Star noted some ‘pretty stained glass’ in the entrance hall was ‘one of the few ornamentations’. The building was large and well-lit, with a lecture theatre able to ‘seat 150 students and give everyone plenty of elbow room’ and other smaller lecture rooms; they incorporated facilities for the latest technology, the lantern slide. The pathology department was on the first floor and the bacteriology department on the second floor; there were also rooms dedicated to medical jurisprudence and materia medica (pharmacology), the library, specimen museum and an assortment of staff and student facilities. ‘The roof is used for store rooms, etc.’, reported the Star with some delicacy; that was where animals and food stores were housed.
The new building was just the beginning. Medical dean Lindo Ferguson had ambitious plans; he imagined the school expanding to take up the entire side of the Great King Street block facing the hospital, replacing its collection of old cottages and shops. Not everybody approved, and there was another battle over the new anatomy and physiology building. In 1919 university council members decided that further extensions to those departments should be on the main university campus, provoking a determined – and successful – campaign by the medical faculty, medical association and ODT to have them change their minds and instead construct a large new building adjoining the 1917 one. Physiology professor John Malcolm countered one of the main objections to the Great King Street site: ‘It had been said that the social life of the university was cut in two through the existing arrangements; and if that were so how about the scientific life of the university? Was it not cut in two as well? The most important was the human life’. After considerable delays in raising funds, in 1927 a splendid new building – ‘one of Dunedin’s most handsome’, declared the ODT – was opened. Designed by Edmund Anscombe in brick and stone facings to complement its neighbour, it provided accommodation for not just anatomy and physiology, but also the ‘sub-departments’ of histology, biochemistry and pharmacology. It had the ‘necessary classrooms, laboratories, and research rooms for a school averaging an annual class of 50 students’.
At the opening of the new block, Ferguson joked that ‘if a dean were content he was not fit to hold his position. No one knew the shortcomings of a school better than the dean, and if the dean thought that enough had been done he should be pole-axed’. He continued to dream of further expansion, and had already foiled suggestions the new dental school building should be immediately next to the medical school; instead its new 1926 building (now the Marples building) was constructed on the next block. Ferguson’s successors took up his scheme and in the midst of World War II work began on yet another large building. It had the prosaic name of ‘the south block’, but later the various buildings were named after the medical deans, according to their chronology, and it became the Hercus building, after third dean Charles Hercus; the earlier buildings were named for the first two deans, John Halliday Scott and Lindo Ferguson.
The Ferguson building (opened 1927), with the Scott building (1917) and Hercus building (1948) in the distance. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/637, S17-517c.
The south block was in brick and of similar scale to its neighbours, but the similarities ended there; it was a striking example of art deco, designed by Miller White and Dunn. Hercus recounted how the Minister of Education, Rex Mason, ‘turned down our original severely utilitarian plan with the statement, “This is not a factory, but a national building of great importance, and it must bear the marks of its function”’. The new design incorporated various artworks, most notably a sculptured marble panel by Richard Gross above the main Hanover Street entrance; there were also plaster murals inside. Building was a challenge because of wartime labour and supply shortages; four Dunedin building firms – Love, Naylor, Mitchells and McLellans – formed the Associated Builders consortium to complete the project. Some students obtained holiday work helping with the demolition and ground works for the foundations, which were dug down 15 metres, but the foreman ‘had to keep his eye on them because many would jump the fence and be off’. The building opened in 1948 and boasted 210 rooms; it became a new home for the preventive medicine, pathology and bacteriology departments and had two dedicated research floors, one of them for animals.
The new south block (Hercus building) under construction in the 1940s, looking east along Hanover Street. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association, MS-1537/631, S15-619f.
The next building development was less imposing and not destined to last for long: a single-storey brick building, completed in 1956 next to the Ferguson building, provided a space for the surgery and obstetrics and gynaecology departments. Next to it, on the corner of Frederick and Great King Streets, appeared in 1963 the Wellcome Research Institute. Funded entirely by the Wellcome Trust, which was created from a pharmaceutical fortune, the new building was a tribute to the important research on hypertension by Otago medical professor Horace Smirk, and provided a space for various research teams. It soon developed the nickname ‘Hori’s whare’, while the dental school was ‘Jack’s shack’ after dental dean John Walsh and the pharmacology department in the old Knox Sunday school was ‘Fred’s shed’ after its professor, Fred Fastier. The Wellcome building was designed by Niel Wales, the latest generation in old Dunedin firm Mason and Wales, which had also been responsible for the Scott building; the new building’s international style, with its simple forms and lack of ornamentation, reflected the architectural fashion of the period.
The next buildings took the medical campus further into the realms of new architecture. In 1972 the medical library acquired a new home in the Sayers building, named for the fourth dean, Ted Sayers. The building, which replaced the 1950s surgery and O & G construction, also included accommodation for the medical school administration. A year later the multi-storey Adams building (Bill Adams was the fifth dean) emerged behind it, with an entrance from Frederick Street; it provided new space for the preventive and social medicine, pharmacology, pharmacy and surgery departments, along with the university’s higher education development centre. The Sayers building was designed by Alan Neil of Fraser Oakley Pinfold. A 1994 exhibition on University of Otago architecture suggested his ‘use of fair-faced concrete is an essay in Brutalism’. The Adams building was designed by Miller White and Dunn and the design was recycled in the microbiology building, opened in 1974 on Cumberland Street. The 1994 exhibition noted its utilitarian architecture: it ‘appears to have been designed from the inside out’ and ‘no thought appears to have been given to the external appearance .… Built in the tradition of tower blocks in a park-way, it does not invite inspection of detailing’.
The new Sayers (front) and Adams buildings in the 1970s. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/665, S17-517d.
With the 1970s buildings completed, Lindo Ferguson’s 1910s vision of a medical school encompassing the length of the block was fulfilled. Indeed, the school was already spreading much further afield, with microbiology and biochemistry buildings on the new science campus in Cumberland Street and new developments in Christchurch and Wellington. At its Great King Street home base, the school was a showcase of 20th century architecture, from neoclassicism and art deco to international style and brutalism. Across the street, Dunedin Hospital, whose presence had drawn the medical school to this location, also went through multiple developments. That, however, is a whole other story.
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