From surgeon to student: a residential history of 86 Queen Street

Tags

flatting, philosophy, politics

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), 20^th April 1901.

[3] Gow, “Wanted, Respectful General Servant”, Evening Star (Issue 11411), 1 December 1900.; Mrs Laing “Wanted, Young Lady”, Evening Star (Issue: 14150), 30^th October 1913.; Mrs George Mackie, “Wanted, Young Girl” Otago Daily Times (Issue: 19225), 16^th July 1924.

[4] Park, Reynolds and Co, “Superior Household Furniture”, Evening Star (Issue: 11528), 20^th April 1901.

[5] Laing, “Birth Notices”, Otago Witness (Issue 3060), 6^th 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), 12^th May 1917.; Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1917.

[8] Dr F. R. Hotop, “Professional Advertisement – Commenced Practice”, Otago Daily Times (Issue 18518), 31^st March 1922.  

[9] Hotop “Death Notice”, Otago Daily Times, (Issue 18673), 30^th September 1922.

[10] Electricity Records, 3^rd 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, 24^th 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, 3^rd July 1913. Register No. 3329. Dunedin City Council Archives.

Electricity Records, 24^th 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.

Keeping it fresh for 121 years: Scents of the Student Christian Movement Otago

Tags

clubs, religion

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, 20^th September 2017.

Russell Thew, involved 1966-1973, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 20^th September, 2017.

Julanne Clarke-Morris, involved 1990 -1997, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27^th September 2017.

Michael Wallace, involved 1989-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27^th September 2017.

Aleshia Lawson, involved 2013-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29^th September 2017.

John Graveston, involved 2013-2017, interview by the author, Dunedin New Zealand, 29^th 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, 20^th 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, 29^th 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, 29^th September 2017. Involvement 2013-2017.

[11] Berry, appendix 2.

[12] Record Book Otago Christian Union, 1896 -1904.

[13] Michael Wallace, interview by author, 27^th 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, 20^th September 2017. Involvement 1966-1973.

[18] Michael Wallace

[19] Julanne Clarke-Morris, interview by author, Dunedin New Zealand, 27^th 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, 27^th 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.

The childcare revolution

Tags

1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2010s, childcare, women

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.

A sporting university

Tags

1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, physical education, recreation, sports

The women’s A grade hockey team of 1920. Back (from left): R. Patterson, W. Elder, G. Lynn, F. Barraclough. Centre: E. Stubbs, H. Sellwood (captain), Prof George Thompson (president), V. White (deputy captain), M. Morton. Front: E. D’Auvergne, I. Preston. From Otago University Review, 1921.

With the Olympics underway, it seems a good time to think about sport! The first serious sporting fixture at the University of Otago involved rugby, though it was a very different sort of game back then. In 1871 there were just 81 students enrolled at Otago, but they managed to muster a team for a 22-a-side football game against Otago Boys High School. It extended over several hours and two Saturdays and ended in a draw. George Sale, the young classics professor and an old boy of Rugby School, played alongside the students, and in 1884 he became inaugural president of the Otago University Rugby Football Club. Cricket wasn’t far behind rugby, with its first match also in 1871, against the Citizens Cricket Club. Cricket historian George Griffiths suggested this first match was ‘archetypal’, for it ‘began disgracefully late, two selected players failed to turn up, and University were resoundingly beaten’. George Sale was again one of the team. Enthusiasts formed a University of Otago Cricket Club in 1876, but it only lasted three seasons; a second attempt survived from 1895 to 1900. The university managed to scratch together teams for one-off matches, but it was in the 1930s that it again managed to get together a club which played regularly in the local competition.

Taking a break during the home science tennis tournament of 1952. Photo courtesy of Sadie Andrews.

Tennis was one of the most popular early sports, for it required few people and could be played by men and women together. In 1884 students petitioned the university council to provide a tennis court and it duly obliged; the students formed a tennis club and within a couple of years had raised funds to lay down a second court. The tennis club, like many, had its ups and downs through the years. In 1890 one of its courts had to make way for the new School of Mines building and this was not the last time tennis courts were to provide an ideal flat site for building expansion; in the 1970s the Archway Lecture Theatres took the place of tennis courts.

The Otago University Bicycle Club, featured in an earlier post, was founded in 1896, and a year later the University Gymnastic Club began meeting weekly for ‘both exercise and amusement’. By 1901 the ‘noble art’ of boxing was an important feature of the club: ‘It is a huge treat to see a couple of junior Meds punching each other vigorously’, noted its correspondent in the Review. The gymnastic club was very short of members though, and may have evolved into the more specialist boxing club, which was up and running by 1910.

Hockey was another favourite with both men and women. ‘The hockeyites are enthusiastic and promise great things’, noted the Review in 1905, when both women’s and men’s clubs got started. Otago women students were early adopters of basketball (known as netball from 1970). This new sport, which some found preferable ‘to the more strenuous game of hockey’ was taking off in Dunedin schools and church organisations. University teams played in local matches in 1915, the year that the Otago Basket Ball Association, New Zealand’s first, was established, and by 1918 there was an established university club. The Golf Club, consisting of ‘some thirty enthusiastic players’, got started in 1920. Later to start than some other sports clubs, but destined for a flourishing future, was the rowing club, founded in 1929. It started out using the facilities of the Otago Rowing Club, but by the late 1930s had acquired its own boats and had dozens of members. In subsequent decades the growing university was able to support an ever-broadening range of sports clubs, from archery and taekwondo to diving and badminton, and of course some students also played for clubs outside the university.

Preparing to set off in the men’s harrier race, 1952. Photo courtesy of Sadie Andrews.

Students didn’t have to join a club to enjoy sports. Many a scratch team was put together for a bit of fun, such as the regular annual footy matches between dental and mining students. Residential colleges promoted sports as well, forming teams and playing against other colleges. Soon after Otago’s second college, Knox, opened in 1909, it began playing tennis, hockey and rugby games against the first college, Selwyn. In 1932 they institutionalised their sporting rivalry with the Cameron Shield, hotly contested in various codes ever since. Arthur Porritt, an early 1920s medical student and Selwyn resident, recalled that ‘statutory work accomplished, we indulged to the maximum extent possible in sport …. “Billy” Fea and Mackereth – two “All Blacks” – were our heroes – and we rejoiced in winning the Inter Varsity Tournament’. Porritt was an outstanding athlete himself, winning a bronze medal in the 100m at the 1924 Olympics in Paris (famously portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire, but with a fictional character representing Porritt). Athletics took off at Otago when the Easter Tournament between the four university colleges commenced in 1902. Soon after that first tournament – hosted and won by Canterbury – Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) presided at the founding meeting of the Otago University Amateur Athletic Club. The club ran annual ‘inter-faculty’ events, where students of Otago’s various faculties competed for athletic glory; they served as trials for the Otago tournament team. In 1923 the athletic club acquired ‘an offspring’, the University Harrier Club, which held Saturday afternoon distance runs. The harrier club reported in 1930 that its ‘finest individual performance’ came from one J. Lovelock, ‘the best distance runner whom Otago University has yet produced’. Jack Lovelock, a medical student of 1929 and 1930, headed to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1931 and became ‘one of the most celebrated of all Olympic champions’, winning gold in the prestigious 1500m race at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Women harriers ready to set off, 1952. Photo courtesy of Sadie Andrews.

Otago students have become sporting stars in many codes through the years. Some came to Otago for its physical education school, which for several decades offered the country’s only sports science tertiary qualification. Many of its alumni became household names, such as netballers Adine Wilson and Anna Rowberry, rugby players Anton Oliver, Josh Kronfeld and Jamie Joseph and cyclist Greg Henderson. Farah Palmer first took rugby seriously after arriving in the south; she went on to lead the Black Ferns to three world cup wins and complete a PhD in physical education. But sports stars came from other disciplines as well. In 1998 Otago claimed a national ‘captaincy treble’: Palmer was captain of the Black Ferns; Taine Randell, a 1997 law and commerce graduate, captain of the All Blacks; and Belinda Colling, a 1998 psychology graduate, captain of the Silver Ferns. Completing a degree while representing your country or province in sport was no easy feat and some sports people dropped out or took longer than usual to finish their studies. In 1990, for instance, John Wright, captain of the New Zealand men’s cricket team, graduated with a BSc in biochemistry, completed after a 15-year break from study. In 2012 the university celebrated when two former students, Hamish Bond and Nathan Cohen, won gold for rowing at the London Olympics; both had studied commerce at Otago before sport took over and they switched to distance education via Massey University. The students’ association recognised its star sportsmen and women with ‘blues’ for outstanding achievements. It also provided financial support for various sports clubs and their facilities. One of the biggest OUSA investments was the Aquatic Centre, opened in 2002 as a new home for the rowing club, which had lost its old premises and boats in a 1999 fire. The splendid facilities presumably contributed to Otago’s long run of success in national and international rowing events in subsequent years.

University sport can be pretty casual! ‘Burgers’ playing volleyball in the spacious surroundings of Helensburgh House, a hall of residence from 1984 to 1991. I’d be delighted to hear from anybody who can identify the year this photo was taken. Photo courtesy of Glenys Roome.

Of course, most students had lesser sporting abilities, and OUSA also developed premises for those who just wanted to keep fit and have fun. Smithells Gym provided room for some indoor activities, but the needs of the physical education school took priority there. OUSA built its Clubs and Societies Building in 1980 to cater for a wide range of activities, and it was soon hosting aerobics classes and weight training. It quickly proved inadequate for the rapidly growing student roll, providing an incentive for the OUSA to take part in a new scheme proposed by the Otago Polytechnic Students Association. The two associations and the university purchased and converted a former stationery factory in Anzac Avenue into the Unipol Recreation Centre, which opened in 1990 and immediately became a hive of physical activity. The university itself developed a recreation services department in 1984, hiring out equipment and organising courses and trips. Recreation services also held the contract to run Unipol. In 2012 Unipol moved to a larger purpose-built space in the new University Plaza building, attracting a jump in student use. Soon afterwards OUSA sold its share of Unipol to the university, unwilling to commit more funds and confident that the university had student needs at heart. Student president Logan Edgar cited the famous example where Unipol had refused a gym booking to the All Blacks ‘when it would have limited the space of students attempting to work out’. OUSA put the proceeds towards a major upgrade of the Clubs and Societies Building (then known as the Recreation Centre), completed in 2014.

This shot of officials at the 1953 interfaculty sports, held at the University Oval, demonstrates the commitment of staff to university sports. From left: Michael Shackleton (medical student), Prof Philip Smithells (Physical Education), Prof Angus Ross (History), Stanley Wilson (Surgery), Prof Bill Adams (Anatomy), Dr Bruce Howie (Pathology), Prof Jack Dodds (Physics), Dr Gil Bogle (Physics). Photo courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

Throughout the university’s history, its students and staff have played an important role in local sport, some as participants and administrators and others as spectators. Indeed, cheering on the local team on the terraces of Carisbrook or, more recently, in ‘the zoo’ at Forsyth Barr Stadium, is an iconic part of ‘scarfie’ culture. This no doubt contributed to the university’s 2014 decision to sponsor the local super rugby team. That decision raised many eyebrows and attracted some opposition, notably from the Tertiary Education Union, unhappy with the extent of spending on marketing within the education sector. Fortunately, the university’s sponsorship coincided with a big improvement in the Highlanders’ results, and when they won the championship in 2015 with ‘University of Otago’ emblazoned on their shirts it was a proud moment for their sponsors. The Highlanders have had another good season, even if they didn’t retain champion status; now it’s time to cheer on our Olympic athletes!

An administrative note

Regular readers may have noticed that this blog post is later than usual. From now on I will be putting up new posts every 4 weeks, rather than every 2. That’s simply because I need to devote more time to writing the book this blog project arose from!

 

The absent-minded professor

Tags

1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, anthropology, geology, history, home science

The absent-minded professor is not a mythical figure; numerous people have fitted this description through Otago’s history. I thought it would be fun to lighten the midwinter gloom with a few of the more entertaining stories of such characters. I must stress, however, that I have considerable sympathy for these people. It is all too easy for scholars to become caught up in the pursuit of their intellectual passions and lose track of the world around them!

Noel ‘Bennie’ Benson in characteristic pose, pointing out a feature of geological interest during a field trip in 1924. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Department of Geology archives, MS-3195/132, S16-591b.

The most notorious absent-minded professor in Otago’s past is Noel Benson, who was geology professor from 1917 to 1950. Benson – known as ‘Bennie’ to generations of students – was an excellent geologist, who received one of the ultimate accolades in science, Fellowship of the Royal Society (London). He was a tall and somewhat shambling figure. John Mackie, a student of the 1920s and 1930s who went on to teach in the School of Mines and founded the surveying school, recalled that Benson ‘wore on all occasions an ancient, somewhat shapeless, dark tweed suit which bore the slightly green sheen of age’. At one point he acquired a new suit with two pairs of trousers, but it didn’t survive long. One day, as he assisted a student examining a map in a practical geology class, there was ‘a powerful smell of scorching’. The professor hadn’t noticed the heater under the table, and when he stepped back ‘the toasted fronts of his trouser legs fell out to reveal his pink long-johns’. A few weeks later, running late to meet a visiting scholar at the railway station, he tripped over the tram rails and fell, removing the knees from the second pair of pants. ‘Next day we saw a limping Bennie clad in the old familiar garb’.

Benson was not the best of lecturers, since he generally spoke with his eyes closed or facing the board, forgot to turn the lights on after showing slides or tripped over the projector cord, and often ran over time. As Mackie noted, ‘his thoughts were often far away on trilobites, or the structural features of the margin of Australasia, or the geology of eastern Otago, and if you spoke to him on such occasions he would reply automatically, “Yes – just so!”’. While he was courting his future wife – Helen Rawson, the home science professor – Benson became even more absent-minded than usual: as he lectured in the mining school he gazed ‘dreamily out the window to the home science building opposite’ and addressed ‘burly’ mining students as ‘my dear’, reported long-time physics lecturer Agnes Blackie. Helen Benson did her best to assist her husband in practical matters; for instance, she attached his compass, eraser and pencil to his button holes with string so he had less chance of losing them on field trips. But she couldn’t prevent some of his more famous lapses, such as the time he set off to work carrying his suitcase and the ashcan lid, carefully depositing his case at the front gate and taking the lid to the university.

Despite – or perhaps because of – his eccentricities, students regarded ‘Bennie’ with affection, and his knowledge and passion for geology inspired many. They were less fond of him when he drove them on field trips. John Mackie recalled ‘descending pale and shaken from his vehicle after being driven around winding roads in the bush, mostly on the wrong side, while he was peering at outcrops’.  Fred Fastier wrote that ‘One reason for an astonishing lack of collisions was that Benny kept his trafficator out “just in case” he might need to turn right. He would also get down to his lowest gear at least a mile away from the Mount Cargill Road lest he should forget to do so later on’.

Unfortunately, Benson was not the only absent-minded driver on the Otago staff. Another famous case was his contemporary Henry Devenish Skinner, the anthropology lecturer and museum director. Neil Howard recalled ‘one hair raising trip when driving out to Murdering Beach excavation site he went around the tortuous corners on the old Mt Cargill road on the wrong side, blowing the horn vigorously as he went. “Please excuse the horn,” says he, “you cannot be too careful”’. Another famous driving story relates to history professor William (‘Willie’) Morrell. His daughter Judith Nathan kindly shares the ‘best known story’ of the professor’s ‘legendary absentmindedness. He left my mother behind at the Vice Chancellor’s residence at St Leonard’s. He was taking the guest of honour home so the guest sat in the front and my mother in the back. As the back window was fogged up, she got out to clean it on the outside and he drove off. After a while the guest reportedly said: “Is your wife in the car?” to which my father is alleged to have replied: “Goodness me. I don’t believe she is.” At which point he turned the car around’. Despite such lapses, Morrell did pay attention to detail, as Neil Howard notes: ‘It was quite a performance when he would halt in a lecture, take out a propelling pencil, propel the lead, insert a comma in his lecture notes, ‘unpropel’ the pencil and replace it in his pocket then carry on’.

The future history professor during his own Otago student days, dressed as a schoolgirl for capping in 1920. From left: F.H. McDowall, G.A. Naylor, J.S. Adam, W.P. Morrell, L.S. Rogers and A.G. Crust. Image courtesy of Judith Morrell Nathan.

There were far fewer women academics back in the day and, since they had to overcome significant obstacles to achieve academic careers, they could not really afford to be absent-minded. Nevertheless, women professors stood out and eccentricity was not confined to the male of the species. Sticking to the transport theme, I don’t know if home science professor Ann Gilchrist Strong was a good driver, but her Model A Ford was a prized possession. 1920s student Sylvia Keane recalled that another of the professor’s prize possessions was her fox terrier Binkie, who had a basket in Strong’s office and ‘sported a bright scarlet coat in the winter’. It was ‘quite a memorable sight to see her sitting up beside Mrs Strong in the car’. The first home science professor, Winifred Boys-Smith, used a bicycle rather than a car. In contrast to the American Strong, Boys-Smith was ‘English to the backbone’, recalled Agnes Blackie, and ‘had a clear idea of the respect due to her position’. She was ‘a well-known figure as, clad in an ankle-length, black, caped waterproof coat and a broad-brimmed hat held securely in place with an enveloping motor-veil, she cycled from place to place round the university’.

Eccentricity and absent-mindedness do, of course, survive on campus to this day, but for obvious reasons I have confined these tales to people who have long since departed!

A chorus of laughs – the Sextet

Tags

1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, capping, graduation, music

The 1962 Sextette in traditional clown costume. Back from left: Doug Cox, Alastair Stokes, Terry Wilson, Peter Chin. Front: Roger McElroy, Gus Ferguson (pianist), Ian Robertson. Photo by de Clifford Photography, courtesy of Peter Chin.

The Sextet has been entertaining audiences at Otago’s capping show with beautifully-sung and witty words for over a century. Given its tendency to come close to the line – and sometimes to cross it – with offensive subject material, it seems only appropriate that its origins were not ‘politically correct’. The capping show itself dates back to 1894, when the University of New Zealand authorities banned public graduation ceremonies after becoming fed up with riotous student behaviour at these supposedly formal occasions. That prompted students to develop their own capping carnival of dances, concerts and processions, while the official graduation ceremony, when reinstated, became a much more seemly affair.

The capping concert soon became a hit with both students and the public, offering amusing commentary on the life and personalities of the university in particular, sometimes extending to the rest of Dunedin and the wider world. Alternative lyrics set to popular tunes were one of its standbys. One of the Sextet’s most famous old boys, conductor and composer Tecwyn Evans, researched its history as an honours project in 1993. He traced its origins to the appearance of ‘Coon’s Quartette’ at the 1903 capping concert. Presumably they made themselves up in ‘blackface’, then popular but later heavily criticised for its racist stereotypes. A review of the 1905 capping concert noted that ‘a coon tableau and a cake walk by a quartet of coloured gentlemen went well’.

The 1903 quartet was followed by various 4 or 5-man combinations, with the first 6-man singing group appearing in 1912. By 1919 the Sextette (as it was known until 1966, when it became the Sextet) was a regular feature of the capping concert, famous for its cheeky words sung with angelic voices. An ODT review of the 1923 concert noted ‘their rendering of topical verses was to many the very best item of the evening. In their first appearance they made play behind great song books of ’Varsity blue. Their songs when they appeared in evening dress in the second half were particularly clever and most amusing as one after another unburdened himself of the confession of the murder of some professor or other equally undesirable person. They also successfully burlesqued the Sistine Choir, and were rewarded with the most prolonged and emphatic applause of the evening’. The tradition of appearing in clown costume for some items and in evening dress for others quickly developed, though occasionally they branched out into other outfits.

The 1948 Sextette dressed as Victorian clergy to fit in with the theme of the capping show, ‘Dunover, or Cargill Rides Again’ (in honour of the centenary of the Otago colony). Left to right: Ninian Walden, John Somerville, Linley Ellis, Brian Neill, Ritchie Gilmour, Michael Shackleton. Photo courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

The Sextet, like the capping carnival, took a break during World War II. When the concert recommenced in 1945, getting traditions going again with no experienced seniors to help proved tricky. Concert director David Cole (future dean of the Auckland medical school) noted that ‘we could only find a quartette the first year but the sextette has reigned supreme again since then’.

The 1952 Sextette, from left: Linley Ellis, Richard Bush, John ?, Keith Monagan, Michael Shackleton, Brian McMahon. Photo courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

Writer James K. Baxter, who was Burns Fellow at Otago in 1966 and 1967, was a fan of capping shows, ‘chiefly on account of their vigour and their freedom of satire, both of which the country sorely needs’. In a review in the notorious but short-lived student publication Falus, he commended the 1967 production as more sophisticated than usual, though it did mean that ‘the sheer drive of spontaneous gutsiness was not so strong’. Fortunately, the ‘casual energy of Sextet provided a counterpoint’. Their performance included a ‘Geering interlude’ – presumably a commentary on the well-known theology professor, who was tried for heresy that year – among other things. ‘The alternation of wide-open satire with straight singing broadened their presentation … I think they were indispensable’, wrote Baxter.

The 1959 Sextette in action. Back from left: Bob McKegg, Jim Cleland, Alastair Brown. Front: John Burton, Peter Chin, Meikle Skelly. Peter Foreman was the pianist. Photo courtesy of Peter Chin.

Members of the Sextet were chosen for their vocal skill. Shy young first-year law student Peter Chin headed along to the audition for the large capping chorus with some friends from school in 1959. At the audition, talent-spotters suggested he should audition for the Sextet, and he was to sing with them for 3 of his 5 years at university. Becoming part of this elite group provided him with an instant introduction into student society. Chin – a future mayor of Dunedin – later became a well-known performer in local productions. The abilities of the Sextet have, naturally, varied from year to year, but there are some very famous names among the old boys, with vocal stars Roger Wilson, Martin Snell, Simon O’Neill and Jonathan Lemalu all lending their talents to the group during their university days. Although the performances have been a cappella for many years, in the past the group had a piano accompanist, and generally sang in unison rather than with the harmonies which became a feature during the 1970s.

The lyrics, also, varied in quality from year to year; sometimes the Sextet wrote the words themselves, and sometimes they received help from others. An anonymous article in a 1991 graduate publication noted that the content varied ‘from the traditional to the topical and from the harmless to the emphatically unsuitable’. Certainly the level of sexual innuendo in the lyrics grew and became more explicit, and in 2010 Rape Crisis criticised the Sextet for trivialising rape and sexual abuse in some lyrics.

Because the capping stage was open to men only until 1947, the Sextet started as an all-male group, and so it determinedly remained. In 1966 the show featured an all-female vocal group, named the Sextette, in addition to the all-male Sextet, but it proved a one-off. The ODT reported that ‘the girls do a good job, but their voices are not strong enough and most of their words are lost’. Finally, in 2001, a new female a cappella group – the Sexytet – debuted at the capping show, becoming a regular feature. The women’s group, which settled on ‘1950s housewife’ costumes, performed witty and smutty songs in beautiful harmonies, as in Sextet tradition.

The 1963 Sextette enjoying themselves backstage. Back from left – Terry Wilson, Jenny Black, Peter McKenzie, Alistair Wright. Front – Gus Ferguson (pianist), John Sayers, Peter Chin, Bob Salamonsen. Photo by Alan Stuart, courtesy of Peter Chin.

Through the years the Sextet has provided a lot of laughs to a lot of people. And, though they often put in a lot of work practising, the singers have clearly enjoyed themselves very much too (with a notable exception in 1993, when they were pelted with beer cans when performing as a warm-up act before a rugby test match at Carisbrook). Video of performances by Sextets and Sexytets of recent years can be found on Youtube – viewer discretion is definitely advised!

The 2014 Sextet. Through the years the clown hats have been lost, but more make-up added. Photo by Daniel Chew, courtesy of OUSA.

The class of 1946

Tags

1940s, graduation, recreation, sports, student health

Waiting for the capping parade to start, 1946. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

1946: New Zealand’s population drew close to 2 million, the long war was finally over, Prime Minister Peter Fraser led the Labour government into a fourth term, Southland held the Ranfurly Shield and The Best Years of Our Lives beat It’s a Wonderful Life to take the Oscar for best picture. But what was life like for Otago’s 2440 students? I recently stumbled upon a survey of a large group of students, which provides some fascinating insights into their lives.

The survey was carried out by the recently-established Student Health Service. The medical school had been carrying out medical examinations of its own students for a while, but in 1946 the university decided to open a general practice health service for all students. It was initiated by the Preventive and Social Medicine Department and partly funded by a social security grant allocated for each student who signed up; it aimed to combine ‘preventive and therapeutic work’. By the end of its first year the service had signed up 736 students, and carried out a statistical analysis of 614 of these, for whom detailed records were available. The information, therefore, covered a quarter of Otago students of that time. It wasn’t a fully representative sample, though. Unsurprisingly, medical students were over-represented, accounting for 53% of the survey, when they were 28% of all Otago students. Home science students were also over-represented, being 20% of those surveyed when they made up just 8% of the student roll. On the other hand, only 15% of those in the survey were arts or science students, at a time when they made up 37% of Otago students. Presumably students at the ‘special’ schools, such as home science, were more likely to sign up to student health as they often came from out of town, and did not already have a local family doctor. The involvement of so many home science students helped sway the gender of the survey, which was 40% female when only 27% of Otago students were women.

A group of dental students clean their pride and joy, 1946. Image courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

The data reported on the physical, mental and social well-being of the students. In an effort to measure the impact of the students’ early environment and class background, they were asked about their home locations and father’s occupation. These reflected New Zealand’s strongly urbanised culture. Just 13% had grown up in the country, and a further 7% in a ‘village’, while 78% had ‘town’ backgrounds. A remarkable 44% had a father with a professional background, 28% were in business, 13% in farming and just 14% in trades. At the 1945 census, just 10% of married men engaged in the workforce were classed as being in ‘clerical and professional occupations’, so it is clear that the children of the upper echelons of society were greatly over-represented at the university. Ethnicity was not recorded, but birthplace was, and 93% of the students had been born in New Zealand – internationalisation had a long way to go! Most of the others had been born in Britain, while a few came from Australia, central Europe, China and the Pacific. 10% of students in the survey lived at home – presumably that included the 6% who were married – and 46% in residential colleges. Flatting was yet to take off in popularity, with just 4% of the sample in flats; 39% lived in ‘digs’, or private board.

The shadow of the war loomed large. The ‘SS War Bride’ was the science students’ float for the 1946 capping parade. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

The shadow of the war loomed large, with 10% of those surveyed having served overseas with the military; this ‘might have a considerable bearing on physical and mental health’, noted Archie Douglas, the student health director. It also had quite a bearing on student life. Tom O’Donnell, a future medical professor and dean of the Wellington school of medicine, was just 16 years old when he arrived to study at Otago towards the end of the war, and recalled that the few returned servicemen in his class provided some welcome maturity. In 1946, a third of the second-year medical class had served in the war. Miles Hursthouse, who was in that class, noted that it ‘became known in that and subsequent years for the dedication and hard work of the students’. The older men, like him, ‘were realising a lifetime ambition and worked like blazes for it, thus stimulating the younger ones to keep with or beat us academically’.

One of many popular physical activities of 1946 students – tramping. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Otago University Tramping Club records, 96-063/036, S15-592b.

But it wasn’t all work: 64% of the students played at least one sport on a regular basis and 41% participated actively in clubs and societies. Reports in the Otago University Review reveal that 1946 was a great year for sports clubs. The boxing, cricket, golf, harrier, ski, soccer and tennis clubs all had successful years, and rowing, after a ‘lapse of some years’, ‘assumed its rightful place in the sporting life of the University’. The rugby club had more members than ever before and fielded 8 teams in the Dunedin competition; 6 players represented Otago and medical student Ron Elvidge, captain of the A team, was selected for the All Blacks. Other clubs and societies had varied success. The Review noted that the photographic society had come to a halt but the literary society had staged a comeback; the debating societies were ‘moderately active’. A new chess club was waiting for chess sets to arrive; the game had ‘a large following’ in the medical school. A new musical union formed a ‘long-needed union between the various musical groups’, with regular ‘gramophone recitals’ and several chamber music recitals in Allen Hall. A piano recital by Lili Kraus, a Hungarian Jew recently released from internship under the Japanese, was a highlight of the year. The dramatic society and dramatic club both staged productions, including The Black Eye, The Spartan Girl, Orange Blossom, a section from The Taming of the Shrew and a play reading of Blithe Spirit. ‘Ill-considered criticism is sometimes levelled at the Drama Club’, suggested OUSA’s intellectual affairs rep, but it ‘works under many difficulties’. The biological society and medical history society flourished, as did the Christian groups, which maintained ‘a continuity for which other societies contend in vain’.

The health service made an attempt to assess the ‘mental hygiene’ of students with a scale measuring their ‘temperament’. A creditable 43% were described as ‘calm’, 39% as ‘average’ and 17% as ‘nervous’. The nervous perhaps included the 8% classed as heavy smokers (’more than 10 cigarettes a day, or the equivalent in pipes’); a further 36% were ‘light’ smokers, while 56% didn’t smoke. Physical examination of the students uncovered a range of physical ‘defects’. The most common – each affecting 17% of the study group – were ‘thyroid’, ‘previous respiratory illness’ and ‘vision unsatisfactory’ (17% wore glasses regularly and 4% for reading – according to my optometrist those are very low percentages compared with today’s student cohort). The most common reason for students to consult the health service was a skin problem, while the greatest cause of acute sickness was ‘the feverish attack labelled flu’. Another problem ‘constantly calling for diagnosis and treatment’ was ‘the possible appendix’.

The School of Mines float for 1946 featured ‘Paddy’s Band of Angels’, a reference to recently-retired cabinet minister Paddy Webb, who declared that ‘the people should take their hats off to the miners’. The capping parade was a popular public event. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

Infectious disease loomed large in the histories of 1946 students. The ‘common cold and its complications is the outstanding ailment of the student group’, reported Douglas, but many had previously suffered more serious infections. Half had experienced mumps, and more than half whooping cough and chickenpox, while a remarkable 95% had suffered measles. A smaller number had survived scarlet fever, diphtheria and polio. Pneumonia and rheumatic fever were the most common causes of the ‘serious illness’ that 9% reported as part of their health history. The threat of tuberculosis – for which the first effective drug treatment, streptomycin, was only discovered in 1944 – was a constant concern. 10% of students had been in contact with TB within their own family. The clinic conducted 270 Mantoux tests and 72 were positive, indicating those people had been infected with TB, though they did not necessarily have active disease (‘latent’ TB being more common). The other main tool of tuberculosis screening – a chest x-ray – was provided to 309 students.

The class of 1946 was clearly a hardy group. Though they came, on the whole, from relatively privileged backgrounds, these young people had grown up during an economic depression, recovered from a range of potentially life-threatening or disabling illnesses and survived a long war (some of them on active service). They worked hard and many of them played hard. The capping carnival – which had been on hold during the war years – was revived in full in 1946 and enjoyed by both students and community. There was an air of conservatism among students: one of the most controversial issues on campus in 1946 was a campaign to overthrow the traditional exclusion of women from participation in the capping show. Women remained behind the scenes in 1946 but would finally appear on stage at the 1947 show.

The cast of the Knox Farce, ‘Cameo and Mabelette’, performed at the 1946 capping show. Image courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

I don’t suppose the director of the student health service had historians in mind when he compiled his report on the clinic’s first year! Nevertheless, his broad-ranging analysis has survived to provide a fascinating window into the lives of one generation of Otago students. I am grateful to him, and also to some former students of 1946 – Arthur Campbell and Michael Shackleton – who have shared some of their photographs from student days.

On a foreign field

Tags

1930s, Critic, history, international students, medicine, mining, war, writers

Alexander Maclure (mistakenly named here as Arnold) and other international volunteers arrested while attempting to enter Spain, at an appearance in a French court in 1937. Image from the Workers Weekly, 2 July 1937, courtesy of the Hocken Collections, S16-521d.

I’ve written previously about the university in World War I and World War II, so to mark Anzac Day this year I’m exploring the intriguing and little-known story of an Otago student killed in one of the other conflicts of the 20^th century, the Spanish Civil War. Alexander Crocker Maclure was not your average Otago student. For a start, he came from Canada, not a common origin for students at that time. Born in 1912, Alex Maclure grew up in Montreal. After leaving school, where he did well, he headed to remote northern Manitoba, working as a wireless operator at Fort Churchill. He was, it seems, a man of adventure and one keen to escape his roots in Westmount, a wealthy Anglophone enclave of Montreal. His parents loved their oldest son, but had no time for his leftist politics; indeed, his father chaired the council of the Montreal branch of the Royal Empire Society. In 1931 Alex Maclure enrolled at the Otago School of Mines. We can only speculate about why he came here when he could have attended one of Canada’s mining schools. The Otago school had a distinguished international reputation, so perhaps that was the drawcard; perhaps he wanted also to explore a new country.

There were only around 1100 students at Otago when Maclure arrived, and he quickly earned the reputation of being the most politically radical person on campus. That wasn’t an especially big challenge: a study by Sharon Dooley of Otago students in the depression concluded that most were ‘conservative members of the middle class’, preoccupied with completing their qualifications. There were a few, like future history professor Angus Ross, who were shocked by the poverty they witnessed in those difficult times and took an active interest in politics as a result, but Maclure was unusual in being a committed member of the Communist Party (it expelled him more than once for unorthodox views). Maclure was a driving force behind the formation of the first formal left-wing groups on campus. The Public Questions Union, first affiliated to OUSA in 1932, organised regular discussions and mock parliaments; it also served as a ‘front’ for the Independent Radical Club, ‘an influential cell’ of more radical students, with about 30 members by 1935.

Maclure was heavily committed to his political beliefs. He was always up for a discussion and a very good speaker, though his views shocked many. He started out living at the Dunedin YMCA and later lived in digs in Cumberland and Hyde streets. His university enrolment card for 1935 gave his address as ‘no fixed abode’; that may have been when friends recalled him living in a deserted house, unable to afford heating or food. He had little choice but to turn to his parents for financial support. Writer Dan Davin, a student contemporary, later wrote a vivid portrait of Maclure (disguised as McGregor) in his short story ‘The Hydra’, published in The Gorse Blooms Pale in 1947. It revealed the radical as an extremist, who always ‘seemed too vehement, slightly absurd’; other students threw him in the Leith when he advertised the first meeting of the Radical Club. But Davin also expressed some sympathy with Maclure’s views on food riots by the unemployed, and felt uncomfortable at his conviction and fine for scrawling political slogans on Dunedin footpaths. Maclure wrote about politics wherever he could, including in student publications Critic and the Otago University Review. Meanwhile, he slogged his way through the mining course, completing some of the practical component in the West Coast mines. He took a year off his course in 1933 and it is unclear what he did then; perhaps he simply got a job to fund his later studies. He completed his final course work at the school of mines in 1936; he didn’t receive his diploma, but that was only because he had yet to complete the required thesis about his practical work, often submitted by students a year or two after they left the mining school.

Maclure now had other priorities. Like other political junkies he developed a keen interest in events in Spain, where in 1931 a coalition left-right government took over from the previous deeply conservative dictatorship and monarch, and after the 1936 election a coalition leftist government – the Popular Front – won power. Later that year the right-wing military began an uprising, led by General Francisco Franco, and a brutal civil war broke out in earnest; the war was eventually won by Franco in 1939. The fight was confined to Spain, but it had much broader significance as a battle between the extremes of left and right in a region where fascism was on the rise. Hitler and Mussolini committed resources, including troops, to Franco’s cause and, in the absence of any effective intervention from other countries, leftists around the world recruited volunteers to support the republican government’s battle against the right. The International Brigades, as they were known, eventually included around 40,000 volunteers from 50 countries. Soon after the war broke out Alex Maclure helped set up the General Spanish Aid Committee, later absorbed into the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, which became this country’s major relief organisation for the war.

But Maclure wanted to do more than raise funds. Early in 1937 he returned briefly to Canada, where he joined a group of Canadian and American volunteers heading to Spain. He intended to get involved in the blood transfusion unit, but because of his record as a crack marksman (he won prizes for his shooting ability at school) he was posted to a fighting unit of the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion. The first challenge was to gain entry into Spain, as France closed its border in February 1937. Maclure and some of his companions were captured by French authorities while travelling up the Mediterranean, hidden in the hold of a fishing vessel; together with several others, picked up by border patrols in the Pyrenees; they spent 20 days in a French prison for evading a non-intervention agreement, which supposedly banned all foreign powers from intervening in Spain. The Workers Weekly, the New Zealand communist paper, published a letter from Maclure in jail, as did the Grey River Argus. The prisoners were in high spirits, and received lots of support from French locals. They finally made their way into Spain some weeks later, crossing by foot in darkness over mountain trails.

Maclure’s movements in Spain remain unclear, but he became sergeant in charge of one of the American Division’s machine guns and was reported wounded and missing in August 1937; he died a couple of months later, probably in battle at Fuentes de Ebro, in the Zaragoza (Saragossa) province of northern Spain. News of Maclure’s death reached Dunedin in December 1937; the Workers Weekly proclaimed the heroism of a comrade ‘killed in action defending, with his comrades in the International Brigade, freedom and world peace against the Fascist invaders’. He ‘demonstrated that New Zealand can point to men to whom freedom means more than life itself’. An obituary in the first issue of Critic for 1938 recalled Maclure’s years as an Otago student, noting his ‘considerable’ intellect and his whole-hearted promotion of his Communist beliefs. ‘His enthusiasm, his sincerity, his moral fearlessness earned him the regard of all who respect such qualities’. Critic did not, naturally enough, demonstrate such approval of Maclure’s politics as the Workers Weekly, commenting that ‘there are many who heartily deplore the theories for which Maclure fought’. It did, however, acclaim his sincerity: ‘to whatever creed we cling we can not but feel admiration for the rare and fine qualities in Maclure’s character, qualities that are revealed by his giving up his life for his ideals’.

Maclure was, to the best of my knowledge, the only Otago student or graduate to serve as a frontline soldier in the Spanish Civil War, but a couple of others did play significant roles in journalism and medicine. Geoffrey Cox completed an MA in history at Otago before heading to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1932. He stayed on in England, beginning an acclaimed career in journalism as a junior reporter for the News Chronicle. In the early months of the Spanish Civil War, Cox became the paper’s correspondent in Madrid. The original correspondent had been captured, and Cox suggested he was sent because the paper saw him as junior enough to be expendable. His reports from the Spanish capital, then heavily besieged by Franco’s forces, became one of the few sources of information to the outside world. His vividly written eye-witness account of five weeks in Madrid was published in the book Defence of Madrid the following year. His reputation as a correspondent grew as he reported for the Daily Express from Vienna and Paris in the years leading up to World War II, covering the Anschluss and Munich crisis and the invasion of Poland, then the war in Finland and German invasion of the low countries. After the fall of France he signed on with the New Zealand Division and served with distinction. When the war ended he returned to his career as an English newspaper journalist, later becoming a pioneer of television journalism.

Geoffrey Cox, photographed by S.P. Andrew in 1932. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference 1/2-C-22830. Alexander Turnbull Library

Douglas Jolly was another Otago graduate who published a book based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, but it had a very different purpose: to equip surgeons for battle. Jolly graduated in medicine in 1930. During his university years, and later, he was heavily involved in the Student Christian Movement, becoming a convinced Christian socialist. When the war broke out in Spain he was in England, close to completing his specialist qualifications as a surgeon. As the republicans lost most of their military medical services with the army rebellion and the Red Cross refused to intervene in an internal conflict, there was a call for international volunteers to support the leftist cause. Jolly immediately abandoned his studies, arriving in Spain in November 1936 with the first contingent of British medics. He was assigned to the XI International Brigade, for whom he formed a 50-bed mobile surgical unit. He gave two years of almost continuous service as a frontline surgeon, only departing when all international volunteers were withdrawn from Spain. He proved an excellent surgeon, ‘courageous and totally reliable’, much respected by all with whom he served. His patients included civilians injured in air raids alongside frontline soldiers, and the settings for the ever-mobile field unit ranged from the basement of a shell-ruined flour mill to railway tunnels and a cave. After the war he campaigned on behalf of post-war refugees, including during a return visit to New Zealand in 1939. When World War II broke out he returned to England and wrote the medical manual Field Surgery in Total War, published in October 1940 to glowing reviews. His advice on abdominal surgery saved many lives, and his systems for dealing with multiple injured patients became the basis for surgical units in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Doug Jolly also signed on with the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a surgeon in North Africa and Italy. His long service on the battlefields of two wars eventually caught up with Jolly; after World War II he lost his enthusiasm and confidence for surgery, spending the rest of his career as medical officer at Queen Mary’s Hospital for amputees in London.

Marianne Bielschowsky in April 1939. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Bielschowsky papers, MS-1493/036, S16-521d.

The involvement of two later Otago staff members, Franz and Marianne Bielschowsky, in the Spanish Civil War was less intentional than that of the three Otago-educated people already mentioned. They were already living in Spain when war broke out. Franz Bielschowsky, son of distinguished German neurologist Max Bielschowsky, undertook his medical training in a succession of German universities before completing an MD at Berlin and embarking on a career in medical research in Dusseldorf. Early in 1933 he was dismissed from his job because of his Jewish parentage and fled to Amsterdam. In 1934 he relocated to Madrid, where he became a lecturer in the medical faculty; in the following year he was appointed director of the biochemistry department of the new Institute for Experimental Medicine at the Central University of Madrid. Marianne Angermann, a German biochemist who had worked with Franz Bielschowsky in Dusseldorf, joined him at the Institute in Madrid late in 1935; they were to marry in 1937. Angermann and Bielschowsky refused offers to leave Spain when the civil war began; they did not feel vulnerable and respected the support they saw for the republican government. But as the siege of Madrid lengthened, their research work became impossible. Franz joined the republican medical service and worked at a military hospital in Madrid. The Bielschowskys remained in Madrid after the withdrawal of international medical staff in 1938, but fled Spain early in 1939, as Franco’s forces prepared to enter the capital. They were now refugees for a second time, and as war took over Europe they ended up in England. They both obtained work at the University of Sheffield, where Franz’s research took a new direction, investigating the role of hormones in the development of cancers. In 1948 the Bielschowskys arrived in Otago, where Franz had been appointed director of the cancer research laboratory. Like his work in Sheffield it was sponsored by the British Empire Cancer Campaign Society. Franz continued a productive research career at Otago for 17 years, until his sudden death in 1965. Marianne, who worked alongside him, continued her work until her own death in 1977. She was especially known for her development of various special strains of mice, used worldwide for medical research.

Franz Bielschowsky in 1949, when he was Director of Cancer Research at the University of Otago. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Physiology Department records, r.6681, S16-521c. (I would be delighted to hear from anybody who can identify the woman in this photo).

The Spanish Civil War of the 1930s might be dismissed as foreign by many New Zealanders, but its dramatic progress caught up several people from these distant shores. The involvement of people connected with Otago reflected the international influences – and standing – of this university. There were an international student from Canada whose politics drove him to his death in a fight against fascism, and two New Zealanders – a Cromwell-born doctor and a Palmerston North-born journalist – who took the skills developed at Otago and further honed in England to make their own contributions during that brutal war. Last, but by no means least, came the cultured German scientists whose fortunes became caught up in that war; it was one of the events which led them to eventually settle and make an important contribution in this more peaceful corner of the world.

I am grateful to Wellington historians Simon Nathan and Mark Derby for sharing information about Alexander Maclure. I highly recommend to anybody interested in learning more the book edited by Mark Derby, Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War. Mark tells me discussions are underway about a possible memorial to Doug Jolly in his home town, Cromwell.

An update (18 July 2016) – somebody who knew the Bielschowskys has kindly been in touch to alert me that the photo labelled as being of Franz is not actually him! She suggests it may be of Leopold Kirschner. If you recognise this gentleman, I’d love to hear from you.

A further update (20 July 2016) – a couple more people have confirmed that the man in the laboratory photograph is not Franz Bielschowsky, but Leopold (‘Poldi’) Kirschner. Kirschner was a microbiologist and worked in the Medical Research Council’s Microbiology Research Unit. He was another of Europe’s Jewish diaspora.Originally from Austria, he did important work on leptospirosis in Indonesia, but was interned there during the war. He continued the work on leptospirosis at Otago. My sincere thanks to those who helped correct the photo identification. The identity of the woman in the photo remains a mystery – suggestions are welcome!

A warm Pacific welcome – the Pacific Islands Centre

Tags

2000s, 2010s, Pacific

Celebration for Pacific graduates in August 2011. Nini Kirifi-Alai is in the centre (with purple lei). Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing & Communications.

Pacific Island students have been coming to the University of Otago since the 1920s (see this earlier post about some of the pioneers). For many decades they were a small but noticeable group on campus. In 1965, for instance, Otago’s 164 international students included 21 from Fiji, 1 from the Cook Islands and 5 from Samoa. With the growth of Pacific migration from the 1960s onwards, a new generation of Pacific Island students who had grown up in New Zealand began to join those coming direct from the islands for their education, with 2% of Otago students identifying their ethnicity as Pacific Islander in 1995.

Phil Meade, Otago’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), was keen to improve further Pacific tertiary access and achievement. He set David Richardson, the Director of Student Services, the task of investigating how Otago might best go about this. After looking at various possibilities they decided to establish a dedicated central service support centre run and led by Pacific people and serving students in all academic departments. This was a model that had already proved itself at Otago with the Maori Centre, established in 1989. Such a centre fitted with the mood of the times, for New Zealand Pacific communities, who lagged behind other New Zealanders in many social measures, were keen to improve their future through education. Around the same time, in response to lobbying from various advocates, the government, through the Tertiary Education Commission, began providing tertiary institutions with equity funding to improve access and achievement for Pacific students (and also Maori students and students with disabilities).

The Pacific Islands Centre got underway in 2001. Under Richardson’s direction, project officer Pesamino Tili set up a room and office in an old house at 262 Leith Street, shared with disability support. He provided pastoral care and extra tutorials for Pacific students. In 2002 Nina Kirifi-Alai was appointed as the centre’s manager on an 18-month fixed contract and shifted to Dunedin from Auckland with her family. She planned to move to Samoa when the term was up, but loved the job and remains in it 13 years later! Kirifi-Alai proved an ideal person for the role. She had recently graduated as a mature student in law and played an active part in student politics in Auckland, working towards improved support for Pacific students there. She had considerable standing in the Pacific community and in 2007 her family in her home village of Iva Savaii, Samoa, gave her the high chief title Tofilau.

Nina Kirifi-Alai speaking at a graduation ceremony in 2008. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing & Communications.

From its beginning the Pacific Islands Centre provided a cultural home for students, with study space, mentoring and extra tutorials in a relaxed and welcoming environment. A support group for postgraduate students, set up in 2002, proved popular. In addition to its monthly meetings, it held an annual Pacific Voices Symposium, a prestigious event where postgrad Pacific students presented their work. Sports events and social gatherings added to the mix of support on offer. The centre moved into larger premises in an old house in Leithbank, across the road from the commerce building, in 2006, naming its rooms after early Otago graduates who became high-achieving Pacific leaders, Fijian Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and Cook Islander Sir Tom Davis. One of the courtyards was named after an Otago law graduate and first New Zealand Pacific Judge A’e’au Semi Epati. Dunedin’s Pacific communities were involved in the centre from the beginning; they had been an important source of support for Pacific students from out of town for generations.

A Pacific Islands Centre tutorial in 2013. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing & Communications.

As Nina Kirifi-Alai notes, Otago’s early Pacific Island students were the cream of the crop – the most able students from their countries, well-prepared and well-funded. While this remains the case for students coming from the islands, later students raised in New Zealand were often not well prepared for university and some struggled to cope. Their families had little experience of tertiary education and students hadn’t always taken the right subjects at school to fit with their career aspirations. Many couldn’t afford residential college accommodation, with the extra support it provided. The university didn’t just need to recruit more Pacific students; it needed to ensure they were properly prepared and that there was an effective programme to help them transition to tertiary study. Liaising with Pacific communities and informing them about university was one important role taken on by the Pacific Islands Centre. In 2006 it began bringing groups of secondary students to a 3-day on-campus experience, to help demystify student life for them. A Pacific Island Community Liaison Officer joined the centre’s staff in 2008 and was soon busy travelling the country; many Otago Pacific students came from Auckland or Wellington. From 2010 the centre brought Pacific leaders from around New Zealand to visit the Dunedin campus, so they could return and advise their communities about life at Otago. As the number of Pacific graduates grew, university education became more visible in the community and seemed an increasingly achievable aspiration.

As part of its engagement with Pacific Island communities the Pacific Islands Centre also initiated homework centres. Homework centres had been trialled many times in many places, but often didn’t survive long; having a paid organiser and the prestige of an association with the University of Otago gave them a better chance of longevity. The Dare to Succeed programme was for Pacific students in Dunedin high schools, with current Otago Pacific students as tutors. Further afield, Reverend Victor Pouesi and his wife Salome Pouesi, who visited Otago with the community leaders programme, set up a homework programme in Mangere, supported by the centre, in 2011; this is still going. These schemes were started as an outreach to the community rather than a recruitment tool, though some of the participants did end up as Otago students.

The Pacific Islands Centre has been a great force for good at Otago. It has contributed to a significant growth of Pacific engagement with the university: the number of students identifying as Pacific has tripled since the mid-1990s, reaching an all-time high of 751 in 2014. The dynamic Tofilau Nina Kirifi-Alai, in addition to supporting students, has been an important advisor on all things Pacific for the university. For some years she ran the centre alone, but it now has several staff. I wonder what Ratu Jione Dovi, who started his medical degree at Otago in 1929, would think if he could see over 700 Pacific Island students on campus today, not to mention a significant group of Pacific Island staff!

Studying in the relaxed atmosphere of the Pacific Islands Centre, 2011. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing & Communications.

 

Lodgings and landladies

Tags

1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, accommodation, boarding houses, flatting, lodgings, women

Many homes near the campus took in a lodger or two, and larger buildings might become boarding houses. This detail of Forth Street from a 1925 photograph demonstrates the range of housing close to the university – many of these later became student flats. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, The Press (newspaper) negatives collection, reference 1/1-008298-G.

One of the most important characters in student life during the university’s first century was not a member of the university at all, but that notorious figure, the landlady. Original plans for the current Dunedin campus, occupied by the university from the late 1870s, included residential accommodation for both students and professors. However, due to lack of funds the intended ‘boarding establishment’ was dropped, along with some of the staff accommodation (four houses for professors did go ahead – these are now known as Scott/Shand House and Black/Sale House). Students from out of town had to find their own place to live. Independent flatting was unheard of in the university’s first 50 years, and even after the churches set up residential colleges (Selwyn in 1893, Knox in 1909 and St Margaret’s in 1911), private boarding appealed to many as a cheaper option. Local newspapers from the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries include numerous ads from students looking for board, plus a smaller number advertising rooms specifically for students.

We know sadly little about the women who provided this essential service. Some local families had one spare room they rented out to help the household coffers, but many landladies were widows or single women who offered several rooms to lodgers, this being their only source of income. If the premises were large enough – some housed around 10 people – this would be termed a boarding house. An 1884 street directory lists several boarding houses close to the campus: Mrs Henderson Morrison and Mrs Eliza Fisher had boarding houses in Albany Street, Mrs Isabella Maffen in Clarendon Street, Mrs Mary Coles in Dundas Street, Mrs Lucy Stuart in Union Street, and Mrs Margaret Maher in Leith Street; Charles Crapp, also in Leith Street, was one of the few male boarding house keepers. Of course, at that early date, when Otago had just 120 students, many of their boarders were working men and women. As the university grew, students became a larger part of the accommodation market and landladies advertised specifically for them. Caledon House was providing accommodation in Albany Street by the mid-1870s; it provided ‘every convenience’, including harmonium and bath, according to one 1881 advertisement. This and earlier ads made no mention of students, but by 1896 it was listed by then-landlady Mrs Johnston as ‘Private Board and Residence; convenient for students; every home comfort; terms moderate’.

The standard of boarding accommodation varied. In 1890 medical students Charles Hector and Bartholomew Wilford, both from Wellington, boarded with Mrs Taylor. In the manner of every generation of concerned parents, Charles’s father was unhappy to discover him ‘hard at work in a cold room – no fire’, when visiting town. Bart Wilford became ill with rheumatic fever shortly afterwards. He and Charles apparently shared a room, and Bart was moved to the sitting room with a nurse to care for him, while Charles was sent by his father, perhaps concerned for the spread of infection, to other lodgings. When Bart developed possible symptoms of typhoid, Hector’s father wrote to his wife: ‘I have told Charlie that he must not go back to Mrs Taylor’s again. The back premises are not what they should be’ (a discreet reference to the toileting arrangements). Sadly, Bart Wilford died soon afterwards of his acute rheumatic disease.

Ads for student lodgers from the Otago University Review, May 1900.

In 1932 the university council established a new board of control with council, staff and student reps; though prompted by disciplinary issues it was concerned for the well-being of students and its sub-committees included one for lodgings. That committee compiled a list of ‘approved’ lodgings and took some responsibility for their conduct and the matching of students with rooms. Long-serving physics lecturer Agnes Blackie chaired the lodgings committee for some years and recalled the procedure. ‘In early December the chairman visited the approved lodgings to find out about probable vacancies. The landladies would almost unanimously declare that nothing on earth would induce them to take students again. A second visit in January would find them cheered up again and willing to re-enter the fray’. Though Blackie was sometimes called on to make peace between landlady and lodgers, she found complaints about student boarders were rare. She developed considerable respect for these women: ‘I came to have a kindly feeling for the landladies; many of them were battle-scarred veterans who had conducted lodgings for many years, terribly over-worked, but very proud of their past students and what they had done in life’. After Blackie’s stint, the administration of the lodgings committee was taken over by a part-time lodgings registrar; this later evolved into the student accommodation office.

Students were not always easy lodgers. In a 1953 publication on residential halls, Harold Turner pointed out that a shortage of good private accommodation was partly students’ own responsibility: ‘The householder whose peace was disturbed at 3 o’clock by lodgers returning from a party, who finds his electric heater left on all night, the bedding burnt by cigarettes, ink splashed on the furnishings, bicycles repaired in the bedroom or his lodger in bed with his boots on, will not be inclined to accept students the following year’. A word of advice appeared in the 1946 Otago University Review: ‘Suppose you get something (wherein at home you would only kennel an ill-favoured cur), then let tact and discretion be your motto. Don’t comment audibly on the odd-looking whiskery old goat in the picture above the mantelpiece – it is probably the relict’s late lamented. Also, take your boots off when you pinch her coal, for be you never so scientific, you cannot explain that keeping the light burning till 2 a.m. makes you an economic proposition at fifty shillings a week’.

Some fortunate lodgers could enjoy ‘all the comforts of home’, but many experienced frustrations with ‘petty restrictions and nagging concerning the use of various facilities’. There was often, noted Turner, ‘inadequacy in the physical conditions, in the lighting, heating, provision for privacy or for quietness for study’. This was, of course, the payback for cheap accommodation. That cheapness was important, because it opened the world of university education to people of humbler means. The working class origins of most landladies also played a role in keeping students from middle class or more privileged backgrounds in touch with the concerns of working people as they dined at their table each day. Most landladies provided regular cooked meals and this was a big convenience for students.

As the number of places in residential colleges grew and flatting became popular, private board began a terminal decline and the landlady became a rare beast. Flats might be just as cold, dark and noisy as a boarding house, but they offered a new level of freedom, which became an increasing priority for young people. Boarding places couldn’t keep up with the growing student roll anyway. There was a ‘diminishing number of old fashioned land ladies’, noted the 1965 accommodation office report, though there was always a response to university appeals to the public to take in boarders. That year 12% of all Otago students were living in private board, down from 17% in 1957; by 1975 the number had plummeted to 3%.

‘Your typical landlady can be classified under two headings – a) Avaricious. b) Maternal’, wrote a 1940s student. Some were eccentric, some irritating, and others much loved. Do you have any stories to share of landladies? I’d love to hear more personal stories about these great characters from Otago’s past!