On a foreign field

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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!

The massage school

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1910s, anatomy, massage, physiology, physiotherapy, war

The women who in 1914 successfully completed the school of massage’s first course were (from left): Elizabeth Washer, Frances Skevington, Edith Thomson, Ellen Smith and Flora Gray. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists Otago Branch records, 88-086, S16-503d.

2016 marks 25 years since the Otago Polytechnic and University of Otago launched a new conjoint degree course in physiotherapy, and 20 years since the university became solely responsible for that degree. In transferring to the university from the polytechnic the school of physiotherapy was returning to its origins, for it started out in 1913 as the University of Otago’s school of massage.

The profession of physiotherapy has interesting beginnings. As Louise Shaw explains in her excellent history of the Otago school (In our hands: 100 years of the School of Physiotherapy in Otago 1913-2013), physiotherapy developed in the early 1900s by combining three distinct areas of therapy: massage, physical agents (especially electricity, light and water) and medical gymnastics. A wide range of practitioners offered these treatments. To cite just one example, in 1880s and 1890s Dunedin, John Jenkins offered electrical and magnetic treatment at his Magnetic and Galvanic Healing Institute.

Doctors were wary of these other health practitioners. That was partly because their popular services provided competition to conventional medical practice, but they also held genuine concerns for public well-being, as a few of the practitioners were undoubtedly ‘quacks’ out to make a quick income from dubious treatments. But doctors gradually gained appreciation for the obvious benefits of these treatments, particularly therapeutic massage, which started to become available under medical supervision in the larger hospitals in the 1890s and 1900s.

A number of massage therapists (known as masseurs if male or masseuses if female) in New Zealand had undergone some sort of formal training overseas and had certificates to prove it. Some belonged to the Australasian Massage Association, established in 1906 by the amalgamation of associations in Victoria and New South Wales. The association promoted the professionalisation of massage therapy, including the establishment of diploma courses at Australian universities. Although a few private individuals offered courses in New Zealand, none survived long and there was a need for better training. In 1912 the medical association, keen to improve and/or control standards within this developing field, asked the University of New Zealand senate if it would approve of a massage course at Otago medical school. Early in 1913 the senate let the University of Otago know that ‘owing to the importance of massage in the treatment of certain diseases’ it would approve Otago ‘granting certificates for proficiency in massage’ and the medical school agreed to the scheme, designing a syllabus closely based on the Australian model. In the meantime, in 1912 Auckland Hospital set up a course based on the British model, whereby nurses had their training extended for a year to include training in massage; this programme continued until 1922, awarding over a hundred massage certificates. Nurses at Dunedin Hospital also received some training in massage, though this was not recognised with any certificate. During the same period the Department of Health began moves to set up a register of massage therapists.

The Booths’ ‘Massage Institute’ offered the latest treatments using electicity, galvanism, water, air and massage. Edwin Booth later became a masseur at Dunedin Hospital and served as clinical tutor to the university’s first class of massage students. Advertisement from the Otago Witness, 6 August 1902, courtesy of Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand.

The Otago course got underway in the middle of 1913. The 18-month programme included six months of anatomy, physiology and massage courses followed by a year of public hospital instruction, supplemented by lectures on theoretical and practical medical electricity, applied massage and medical gymnastics. Lizzie Armstrong was appointed as the university’s first massage instructor; she had extensive experience in massage practice and instruction in Sydney and had also travelled to England to observe treatments and training there. She was already a masseuse at Dunedin Hospital; she had offered her services there earlier in 1913, and had been advising the medical school on its new course. Hospital radiologist and medical electrician Percy Cameron was appointed to teach medical electricity, William Newlands as anatomy lecturer, and the home science professor, Winifred Boys-Smith, agreed to teach physiology in a combined massage and home science class. The medical school professors oversaw the anatomy and physiology training. Stuart Moore was later appointed as lecturer in applied massage and medical gymnastics.

Eight students signed up for the university’s first massage course, but it had teething problems, many of them due to hurried planning (or lack of it). Home science students had already completed half their physiology course and an extra tutor had to be appointed for the massage students. Lizzie Armstrong ended up in a prolonged dispute with Edwin Booth, who had been a masseur at Dunedin Hospital since 1908 and was upset at her appointment as instructor, a position which was not advertised. The original idea for the students to complete their hospital training at various centres did not eventuate and, after considerable negotiation, they were allocated between the three Dunedin Hospital massage therapists. By then two students (including the only male) had dropped out of the course. Just one student, a man with several years of practical massage experience, enrolled for the second course, which commenced in May 1914.

In August 1914 instructor Lizzie Armstrong resigned to return to Sydney; soon afterwards she headed to London, offering her skills to the Red Cross for war work. Final exams were brought forward so she could assist with the examination, but the students were left to muddle along without having completed the full required period of practical training. The war also put a stop to the passage through parliament of legislation for the registration of masseurs; it had already been held up due to opposition to a clause that required masseurs to undertake all treatment under the authority of a medical practitioner. Since the government did not yet have the authority to examine or certify massage therapists, the university awarded its own certificate of proficiency to the five women who successfully passed their exams in 1914.

In 1915, apparently to the relief of the university, the Otago Hospital Board took responsibility for the administration of the school of massage. It continued that role until 1976, when physiotherapy education was transferred to Otago Polytechnic. But the university did retain a hand in the training of physiotherapists, as they were increasingly known, through this 60-year period, because it continued to provide their anatomy and physiology courses.

Anybody who serves as guinea pig for a new venture deserves recognition, but I think the five women who completed the first Otago school of massage course really deserved a medal! Two of them, Edith Thomson and Flora Gray, did receive another sort of medal – the British War Medal. Along with Ruby Millar, who completed the hospital-run course in 1916, they served as masseuses with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service during World War I. The injuries of war highlighted the usefulness of physiotherapy, as did the treatment of polio victims (there was an outbreak of polio in Dunedin during the clinical training of the first school of massage class, followed by a national epidemic the following year). The status of the profession was assured when the Masseurs Registration Act was finally passed in 1920.

From Italian to Arabic

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1870s, 1910s, 1930s, 1960s, 1990s, 2000s, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, languages, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, war

The language laboratory, once a familiar venue to every language student, in 1990. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit records, MS-4185/030, S15-500c.

Various modern languages have come and gone from the Otago curriculum over the years and their fortunes show a fascinating link with world geopolitics. While Latin and Greek were there from the beginning, modern languages started in 1875, with classes in German, French and Italian. Italian didn’t make it far – there was just one student in that first class and it was never repeated! French and German had the advantage through the years of being taught widely at high schools, always an important factor in recruiting students at university level. They were also useful for anybody with scholarly interests, since much scholarly publishing, from sciences to theology, was in German or French until English became more dominant in the mid-twentieth century. This was one of the rationales for compulsory languages in all university degrees.

Apart from a two-year suspension in the 1870s while the university sought a replacement lecturer, French has remained on the Otago syllabus throughout, but the German programme became a victim of World War I. Early in 1915 Frank Campbell, the German lecturer, had no choice but to resign, for he had no students; Otago students in the grip of patriotic fervour were not prepared to learn the language of their enemy. The university council regretted ‘the removal, even for a time, of so important a study as that of German from the subjects of instruction within the University.’ German classes commenced again in 1918, catering for science students who now had to demonstrate a reading knowledge of foreign languages to complete their degree.

The German programme slowly rebuilt and was boosted by the arrival of new lecturer Felix Grayeff in 1939. By contrast with World War I, German classes actually expanded during World War II. New Zealand society had obviously matured a little, and it presumably helped, also, that Grayeff was a Prussian Jew who might earn some sympathy from the most patriotic supporter of the allied cause. He was a classicist who had difficulty obtaining teaching work in Germany due to his religion.

Geopolitics also played a role in the next major development in languages at Otago, as the prolonged Cold War heightened local interest in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; this coincided with an increase in scientific publications in Russian. In 1960 the Department of Modern Languages began offering Russian tutorials as an option for those who had to pass a compulsory foreign language reading test, and a year later a degree programme in Russian commenced. In 1969 the expanding Department of Modern Languages divided into three: the German, French and Russian departments.

New Zealand’s growing economic, diplomatic and cultural ties with Asia prompted the next additions to the language programme. A 1991 working party set up by vice-chancellor Robin Irvine reported that Asian studies were critical to the future of both university and nation. Though Otago offered papers relating to Asia in various departments, there were no Asian languages taught. Other than Lincoln, all other New Zealand universities had Asian language programmes, and Otago ‘would find itself at a steadily worsening competitive disadvantage if corrective measures are not taken urgently.’ Undergraduate language courses in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese commenced in 1993, with classes of 26 and 132 respectively. The greater popularity of Japanese reflected New Zealand’s closer trade and tourism ties with that country than with Chinese-speaking nations in that period, together with the widespread teaching of Japanese in secondary schools.

Despite the encouraging introduction of Japanese and Chinese, the 1990s was a troubled decade for Otago’s language programmes. Tighter funding, closely linked to student enrolments, placed small departments like those of the languages in jeopardy. Russian, which had evolved from the Department of Russian and Soviet Studies into the the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was the smallest department in the humanities with very few students and large budget blowouts; it closed at the end of 1997. This prompted wide protests, for the department, renowned for its eccentricity, was held in much affection around the university. The closure reflected a declining local interest in things Russian as world politics evolved – as one-time lecturer Peter Stupples comments, Russian ‘came in because of politics and went out because of politics’.

Meanwhile, a 1997 report noted that Spanish was ‘important as a Pacific Rim language. South and Central America are likely to become of greater significance to the future of New Zealand, both commercially and culturally, in the coming decade.’ Otago was developing exchange agreements with universities in Chile and Peru, short courses in Spanish were proving popular at Otago Polytechnic, and Auckland and several Australian universities had introduced very successful Spanish programmes. Otago commenced Spanish courses in 2001 and they proved popular from the very start, attracting 340 students to the first paper offered. By 2003 there were 394 students enrolled in undergraduate Spanish papers, making it the most popular language on offer (te reo Maori excluded – for the history of Maori language teaching at Otago, see this earlier post).

The success of the Spanish programme prompted Otago into a new language venture: in 2003 it became the only New Zealand university to offer teaching in Portuguese. This was a strategic decision to strengthen the university’s Latin American and European offerings and aid its exchange programmes with two Brazilian universities. Classes carried on for a few years, but did not attract sufficient interest to survive.

The most recent language added to the schedule reflects New Zealand’s growing involvement with the Middle East. Introductory Arabic language was first taught as a Summer School paper in 2005, following requests from students. This was a convenient way for the university to introduce a new language, since it could be taught, like many Summer School papers, by a visiting lecturer. Arabic has since appeared several times on the Summer School programme, attracting both local and international students. It has not, however, progressed beyond first-year level.

Otago’s Department of Languages and Cultures, created in 2003 by combining the departments of French and German and the other language programmes, now teaches five core languages at both undergraduate and postgraduate level – Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. I wonder where our ever-changing world will lead us next!

The German play, a popular annual event since 1954. This production was in 2002. Image courtesy of Alyth Grant.

Otago’s war effort

Tags

1940s, chemistry, clothing, home science, human nutrition, medicine, physics, Studholme, war, women

A tarpaulin lean-to operating theatre of the 6 New Zealand Field Ambulance near Cassino, Italy. Many Otago medical graduates found themselves working in facilities like this during World War II. Photographed by George Robert Bull on 25 April 1944. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Department of Internal Affairs War History Branch collection, DA-05591-F.

In the midst of all the centenary commemorations of World War I, the 75th anniversary of World War II has been rather overshadowed. As I’ve written here before about the impact of World War I on the University of Otago, I’m marking Anzac Day this year by considering the university’s involvement in the second great conflict of the 20th century.

As had been the case during the ‘Great War’, many Otago staff and students served with the forces during World War II and the conflict had an enormous effect on those people and their families and friends. The exact numbers involved are unclear, but the university annual report for 1942 gives figures for that stage of the war – as of December 1942, 13 members of staff and about 725 students and former students were on active service, and 28 had died. Since the total student roll of the university just before the war was around 1400, this was a very significant contribution. Many other students spent their vacations completing military training. For medical and dental students, this was done through the Otago University Medical Corps. Some students not involved in military training were instead manpowered to carry out essential work on farms during breaks.

Student enrolments dropped off during the first half of the war, hitting a low of 1348 in 1942 before steadily rising again to 1839 in 1945; the end of the war led to a big influx of students in 1946, when the roll reached 2440. Variation was huge between the different faculties. There was a significant wartime drop in the number of arts students, but it was the small commerce and law faculties which fared the worst. Meanwhile, science and home science numbers increased, and those in medicine flourished as the demand for doctors both military and civilian grew. The medical school struggled to resource this student growth and had to introduce restrictions on entry to second-year medical classes for the first time in 1941. One unfortunate result of such restrictions was public resentment towards war refugee doctors (mostly Jews from Germany, Austria, Hungary and Poland) who had been accepted into New Zealand. Some were required to complete further training at the medical school – they were seen to be taking places ahead of New Zealand students. The attitudes of both medical school and university towards these refugees were decidedly mixed.

In 1942 the medical school accounted for 40% of Otago students, a percentage only reached once previously, and that was during World War I. Med students were a traditionally conservative group and their dominance contributed to what OUSA historian Sam Elworthy has described as “the death of political radicalism” on campus during the war. Of course, other wartime influences played their part. Students wanted to demonstrate their loyalty in an environment of public suspicion, where citizens believed healthy young men who continued at university were shirking their patriotic duty. Wartime did offer new leadership opportunities for women, who increased from around 25% of students in the mid-1930s to 40% in 1942 (a percentage they would not reach again until 1976, after dropping back below 30% after the war). Women were elected to the students’ association executive, edited Critic and became presidents of the dramatic and literary societies.

Otago’s Professor of Chemistry, Frederick Soper, co-ordinated New Zealand’s war efforts in chemistry. He is photographed around December 1946. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand Free Lance collection, PAColl-8602-66.

As well as supplying numerous personnel to the military forces, the University of Otago made important contributions to the war effort through its scientific work. Government scientists and the universities cooperated on various  projects. At Otago, Professor Robert Jack and his colleagues in the physics department worked on infrared sensors for the detection of shipping. Frederick Soper, the chemistry professor (later vice-chancellor), chaired the chemical section of the national Defence Science Committee, whose projects mostly related to producing products in short supply due to the war, including munitions and many other items which were normally imported. Otago staff worked on an antidote for war gas, production of chemicals required for naval sonar and smoke bombs, and the testing of New Zealand ergot (an essential drug used in obstetrics). Stanley Slater of the chemistry department produced morphine using opium which had been confiscated by the police under drug legislation (the same project was carried out during World War I by Prof Thomas Easterfield at Victoria University of Wellington).

War and post-war food shortages also inspired various university projects. Leading Otago scientist Muriel Bell was appointed government nutrition officer, setting the food ration scales and continuing her applied research into New Zealand foods. Among many other things, she was well-known by the public for her rosehip syrup recipe, designed to supply Vitamin C to young children. The School of Home Science got involved in the war effort right from the beginning, using Studholme Hall to train local women in large quantity cookery, so they would be prepared in case of emergencies in hospitals. The school’s clothing and textile experts advised on the manufacture of garments for soldiers.

I haven’t found any references to deadly weapons being produced on campus, but one of the university’s neighbours became a munitions factory during the war. Engineering firm J & AP Scott, located on the corner of Leith and Albany streets, produced 3-inch mortar shells and cast iron practice bombs, with the government doubling the size of their building to aid this war work. The university later took over the Scott building, which has been the home of Property Services for many years.

A 1920s advertisement for engineering firm J & AP Scott, which manufactured munitions during World War II. The university later took over the building. Image courtesy of Hocken Collections, from the Otago Motor Club Yearbook 1927-8, Automobile Association Otago records, 95-056 Box 97.

In the 1970s, looking back on World War II, Frederick Soper commented that it was “popular to accuse the Universities of being ivory towers but I should like to affirm that University policies do respond to national needs.” The research efforts of New Zealand universities during the war led to growing support for their research in the post-war period. One very significant result was the re-introduction of the PhD degree in 1946 – it had first been offered in the wake of World War I but withdrawn after just a few years. For better and for worse, the war of 1939-1945 clearly had a major impact on Otago. Do you know of any other stories relating to the university and the war?

Off to war

Tags

1910s, classics, dentistry, languages, medicine, mining, war, women

Alexander Trotter, who graduated MB ChB from Otago in 1913, took this snapshot of some of his colleagues from the NZ Medical Corps in Jericho. They include Capt Warren Young (an Otago medical graduate of 1916), Capt Martin Ryan (a dentist) and Col Robert Walton (an Edinburgh medical graduate). Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, AM Trotter papers, MS-3397/008, S14-589a.

The barrage of World War I centenary events is now upon us, and this month Dunedin commemorates the embarkation of the first troops who departed here for the war in Europe. It seems an appropriate time to think about the impact of the war on the University of Otago.

At the beginning of 1914 there were just over 600 students enrolled at Otago, 70 per cent of them male; a considerable number were part-timers. Numbers attending dropped off rapidly as young men headed off for the front. The chancellor reported at the end of March 1915 that “at least a hundred students are wearing their King’s uniform, and small detachments are constantly leaving to join the reinforcements.” The March 1915 annual reports of the “special schools” revealed the large impact of war. Of the 29 students in the School of Mines, 9 left in August 1914 to become part of the main expeditionary force, and by March a further 5 had joined them on active service. The tiny dental school, which had just 8 students enrolled in 1914, provided 3 of those to the armed forces. The medical school, too, contributed significantly. Like the dental and mining schools, it allowed students who had nearly completed their degrees to finish early, expediting their departure: “In consequence of the demand for surgeons a special final examination was held last August [1914], and sixteen of the fifth-year students who passed either joined the Expeditionary Force or replaced others who did so.”

The university council took great pride in the contribution being made by its students and former students to the war effort. It had been horrified by news of the “wanton and lawless destruction” of the “ancient and honoured University of Louvain” by German troops invading Belgium; many irreplacable books and manuscripts were lost along with buildings. In an October 1914 letter of sympathy to Louvain, the council noted its pride “that many of its own alumni have gone forth to serve as comrades in arms of the Belgians in the cause of freedom and humanity.” An early sign of the tragedy of war can be seen in the minutes of the following month’s council meeting, which record sympathy at the “cruel death of Dr Angus McNab on the battlefield. While in the act of rendering surgical aid to wounded soldiers it has been reported that he was bayoneted by the Germans, although he was wearing the red-cross badge on his arm.” McNab completed a BSc and BA at Otago in the 1890s, and went on to become a medical specialist in London.

In May 1915 the university council recorded its last sympathy motion for war-related deaths, noting its “mingled feelings of sorrow and pride” at “news of the death at the Dardanelles of three students of the University of Otago – Lieutenants R. Duthie, J.S. Reid, and E.M. Burnard.” All three died at Gallipoli. Death at war, it would appear, then became so common that it no longer warranted a special mention: by the end of the war nearly 100 staff and students had been killed. Their names were recorded in the University of Otago Calendar and photographs of “fallen comrades” appeared in the student publication, the Otago University Review, but there was no longer space for recording them in the council minutes. The council did, however, continue to record military honours awarded to university people, sending congratulations to the families of those concerned.

Putting aside the personal tragedies of the many deaths and injuries, the biggest headache the war created for the university authorities was retaining sufficient staff to keep its normal activities going. Of course, they had no idea how long the war would last, and nobody suspected in 1914 that it still had four years to run. When William Phillipps, a demonstrator in biology about to leave on military service, requested 3 years of leave in February 1915, the council resolved “to grant Mr Phillipps leave for twelve months or until the end of the war should the war terminate in less than twelve months.” Deciding whether or not to grant leave, and how long for, was tricky, and once conscription was introduced in 1916 the council also had to decide whether or not to appeal against the calling up of its employees.

There was a particular demand for people with medical expertise, and replacements for medical school staff could be difficult to find. When Percy Gowland, Professor of Anatomy, asked the council in February 1917 if he might proceed to the front, it sympathised, but informed him that “his services are indispensable to the Medical School.” When Gowland was called up in the ballot in 1918, the university appealed. At the same October meeting of the Military Service Board, it appealed against the calling up of William Carswell, surgical tutor and assistant lecturer, and Alexander Kidd, who worked in the anatomy laboratory. Kidd had asked the council for leave to proceed to war, but Gowland stated he was “essential for the proper working of the Anatomical Department.”

A familiar wartime sight. This unidentified photograph is from the papers of Roland Fulton, one of many Otago medical graduates to serve in World War I. After qualifying in 1914 he headed to England for further training in surgery; he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the war. Image courtesy of Hocken Collections, RAH Fulton papers, MS-1667/008, S14-589b.

Some senior staff did head overseas to the war, often for long periods. Daniel Waters, Professor of Metallurgy and Assaying in the School of Mines, served as an officer in the New Zealand Tunnelling Company for a couple of years; he returned to the university after being discharged no longer fit for service at the end of 1917. Henry Pickerill, Dean of the Dental School, served from 1916 to 1919 with the New Zealand Medical Corps, becoming famous for his pioneering work reconstructing the jaws and faces of those injured by war. The Professor of Surgery, Louis Barnett, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in Malta early in 1915 and was transferred to the New Zealand Medical Corps in Egypt in October 1915. He returned to New Zealand early in 1917, after the university had convinced the military authorities he was essential to the training of the country’s future surgeons. Thomas Adams, Professor of Classics, enlisted early in 1917 and did not return to New Zealand until 1920, having been seconded for army educational duties in England.

Some subject areas struggled in the war years due to a lack of students. With its dean away and very few students, the Dental School was under threat of closure, but managed to survive the war years before expanding greatly in the post-war period. One casualty of the war was the university’s German language programme. In 1915 lecturer Frank Campbell resigned because he had no students. The council regretted “the loss of a teacher of his experience and the removal, even for a time, of so important a study as that of German from the subjects of instruction within the University.”

A more common difficulty, though, was finding substitutes for staff serving overseas. One solution was to appoint women, who were more readily available and not liable to conscription into the military. Isabel Turnbull became assistant to Adams in 1915; for the three years he served overseas she took on full responsibility for Otago’s teaching of Latin. Gladys Cameron was appointed to teach in bacteriology and public health in 1917, and Phyllis Turnbull as assistant in French in 1918; other women became demonstrators. Outside the School of Home Science, women academics had been non-existent at Otago prior to the war. Now new opportunities were opening to them, though sometimes these were temporary. Women also became more prominent as students during the war years, accounting for almost half of students in 1918 before men took over again in 1919.

The ‘Great War’ clearly had an enormous impact on the university, its staff and its students. It is also clear that the university made an enormous contribution to New Zealand’s war effort, with the council  minutes recording numerous students, staff and alumni mentioned in despatches and awarded military honours. For more information about the university and World War I, see this recent article in the alumni magazine, which also features on article about the war commemorations by Professor Tom Brooking.

How Otago almost had a veterinary school

Tags

1900s, 1910s, dentistry, veterinary, war

A World War I vet with the New Zealand Veterinary Corps treats a horse’s teeth while an assistant steadies the animal. Photograph taken at Louvencourt, France, 22 May 1918 by Henry Armytage Sanders. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association New Zealand official negatives, World War 1914-1918, reference 1/2-013208-G.

One of the little known casualties of World War I is the University of Otago’s proposed veterinary school. By the late 1800s animal health was critical to New Zealand’s economy. The country was dependent on animals for much of its export income, which centred on wool, frozen meat and dairy products; just as importantly, horses still powered much transport and machinery. Yet, at the turn of the century the country was still importing its qualified vets. In 1903 the Canterbury Agricultural College (later to become Lincoln University) appointed W.J. Colebatch as its first veterinary science lecturer, but his role was to instruct students of farming rather than prospective vets.

Around this time the government was looking keenly at the “special schools” of the various university colleges, and was under some pressure from the North Island colleges to divide these more fairly around the country. Otago and Canterbury, as the first universities to get off the ground, had naturally evolved their special schools first: Otago in medicine and mines and Canterbury in engineering and agriculture. Otago now came under pressure from the government to close its School of Mines in favour of Auckland and to instead develop further specialities which would coordinate well with its medical school. It won the battle to retain the mining school (a battle which would be repeated and lost later in the century) but the idea of other special schools at Otago gathered momentum.

The 1904 Dentists’ Act raised the required standard of education for dentists and placed it in the hands of the University of New Zealand. Plans to open a national dental school at Otago quickly took shape and the first students commenced in 1907. This was made easier because some of the subjects necessary for dental students – anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry – were already on offer at Otago thanks to its medical school. The same would also be true for veterinary students, provided lecturers were able to teach animal as well as human biology. In 1904, the same year that negotiations for the dental school got underway, the university council began negotiating with the government for a proposed course in veterinary science, receiving encouragement from Premier Richard Seddon. It set up a committee which worked with veterinary experts to plan the facilities required to offer a four-year degree in veterinary science. This would include the appointment of a couple of specialist professors, a surgeon and assistants and the building of a veterinary hospital; the old tin shed building of the School of Mines – then under prospect of closure – could be altered to become the new veterinary school.

In early 1907 the University of Otago Council reported “there is every prospect of the school being opened and carried on with success, provided the Government determine to select their Veterinary Surgeons and Inspectors from those who may pass through the school.” But when it offered a veterinary course that year, no students applied. The council remained anxious to start the school, consulted with government veterinary experts again and decided to commence with a shorter nineteen-month Certificate in Animal Hygiene “for the training of Inspectors of the Agricultural Department.” It hoped this less demanding course would be more attractive. Unlike the full veterinary course, which could start with an intermediate year with resources already available, the animal hygiene course would require specialist teaching from the beginning; government funding was needed.

In 1909 the government voted the University of Otago £3,000 to build a veterinary school (around half a million dollars in today’s values) together with £1,500 per year for running costs; “before long, no doubt, the Veterinary School will be in operation,” the Minister of Education reported. The university council was not so confident. With no money to spare from its own funds, it was fully dependent on this government grant. Now the School of Mines had been saved, a new building was needed for the vet school and the grant did not seem big enough. The council continued negotiating with the government for additional money, but meanwhile it was having difficulty finding a suitable site. Ideally the vet school should be fairly close to the main university buildings, but there could be problems housing animals in a heavily populated part of town. Experts advised “a site of sufficient size to allow of stock being kept under the same conditions as they would be on an ordinary farm, and, with this end in view, the Council is desirous of acquiring a property near the outskirts of the town of an area amounting to about 25 acres.”

In 1911 the university’s annual report expressed its hopes of opening the veterinary school early in 1912, but the following year’s report regretted that it was not yet underway: “Very great difficulty has been experienced in acquiring at a reasonable price a suitable block of land which would not be inconveniently remote from the city. Until further financial assistance can be obtained from the Government, therefore, the matter of establishing a veterinary school must still remain under consideration.” The council did not give up hope and continued its hunt for a site; in 1914 it believed it had finally found somewhere suitable on the Taieri and submitted it for government approval, since additional funding would be needed.

World events now intervened: both nation and university had new priorities as resources – both human and financial – were diverted to the cause of the Great War. All thoughts of a veterinary school at Otago were put aside. This was rather ironic because, as the photograph above suggests, horses and their carers played an important role in New Zealand’s war effort. In the jubilee history of the University of Otago, published in 1919, George Thompson wrote: “The presence of the Medical School in Dunedin has necessarily gathered there a group of other schools whose curriculum is closely connected with that of Medicine, viz., Dentistry and Home Science; and probably in the near future a School of Veterinary Science may also be added.” But alas, this was not to be. Had the government been a little more generous in their funding in the early 1910s, Otago might now have a century-old veterinary school. Instead, New Zealand experienced decades of insufficient veterinary services, and New Zealanders who wanted to train in veterinary science had to travel to Australia or further afield until as recently as 1962, when this country’s first veterinary course was established at Massey University.

Sadly there are no Otago veterinary graduates to read this post, but sometimes what didn’t happen in history can be almost as interesting as what did!

 

 

 

Women in charge

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1880s, 1910s, 1920s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 2010s, home science, war, women

This month Otago students elected Ruby Sycamore-Smith as their students’ association president for 2014. With Harlene Hayne as vice-chancellor, the two most public leadership positions in the university are now held by women. As women account for around 57% of Otago students, this seems only appropriate. It is not so very long ago, though, that such a scenario seemed unthinkable.

Caroline Freeman, Otago’s first woman graduate. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, S13-186a.

Otago University admitted women as students from the beginning, thanks largely to a campaign organised by Learmonth Dalrymple, who had also campaigned for a girls’ high school in Dunedin. The first woman to graduate was school teacher Caroline Freeman, capped with her BA in 1885. Like many students of this era, Freeman did not find it easy to complete her course, failing several subjects (including history and political economy on three occasions!). But she and other early women students also faced an additional barrier of gender discrimination: not every professor approved of higher education for women.

In the 1890s fewer than 20% of Otago students were female, but numbers grew slowly in the early twentieth century. During both world wars women were a more notable presence on campus as men were called away to military service – in 1918 almost half of students were female. But this was only a temporary situation and after both wars females dropped again to what seemed their ‘natural’ position of a third or fewer of Otago students. In the late 1960s persistent growth in the female proportion of students began and in 1986 women outnumbered men for the first time – a position that has persisted ever since. Unsurprisingly, the 1970s and 1980s were also a period of considerable tension on campus over feminist issues, as radicals among the growing female student body led campaigns against some of the more chauvinistic student traditions. The opening of a women’s room, banned to men, created huge controversy in 1983. It was the initiative of Phyllis Comerford, the first female president of OUSA.

Professor Rawson and Professor Benson in 1923. This marriage spelled the end of Helen Rawson’s academic career. Photograph courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Sir Charles Fleming collection, ref 1/2-129013-F.

Women staff faced their own difficulties. The School of Home Science, which opened in 1911, was a female preserve which provided a rare opportunity for senior appointments to women. Winifred Boys-Smith became Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first woman professor when she took on the chair of home science and domestic arts in 1911. In several other departments women had teaching roles; indeed, some departments were only kept going through the war years thanks to women staff. But these women generally remained in lowly positions and were not offered the same opportunities for advancement as their male colleagues of similar abilities.

The convention that women ought not to work after marriage put a stop to many a potential academic career. An outstanding example of this is Helen Rawson, who succeeded Boys-Smith as Professor of Home Science. When she married Noel Benson, the Professor of Geology, in 1923, she resigned and, like many women of this era, threw her energies into unpaid community and voluntary work, while providing support for her husband’s career.

During the 1960s married women began to enter the university’s academic workforce, though not everybody approved. They might receive support and encouragement from their departments, but often faced criticism from the wider community, and particularly from earlier generations of women who had not had the same opportunities. Women with young children faced particular criticism and also practical difficulties due to a lack of childcare facilities – a large part of their wages could disappear as they paid for nannies or other private arrangements.

Women have come a long way since the 1960s, with equal pay legislation, improved childcare facilities, and wider opportunities for employment and promotion. In 2012, 47% of Otago’s academic and research staff (measured by full-time equivalents) and 65% of general staff were women. They remained, however, under-represented in senior positions, both academic and general. So, all power to Harlene Hayne and Ruby Sycamore-Smith as they lead the University of Otago in 2014!

Anyone for mental science?

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1910s, jubilee, Knox, mental science, philosophy, psychology, St Margaret's, war

Professor Dunlop and mental science students in 1919. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 89, S13-215b.

In 1919, as part of its jubilee celebrations, the university commissioned Charles Armstrong to photograph its buildings and people. This image comes from the wonderful album which resulted, now among the treasures held at the Hocken Collections. It features Professor Francis Dunlop and the mental science students. I can’t help thinking there should be another person in the front row – did somebody develop stage fright and run away at the last moment, perhaps?

Mental science (sometimes known as mental and moral philosophy) was a significant part of the university’s offerings for many decades. It combined two fields of study we now think of as distinctly different: philosophy and psychology. In 1919 the mental science course for beginning students included psychology and either ethics or logic (deductive and inductive). The advanced class included logic (“mainly viewed as the methodology of scientific enquiry”), psychology, and ethics (“in its full extent, treated both theoretically and historically”). There was also an honours class in the history of philosophy. Eventually psychology emerged from the shadow of philosophy and the arts faculty to become an independent department within the science faculty in 1964.

Dunlop, himself an Otago graduate, was Professor of Mental Science from 1913 until his death in 1931. Like his predecessor in the chair he was a Presbyterian minister; he completed his doctorate in Germany under Rudolf Eucken, a proponent of Lebensphilosophie, a form of idealism. Dunlop was famous for his enormous book collection and his steam-powered car.

An interesting feature of the class photograph is that several of the men are wearing prominent Returned Soldiers’ Association badges. There was a big jump in Otago student numbers in 1919 as men returned to, or began, their studies after the war. One of the returned servicemen in the class (second row from back, on the far right) is Hubert Ryburn. Ryburn returned to his Otago studies after serving in France, eventually completing a master’s degree in mathematics. He then went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, finished off his training in theology in New York and returned to New Zealand as a Presbyterian minister. In 1931, while minister of St Andrew’s Church, Dunedin, he married Jocelyn Dunlop, the daughter of his former mental science professor. From 1941 to 1963 Hubert Ryburn was Master of Knox College, where he was renowned for being “firm but fair”. After his retirement he moved to St Margaret’s College, where Jocelyn Ryburn was Warden until 1974. She was a stalwart of many organisations and served as president of one of New Zealand’s most influential bodies, the Plunket Society. Hubert Ryburn’s most significant contribution to the University of Otago came through the University Council, which he sat on from 1946. From 1955 to 1970 he was the highly capable Chancellor of his alma mater.

Do you recognise any other students in this photograph? If so, please get in touch!