Rupert Connell

Studio portrait of Sylvia Ashton-Warner, taken c. Dec 1958
Silver gelatin print in folder by Rupert Connell, Tauranga
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington Ref: PAColl-2522-7-01-01

This striking portrait of the idiosyncratic author and educational pioneer Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1908-1984) was taken at the Tauranga studio of Rupert Connell around December 1958, shortly after her first novel Spinster was published to critical acclaim and became a runaway bestseller. By this time Connell had already been in Tauranga for two decades, and was within a couple of years of retirement.

Century Grand field camera used by the Connell studio, Eltham
Collection of Puke Ariki museum, New Plymouth. Ref. PA2015.052

Rupert Douglas “Pip” Connell was born in 1907 at Eltham, South Taranaki, one of six children of photographer Nigel Douglas Connell (1874-1951). He attended school in Stratford and, after an early apprenticeship as an electrician for the Union Steamship Company on its Pacific routes in the mid-1920s, he probably learned the photographic trade in his father’s studio in Eltham. He continued working there after his marriage to Lois Mary Mclean in 1935, until at least 1938.

Pip and Lois Connell, by unidentified photographer
Courtesy of Connell Family Heritage

By July 1939 Pip and Lois had moved to Tauranga, where they moved into a home in 11th Avenue. In his first Bay of Plenty Times advertisement, Connell announced the display of examples of his photographic work in the shop window of Bernard Judd, an electrician and radio specialist, located at The Triangle.

Studio portrait of unidentified soldier, Hauraki Regiment, c.early 1940s
Laser copy of silver gelatin print by Rupert Connell, Tauranga
Hauraki Regiment Collection, courtesy of Pae Koroki. Ref. 2012-029

Despite the predicament of the outbreak of war, Connell opened his own studio premises in Devonport Road and found enough business to advertise for an assistant – “a keen, capable girl, 15-16 years, to learn all branches of professional photographing” - in early 1943.

View down Devonport Road, Tauranga, Rupert Connell’s studio at centre, behind S&N Motors
Black-and-white copy print, taken by an unidentified photographer, c1951-52
Courtesy of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Koroki. Ref. 01-500

Turkeys, possibly at the Brain Watkins House in Cameron Road, undated
Silver gelatin print by Rupert Connell, Tauranga
Collection of Brain Watkins House. Ref. BWH2004/0558/2

This undated snapshot of four turkeys, possibly taken in the garden of the Brain Watkins House in Cameron Road, Tauranga, is pretty incongruous given Connell’s normal oeuvre. The clue possibly lies in a series of advertisements which appeared intermittently in the Bay of Plenty Times between 1943 and 1948, typified by the following from 23 January 1948:

“Situations Vacant. Photography. An opportunity awaits suitable girl to learn all branches professional and candid work. Apply – Rupert Connell.”

The fact that he inserted no less than eight separate such advertisements during that period suggests that he was unable to attract the young women to that role for very long.

Advertisement, Rupert Connell, Devonport Rd
Western Bay of Plenty Year Book, 1952-1953, publ. Astra Publicity, Auckland
Image courtesy of John and Julie Green

Otherwise commonly known as outwork, taking on an assistant – here referred to as “the Candid Cameraman,” and presumably a young girl would not need to be paid very much – meant that a photographer could be sent out for general commissions, while Connell himself would not be absented from the more serious, and better paying, studio work encompassing “child studies, portraits, family groups” and bridal portraits.

Studio portrait of Lynette Christian (later Harpham) as a young girl, Tauranga, c1940s
Photo by Rupert Connell, Tauranga
Courtesy of Tauranga City Library, Pe Koroki. Ref. 06-496

Photo wallet, “Studio Photography by Rupert Connell, Tauranga, N.Z.,” c1950s
Image courtesy of John and Julie Green

 
Connell’s studio portraits were generally executed and finished to a very high standard, often softly toned, sometimes double-mounted on card, signed personally in pencil in the lower margin of the mount, and enclosed in a folder or wallet printed on the front with his name in a stylish brown design.

Rupert Connell retired from the photographic business some time between 1958 and 1963 and went to live in Ranginui Street (now Briarley Street, The Avenues). He and his wife Lois had two sons. He was, in the words of his great nephew, a “prodigious fisherman and hunter.” He died in 1977.

References
Alexander Turnbull Library / National Library https://natlib.govt.nz/
Auckland Library Photographers Database http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/photographers/basic_search.htm
Electoral Rolls
Pae Koroki https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers
Puke Ariki Heritage Collections https://pukeariki.com/research-and-heritage/heritage-collections/
Connell, Tim (2012) Connell Family Heritage https://issuu.com/bigtimeproductions/docs/connellfamilytreebook
Other examples of Connell’s work may be seen in the Tauranga Heritage Collection https://view.taurangaheritagecollection.co.nz/explore

The Old Dairy Company Building

Opening of the Tauranga Dairy Factory, cnr 11th Ave/Devonport Rd, 2 October 1910
Image courtesy of Pae Koroki, Ref. 99-1181

My first view of the Army Hall gave the clue that it had been a dairy factory - the ventilators on the ridge of the roof. New Zealand has many examples of the remnants of old factories as they were not very far apart in the landscape due to transport of milk from farm to factory impeded by poor roads, if any, and the need to have the milk at the factory as quickly as possible for processing.

By the 1880s in the Tauranga district farming was being established and many of the well-known citizens like Lundon, Crump, Mathieson, Brabant and Tollemache began to speak up identifying the need for a factory. Eleventh Avenue, regarded as being on the fringe of the town, importantly had a fresh water. Dairy factories use water to wash the butter and need a reliable supply.

Tauranga Dairy Factory, 1918
Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0324/10

In 1883 a meeting established the Tauranga Dairy Company and raised half the capital needed that night. There was a general preference to keep it local and refuse investment from out of the district. Eventually on 1 November 1885 the factory opened. They were not easy years ahead with problems like the difficulty in procuring young pigs to consume the whey, while some farmers wanted to keep the whey to feed the calves. Tauranga people were encouraged to buy the local butter but outsiders were trying to undercut the prices. Arguments arose when the Dairy Company proposed to open a store for their suppliers to purchase farm requirements and the town merchants complained that the Company wanted it both ways – to ask retailers to sell the butter but to undercut them with the sales of other supplies. The Dairy Company sales of bacon and ham remained an important part of the business. Those pigs needed to move on.

In the 1890s, a time of economic depression in New Zealand, the factory closed but reopened in 1900 under the management of Mr McPartland, the successful manager of the Te Puke Dairy Company. The Company paid three pence per gallon of milk to suppliers at this time. Exporting butter was more difficult than meat and it was not until the twentieth century that exporting increased. Britain’s need for food during the First World War created a huge market. A capable and energetic man Charles Macmillan had become the company secretary and saw the company through a period of growth. Macmillan became a Borough Councillor, later the Member of Parliament for the area, and Minister of Agriculture.

Dairy Factory, 1969. Photo by Renwood Studios
Image courtesy of Pae Koroki, Ref. 99-941

The butter factory prospered producing a quality product that won many prizes at shows around the country. In 1932 the meeting of the Tauranga Farmers’ Union revealed that £90,000 had been paid last season to suppliers and the bulk of it spent in Tauranga. In the twentieth century industrial action was a feature with a strong Dairy Factory Workers Union demanding better pay and conditions; the payment to farmers was low; and when things started to improve when War broke out again, there was a shortage of workers and the Dairy Company made representations to exempt some of their employees from War service. Photographs from 1969 show the factory still in business.

Army Hall, 2021. Photo by Shirley Arabin

The Tauranga Cooperative Dairy Company continued to operate from the Eleventh Avenue site through and after the Second World War but more research is required for those years until the building became the Battalion Headquarters of the Hauraki Regiment. This occurred in May 1981 with a move from the old Army Hall in Dive Crescent. The subject of a move had been debated since the 1970s when the City Council favoured demolition and building houses on the land. Bob Owens the Mayor favoured the Army so the new headquarters became known as the Hauraki Army Hall. The building includes a drill hall and the Hauraki Army Museum.

References
Bay of Plenty Times. Papers Past.
Taylor, Richard. Comrades Brave, A History of the Hauraki Regiment. Cosmos Publications, Napier 1998

The Albatross and the 13th Earle of Pembroke, 1869

Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga, Part XIV

Built at the thriving Mechanics Bay shipyard at Auckland in 1861, the 85 ton Albatross, an elegant topsail schooner, was initially owned by Christopher Harris an Auckland timber merchant. In 1864, the vessel was acquired by James Braund a Devonshire master mariner who had sailed the 100 ton cutter Surprise from England to Auckland in 1857.

In 1870, Braund’s Albatross was contracted by Britain’s notoriously wealthy Earl of Pembroke and his companion, the writer Dr Henry Kingsley, for an extended cruise around New Zealand and the Pacific islands (during which they co-wrote the travel bestseller South Sea Bubbles). During the course of its North Island cruise, Captain Braund sailed the Albatross and its two celebrity tourists into Tauranga Harbour.

The topsail schooner Shepherdess off Wellington in 1870

Like the Shepherdess, Captain Braund’s Albatross was among the many smart, locally built, trading schooners that plied New Zealand and Pacfic waters during the 1860s and 70s.

At Tauranga, the visitors were met and accompanied by Major Gilbert Mair, a Colonial Defence Force officer noted for his leadership and courage during the Anglo-Maori Land Wars of the 1860s. Fluent in te reo, Mair, who led the kupapa (loyalist) Te Arawa flying columns Maori style, was on leave at the time from what was to prove a four year pursuit of the ‘rebel’ guerilla leader Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turiki and his Ringatu followers (1868-1872). In his memoirs published as Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Mair described his role in the Earle of Pembroke’s visit in a chapter titled ‘A Visit to Tauranga and the Order of the Peacock’s Feathers’, an experience that left a sour taste, while illustrating his own mana and integrity.

Major Gilbert Mair

“It was my fortune in those days to meet many a celebrity travelling through those parts of the earth… But for a curious incident, or series of incidents, with Tauranga as a locale, I should have accompanied the globe cruising pair on their famous voyage, and maybe have been immortalised, one way or the other, in the pages of "South Sea Bubbles."

It was my ambition from early youth, when the mind was full of longings for adventure, to experience a terrific shipwreck. The idea was ever present in my waking thoughts and in my dreams. I prepared myself to act promptly in every conceivable emergency, always having the comfortable feeling that I should survive after displaying splendid courage in rescuing the loveliest female passenger, unmarried for preference. It was, I think, about the end of 1869 when I received a letter from Wellington, instructing me to place myself at the service of the Earl of Pembroke, who, with Dr. Henry Kingsley, would call at Tauranga in his yacht, the "Albatross."

I was all excitement when a beautiful white painted topsail schooner (a vessel chartered in Auckland by the Earl) dropped anchor in Tauranga Harbour, and I went on board and reported myself. The master of the schooner was Captain Braund, whom I knew very well. He told me that the idea was to cruise around New Zealand, seeing as much of the Maoris as possible, and then I might have to visit the South Seas with the party. It had been arranged that a comrade officer would discharge my military duties in my absence.

George Robert Charles Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke

I was taken to the cabin and introduced to the Earl and the Doctor. Lord Pembroke was a typical young English aristocrat, about twenty-three years old, fair-haired, rather delicate looking, and had a pretty lisp withal. He stood about six or seven inches over six feet in height; he was so tall, in fact, that an oblong hole had been cut in the cabin floor in which he could stand, his head all but touching the companion hatch. A most delightful, genial young chap he was, with a nimble wit, and fond of speaking in a very affectionate way of his mother, the Lady Herbert of Lea.

 Dr. Kingsley, writer of "Geoffrey Hamlyn" and "Ravenshoe," and brother of the even more famous author of "Hereward the Wake," "Westward Ho," etc., was a sturdily-built, self-contained man of about my own height, full of dry humour; a man with a wonderfully well-stored mind, and the pleasantest of companions. I think he was the Earl's trustee or tutor, for Pembroke deferred very much to his opinions.

The young Earl was very rich; his income was reported at something like £60,000 per annum. A good deal of money had been spent in fitting out the "Albatross" for the cruise. She was most comfortably equipped and generously found; live stock was carried for sea food--pigs and poultry galore. The schooner was manned by a picked crew of twelve men.

During a few days we had some very pleasant short cruises about the Bay of Plenty. We never went far along the coast without the Doctor wanting to drop anchor and fish; he was the most patient and enthusiastic fisherman I ever met, and in the wonderful Bay of Plenty he had his heart's desire. I remember the Earl saying one day: "Mair, I believe when Charon is ferrying Kingsley over the Styx, before he gets half-way across the doctor will bait his hooks and ask the old man to give him another half-hour.

Dr Henry Kingsley

The Civil Commissioner at Tauranga, Mr. Clarke, had suggested to the Maori chiefs that they show these English Rangatiras some attention. Under this arrangement, I got up some good Maori shows for our new friends. One day the principal chiefs of Ngai-te-Rangi requested me to arrange a meeting on board the schooner. These chiefs were Hamiora Tu, Enoka-te-Whanake, Hori Ngatai, Hohepa te Mea, Raniera-te-Hiahia, and Taipari.

They came aboard at the hour fixed, and were ceremoniously received at the cabin. After brief speeches on both sides, each chief divested himself of a splendid woven flax or feathered cloak, which he spread out on the cabin table. Then on the top of the pile of beautiful mats, each Maori laid a greenstone treasure, which included one of the largest and finest "tikis" I ever saw, and there were several ancient carved war clubs, etc. Finally, the crowning gift, the chief placed on the table a carefully drawn and executed document purporting to be a conveyance of the fee simple of Te Ruatuna Island (Mr. Clarke having informed them that it had not been included in the confiscated area.)

The Ngai Te Rangi rangatira Hamiora Tu

After the chief's departure, the matter of return gifts was discussed. The Earl and Doctor had been informed in Auckland that the Maori always refused to accept return tokens. However, I was emphatic that they should be given, as the presents received were of great value. Finally I was requested to select six handsome rugs, which I had sent on board, costing about fifty shillings each.

I was called away to Maketu next day, and on returning in the afternoon, was informed that the chief had been on board, had received their presents, and gone away "highly pleased."

That evening I was requested to guide the Earl and Doctor to the Elms to supper, when a roast snow-white Royal peacock was placed before them as a special mark of honour, at the Venerable Archdeacon Browne's hospitable table. It turned out to be such a wild night, that Mrs. Browne insisted on the Earl remaining for the night. He was given the guest's room, and when asked by the Archdeacon next morning how he had slept, he laughingly replied that the middle part of his anatomy was most comfortable, but a foot or so at each extremity projected. The venerable piece of furniture, imported probably in the 'thirties, is still known as "The Earl's Bed."

Charlotte Brown

The next afternoon he went to Maori gatherings at Matapihi and Maungatapu. The visitors asked me what birds those were that were uttering such discordant noises, and they seemed surprised when I said they were English peacocks; that their cries were a certain portent of rain and bad weather, also that the natives kept numbers of them. The Doctor thereupon repeated Voltaire's description of the bird:--

The plumage of an angel,
The voice of a devil,
And the guts of a thief.

I fancied I noticed a kind of reserve between my white companions and myself. Next day I discovered that the bird of ill omen was the cause. While I was absent at Maketu some officious meddling pakeha, whose name I never could find out, had induced them to discard my advice, substituting for the rugs six peacock feathers, which they had purchased from a barber's shop for a shilling each, and a pound a piece of cheap tobacco.

I had my bag sent ashore, and never went near the yacht again. She sailed shortly afterwards for Tahiti, to be totally destroyed a few months later in Nukumbassanga passage, Ringold Islands, in the north-west of the Fiji group [Wakasamba , Fiji Group, 21 Oct 1870].

In "South Sea Bubbles," the writers lament the destruction of their South Sea treasures in the shipwreck, I only hope that all the Maori gifts went to the bottom with her, too.

So ended the beautiful "Albatross." But for those peacock feathers and an atrocious and insulting return for priceless gifts, I should have sailed with her, and have had the pleasure of adding a shipwreck to my other adventurous experiences.”

The 12 ‘picked crew’ of the Albatross, returned to New Zealand on the schooner Kauri. Earl Pembroke, Dr Kingsley and Captain Braund returned on the steamer Auckland.

References
Auckland Star, 9 February, 1897: 5.
'Gilbert Mair', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/gilbert-mair, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 8-Nov-2017.
Hawke’s Bay Herald, 10 February 1897: 3.
Mair, Gilbert, Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Brett, Auckland, 1923: 111-115.
Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, 29 November 1870: 2.

Illustrations
Forster, William, ‘The New Zealand topsail schooner “Shepherdess’’off Wellington in Cook Strait’, circa.1870, C-105-00, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.
Webster, Hartley, ‘Portrait of Major William Gilbert Mair’, circa 1860, PA2-1870, National Library of New Zealand.
Pelligrini, Carlo, Caricature of the 13th Earle of Pembroke, Vanity Fair, 14 July, 1888.
Photographer unknown, ‘Novelist Henry Kingsley’, in Lord, Walter, The Mirror of the Century, John Lane, London, 1906: 200.
Photographer unknown, “Hamiora Tu, Chief of Ngai Te Rangi’, PH-ALB-93-p6-1, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland.
Artist Unknown, ‘Charlotte Brown’, 2003.12, The Elms Foundation, Tauranga.

New Books: Transgressing Tikanga, by Trevor Bentley

During the 1800s published stories about Europeans captured by 'savages' thrilled and horrified British, Continental and North American audiences. Hugely popular and known as captivity narratives, they entertained urban readers and frightened those still living on colonial frontiers.

This anthology contains 20 first hand captivity accounts written or dictated by 16 European men and four women captured by iwi throughout New Zealand between 1816 and 1884. Some were seized when they unknowingly transgressed tikanga Maori (the customary laws of tapu, utu, mana and muru). Others were seized when they or their countrymen committed blatant acts of aggression against Maori. Two of the women (Maria Bennett and Mary Jane Briggs) were captured when they were shipwrecked. Bennett escaped and Briggs was freed by her captors.

The captives were held for weeks, months and in several cases for years before they were rescued or ransomed, for utu (redress) could be obtained by preserving life as well as taking it. Some escaped and others were freed by their captors. Of interest to Bay of Plenty readers will be the captivity of John Atkins (Whakatane, 1829), George Budd (Opotiki, 1834) and James Curlett (Tauranga, 1867).  A government surveyor seized at Paengaroa during the Tauranga Bush War of 1867, Curlett spent six months amongst Maori 'rebels' in the Kaimai Ranges before escaping and travelling to Cambridge.

Packed with drama and action, the narratives create a vivid picture of Maori and Pakeha interactions during the 1800s. They also provide rich insights into Maori life, including the principles of captivity and utu, social order, religious practices, everyday customs and the conduct of warfare. Each narrative is followed by a brief essay providing historical and cultural context.

This anthology makes an important contribution to understanding the cross-cultural tensions from which contemporary New Zealand society has emerged. Many anthologies containing first hand accounts by Europeans captured by American Indians and North Africa's Barbary pirates have been published overseas. Transgressing Tikanga is New Zealand's first anthology of Maori captivity narratives.

Trevor has a special interest in researching and writing about the interaction of Maori and Pakeha in pre-Treaty New Zealand. He is currently contributing a series of vignettes to the Society’s website titled ‘Early Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga.’ Transgressing Tikanga is Trevor’s sixth New Zealand history book.

The publisher's site (https://www.pottonandburton.co.nz) allows you to read a sample captivity narrative. The book is also  currently available in all local Paper Plus and Whitcoulls stores.

Ada's Birthday Book and the New History Curriculum

“Youth challenging norms” is one of the challenging sub-headings of the Royal Society of NZ/Te Apārangi’s critique [1] of the new history curriculum proposed for release into Aotearoa New Zealand’s schools next year [2].

At page 19 of its report, the panel of experts [3] comments:

The idea of youth ‘challenging social norms’ is a prominent part of the outcomes to the end of Year 10, but does not connect with any other aspects of the curriculum. Young people taking an active role in political activity is something almost completely limited to the period after World War II, and mostly from the beginning of the 1960s. A rare example from an earlier period is the involvement of the Te Aute students (who became known as the Young Maori Party) in promoting health reforms. Through behaviour, some groups, such as those described as larrikins, did challenge social norms, but for every larrikin there were many, many more enthusiastic attendees of Sunday schools. To look at the way young people debated and chose roles that challenged expectations for young men and young women can only be appreciated if we understand what these norms were in the first place. To do this, students would need to consider what it was like to be a young person and how this changed over time. This would have been a more appropriate topic in itself. ^[17]

^[17] Chris Brickell is just one of a number of historians who has written very productively about the history of ‘young people’ and youth culture across New Zealand history. For example: Chris Brickell, Teenagers: The rise of youth culture in New Zealand. Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2017.

In this group of pupils and teachers at Tauranga School [4] are three of the 16 contributors to Ada’s book and the brother of a fourth:  he is N McNaughton, third from left in the back row.  The girls are: Mabel Blick, second from left in the middle row; Ada herself, fourth from left in the same row; and, at the front, second from left, Alice Brain. The date is uncertain but, I would contend, at the earlier end of the range offered (1892-1896). [Editor's Note: Stewart Bros. operated a studio in Tauranga from 1890-1892]

In this blog I suggest that the Tauranga Historical Society is in possession of an excellent primary source of the ‘norms’ of likely attendees – I cannot verify their enthusiasm – of Sunday schools.  Three daughters of Wesleyan Joseph Brain, and thirteen of their friends and beaux, are represented in amusing variety in Ada Brain’s twenty-first birthday [5] present, a volume that records not only the birthdays of her acquaintances but also a series of “Confessions” where they disclose, with a truthfulness that cannot be taken for granted, matters ranging across who their heroes and heroines are, what the ideal man and woman is like, their favourite companion animal and their most admired statesman.  I have described some aspects of this volume in earlier blogs.  It is gratifying now to put Ada’s Birthday and Confessions Book forward as – potentially – a local resource whose importance might sit alongside the Mazengarb report of 1954 [6].

As with the milk bar gangs of the mid-twentieth century, there is almost no direct evidence of political activism in the ‘confessions’ of Ada’s friends made fifty years earlier.  But there are indications of political attitudes.  Lest this essay be cribbed by some earnest Year-Tenner of the future, I do no more than present a few examples of responses that, with further research and careful attention to context, in my view show some threads of

a huge story of human experience, and of formative ideas that emerge from the political, industrial, and social revolutions from the late eighteenth century onwards – events that continue to shape the modern world (where ‘modern’ is taken to characterise the long span from the c.1780s into the late twentieth century, a period that is the context for Māori–European interaction). [7]

For instance, there is the young fellow (Mr F R Koller) who, aged 21, found the peculiarity he was most able to tolerate to be “an intense hatred of wrong” and who thought immorality to be the most detestable vice.  He went on to be a head teacher [8] at Wade, later Silverdale, School.  It is to be hoped that his ardent spirit inspired his pupils and colleagues. 

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Alice Brain, 18 years old at the time, claimed, possibly mischievously,  “Te Kuiti” to be her favourite hero “in fiction” and the “D. of Wellington” and Florence Nightingale to be her historical hero and heroine.  All names rather well known for challenging established ideas.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Then there is the enigmatic HineMoa, who would be seventy years old at her next birthday, but who evidently was part of a youthful social circle and whose “opinion of the girl of the period” was, well:  “Perfection”.  A senior woman affirming younger ones: the green shoots of feminism two years after women in New Zealand achieved the vote.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

“History can hurt”, the Royal Society report goes on to say.  I acknowledge that some of the light-hearted responses recorded in Ada’s book may cause pain to relatives and descendants of those who made their “Confessions” without any thought that later research might expose them to cool assessment and the judgment of hindsight.  For me, unconnected with any of them, Ada’s book offers invaluable insights into a tiny slice of Tauranga society cheerfully playing a parlour game.  In my view, for that alone, it has an intrinsic value for young students of history.  If they then care to follow some of the threads of meaning offered by the youth of yesteryears, they may find, in the admittedly unreliable responses, a real sense of excitement and a trace of the power of ideas.  

References

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[1] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf

[2] https://ssol.tki.org.nz/Have-your-say-on-Aotearoa-New-Zealand-s-histories-draft-curriculum-content

[3] Professor Charlotte Macdonald FRSNZ, Professor Michael Belgrave (co-convenors), Sir Tipene O’Regan CRSNZ, Emerita Professor Barbara Brookes, Associate Professor Damon Salesa FRSNZ, Sean Mallon, Emerita Professor Manying Ip FRSNZ, Dr Vincent O’Malley, Professor Jim McAloon, Dr Arini Loader (until June 2020), and Kahu Hotere.  Their report was independently reviewed by Emeritus Professor Atholl Anderson FRSNZ, Emeritus Professor Margaret Tennant FRSNZ, and Professor Tony Ballantyne FRSNZ.

[4] Tauranga City Libraries image 04-327. https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/29335

[5] 26 February 1895

[6] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-mazengarb-report-on-juvenile-moral-delinquency-is-released

[7] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf, p.15

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19091216.2.88

 

Tauranga District Federation of Women’s Institutes scrapbook, 1932-1984

From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

It was a surprise to find the signature of one of the most significant women of the 20th century in our archives (Ams 358/1, Box 569). What could such a famous figure as Madame Chiang Kai-shek/Soong Mei-ling have to do with Tauranga? In the Tauranga District Federation of Women’s Institutes scrapbook (‘T.D.F.W.I. Scraps of Interest!’), dating from 1932 to 1984, there are the usual Eisteddfod programmes, certificates, cards, and invitations, just as you would expect. Also, there are fragments of a typed letter dated August 29, 1947 and signed personally by Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the Headquarters of the Generalissimo, China. The letter was sent to thank the Federation for ‘their kind expressions of practical sympathy’: they had contributed to a cause that was dear to Madame Chiang’s heart, the welfare of Chinese war orphans, for whom she set up special schools and well-equipped orphanages.

Photograph taken by Stephanie Smith, Tauranga City Libraries, 19 March 2019

Soong Mei-ling, later Madame Chiang Kai-shek, lived a long and remarkable life: she was born in China in 1897 and died in New York, in 2003. She was the child of a wealthy Methodist businessman from Hainan. Educated in the United States, she spoke excellent, American-accented English, which was to help smooth the path of her international diplomatic efforts. In 1927 she married Chiang Kai-shek, thus beginning a close 48-year political partnership. Chiang became leader of the nationalist Kuomintang party and ‘Generalissimo’ of China, and his wife was a major contributor to his success. She reached out to the world beyond China, touring the United States several times to drum up support for the party’s war effort, and becoming internationally popular in the process. However, the tides of history turned against the Kuomintang and after defeat by Mao Tse-tung’s Communists in the civil war of 1949, the Chiangs fled to Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975. At this point Madame Chiang moved to the United States.

Soong Mei-ling, image, from Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed March 9, 2021

Sources: 

Britannica Library, s.v. "Soong family," accessed March 9, 2021
Britannica Library, s.v. "Soong Mei-ling," accessed March 9, 2021 
Britannica Library, s.v. "Chiang Kai-shek," accessed March 9, 2021

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This archival item is on our schedule for digitisation, and will be added to Pae Korokī once digitised. For more information about other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: Research@tauranga.govt.nz

Written by Stephanie Smith, former archivist at Tauranga City Library.