Summer Heartbreak Remembered 120 years on

 

Boer War veterans with enteric fever return to New Zealand
The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies Journal, 22 September 1900
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Ref. NZG-19000922-0544-01

“In January 1903, a great blow struck this little town when an epidemic of enteric fever swept through the district carrying off our baby sister, as well as dozens of other children. This might have been the aftermath of the Boer War – or caused by impure water supply but as we were still using individual tank or well water the latter could hardly be blamed. However, the community mourned this tragedy for a long time.”[i]

Historian Jinty Rorke once told me that she approached oral histories and personal reminiscences with a degree of caution, wary of incorrect facts and false memories obscuring events that had occurred years prior. Recently I was reminded of Jinty’s words when I came across this quote in a 1963 Tauranga Historical Society journal. Surely, dozens of Tauranga children dying of enteric fever over the course of a single month would be a well-remembered and sad chapter in our town’s history - even if it occurred more than 100 years ago.[ii] I knew I needed to investigate, especially as, in my experience, truth can dwell within the fallibility of memory.

Learning the name of the baby sister ‘carried off’ was my starting point. Fortunately, the writer, Mrs Rennie Gordon, provided a clue in the form of her maiden name - Daines.[iii]  A search of the Bay of Plenty Times produced this death notice: [iv]

The same edition of the paper also yielded information supporting Mrs Gordon’s account - an article which made it clear that Laura was one of several children who died of a ‘dysenteric complaint’ at the beginning of 1903:[v]

 

Laura is buried in the Catholic Cemetery with her parents Edward and Katie Daines. The first image was taken several years ago and the second is the current state. (Images courtesy of Fiona Kean, Private Collection & https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/council/services/cemeteries/cemeteries-search)

Further research produced the names of several children, amongst the pakeha population, who died of the ‘complaint’ in January 1903:

Edward Francis Castaing (aged 7 months)

Arthur Harold Jackson Smith (aged 4 years)

Robert (Roddie) Henry Smallbone (aged 5 years)

Frances (Fanny) Constance (aged 13 months)

Tom Eric Griffith (aged 4 months)

More deaths occurred in the ensuing months, and it seems likely the true number will never be known. [vi] However, the Department of Public Health Report for 1902-1903 documented that:

“Tauranga Borough has suffered, like Rotorua, from an outbreak of diarrhoea, especially among children; sixteen deaths occurring from this cause in six months. This, in a population of a thousand persons, shows an alarmingly high death rate.”[vii]

The deaths were not attributed to enteric fever but were believed to have been the result of summer diarrhoea - a worldwide phenomenon whose cause is still not fully understood:[viii]

“In January, February, and March 1903 an unusual number of cases of diarrhoea occurred in Tauranga and Rotorua, the illness being severe and of a dysenteric type … the sufferers were chiefly children and a number of deaths occurred in both places. Probably this is more of the nature of the summer diarrhoea commonly found in places where there is pollution of the soil by sewage, as this condition obtains in both Tauranga and Rotorua … In conclusion I would again draw attention to the necessity for placing acute diarrhoea on the list of notifiable diseases, since it is only by chance reports that serious outbreaks are discovered.”[ix]

At this point it would be natural to wonder what was done in Tauranga to combat the spread of the disease and to save lives. According to the Health Department’s report, very little: “Recommendations to the Council as to improvements in the night-soil service, and the protection of public wells, have not resulted in any action being taken.”[x] This is corroborated by a politically motivated letter to the editor written in April 1903. The writer, M. J. Stewart, asserts that Councillors were more concerned about keeping rates low than saving young lives:

“At the coming elections will the people of Tauranga, with whom the onus lies, return only men to the Council who will stop the sacrifice of little children to the Moloch of low rates and the party vote?[xi] It is deplorable that party should enter into a question of life and death at all, but it is a plain fact that one side stands for the Rights of Man and one for the Rights of Property, and there is no sign that those in the latter, who run the Council, have any conception that on their heads is the responsibility for the Massacre of the Innocents by municipal neglect of plain duty. It is deeply to be hoped that the sufferers will only choose Councillors of a stamp to whom sanitation and not cheapness will be the first object.”[xii]

Laura’s death had a significant impact on her older sister Rennie, who never forgot about her family’s loss, or the losses suffered by other Tauranga families in the summer of 1903. And although 60 years later all the facts of the tragedy might not have been at her disposal, the heartbreak she felt was. Rennie’s memories give us a glimpse of what she experienced and allow us to better understand how communities are changed - or not changed - by heartbreak such as this. Perhaps in one-hundred-and twenty-years’ time those looking back at the impact of coronavirus will turn to oral histories and personal reminiscences for the same reason.

References

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[i] Mrs D.L. Gordon, ‘My Story – And Yours, Perhaps’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, No.17, 1963.

[ii] Enteric fever or typhoid fever is caused by eating food or drinking fluid contaminated with Salmonella typhi bacteria. It can cause high temperatures, stomach pain, constipation, or diarrhoea.

[iii] Rennie Daines (b.1891) married Douglas Gordon in December 1946. Rennie was a well-known teacher and local identity.

[iv] Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4405, 2 February 1903.

[v] Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4405, 2 February 1903.

[vi] Percy Edward Wayte (aged 11 months), Susan McDowell (aged 2 years 11 months), Christina Victoria (aged 1 year 9 months), Madge Haliday (aged 5 years), Henry Tanner (aged 2 years 10 months).

[vii] Department of Public Health (Report of the), By the Chief Health Officer, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1903 Session I, H-31, (page 25).

[viii] For more information on summer diarrhoea see ‘The phenomenon of summer diarrhea [sic] and its waning, 1910-1930’ by American academics Anderson, Rees and Wang www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8112734/ 

[ix] Department of Public Health (Report of The), By the Chief Health Officer, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1903 Session I, H-31, (page 9-10).

[x] Department of Public Health (Report of The), By the Chief Health Officer, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1903 Session I, H-31, (page 25).

[xi] “A Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice” – Britannica.

[xii] Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4436, 17 April 1903.

John Macquarters (1869-1915)

Representatives of the Tauranga Mounted Rifles selected to form part of the Royal escort to Rotorua
Toned silver gelatin print on album page, by John Macquarters, Tauranga, May 1901
Courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0299/08 (Gifted by V. Simon)

This group portrait of eight members of the Tauranga Mounted Rifles was captured in May 1901 on the eve of their departure for Rotorua, where they were to form a guard of honour to the Duke of Cornwall during his Royal visit to the Hot Lakes District. The photograph was taken – as evidenced from the byline of the same image published in the Auckland Weekly News Supplement on 31 May (Auckland Libraries Heritage Images Ref. AWNS-19010531-11-3) – by John Macquarters. A somewhat disgruntled member of the unit later calculated that, since “the only duty this force performed was to present arms at the railway station for about five minutes, each man must have cost the country at least 4/6 per minute for the trip.”

The Tauranga Mounted Rifles were part of a country-wide effort to recruit and train militias, from which volunteers could be drawn to serve in the ten contingents of mounted riflemen that New Zealand sent to fight in the Boer War.

Te Puna School and pupils, with teacher Winnie Morley, c1900
Copy print of original mounted silver gelatin print, by John Macquarters
Courtesy of Tauranga Library, Pae Koroki Ref. 06-175

Macquarters was present at a company parade in Te Puke in December 1900, where he took photos of players of the Lawn Tennis Club. He had joined the ranks of the Tauranga Mounted Rifles by April 1901, when he was among those who met to form the Tauranga Football Club. In mid-September that year he attended a meeting of the organizing committee for a fundraising Grand Volunteer Ball to be given by the T.M.R. at the Theatre Royal two weeks later. Although he was active photographically, few photographs have survived from this period. The portrait of pupils and teacher at Te Puna School (above) is a copy print, and therefore difficult to date accurately, but was presumably taken around this time.

Sergeant Allan Bell, Opotiki Mounted Rifles, c. late 1902 - 1903
Copy film negative of original mounted silver gelatin print, by John Macquarters, Opotiki
Image courtesy of Whakatāne Museum, Ref. F277-1

Macquarters moved to Opotiki between late 1901 and late 1902. His portrait of Sergeant Allan Bell shows the latter wearing the typical uniform of a mounted rifleman, with slouch hat, 1896 pattern bandolier and two silver fern collar badges issued to troops serving in the South African (Boer) War. Allan Bell went overseas with the 9th Contingent in March 1902, and presumably returned soon after the end of the war in June-July that year. Bell participated in a shooting match between the O.M.R. and the T.M.R. in November 1902, when he may have posed for this portrait. Macquarters was settled enough in Opotiki by then to have had personalized card mounts printed.

McGowan child, c. 1890s
Glass plate copy negative by Tyree Studios, Nelson,
of a carte de visite portrait taken by Macquarters and Ray, Waimate
Courtesy of Nelson Provincial Museum, Ref. 51400

John Thomas Macquarters was born c. 1869 in Manchester, England and emigrated to New Zealand on board the RMS Coptic – arriving in December 1891 – following his father Joseph (1838-1926) and an elder brother William Henry (1862-1928). Although he was a glass salesman in England, like his father, he was working as a photographer in Fairlie, Canterbury by 1896. It is conceivable that he was one half of the partnership of “Macquarters & Ray” of Waimate, who produced the carte de visite portrait of an unidentified child shown above.

By May 1895 he was in Poverty Bay. He is listed as a photographer in Gisborne in 1896, although clearly struggling, as evidenced by the court claims for goods delivered and work done by fellow cameraman John Robb - £8 in September 1898, more than £18 a year later. It seems unsurprising that he moved on to the Bay of Plenty soon after.

Opening up the East Coast Country: A Settler’s Camp in the Waioeka Block
Photographed by John Macquarters, Published in the Auckland Weekly News, 5 Sep 1907
Image courtesy of Auckland Libraries Heritage Images, Ref. AWNS-19070912-3-2

His sojourn in the Eastern Bay of Plenty was the most productive period of his career, if not entirely economically successful. Creditors continued to pursue him through the courts, many related to bills from photographic suppliers. Between May 1903 and September 1907 he made several contributions to the Auckland Weekly News and New Zealand Graphic depicting pakeha settlers “opening up” the bush for sawmilling and farming activities in the Motu and Waioeka valleys. He also photographed the settlers engaged in leisure time pursuits, such as pheasant shooting (June 1905) and visiting the active volcano Whakaari (March 1906).

Rua Kenana’s Visit to Taneauta, 1907
Mounted silver gelatin print by John Macquarters, Opotiki
Courtesy of Whakatāne Museum, Ref. P10736

Macquarters documented important local events, such as the unveiling of a memorial at Maraenui on 23 March 1905 by Native Minister James Carroll – dedicated to 16 boys and girls and two adults of Te Whanau-a-Apanui drowned whilst crossing the Motu River in August 1900 – the visit of Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana to Taneatua in 1907 (shown above), and the stranding of the coastal steamer Ngatiawa on the Opotiki Bar between 1 and 6 January 1909.

James Edward Durand (1869-1913) and Fortunita Haua (1886-1974) on their wedding day, 1904
Mounted silver gelatin print by John Macquarters, Opotiki
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library, Pae Koroki Ref. 04-169

He also undertook regular commissions, including portraits of individuals, couples and groups. The bulk of the photos mounted on his printed cardstock surviving in institutional collections around the country are of this type. Although the portrait shown above is a studio portrait, others using this painted backdrop of an idyllic rural scene are more hastily arranged, revealing floors of bare earth or rough wooden fences, indicating that they were taken outdoors. Other examples of group portraits include a class of girls at Opotiki School (c.1907) and a men’s cricket team (c.1911).

St Mary’s Convent and Church, Opotiki, c.1910-1915
Hand-coloured postcard published by The Price Photo Co., Auckland, W.A.P. Series, 2202D
Image courtesy of Whakatāne Museum, Ref. P1818

No postcards imprinted with his name have been found during this study. However, there were a number of postcards of Opotiki street views taken during the time that he was the only resident photographer, and some of these may be attributable to him. It is conceivable, for example, that he took at least some of the views of Opotiki published by The Price Photo Co. of Auckland as the W.A.P. Series (for William Arthur Price). Perhaps the “Newell Series” of postcards sold by Opotiki stationer William Jabez Newell could also have been taken by Macquarters. He may well have decided that selling the glass plate negatives of his scenes for quick money was a better option, considering his straightened circumstances, than the long-term proposition of printing and selling them himself.

As the photographer Charles Henry Harris had discovered before him in the late 1890s, the small settlement of Opotiki just could not provide sufficient trade for a full-time photographic business to thrive. He ventured further afield, attempting a partnership with C. James in Taneatua in 1911, but even that was short-lived. When a fire burnt down an entire Opotiki block, including his studio, on the night of Sunday 9 November 1913, and with suppliers still pursuing him for payment of photographic materials that had presumably been lost in the conflagration, that was possibly the last straw, and Macquarters moved on.

By August 1914 John Macquarters was in Morrinsville, where his father was living; his elder brother lived in Te Aroha by then. His latest debt, to G.W. Bennett & Co. photographic suppliers of Auckland had grown to over £31, equivalent to roughly $10,000 today. He died nine months later in Hamilton, on 19 May 1915, of asphyxia (pneumonia) and was buried in Hamilton West cemetery. Joseph Macquarters advertised the sale of his late son’s photographic business for £100 in the New Zealand Herald three weeks later. John Macquarters did not marry, and left no known issue.

Acknowledgements

I’m very grateful for assistance from staff of the Tauranga Library’s Ngā Wāhi Rangahau and Fiona Kean of the Tauranga Heritage Collection for their assistance in researching this article. An article of this breadth could not have even been contemplated without access to the following online collections: Alexander Turnbull Library, Auckland Library Heritage Images, Auckland Museum, Nelson Provincial Museum, Tauranga Library (Pae Korokī) and Tauranga Heritage Collection. I’d like to acknowledge my employer, Whakatāne Museum, for permission to reproduce images of photographs from their collection, for which an online portal is currently planned. Maree Fagan’s family tree including her great-great-grandfather William Henry Macquarters also proved very useful.

References

Auckland Library Photographers Database
Bradford Bandolier, New Zealand History, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/bradford-bandolier, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 18-Aug-2014
Death Certificate for John Macquarters, New Zealand Registrar of Births, Deaths & Marriages
Embarkation Database, New History, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/soldier/allan-bell (Ministry for Culture and Heritage)
Fagan Family Tree by Maree Fagan on Ancestry
Hamilton Cemetery interment records from Hamilton City Council
Hamilton West Cemetery Memorials from FindaGrave
Censuses, Parish Registers, Electoral Rolls, Directories and other databases from Ancestry
Papers Past Newspapers from National Library of New Zealand
New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973 from Family Search
Reserve Bank of New Zealand Te Pūtea Matua Inflation Calculator
South African War Service Records on Archway from Archives New Zealand