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| 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]
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.
[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.
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