On keeping warm

Aotearoa New Zealand’s houses are notoriously cold. Overseas visitors are bemused – or outraged – by the general absence of central heating and double-glazing (the latter is changing, the former not so much), by our propensity to heat just one room in a house and the general attitude that, really, you should just put another layer on and get over it – woolly jerseys were invented for a reason, right? (See this blog post from the Young Adventuress for the full rant, ahem, details). They’re not wrong. Our houses are cold. There’s not been a great deal of examination of the underlying reasons why this might be the case (the practical reasons are clear). One article I found during the research for this blog post noted that “it’s not customary for us [New Zealanders] to have central heating” (New Zealand Herald 2/5/2017) – custom (or tradition) is well-established as a generally terrible reason for doing or not doing something. It’s also not a particularly satisfactory explanation – central heating wasn’t custom in England or the USA either, until it became so. Anyway, the same article goes on to note that the cost of central (or more comprehensive) heating is also prohibitive for many (New Zealand Herald 2/5/2017) – particularly when you need not just to install a better heating system, but, to make it effective, double-glazing and insulation.

In spite of this preamble, I’m not here to offer an exploration of why our houses are so poorly heated. Instead, I have a surprise for you. Central heating! In a 19th century house! In Christchurch! And, while it may not have been original, it probably dated to c.1900 (when the house was added to substantially). Actually, it was a double surprise, because the house also had a cellar (very unusual in Christchurch, due to the exceptionally high water table in the 19th century).

The central heating unit found in the cellar under a Christchurch house. The cellar was constructed when the house was built, in the early 1860s. The central heating was added to the house later, possibly in c.1900.

The pipework associated with the central heating unit (the firebox and chimney are at extreme left.

In fact, this central heating unit was found in the cellar of a house that Christchurch residents are likely to be familiar with. Only the brick part of the house was demolished following the earthquakes, leaving the timber front half (designed by Samuel Hurst Seager) standing. This building is a Category I historic place, and its redevelopment later featured on Grand Designs NZ. The brick part of the house was just as interesting, to my mind. Built in the early 1860s for Dugald and Mary Macfarlane, it was a saltbox cottage in form. While this is a very basic and unassuming house form, the house itself was large (12 rooms – this would have made it large at any point in 19th century Christchurch, let alone the early 1860s) and brick – also fairly unusual for that time (and, also, throughout most of the 19th century in Christchurch). So, yes, it’s reasonable to assume it was built by someone wealthy. Dugald was a retired farmer, and he and Mary moved to Christchurch from rural Canterbury in the early 1860s, and Dugald established a wine and spirit business with their sons.

An advertisement for Dugald Macfarlane’s wine business. Note the reference to their cellars. Image: Lyttelton Times 17/9/1864: 6.

But what of this central heating unit? Well, it was located at one end of the cellar. The cellar itself was under the early 1860s part of the house. The central heating unit consisted of a firebox, set into large blocks of stone, with an opening for feeding it, and a chimney above, which also have a small metal-covered opening. The firebox was connected to metal pipes, which would have carried hot water around the house, and there would once have been a cistern to hold water too. The pipes visible at the time of recording ran under the c.1900 part of the house (and there was no evidence to suggest that pipes had run through the 1860s part), suggesting that this was the date the unit was installed. The angle and arrangement of the pipes suggests that they were connected to radiators (P. Petchey, pers. comm.). There was a decorative grate in the wooden floor above the cellar, which would presumably have allowed some heat to radiate up through the floorboards into the room above.

The decorative grate in the floor in the room above the cellar.

But here’s the most frustrating thing. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that the firebox has some words on it, and these are quite legible, reading “All Night / No 2”. There are some more words underneath this, but regrettably they’re indecipherable (and were at the time of recording). The frustrating aspect is that googling has turned up just one result for “All Night No 2”. Which seems almost impossible. It’s also not a particularly helpful result, although I guess it does confirm that I’m not making things up. To add to my frustrations, searching 19th and early 20th century newspapers for more information about the use of radiators in Christchurch also proved difficult – the term ‘radiator’ was used to describe standalone heaters, as well as what we might think of as radiators today.

Detail of the firebox, showing the name “All Night No 2”.

So I can’t actually tell you a great deal about this particular radiator, or the use of radiators in general in Christchurch, although I would note that institutions like the hospital installed them in the early 20th century and several theatres proudly advertised their use of them – clearly a good marketing strategy (Lyttelton Times 26/4/1909: 1, Press 3/4/1909: 13, 8/7/1911: 1). Talking with colleagues indicated that no one else had seen anything like this in 19th or early 20th century buildings. But! This is not the only example of central heating that I’ve come across in Canterbury. If you should venture to the site of the Mt Harper ice rink (and if you’re able to, I’d strongly encourage you to – it’s one of my all-time favourite archaeological sites), you will find a house built in the early 1930s, complete with central heating.

And the moral of this story? Well, there isn’t really one. It serves to prove that, yes, central heating was very unusual in 19th and early 20th century Christchurch, but it did exist. It’s frustrating not to be able to date when this particular system was installed, but if it was in c.1900, it was at the time that Samuel Hurst Seager made his substantial addition to the house, and may reflect a level of experimentation by the architect (I don’t have any information to suggest that Samuel Hurst Seager regularly installed central heating in his houses). But also, his wife – Hester, sister to the more famous Helen – was involved with the School of Domestic Instruction. Amongst other things, said school sought to have housewifery recognised as a profession, and thus improve the status of that role (yes, this – and Hester – are absolutely worth a blog post in their own right). I cannot help but feel that there could be a connection between professionalising the house and installing central heating. Yes, it’s a mighty long bow to draw, but the possibility feels at least worth thinking about.

Katharine Watson

References

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Press. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Preston, Nikki, 2017. Cost and custom blamed for lack of central heating in NZ homes. New Zealand Herald, [online] 2 May. Available at: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/cost-and-custom-blamed-for-lack-of-central-heating-in-nz-homes/L6QK3GPZWTD3E7JZKN5RR7FH3Q/ [Accessed 18 April 2024].

Straight to gaol

“The practice of inflicting pain on children as punishment was widely accepted in Pakeha [sic] society as an essential child-raising tool for parents and other caregivers” (Maclean 2006: 7). It’s a confronting statement, and refers to 19th century New Zealand, where, indeed, the right to physically punish a child was enshrined in law. Somewhat ironically (to 21st century eyes), a section of the Children’s Protection Act 1890 stated that “[n]othing in this Act contained shall be construed to take away or affect the right of any parent, teacher, or other person having the lawful control or charge of a child to administer reasonable punishment to such child.” This law reflected broad societal acceptance amongst Pākehā of the practice of physically punishing children, as well as preserving the right of the courts to sentence a child to such a punishment.

Not only were physical punishments handed out to alarmingly young children in 19th century New Zealand (and numerous other countries), so too were sentences of incarceration. These punishments reflected a society – and legal system – that saw little difference between children and adults and did not recognise that children might be both more vulnerable than adults and less able to think through the implications and rights and wrongs of their actions. These attitudes began to change towards the end of the 19th century with the passage of the 1893 Criminal Code Act. With this act, children under seven could no longer be prosecuted for their actions, while those aged between seven and 14 could only be prosecuted if there was evidence that they knew they were doing wrong (Watt 2003: 7). 

These legislative changes, though, came too late for Robert Bruce Hardie. Robert was the son of Andrew and Maria Hardie, born in Shoreditch (not Scotland, as you might have expected with that name) in 1868, the fourth of their eight children (only six of whom survived childhood; Ancestry 2006-24). The Hardie family arrived in Christchurch in 1874 and by 1879 had bought land and built a very small house (just over 50 square metres!) in the Avon loop, on the outskirts of central Christchurch. It is through this house that Robert came to my attention. Robert’s first encounter with the law was in 1878, when he was arrested and charged with stealing a horse blanket and some apples. During the court case that followed, the policeman involved described Robert as a good boy who’d not been in trouble with the law before but noted that he was in “bad health”. Given these mitigating circumstances, he was sentenced to six hours in prison (Star (Christchurch) 1/11/1878: 3). He was 10.

The house that Andrew and Maria Hardie built in the Avon loop, in Christchurch (the door and windows had been replaced in the early 20th century). Andrew and Maria built this small house in 1879, and lived here until 1886. Image: P. Mitchell, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

Prison in this case was probably the rather forbidding Addington Gaol. Surprisingly little has been written about the history and operation of this gaol, and it is not clear how children imprisoned there were treated. Late in the 1870s, it was noted that it was difficult to keep boys in the gaol separate from other prisoners there, implying that this was at least the intention, if one that was not always observed (Lyttelton Times 7/10/1879: 6).

The only surviving building from Addington Gaol, in 2005 (the building is now a backpackers). In the same way that little has been written about the history of gaol, there are surprisingly few photographs of it. Image: Wikipedia.

If this short spell in prison had been intended to deter Robert from future criminal behaviour, it wasn’t successful. The following year, he was in trouble with the law again, this time for being involved in the theft of some bags. While some of the other boys involved were sent to Burnham Industrial School, Robert and one other received a harsher punishment – they could not be sent to the school because they had previous criminal convictions (Globe 29/5/1879: 3). Burnham Industrial School had been established in 1873, under the Neglected and Criminal Children Act 1867 (HNZPT 2023). Under this act, neglected children were to be sent to industrial schools (to receive an education and vocational training), and ‘criminal’ children to reformatory schools, recognising the different circumstances leading to their situation, and to prevent the latter influencing the former (Globe 8/7/1881: 2). In reality, however, both ‘types’ of children were often sent to the same institution, as can be seen in the case of Robert’s contemporaries.

Robert, however, was less fortunate. This time, he was sentenced to 24 hours in prison, and 24 lashes with the cat-o’-nine tails (Globe 29/5/1879: 3). No, I didn’t know that the cat-o’-nine tails was a legal punishment for crimes in New Zealand either. Until 1941 (NZHistory n.d.). I still find it somewhat mind-boggling that ‘the cat’, which was specifically designed to inflict “intense pain”, could fall within the parameters of ‘reasonable force’ (MHNSW 2024). (And it feels like delving into this particular issue might provide some insight into Aotearoa’s current high rates of child abuse.) Maria, Robert’s mother, observed during the court case that “if he got a good flogging it would do him good,” reflecting the broader societal view that physical punishment was not only appropriate, but beneficial (Globe 29/5/1879: 3). In case you’ve missed it, I’d like to state here that Robert was just 11. Subsequent events would prove Maria quite wrong.

A cat-o’-nine tails, held by the New Zealand Police Museum. The label on it states that it was authorised for use by Minister of Justice A. L. Herdman on 6 October 1913. Image: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

Robert appeared before the court again several times over the succeeding years, always for petty thefts (e.g. Star (Christchurch) 28/12/1880: 1, Lyttelton Times 25/3/1881: 3). On most occasions, he was both incarcerated and whipped, with the lengthiest imprisonment being for 3 months, to be accompanied by 18 lashes at the beginning and end of the sentence (Lyttelton Times 19/8/1879: 3). He was 11. A notable exception came in March 1881 when, rather than being imprisoned, his father was instructed to “chastise” him – given what had gone before, I assume that this was an instruction for Andrew give him a flogging and thus that this is state-sanctioned violence by a parent against a child (Lyttelton Times 25/3/1881: 3). I may be reading too much into this, but I doubt that a stern telling-off was going to be considered sufficient chastisement. Later that same year, Robert was sent to the Caversham Industrial School (in Dunedin) for three years, and this brought his youthful offending to an end (Globe 13/7/1881: 3). It’s not clear why Robert was sent to the Caversham school and not Burnham, but it may have been because Burnham would not accept children with a criminal conviction (Globe 8/7/1881: 2).

Robert’s offending may have come to an end at this point, but the story doesn’t end here. In 1897, his children, Dorothy (aged five) and Bland (three) were removed from his care and taken to Burnham Industrial School, after being found in the company of their drunk father (described as a “habitual drunkard”) and other drunk men and women, including a prostitute (Star (Christchurch) 26/1/1897: 3). Their mother had died the previous year (BDM Online n.d.).

From a 21st century perspective, there are many details of this story that are shocking. The sheer brutality of the punishments meted out to Robert Hardie are hard to fathom, and seem completely out of proportion to his crimes. They reflect a world where it was deemed appropriate for the state to undertake the painful physical punishment of its citizens, and where such punishments were seen as a deterrent. Not only did the state carry out these punishments, it also enabled parents and other caregivers to do the same (see the work of Debra Powell (2012) for a discussion of the tensions that this led to when it came to courts prosecuting caregivers for child abuse). Aside from the brutality, what is most notable for me is that there was no attempt at reform – which, to be honest, feels like a loaded, paternalistic word. What I mean is that there was no attempt to change Robert’s circumstances, there was only punishment: there was no examination of the broader context in which his offending was carried out, or the reasons for, or attempts to change this. It was just straight to punishment. Actually, literally, straight to gaol. Which would have disrupted his education – if, in fact, he was attending school (legally, he should have been, but it is not clear whether or not this was the case) – and thus affecting his future opportunities. This situation reflects very different attitudes from those that guide our justice system today but, perhaps, in some of what I have outlined can be seen some of – if not the roots – at least the symptoms of our horrifying child abuse statistics.

Katharine Watson

References

Ancestry, 2006-2024. Andrew Douglas Hardie. Ancestry. [online] Available at: https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/person/tree/14687068/person/148513297/facts?_phsrc=AxX355&_phstart=successSource [Accessed 21 March 2024]. 

BDM Online, n.d. Death search – Lillian Annie Hardie. Births, Deaths & Marriages Online. [online] Available at: https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/search/search?path=%2FqueryEntry.m%3Ftype%3Ddeaths [Accessed 21 March 2024].

HNZPT, 2023. Burnham Camp Post Office. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. [online] Available at: https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/3063/Burnham%20Camp%20Post%20Office [Accessed 21 March 2023].

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Maclean, Sally, 2006. Child cruelty or reasonable punishment? A case study of the operation of the law and the courts 1883-1903. New Zealand Journal of History 40(1): 7-24.

MHNSW, 2024. Cat-o’-nine-tails. Museums of History NSW. [online] Available at: https://mhnsw.au/stories/convict-sydney/cat-o-nine-tails/ [Accessed 21 March 2024].

NZHistory, n.d. Flogging and whipping abolished. New Zealand History – Nga korero a ipurangi a Aotearoa. [online] Available at: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/flogging-whipping-abolished [Accessed 21 March 2024].

Powell, Debra, 2012. Reading past cases of child cruelty in the present: the use of the parental right to discipline in New Zealand court trials, 1890–1902. In: Kirkby, Dianne (ed.). Past Law, Present Histories. Australian National University e-Press, pp. 107-124.

Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Watt, Emily, 2003. A history of youth justice in New Zealand. Unpublished report prepared for Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft.

Banner image: Canterbury Stories.

Gendered marketing: so terrible it's funny, until you think about it properly

A short post in honour of International Women’s Day (which was on Friday, but eh, still relevant).

There are several ways that we can find the stories of women’s lives through material culture, from the way that women are depicted on artefacts, their choices and tastes as consumers and, most pertinent to this post, the way that they are framed as a consumer market through advertising. Advertising can be its own form of social commentary, drawing attention to – often over-inflated or sensationalised – contemporary assumptions about people’s worries, cares, likes and dislikes and daily habits. It can also be terribly funny or simply just terrible and I have absolutely no doubt that people will be saying the same thing about our advertising culture 150 years from now.

Not relevant to anything in this post, but genuinely one of my favourite historic advertisements. Their eyes, dear god, their eyes. Image: Otago Daily Times 24/08/1950: 9).

We have many examples of products marketed to women that come up in the course of archaeological research (often these are just incidental adverts that come up when looking for something else, like how too much salt and too much jealousy might cause the bust to ‘fall ’; Pelorus Guardian and Miners’ Advocate 25/03/1898: 6). The one I’d like to talk about today is a ‘medicated’ tonic wine from the early twentieth century, specifically a brand called ‘Vibrona, The Ideal Tonic’, a bottle of which was found on a site in Hereford Street. Vibrona, along with other tonic wines, was marketed to women (particularly middle-class women), through women’s magazines and through repeated reference to its aid in alleviating ‘female complaints’ – a generic term that referenced everything from menstrual pain, breastfeeding pain, post-natal health issues and “maternity weakness”, to general lethargy and nervous disorders (Loeb 2020; Thames Star 17/07/1909: 4; National Library of Medicine 2024). Even when women, or their complaints, weren’t referenced by name, women’s faces were still used in the advertisements, making the intended customer base very clear (Timaru Herald 21/10/1935: 10).  

Feeling saggy? Image: Timaru Herald 21/10/1935: 10.

These tonic wines could be up to 15-20% alcohol, higher than most non-fortified wines today, but their ‘medicated’ label deliberately misled consumers into thinking that the harmful aspects of the ‘wine’ had been removed (Loeb 2020; British Medical Journal 29/05/1909: 1307-1309). Rhetoric of the day included accounts of teetotallers being duped into consuming alcohol thanks to the medicated moniker (Loeb 2020). In this, tonic wines were similar to many patent medicines and remedies, which also claimed curative properties but could primarily be composed of alcohol (perhaps with some herbs and sugar as a disguise). Apparently, tonic wines themselves contained a range of ingredients alongside the alcohol, from beef extract, malt extract and cocoa leaves to quinine and cocaine (were you expecting cocaine to round out that list? In my experience of late nineteenth and early twentieth century medicines, you should quite frequently expect cocaine…; Loeb 2020; BMJ 29/05/1909: 1307-1309). Vibrona itself seems to have contained chinchona bark, from which we get quinine, the anti-malarial. A British Medical Journal analysis in 1909 suggested that Vibrona did contain a small proportion of chinchona bark (alongside almost 20% alcohol, but with the quinine itself removed – although this was disputed by the manufacturers the following month (BMJ 29/05/1909: 1307-1309; 19/06/1909: 1491). The English manufacturers, Fletcher, Fletcher and Co., did advertise Vibrona as a good option for those customers who normally got a headache from quinine. Read into that what you will…

Tonic wines were subject to campaigning by temperance organisations in the early twentieth century, due to their misleading nature and the grey areas they occupied in British legislation about alcohol, which allowed medicated alcohol to be sold without a license. Temperance campaigning was also heavily based on a stated desire to protect women from their harmful effects (Loeb 2020). It was this last motivation that came to frame much of the narrative of their campaign: however much weight the other reasons for opposing the unlicensed sale of tonic wines had, it was their harm to women – and the need to protect women – that was chosen as a fundamental thread by which public and professional support for their regulation or prohibition might be generated. This narrative included “the spectre of female teetotallers soaked in liquor, dirty and lying in the gutter” (Loeb 2020: 16) and the framing of some women as gullible and easily misled into alcoholism by the recommendation of profit-driven chemists and druggists. It is worth noting here that the impact of alcoholism on women was a core tenet of the temperance movement, particularly the impact of men’s alcoholism on women’s lives – we can see it here in New Zealand history with the famous example of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which played a key role in achieving women’s suffrage in 1893. The impacts of alcoholism on women in general during the nineteenth century were very real, and the efforts of temperance campaigners to minimise this were anchored in a desire, that I am personally very grateful for, to materially and politically improve the lives of women for generations to come. That said, I think there are some interesting impressions to be taken from the story of Vibrona – and tonic wines – in particular, that show some of the different ways that we can read attitudes towards women in the past and the ways we have to be careful about using historical sources to do so.

A letter to the editor, written in 1898 by Fanny Cole, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the early 1900s, framing the ‘no license’ issue in terms of its impact on women, taken from the ‘And yet, she persisted’, blog post on Christchurch Uncovered. Image: Press 28/11/1898: 2).

To start with, marketing a medicated alcohol – a fairly generic remedy, when all is said and done – as a solution for the catch-all diagnosis of “women’s complaints” suggests to me an understanding of the consumer power of women, especially – in this case – middle-class women, but a lack of knowledge or interest in their health and all its variation beyond that generic grouping. This is not an uncommon refrain – we are still, today, reckoning with the way that women’s health issues have been ignored or generalised by the medical and pharmaceutical industries. It is also worth acknowledging that framing women as a consumer market is not just a positive recognition of women’s power as consumers – it also allows them to be forced into a somewhat narrow consumer stereotype, subject to the expectations of a patriarchal society (anyone else who has issues with the gendered lines of cosmetic and perfume marketing will know what I mean). Marketing along gendered lines, for both men and women, is very much about tapping into stereotypical and generalised expectations of what it means to be either in this society and, by doing so, it often reinforces those gender stereotypes back to us, thereby increasing their efficiency as a marketing technique (if you can’t tell, I’m a bit cynical and very irritated by this).

How DOES she stay so young? Also, I find the claim of “delicious wine” to be a bit suspect. Image: Jennings and Keers 2018.

On the other side of the tonic wine example, we also have the temperance movement’s use of the damsel in distress narrative when it came to policing the consumption of products like Vibrona, playing on attitudes towards women as people in need of protection, weak willed and gullible (check out Loeb 2020 for a much more nuanced discussion of this). This is where the danger of looking at history through the eyes of advertising comes in. Women are no more in need of protection, no more inherently weak-willed or gullible than any other gender, not now and not then. What we (and everyone else!) are in need of is enfranchisement and empowerment, to be valued and respected beyond the constraints of gender. It is no coincidence that this is part of where the temperance movement in New Zealand did lead, towards women’s suffrage and the ongoing fight for gender equality.

So, while using advertising and consumer culture as an insight into social attitudes and social commentary is interesting and can be really useful, it is by no means without its own biases and cannot be used uncritically. Always question the rhetoric. I want to end by acknowledging that working in a field that spends a lot of time researching the past can sometimes be a bit of a slog if you’re a woman (or a person of colour, or LGBTQ+, or any of the other groups of people that have historically suffered, been diminished and oppressed). It’s a little bit of an exercise in rolling your eyes, laughing at the more outlandish claims and learning how to moderate the frustration and anger and sadness and solidarity that inevitably strikes when you remember the actual women living with it all.  I can only hope we do them justice.

Jessie

References

British Medical Journal 1909. Online, available https://www.bmj.com/content

Jennings, C. and Keers, P., 2018. ‘The wines that made us (4): Sanatogen’, in Sediment. Online, available at https://sedimentblog.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-wines-that-made-us-4-sanatogen.html

Loeb, L., 2020. ‘Desperate housewives: The rise and fall of the campaign against medicated wines in twentieth-century Britain’, in Pharmaceutical Historian, Vol. 50(1): 16-25. Available at https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bshp/ph/2020/00000050/00000001/art00002?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf

Tapping, R. 2017. ‘Tonic wine’, in AJP: the Australian Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 98, p. 16.

To buy or to rent? Considering home ownership in 19th century Christchurch

House – and land – ownership. This was one of the factors that attracted European colonial settlers to New Zealand in the 19th century. Not surprising, really, when you think about the situation in England at the time (where most of those colonial settlers came from). There, property was a source not just of social status and power, but also of the ability to vote (for men…) and thus the ability to participate in the political system. And yet, it’s been estimated that, at the time, only 10% of houses in cities were occupied by their owners (most of whom were presumably from the upper classes). In the biggest cities, such as Birmingham and London, that proportion fell to just 1-2% of houses (Davison 2000: 12, 14, 16). In this context, it’s not surprising that home ownership took on an almost symbolic – and definitely political – importance for working class people. Nor is it surprising that members of the ruling elite, in turn, began to see working class home ownership as a threat to their power (Davison 2000: 9-11). Which brings me to this rather breathtaking quote from one John Robert Godley:

the age of equality is coming upon us, and our business is not so much to struggle against it, with a view to repulse it altogether, as to retard its progress and modify its effects…no man can look upon the state of our working classes; their ignorance in all which is important for them to know, the immense space which divides them in habits, tastes, pursuits, and feelings, from the rich; above all the widespread indifference to religious obligations, without trembling at the thought of their speedily acquiring political power.

             Quoted in McAloon 2000: 162.[1]

Such attitudes may well have contributed to the Canterbury Association’s decision to price the poorer settlers out of the property market through their sufficient price model. This was a model that quickly fell by the wayside, and home ownership was to become widespread among colonial settlers.

Home ownership was much more achievable in 19th century New Zealand for these colonial settlers than in their home countries due to the relatively cheap and abundant supply of land. Of course, this land was only cheap and abundant thanks to the means by which it was acquired from Māori by the various agents: sales for ludicrously small amounts of money (with conditions that then weren’t honoured) or war and raupatu (confiscation). This land might have been ‘cheap’ at the time, but the long-term consequences of Māori loss of land have been anything but.

While home ownership was more achievable, by no means everyone chose to rent, and home ownership would not have been an option for some. There are no statistics about the number of rentals in 19th century New Zealand (in fact, no such data exists until 1916, when nearly half of all homes were rented; Schrader 2013), and gaining a detailed understanding of the rental market and particularly the rental experience is difficult. Considering the houses that were rented out does, however, offer some insights into renting in Christchurch in the 19th century (I will return to the renters themselves shortly). For my PhD, I spent what felt like months doing statistical analyses (numbers and I, it’s not a happy relationship), resulting in exactly three paragraphs in my final thesis. And some tables. But it wasn’t a complete waste of time: now I can say with confidence that there were almost no statistically significant differences between rental houses and those built for owner-occupiers in 19th century Christchurch. In fact, the biggest difference was that rental properties were much more likely to be built in the central city than in the suburbs, whereas owner-occupier houses were pretty evenly split between the two areas. Which tells us something about the economics of building rental properties (bearing in mind the usual caveats about samples, and mine definitely had a geographic bias). But the houses themselves varied in the same way owner-occupier houses did, reflecting the range of people who rented, and their requirements.

The houses shown in the images above were all either built as rental properties or, as in the case of the first house shown, rented out after a period of being occupied by their owner . Images: P. Mitchell, M. Hennessey, F. Bradley, K. Webb, Ōtautahi Christchurch Archaeological Archive.

Researching tenants is much harder than researching houses, and the reasons for this are instructive. In the absence of diaries or letters, the easiest way to gain an understanding of someone’s life in 19th century Christchurch is through newspapers (it helps that these are freely available online, unlike some historical sources). But many people did not appear in the newspapers (although the number who did is surprising). Court cases would warrant an appearance, so too would advertising for servants (which women might do but obviously this required a certain level of wealth), advertising your business, appearing at ‘important’ social events, or being involved in public affairs or an organisation of some sort (meeting attendees’ names were often recorded). Death notices, too, but birth notices often didn’t mention a woman’s name, only referring to her husband. And there are random mentions, too, like people selling chickens. But if you didn’t do any of those sort of things, you didn’t appear in the papers. And many of the tenants I chose to research simply didn’t appear in the papers (or had annoyingly common names: John Taylor, for example…). This tells me that these were not people who were prominent in business affairs or the city’s social or political life, they were not wealthy and they didn’t have advertise for servants (to be fair, the houses they rented told me that all of this was likely to have been the case). These are the sort of people you might expect to rent, people whose circumstances suggested they couldn’t afford to buy a property. What was also notable about many of the tenants I came across was that they were often at a particular property for only 2-3 years. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about these people to know why that was the case, and whether they moved into a house of their own from their rental, for example.

One group for whom circumstances are likely to have made property ownership pretty difficult was women on their own, particularly those with no family to turn to and, in the case of widows, women who hadn’t been left a reasonable estate by their deceased husband. In the absence of an adult male wage, life was not easy and financial hardship common (Cooper and Horan 2003: 193). One such renter was Mrs Sarah Gault, who rented a pretty little new build in Gloucester Street. Sarah lived here for several years in the 1880s with her children (and possibly also her elderly parents, who she is likely to have supported), and ran her dressmaking business from the house. Women would have visited her here to be measured and fitted for their new clothes. While circumstances may have forced renting upon Sarah, the house that she chose to rent was fashionable and attractive and, I like to think, a key part of her business strategy, designed to appeal to the sort of women for whom she made clothes.

The house Mrs Sarah Gault rented in the mid-late 1880s. Image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch Archaeological Archive.

While Sarah’s occupation was a working class one, renters were by no means exclusively working class people (Olssen and Hickey 2005: 207). At the other end of the spectrum were Caroline and Charles Todhunter, who rented a brick cottage on Cranmer Square in the early 1890s. Charles had a varied career, having been a timber merchant for a time and involved in the brewing industry. In 1890, he bought Westerfield station, near Ashburton. When he died in 1916, he left an estate of over £27,000, a substantial sum of money for the time (I don’t what Sarah Gault’s estate was, but I think it’s safe to assume it was nothing close to this; Macdonald 1952-64: T290, McAloon 2002: 15). That the Todhunters took up their rental in 1890 is probably no coincidence, given that Caroline Todhunter is consistently listed in the street directories as the occupant of the house (the street directories listed the head of the household, and women were only listed when there was no man in residence). It seems likely that this was a town house that the Todhunters chose to rent, with Caroline and at least some of their children living there, while Charles was based at the station. While this could be interpreted as a reflection on their marriage, there is another component to this story: Margaret, the couple’s eldest daughter, and in her mid-20s at this point, was attending the nearby Canterbury College (Press 29/10/1892: 8).[2] Further, newspaper references record her active involvement in Christchurch life: St John Ambulance (Star (Christchurch) 16/9/1892: 3), the Girls’ Friendly Society (Lyttelton Times 7/12/1892: 3) and attending any number of balls and other social events (Press 11/11/1892: 4, 21/9/1893: 5, 11/10/1894: 6). Presumably, then, the family had rented a house in the city to provide Margaret with a range of educational and social opportunities (the younger children may have been similarly involved, but they were less visible in the papers of the day).

The Todhunter lived in the rear, brick part of this house, the timber part having been added in c.1900.

The Todhunters were by no means the only well-to-do family I came across who rented, although the reasons why other families like this had chosen to rent were not always so clear-cut. For example, Supreme Court judge John Denniston and his wife, Mary, rented Linwood House for five years at the end of the 19th century. In fact, Linwood House – one of the grandest in the city in this era – was rented out on a number of occasions from 1877 on.

Linwood House, 2003. Image: Jackie Snowdon, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16775483

Renting, then, was by no means confined to poor people, or people with working class occupations, and the range of rental options available reflected this, with rental properties in 19th century Christchurch ranging from the small and ordinary to the grandest of homes. While home ownership was undoubtedly the preferred option for many, there were some for whom this would never have been a possibility, whether due to their financial situation, the security of their employment or their gender. Some, though, chose to rent for other reasons, such as the Todhunters and their town house. Nonetheless, the ideal of home ownership was an important one, and one that has persisted to the present day. This is perhaps why Aotearoa has never developed the culture of successful, stable long-term renting seen in other parts of the world, and why attitudes towards renting often remain negative.

Katharine Watson

References

Cooper, Annabel, and Marian Horan, 2003. Down and out on the Flat: the gendering of poverty. In: Barbara Brookes, Annabel Cooper and Robin Law, eds. Sites of Gender: Women, Men and Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890-1939. Auckland: Auckland University Press.

Davison, Graeme, 2000. Colonial origins of the Australian home. In: Patrick Troy, ed. A History of European Housing in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 6-25. 

Lyttelton Times. [online] Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

McAloon, Jim, 2000. Radical Christchurch. In: John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall, eds. Southern Capital, Christchurch: Towards a City Biography 1850-2000. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, pp. 162-192.

Olssen, Erik and Maureen Hickey, 2005. Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality. Dunedin: Otago University Press.

Press. [online] Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Schrader, Ben, 2013. Housing – tenure. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. [online] Available at: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/graph/38662/housing-tenure [Accessed 23 February 2024].

Star (Christchurch). [online] Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

An issue of scale

I’m going to attempt the impossible today. Unlike Alice, I’ve already had my breakfast, so hopefully that’s all we need to make it possible. Let’s talk about the CAP database and – this is the impossible bit – I shall do my very best to make a blog post about a designing, compiling and populating a database of interest to more than data nerds like me…

As a child, I thought I was Alice. As an adult, I am increasingly, painfully aware I’m the white rabbit, stressed and constantly running late. Image: Sir John Tenniel, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

 For those who are unaware, the Christchurch Archaeology Project is currently working on a somewhat ambitious project to take all the information – histories, archaeological data, artefact records, etc. – gathered from archaeological work in Ōtautahi since the earthquakes and make it freely available to everyone through a huge database and website. We got funding for this from Manatū Taonga, which was amazing, and have been spending the last few months designing and building it, with the assistance of the wonderful people at Intranel. It’s a hell of an undertaking, to be blunt. There have been several occasions on which my brain has – for lack of a better work – ‘blue-screened’, but we have persisted and, honestly, what we’re managing to create is so cool. I can’t wait for you all to see it properly. 

My brain, some days.

 As we’ve talked about before, here on the website and in previous blog posts, the scale of archaeological information recovered from Ōtautahi Christchurch since the earthquakes was unprecedented in many ways, not just because of the number of artefacts found or the number of archaeological features excavated, but because of the sheer variety and scope of the sites, projects and material culture excavated. Archaeology in Christchurch since 2011 has extended across most of the city’s urban landscape, uncovering evidence of so many different aspects of the city’s history and development. The concentration of this work over such a short period of time has also really highlighted the inter-connected nature of the archaeological and historical landscape, as we encountered the same people across multiple sites, found similarities and differences in the archaeology of different parts of the city and saw patterns in land ownership, urban development and the city’s built heritage. At the same time, however, the data itself exists in disparate, separate datasets – the city has been excavated site by site, project by project as the post-earthquake recovery necessitated archaeological investigation bit by bit. We’ve seen those connections and patterns in what seems like fleeting glimpses – we know they’re there but we can’t easily tease them out until we have all of the information in one place, accessible and searchable. Perhaps more importantly, this information belongs to the city – all this archaeological work has uncovered a rich history that belongs to the past, present and future residents of Ōtautahi Christchurch, to the people who live here, who have lived here, whose ancestors lived here, none of whom can currently access it with any ease.

I tried to manually map connections for a set of sites once. It did not go well, given the file name of this image is ‘political flowchart of doom’. Image: J. Garland.

 To really get your head around the project and what we’re doing, it helps to think about scale and the ways that we frame stories, especially stories of people and place. Here, although archaeological work in Christchurch has occurred on a site-by-site basis, what we really have in the end is an archaeology of the city, the story of the city as a whole told through the stories of its people, its places and its material culture. It’s just like the city itself, really. Christchurch, like all places, has an identity that is formed by its history, by the landscape, the cityscape, the community and the ideas that the residents and non-residents alike have of who the city is. I’ve always thought about cities as people (I’m not alone in that, if anyone has read N. K. Jemisin’s work, for example), individual entities with personalities and atmosphere and a sense of something that is more than the sum of their parts.

When you frame a place like this, as one big entity instead of a whole lot of individual components, there are details of that place that fall out of focus, because they matter less at this perspective – for example, each of the suburbs of Christchurch also have their own distinct personalities (sometimes this goes down to the street level!), but these become overshadowed by the city when we consider it as a whole. Similarly, there are aspects that come into focus more when viewed from the broader perspective – we see more of the connections between places, more of the similarities and shared characteristics, the things that make the city distinct, especially when compared to other cities.

I think of the database in a similar way. We are broadening our perspective on all the archaeological information generated by our work here over the last decade, to better enable us to see the connections and find the shared characteristics of the city’s archaeology and history on that large scale. We are also, however, also making sure that if we want to look at the small scale, we can – the details that can be lost at the large scale, like individual people, sites, single artefacts or specific archaeological features, are all still there for us to find if we want to. Essentially, we’re using the database to do what a human brain struggles with – to hold all of this data at the same time, so that we can move between perspectives to explore the city’s history at whatever scale we like.

Each of these artefacts has so many stories to tell, from so many different perspectives. Image: J. Garland.

 My job has been to try and create a network of information that lets us do this, finding the connections between the different types of data generated by the archaeology of the city and trying to be sure that we have enough detail to showcase the individuality of sites and people and archaeology as well as enough standardisation, ways of grouping data and ways of filtering information to also showcase the similarities and connections between all of this. I won’t go into the specifics of this (but it will all be available on our website in the end, so you can go and trawl through it if you really want to!), because, quite honestly, it’s a LOT. It has broken my brain on more than one occasion.

Our wonderful CAP team – Sayali, Sam, Ebony and Madi, thank you! – have been going through archaeological reports produced since the earthquakes and pulling out information to be entered into the database and website. It has been something of a crash course in Christchurch’s history and landscape for them, not to mention a journey of discovery through all kinds of archaeological finds and historic stories. To date, they’ve entered information on more than 800 places (land parcels, subdivisions, surveyed sections), almost 1500 people, 300 organisations and buildings and have teased out almost 2000 connections between those people and those places. We’re recording the connections between people as well, from the familial – brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins – to commercial and social connections, like who employed who. In one memorable case, we even have a criminal connection between someone who crashed his cart into someone else in 1900. These people and places and organisations are all then linked – when possible! – to our archaeological data, to the artefacts and the sites and the archaeological features, slotting each of those jigsaw pieces in next to each other to form a more complete picture of the city’s story. We already have detailed records of almost 2000 archaeological contexts (things like rubbish pits, layers, wells, brick features, bridges, cellars, drains, tram tracks, road layers, underfloor deposits, postholes, even an animal burial!) and with those contexts, the records for more than 18,000 artefacts (44,000 fragments) ready to be made available online to anyone who wants to look at them. If those numbers don’t seem like a lot, I promise they’re growing rapidly, but maybe a better way of conveying the scale is that across all the different records and datasets, the team has recorded 140,000 pieces of information (not including the artefacts), from feature measurements to the marital status of early Christchurch residents to who analysed and excavated what. 

When I looked up His Lordship’s Larder (see next paragraph), I thought I would get advertisements for the business, maybe some shenanigans at the hotel, not this. Image: South Canterbury Times 12/03/1886: 3.

 I’m going to leave you today with a handful of stories and bits of information that have stood out to the team as they’ve been working through all the data. My personal favourites (except for all the artefacts, obviously) are the interesting names people used for their businesses. Did you know there was a hotel in Christchurch called “His Lordship’s Larder Hotel”? Or that there was another one called the “Robin Hood Inn”? I will also never forget the story of J. Hare, poor person, the inquest into whose death recorded that he had “died by visitation of god”. Your guess is as good as mine, there.

Lyttelton Times 14/06/1864: 6.

 One of the team loved the story of Charles Cox, who was involved in shoe polish fraud from his Harvey Terrace section, a crime for which we found archaeological evidence. There was also the story of James Lee Goon, a Chinese boarding house proprietor who was arrested as a brothel keeper in the 1890s, at the same time as a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment was prevalent in New Zealand. We’ve come across prominent figures in their everyday lives, such as Julius Von Haast and his family renting a house on Armagh Street in the 1880s, and common place materials in unexpected situations, like the use of clinker (metalworking waste) in roads and landscape modification. There have been great artefacts (time capsules!) - one of our team mentioned that she’s coming to realise that there are quite a lot of cool belt buckles in nineteenth century Christchurch – and aspects of life in the historical city that hadn’t been considered, but make sense when you think about it, like the number of cart-on-cart accidents and subsequent arrests. Dangerous driving, it’s been a thing for much longer than you’d think. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone working on the project has come to have that duality of vision that happens to anyone who works with or learns the history or archaeology of a place, simultaneously seeing two cities around them as they live in the Christchurch that is and work with the Christchurch that was.

An sinister snake buckle. Image: Maria Lillo Bernabeu.

Two 1920s time capsules from the foundations of the Nugget Boot Polishing Factory on Ferry Road and an account of some cart related crime. Image: Andy Dodd (left) and Star 22/05/1902: 3.

 This is just a tiny taste of what this project will be. I could write a whole post just listing the research potential of a dataset like this. Every day, the team are adding more and more data and we will eventually have something fantastic that will, I hope, allow any of us to see these stories whenever we like, with whatever framing we prefer.

Jessie

Two couples, two houses, one architect

Allow me to introduce you to two couples: Sarah and the Reverend Thomas Fisher and Charles and Jane Ick (no, I’m not making that up). I came across these couples thanks to their houses, which were designed by the same architect, built within a couple of years of each other and not dissimilar in appearance. I was delighted to discover that they were connected by marriage: William, son of Thomas Fisher and his first wife, Harriotte, married Stella, daughter of Charles and Jane, in 1872 (Press 7/6/1872: 2). Examining the lives – and houses – of the Fishers and the Icks reveals more about how class, wealth and status played out in 19th century Christchurch.

Both couples arrived in New Zealand in the late 1850s, Sarah and Thomas settling in Christchurch and Charles and Jane in Dunedin. Thomas was a Methodist minister and was reputed to have arrived here with “a considerable sum of money” (Press 22/1/1890: 2). With this he bought land in and around Christchurch in the late 1850s and early 1860s, including several town sections, and rural sections in St Albans, Sefton and Irwell (LINZ c.1850: 23, 24, 839, 1318, 1319, 1332, c.1853: 66, 72, 699, c.1860a: 781, 1434, c.1860b: 1705, 1706, 4710, c.1860c: 4710, c.1860d: 5658). One of these land purchases was a prominent central city section, being the corner of Hereford and High streets, and it was here that Thomas established his grocery business. In fact, this location would become known as Fisher’s corner, and the building constructed here in 1880 was known as Fisher’s building until it was demolished following the Canterbury earthquakes.

Fisher’s building, 1978. Image: Christchurch Star Archive, 1978.

In addition to his business activities, Thomas was – unsurprisingly – heavily involved with the local Methodist church and organisations associated with that. He wasn’t particularly politically active, but the causes he championed and his other involvements in the city brought him into contact with many of the city’s elite (see, for example, Lyttelton Times 1/6/1859: 4, Press 18/11/1865: 1). Further, he was prominent enough in the city that his attendance at various public events was worthy of mention in newspaper reports of the day (Lyttelton Times 30/4/1867: 2, 4/9/1867: 5 Press 23/4/1869: 2, 12/11/1873: 2, 21/2/1883: 3). Thomas’s occupation – Methodist minister – meant that he and Sarah were upper middle class and I would describe their position in the city as elite-adjacent, as they were not amongst the city’s power-brokers or leaders but Thomas clearly mingled with them (McAloon 2000, Olssen and Hickey 2005: 57-58, 163). Their wealth, however, placed them firmly in the upper echelons of society: Thomas left an estate of £30,000 when he died in 1890 (Fisher 1890).

Like many women in 19th century Christchurch, Sarah appeared in the newspaper only to advertise for servants, and on her death (Star (Christchurch): 31/5/1879: 2, Lyttelton Times 13/2/1884: 1, Press 21/7/1891: 8). Sarah’s life is likely to have revolved around managing her house, looking after Thomas’s children and paying calls. Like Thomas, she may have belonged to organisations associated with the Methodist church or other community organisations, but the couple’s social status may have meant that her involvement was not considered worthy of mention.

In 1879, Sarah (aged 62) and Thomas (71) built their retirement home. This, however, was no case of down-sizing. The two-storeyed house they built, known as Cotswold House, was designed by local architect J. C. Maddison and had 18 rooms, including a drawing room, dining room, breakfast room, seven bedrooms (one of which may have been for a servant), a linen closet, kitchen, pantry, toilet and bathroom (there were also three halls; Lyttelton Times 16/8/1879: 7, 13/2/1884: 1, 29/7/1891: 8). It also had a conservatory (Press 1/8/1891: 8). But those seven bedrooms?! When only one of Thomas’s children was living at home (Macdonald 1952-64: F141, Shortian n.d.). Why so big? Perhaps to house visiting family and friends? Or perhaps because the Fishers felt that this house as cognisant with their wealth and status?

The street-facing elevation of Cotswold House, the house Sarah and Thomas Fisher built in 1879. Image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch Archaeological Archive.

The east elevation, Cotswold House. Image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch Archaeological Archive.

Charles and Jane Ick started their New Zealand lives in Dunedin, before moving to Waikouaiti for a few years and then finally to Christchurch, in 1870 (Otago Witness 12/11/1859: 3, 2/4/1870: 2). In Dunedin, Charles operated a drapery firm, but he sold that to start farming in Waikouaiti (Otago Witness 19/11/1859: 2). Once in Christchurch, Charles went into business as an auctioneer, but did briefly operate a drapery firm here too (Globe 25/9/1879: 2, Lyttelton Times 15/8/1870: 4, 29/1/1874: 1). Charles’s auctioneering business specialised in farm and dairy produce, seafood, grocery items and household furniture, as well as the occasional auction of household and business lots and sales under the bailiff’s orders. My favourite of his auctions, though, are for birds: one for 500 canaries, 100 chaffinches and a range of other song birds, apparently from Germany; and a second for the most fabulous-sounding – and looking – chickens (Press 22/11/1879: 3, 21/5/1880: 8). Black breasted red game! Silver and gold pencilled Hamburgs! White crested black polish! Silver spangled Hamburgs! Their names alone make me want one! The song birds suggests a trend for caged birds in Victorian houses, while the poultry theme is one that runs through 19th century Christchurch life. Charles sold the auctioneering business in 1882 (aged 55), and it’s not really clear what he did after that, but he died in 1885, Jane having died in 1883 (Press 5/4/1882: 3, 4/12/1883: 2, 28/4/1885: 2). Jane’s death notice states that she died after a lingering illness – maybe Charles gave up his business to look after her (Press 4/12/1883: 2)? Charles’s estate was worth £2300 at the time of his death (Ick 1885).

Fancy chickens for sale! Image: Press 21/5/1880: 8.

Charles Ick’s auction of song birds, 1879. Image: Press 22/11/1879: 3.

Unlike Thomas, Charles was politically successful (Thomas unsuccessfully stood for public office in 1862; Lyttelton Times 1/3/1862: 4). Charles was elected to the Christchurch Municipal Council throughout the 1870s, and served two terms as mayor at the end of the decade (Macdonald 19652-64: I2). He also had charitable interests, sitting on the board of the Christchurch Benevolent Association and the Canterbury Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, as well as being involved with the Mutual Benefit Building and Investment Society (Lyttelton Times 18/7/1882: 1, Press 3/11/1876: 1, 18/6/1883: 3). While Charles was a patron for some performances at the Theatre Royal in his role of mayor, he did not have the social prominence of Thomas Fisher (Press 22/9/1880: 1). And, as with Sarah, we know little about Jane: she advertised for servants, but does not otherwise appear in the newspapers of the day (e.g. Press 22/11/1882: 1). Like Sarah, she would have been involved with her children’s lives and managed the household (as evidenced by the servant advertisements). She, too, may have paid calls to friends and families and may well have been involved with other community organisations, but these activities remain hidden.

As noted above, William Fisher and Stella Ick married in 1872. In 1881, Charles and Jane built a house in Papanui Road, also designed by J. C. Maddison (Press 27/10/1872: 3). It shared a number of similarities with the Fishers’ house: bays and gable ends on two elevations, window pediments and brackets, portholes in the gable apexes, a string-course and the distinctive over-sized moulded eaves brackets on the gable end (most of which had been removed from the Icks’ house). While some of these features were not uncommon in houses of this nature (the window treatment and the bays and gable ends on two elevations), others were less common (the portholes and the string-course). These are small details, but examining plans for houses of a similar vintage from the Armson Collins Collection indicates they were unusual at the time, and that the wealthy of this period typically built houses with stickwork decoration in the gable ends. Nor were these features common on other Maddison-designed houses. There were also differences between the exterior of the two houses: Cotswold House did not have finials and had far more ornate veranda decoration, along with a splayed bay window, and the panelling below the bay windows was different. It’s impossible to prove, but given their family connection, it’s not unreasonable to think that the Fishers were perhaps the inspiration for the Icks commissioning Maddison to design their house, and perhaps also for some of the design elements chosen.

The street-facing (left) and west elevations of Charles and Jane Ick’s house. Image: L. Tremlett, Ōtautahi Archaeological Archive.

The biggest difference between the two houses was in fact their size: Cotswold House had 18 rooms, the Icks’ house 10. The Icks did not have a breakfast room and had just the four bedrooms, although they did have a conservatory (Lyttelton Times 16/8/1885: 8). Some of the service rooms in the two houses may have been different, too, but this is more difficult to assess. In general, the greater the range of room types in a house, the higher the status of the occupant. While these distinctions are small and subtle in this case – the presence or absence of a breakfast room – Christchurch’s 19th century residents would have been well aware of them, and the implications thereof. The houses were the same width and, from the street, they would have looked the same size (due to 20th century modifications to Cotswold House, it is not possible to compare the floor area). The houses were on opposite sides of the city, so the point here is not necessarily one of direct comparison (although that point could be made), more about how one presented oneself to the world in 19th century Christchurch, with importance being placed on the size and scale of the house. This was achieved by building a two-storied house and by making the street-facing elevation as big as it could be – in practice, the latter often meant that a house was rectangular in plan, with the longer axis facing the street (the Fishers’ house was all but square in plan). Both houses stood well back on large sections, the Fishers’ being 4½ acres and the Icks’ 3 acres, features that would have added to the sense of scale (LINZ 1880, 1885).

Examining the lives and houses of these two couples provides an insight into the nuances of class, status and wealth in 19th century Christchurch. While both men had upper middle class occupations (yes, I’m also surprised that an auctioneer was an upper middle class occupation, but there you have it; Olssen and Hickey 2005: 163), the Fishers were far more wealthy and socially prominent in Christchurch than the Icks, in spite of Charles’s role as mayor of the city. The houses the two couples built reflect these differences, although this may have been driven largely by wealth, with social position having little relevance. Their quite different levels of wealth, and their different social connections in the city, highlight the nuance within a single occupational ‘class’ category, and that occupational class does not equal social position. It also highlights that taking on a public role such as mayor – effectively, leader of the city – did not necessarily bring social connections with it. But why was the social position of the Icks different from that of the Fishers? Did it relate to money? Or did it stem from family origins, something that is often touted as has having been left behind by English colonial settlers? Thomas’s grandfather and mother were deemed worthy of mention in his obituary, for their occupation and house respectively, but Charles’s obituary made no mention of his parents or grandparents (Press 28/4/1885: 2, 22/1/1890: 2). Or was the difference to do with what the two couples wanted from life? When discussing class status and social position, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that people wanted to move up through the social ranks (as it were), and it would be easy to sell this as a story of Charles and Jane wanting what Sarah and Thomas had, and thus setting out to achieve that by emulating them through their housing choices (Bell 2002). Social connections and social position may have meant little to them, however, and they may have placed more emphasis on other aspects of their lives, such as service to the community.

 Katharine Watson

*Jim McAloon has defined the wealthy in 19th century Canterbury as those who died leaving an estate worth more than £10,000 (McAloon 2002: 15).

References

Bell, Alison, 2002. Emulation and empowerment: material, social and economic dynamics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Virginia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(4): 253-98.

Christchurch Star Archive, 1978. Available at: https://canterburystories.nz/collections/archives/star/prints/1978/ccl-cs-2684

Fisher, Richard Thomas, 1890. FISHER Thomas Richard – Sydenham – Gentleman. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

Globe. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Ick, Charles Thomas, 1885. ICK Charles Thomas – Christchurch – Gentleman (probate file). Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, c. 1850. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – A – Christchurch Town Sections and Town Reserves. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, c.1853. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – C1 – 1 to 750 – Rural Sections Register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, c.1860a. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – C2 – 751 to 1484 – Rural Sections Register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, c.1860b. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – C3 – 1485 to 2238 – Rural Sections Register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, c.1860c. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – C7 – 4533 to 5294 – Rural Sections Register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, 1860d. Canterbury Land District Deeds Index – C8 – 5295 to 6108 – Rural Sections Register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

LINZ, 1882. Certificate of title 86/59, Christchurch. Land Information New Zealand.

LINZ, 1885. Certificate of title 107/280, Christchurch. Land Information New Zealand.

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Macdonald, G. R., 1952-64. Macdonald Dictionary of Canterbury Biography. Canterbury Museum.

McAloon, Jim, 2000. The Christchurch elite. In: John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall, ed. Southern Capital, Christchurch: Towards a City Biography 1850-2000., Canterbury University Press, Christchurch. Pp. 193-221.

McAloon, Jim, 2002. No Idle Rich: The Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago 1840-1914. University of Otago Press, Dunedin.

Olssen, Erik, and Maureen Hickey, 2005. Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality. University of Otago Press, Dunedin.

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