On the villa: idylls and ideals

So, why do we in Aotearoa call a villa a villa? What even is a villa? The former is a question that completely flummoxed me when someone asked it of me a few years ago. My response was, “because we do”. Which is a terrible answer for any question. But, here, today, I can tell you why and – generously… – I’m going to share this with you. I should say that this is a very once-over-lightly – many people have written whole (fascinating, I might add) books on the history of the villa. This blog post is but a short summary and, thus, equally short on nuance. There’s nothing wrong in it (hopefully!) but I have less than 1000 words (in theory) and much has been left out.

The villa: important enough to write a whole book about, but do you know why it’s called a villa?

Before we really get into things, I’d like to share James Ackerman’s excellent observation about villas with you (NB: not written in plain language, please don’t give up on the post at this point!): a villa “is a myth or fantasy through which over the course of millennia persons whose position of privilege is rooted in urban commerce and industry have been able to expropriate rural land, often requiring, for the realization of the myth, the care of a laboring class or slaves” (Ackerman 1990: 10). Not a man to hide his politics, Ackerman.

A classic Christchurch villa, albeit rather small and plain - and somewhat rundown. Image: L. Tremlett, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

It all starts with the Romans (something my high school classics teacher was fond of reminding us). The ancient Greeks might have been involved too, but I’m going to focus on the Romans. Wealthy Roman city dwellers, often political figures or at least public ones, developed the villa concept as a retreat from the stresses and strains of city life. More particularly, the stresses and strains attendant upon their lives in the city: the petitioners, the demands on their time, the speeches they needed to give, the plays they needed to write, etc, etc. All of which left them no time to think. And by ‘think’ here, I mean engage in deep contemplation about important matters, as opposed to the general day-to-day thinking about, say, what’s for dinner… (always a pressing concern, I find). Thus, they needed to escape, to have some peace and quiet, and so it was to their rural estates, known as villas, that they decamped. They didn’t just do serious thinking here, they enjoyed the healthier air, nature itself, a slower pace of life, and the opportunities for recreation, be that exercise, fishing, visits from friends or creative pursuits (Ackerman 1990: 35-36).

A slightly more decorative and larger villa, but still a classic Christchurch form - although the porch is a bit unusual. Image: F. Bradley, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

There was a major flourishing of the villa in the late medieval period (who knew?), and it is this period that the aforementioned Ackerman dates the association between the villa and the bourgeois, going so far as to describe the villa as a “bourgeois concept” (Ackerman 1990: 10, 63). This was when the good burghers of Europe began to develop a taste for villa life, much as envisaged by the Romans (that is, the house at the centre of an estate to which city dwellers could retreat to escape the city – in fact, ‘villa’ at this point in time often referred to the estate as a whole, not just the house). It stood in contrast to the homes of the feudal overlords, who typically lived in castles (in the countryside), which, while literal places of retreat during times of war, were by no means the places of figurative retreat that the Romans had built (Ackerman 1990: 63).

A very cute little bay villa, sans veranda. Image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

From here, the villa spreads to England during the Enlightenment (obviously there’s a bit of a time lag, but see earlier comments re word count). In this period and location it gets caught up in ideas about property ownership, privacy, identity and labour (Archer 2005: 1). It continues to embody those same ideals as the Romans and the burghers associated with their villas: a house in the country, with land, to which busy and wealthy city dwellers could retreat (supported by the aforementioned labouring class). But, there is a new development: the villa begins to be built in suburbs, by middle class people, becoming what John Archer has described as the “bourgeois compact villa”, noting also that the suburb was a particular bourgeois location (Archer 2005: 45-52, McKellar 2011: 50-51). As a consequence – as the size of the land parcel these villas stood on reduced and the occupation of the occupiers changed – the villa comes to be more specifically about rest and recreation, and its economic role declines (Archer 2005: 46). These changes reflect the increasing wealth of the English middle class, the growing industrialisation of England and improving transport networks (Ackerman 1990: 17, McKellar 2011: 51). All of this was bundled up with a sort of moral panic on behalf of the English middle classes, as cities were increasingly seen as dirty, disease-ridden and poverty-stricken places that were not suitable to live in, particularly if you were raising a family (Archer  2005: 147). To this, a stand-alone (or, at a pinch, a semi-detached) house in the suburbs was the ideal solution, and enabled the separation of work and home (another key middle class ideal that was connected to all of this).

A much larger, but quite plain, bay villa. Image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

As the size and wealth of the English middle classes grew, so too did the suburban villa proliferate. Its spread was aided by the books of people like J. C. Loudon, whose work popularised the bourgeois compact villa and provided numerous examples of the different types of villa that could be built. On the back of this, the growing number of architectural pattern books further spread and popularised the ideal, also making it more accessible to a wider range of people. By the time English colonial settlers began arriving in New Zealand in the early nineteenth century, the concept of the – bourgeois – villa was firmly entrenched in their cultural baggage, as it were. The first reference to a villa in a New Zealand newspaper dates to 1840 – in this case, to a “villa allotment” i.e. a section of land on which it would be suitable to build a villa (New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator 6/6/1840: 4).

And that, folks, in just a little bit more than 1000 words, is how we came to have the villa in Aotearoa. It’s not just a house type, it’s an ideal: of peace and quiet and rest and recreation, a set of circumstances best achieved on a small parcel of land (big enough for a garden, and to separate you from your neighbours), in a standalone house, not in the central city, and it’s not a place of work. For men, at least. These ideals morphed and changed a bit here in New Zealand, but that’s a topic for another day. Before I sign off, though, I’d like to ask you to pause and think about these ideals might today relate to, say, a holiday house, or how they might have fed into the growth of the lifestyle block.

Katharine Watson

References

Ackerman, James S., 1990. The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Archer, John, 2005. Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

McKellar, Elizabeth, 2011. “The villa. Ideal type or vernacular variant?”. In Peter Guillery (ed.), Built from Below:  British Architecture and the Vernacular. Routledge, London. Pp. 49-72.

New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator. Available at: www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Down the rabbit hole: on sewing machines, women, clothing and Ballantynes

It all started with a sewing machine. More specifically, a sewing machine manufactured for and sold by Christchurch institution, Ballantynes, in the early years of the 20th century and found during archaeological work in Woolston. It seemed like it would make a nice blog post, particularly given that it recently featured in the 170th exhibition at Ballantynes. I figured I would write about the woman who owned the sewing machine and the connection between sewing and women in the late 19th century, with maybe a diversion into dressmakers. Before I knew it, though, I was pouring over advertisements from Ballantynes in 19th century newspaper, trying to work out how the firm conducted the women’s clothing component of its business, wondering how I got there…

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Let’s start with the sewing machine we found. It’s the rusty pieces of a classic treadle sewing machine, complete with the remains of the word “Ballantynes”. Newspaper advertisements tell us that Ballantynes began selling sewing machines in 1904 (Lyttelton Times 8/9/1904: 3). As luck would have it, the section where the sewing machine was found was occupied by the same family from c.1900 until at least 1922 (H. Wise & Co. 1900: 189, NZER (Lyttelton) 1922: 11). Side note: the section was also home to a woolscour, run by the same family who lived there (H. Wise & Co. 1900: 189). This family was Emily and Joshua Beaumont and, based on all the gender norms of the day, I’m assuming the sewing machine belonged to Emily – or one of her daughters.

The first advertisement found for Ballantynes selling a sewing machine. Image: Lyttelton Times 8/9/1904: 3.

Women of all ages and classes were expected to be able to sew in 19th century England, and this cultural expectation was part of the colonial baggage that these settlers brought with them. For some women, this was an economic necessity; for others, it was a genteel and suitable leisure pursuit. Dressmaking was also one of the most common sources of income for women in 19th century New Zealand. Not only was it a socially acceptable form of work, it was also one that women could do at home, whilst carrying out other domestic duties, including childcare. Dressmakers, though, did not necessarily work from home. Some worked in other women’s homes, some had separate premises, some worked for or with tailors (an exclusively male occupation at the time) and some worked in department stores, such as J. Ballantyne & Co (Malthus 1992: 76-77).

Ballantyne & Company Ltd building, Christchurch. Image: Anon, c.1920s.

Imported fabrics and clothes for sale, J. Ballantyne & Co. Image: Lyttelton Times 30/4/1873: 3.

Jane Malthus outlines the broader implications of the increasing mechanisation of sewing – in the form of the sewing machine – for the fashion industry. It’s not surprising when you think about it, but, essentially, the sewing machine enabled fast fashion. Of course, it wasn’t just the sewing machine. It was also changes in attitudes to women’s work practices (as it became more acceptable/normal for women to work outside the home), changes in women’s fashion (looser-fitting clothes) and the increasing availability of paper patterns (Malthus 1992).

Prior to the advent of the sewing machine, all clothes were hand-sewn, and women’s clothes in particular were made for the person who was going to wear them (men’s work clothes and children’s clothes were more likely to be ready-made). Sewing machines enabled the mass-production of clothes, at the same time that women’s clothes became looser-fitting and less decorative (which is cause and which is effect is open to debate). This meant that ready-to-wear clothing became a thing and women’s dresses and the like could be made in advance, for the mass market, rather than for a particular woman. There’s not enough information in the advertisements for Dunstable House (as Ballantynes was known before it became, well, Ballantynes) to know how the dresses they sold were being produced. But there weren’t any advertisements looking for dressmakers or the like, suggesting that Dunstable House may not have employed any (bearing in mind absence of evidence and all that). J. Ballantyne & Co., however, employed a “machinist” from at least 1873 (having taken over the business the year prior) and seem to have been making dresses to order at that point (Lyttelton Times 30/4/1873: 3, Press 20/9/1873: 3). Other items of clothing, however, were imported, such as women’s jackets and underskirts (Lyttelton Times 30/4/1873: 3). Dressmakers were employed from at least 1874 and by 1877, there was a dressmaking workroom (Lyttelton Times 23/6/1877: 1, Press 8/1/1874: 1). This workroom would have been staffed by young women, many of whom are likely to have sewed on sewing machines. By 1878, demand was such that the firm had three dressmaking rooms (Star (Christchurch) 26/6/1878: 3).

J. Ballantyne & Co. was by no means unique in Christchurch in employing dressmakers, but it does indicate a clear shift in business strategy from the previous owners of Dunstable House (the Clarksons, followed by William Pratt). Having dressmakers and machinists on site would have enabled Ballantynes to produce women’s clothing quickly, and to respond to changes in fashion easily – and perhaps even to help drive those changes in fashion. Importing any item to New Zealand was a risky business, given the time between ordering the item and it arriving on the shop floor. Out-of-fashion stock no doubt had to be sold more cheaply than the latest thing – and possibly even at a loss. A dressmaking workroom mitigated this problem, as well as providing employment opportunities for women outside the home, whether their own or someone else’s (in the form of domestic service). In this way, the sewing machine contributed not just to changes in what women wore, and how that was made, but to broader changes in opportunities for women, and helped them forge new roles in the world.

Katharine Watson 

References

Anon., 1920s. Ballantyne & Company Ltd building, Christchurch. The Press (Newspaper) :Negatives. Ref: 1/1-009721-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/29946497

H. Wise & Co., 1900. Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory. Available at: ancestry.com.

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

Malthus, J., 1992. Dressmakers in 19th century New Zealand. In: Brookes, B., Macdonald, C. and Tennant, M., eds., Women in History 2. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington. Pp.76-97.

NZER (New Zealand Electoral Rolls). Available at: ancestry.com

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

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

Carving out spaces: living above your business

In 1900, James Knight set about remodelling his business premises and home, which happened to be one above the other (Collins and Harman 1900, Press 17/3/1900: 4). He’d purchased the property the year before, having worked and lived there in the early 1890s (Lyttelton Times 19/3/1898: 6). At the time of purchase, the property – in High Street, Christchurch – consisted of three ground floor shops, each with a flat above. By the time James’s renovations were complete, it was just two ground floor shops and one flat upstairs, which he and his family (wife Charlotte and children Charles, Edith and Florence) promptly moved into (Collins and Harman 1900, H. Wise & Co. 1901: 209). It’s the layout upstairs that’s of particular interest to me, and the differences between the layout of this central city flat and your standard suburban house, and the complex picture they present.

James Knight’s premises prior to the alterations in 1900. The butchery was in the left-most shop. Image: Collins and Harman 1900.

Before we dive into that, though, a little context. In the 19th century Anglo-colonial world, particularly in England and the United States, the domestic urban landscape was characterised by the development of the suburb. This came about in part as a result of transport options that meant living further from your place of work was actually feasible (for those who could afford said transport options), but also as the central city was increasingly perceived as a dirty, dusty and disease-ridden place, thanks to the factories that sprang up as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Thus, again, those who could afford to decamped to the suburbs, where the houses were bigger (central city housing was often terrace housing) and there was greenery and the air was healthy. Of course this was bound up with money and class – those with working class occupations could rarely afford suburban living and had little choice but to live in often cramped inner-city housing (Archer 2005, Wright 1983). This is where New Zealand, and the opportunities it presented, differed: people from a wide variety of class backgrounds and with a range of occupations were able to live in the suburbs. And they did: my research indicates that occupational class was no barrier to purchasing land and building, and that this was, for most people, the preferred option and quickly came to represent the norm. You don’t need me to point out how this has shaped the New Zealand psyche (the same is also true of other British colonial nations, as Luke Malpass observed earlier this week).

But, when you couldn’t afford this, or simply chose to live in the central city, what did this actually look like, and how did it differ from a suburban home? Fortunately, the plans of Charlotte and James Knight’s renovations survive to shed some light on this.

Interior of James Knight’s butchery, c.1910. Image: Webb, c.1910.

In their original form, access to the flats above the shops was via stairs at the rear of the shop, meaning family and any visitors had to walk through the shop to get up to the living quarters. This would have been all well and good if you owned a tailor’s shop (as one of the other occupants did), but James was a butcher, and family and friends would have walked past numerous hanging carcasses to reach the staircase. Now, Victorians seem to have been a bit less squeamish about the realities of eating meat than we are today, but bear in mind that there wasn’t a whole of refrigeration going on at the time, so it may well have been a touch smelly and there might have been flies, particularly in the height of summer. There’s another factor at play, too.

During the Victorian era, the idea that work and home should be separate became increasingly prevalent among the middle class (this idea neatly sidestepped the fact that domestic work was, well, work). This seems to have been less of a concern amongst the upper middle class: doctors often had their consulting rooms in their houses and ‘gentlemen’ often had what was essentially a home office. For working class families, and particularly for the women in those families (who often took in work; Bishop 2019), such a separation was often impossible. Nevertheless, this was certainly the ideal for those with middle class occupations and likely also for many with working class occupations. Of course, covid has taught us that there are many reasons why this separation is a good idea and they have nothing to do with class or class aspirations.

The plans for the renovation of the ground floor, showing the central staircase. Image: Collins and Harman 1900.

But back to Charlotte and James. Not only did James convert the ground floor of his building from three shops to two, he changed how the first floor was accessed, giving it a completely separate staircase that was accessed from High Street, without having to go through the butchery (although there were also stairs at the rear of the shop). The family no longer had to pass through the shop with its carcasses to reach their home – and nor did they clutter up the shop space unnecessarily. But here’s where things get a little odd. After ascending the staircase, you arrived in the home, outside the bathroom and bedrooms, rather than next to the parlour or drawing room. Think about it: even today, the front door of your house typically opens into a communal space. Not only did Charlotte and James’s visitors arrive next to the bathroom, they then had to walk past all the family bedrooms and the servant’s bedroom (more on that in just a second) to reach the dining room. Most unusual. Bedrooms and bathrooms were typically considered to be the ‘private’ parts of a Victorian house, where guests were unlikely to venture. I am dissembling somewhat, as James’s office was near the top of the stairs, as was the sitting room (another oddity: most houses had a drawing room or a parlour, rather than a sitting room). This doesn’t change the fact you did land right outside the bathroom. I know I keep going on about this, but it flies in the face of pretty much all that I know about housing in the Anglo-colonial world.

The plan for the renovation of the first floor. Image: Collins and Harman 1900.

Another odd detail was that the sitting room was positioned in amongst the bedrooms. Its location, however, was consistent with the idea that this sort of communal space where guests might be entertained was at the front of the house. But, again, the sitting room was typically a ‘public’ space and bedrooms were private, so putting them in the same part of the house was fairly unusual. Although, to be fair, in smaller houses (often built by or for those with working class occupations), where there was no dining room (the Knights had a dining room), the front two rooms (in the ‘public’ part of the house) were typically  the master bedroom and the parlour.

A further intriguing element of the layout of the flat was the position of the servant’s bedroom. In fact, the mere presence of a servant’s bedroom tells us something about Charlotte and James: that they could afford to employ a servant (full disclosure, James died with an estate valued at something like £25,000, but that was in 1918 and this was 1900 (Knight 1918)) and saw employing one as an important part of their lifestyle. I should perhaps have mentioned before now that James’s occupation – a business-owning butcher – positioned him and Charlotte securely in the middle class (if he were just a butcher, working for someone else, which is how his career started out, that would have been a working class occupation). But back to the position of the servant’s bedroom: it was pretty squarely in the middle of the house, which did make it close to the kitchen, etc. But family members couldn’t get from the dining room to their bedroom, or the sitting room, without walking past it. Again, this was unusual. Servant’s bedrooms were typically tucked away at the back of the house (in this flat, I would have expected it to be located back down by the scullery, or where bedroom 2 was), so that they, along with their work, could be hidden from view and kept out of sight of the family. Proximity to the kitchen was perhaps the deciding factor here.

There were multiple ways, then, in which the Knights’ flat did not conform to the norms of the day. This was no doubt a response to the spatial constraints of the original building, which was quite different in shape from your average house (typically square or rectangular, rather than this L-shape). Were the Knights aware of how much their home flew in the face of convention, of what visitors might have thought? I think they must’ve known it was unusual. The Knights didn’t reside here – business boomed and, by 1914, they’d moved to the west end of Cashel Street (NZER (Christchurch East) 1914: 68). As it happens, this was getting pretty close to the part of the central city favoured by the elite, being the land adjacent to Hagley Park and Cranmer Square, and the area immediately to the east – an area of greenness and spacious sections. I don’t know anything about the layout of this house – or the layout of other inner-city flats. An area that is ripe for further investigation – watch this space!

Katharine Watson

References

Archer, John, 2005. Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bishop, Catherine, 2019. Women Mean Business: Colonial Businesswomen in New Zealand. Dunedin: Otago University Press.

Collins and Harman, 1900. James Knight premises. [architectural drawing] Armson – Collins Architectural Drawing Collection, MB 1418-31252. Christchurch: Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury. Link: https://kohika.canterbury.ac.nz/opac_canterbury/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/Description/Web_desc_det_rep?sessionsearch&fld=SISN&exp=32887

H. Wise & Co., 1901. Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory. Available at: ancestry.com.

Knight, James, 1918. Probate. Christchurch Probate Files 1855-2003, CH9756/1918 224 R22393867. Christchurch: Archives New Zealand.

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

NZER (New Zealand Electoral Rolls). Available at: ancestry.com

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

Webb, Steffano, c.1910. Interior of James Knight's butchers shop in Christchurch. [photograph] Webb, Steffano, 1880-1967: collection of negatives, 1/1-004186-G. Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library. Link: https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23073247

Wright, Gwendolyn, 1983. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

 Banner image: M. Hennessey, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

Of fish knives and sherry glasses: examining class in 19th century Christchurch

Edward Watson Tippetts lived alone. No wife, no children. No need to read anything into this, but it was unusual for mid-late 19th century Christchurch. As it happens, he may not have lived alone: although he never advertised for a servant, his lifestyle, gender and social situation indicate that it’s highly likely he employed one, and it’s possible that they lived in, as servants of the day often did. That Edward lived alone is not what makes him the focus of today’s blog post, however – it’s more of an interesting side bar, as it were. The real reason I’m writing about Edward is social class, and that his changing social position provides some insight into the nuances of investigating social class and material culture in Christchurch in the mid-19th century.

A Chinese export porcelain plate that Edward threw out. Image: M. Lillo Bernabeu.

Class feels like an old-fashioned topic to be writing about, particularly when you’re focusing on a privileged white man, but the reality is that class and social status were key to shaping the lives of colonial settlers in 19th century New Zealand. Thus, understanding how class functioned at that time and place is important for understanding life then. More than that, class continues to shape New Zealanders’ lives today, and exploring class in the 19th century can help us understand how it affects people’s lives today, and why that’s the case.

A chamber pot, decorated with the Cattle Scenery pattern, that Edward threw out. Image: M. Lillo Bernabeu.

It’s generally accepted that, particularly during the early phase of British settlement of New Zealand, class boundaries were more porous here than in Britain. In part, this was because the colonial setting removed people from their context (and their support networks), enabling them to construct their identities as they saw fit. Further, this was a setting where money could talk (there was by no means a direct relationship between class and money in Britain, although there was a strong correlation) – and where it was possible for a far greater range of people to make significant amounts of money. Not only were class boundaries more porous, there was no true upper class (in the British sense) here, and occupations that were generally considered middle class in Britain were upper middle class occupations in New Zealand (McAloon 2004, Olssen and Hickey 2005). It’s important to recognise that the class system I’m writing about applied to New Zealand’s colonial settlers, not iwi Māori. Nor would it have applied to Chinese settlers.

One of the decorative salad oil bottles Edward threw out. Image: M. Lillo Bernabeu.

Edward grew up in a middle class household in London (his father was a lawyer) in the 1830s and 1840s, immigrating to Christchurch in 1851, aged 21 (Ancestry 2024). Here, he founded the company Tippetts, Silk and Heywood with his fellow shipmates, Alfred Silk and Joseph Heywood (Macdonald 1952-64: 264). I’d like to hazard a guess that, Edward’s name being first in the business’s name, he put up the bulk of the funds for it. The partnership was dissolved in 1855 (Lyttelton Times 14/7/1855: 1). At around this time, Edward had a brief foray into the Australian goldfields, before returning to manage the Steam wharf in Heathcote. This was followed by a fairly short-lived investment in a hotel at Woodend, and then a lengthy period of employment as a goods shed manager on the railways (Macdonald 1952-64: 264).

A buff-bodied Bristol glazed jug thrown out by Edward. The relief moulding is of a pastoral scene, with people drinking under some trees. Image: M. Lillo Bernabeu.

All this delving into Edward’s employment history is important, because I use occupation to define class. It’s not a perfect method (there isn’t one), but in Aotearoa we’re fortunate to be able to draw on some rigorous historical research about occupational class and status in the late 19th century (although the authors would note that this was developed in south Dunedin and should be applied with caution elsewhere; Olssen and Hickey 2005). Drawing on Olssen and Hickey’s work, then, Edward’s various occupations – small business proprietor and white-collar – were solidly middle class. But in his parents’ eyes, he would essentially have taken a step down the class ladder, as it were. But the archaeological and historical record show that Edward’s lifestyle in Christchurch befitted a member of the upper middle class in this city.

The sale of Edward’s goods and possessions, 1878. Image: Lyttelton Times 15/2/1878: 4.

Edward lived in Avonside for more than 10 years, in a house he probably built (LINZ c.1860: 425). This house had a drawing and a dining room, both of which were more typical of upper middle class that middle class houses (the latter typically had a parlour, as opposed to a drawing room, and was unlikely to have a dining room). These rooms were fitted out with, amongst other things, a loo table, various sideboards and set of croquet (which was surely more use outside, but no matter). The sale of Tippetts’s household goods in 1878 revealed a range of specialised dining accoutrements, such as dessert spoons, entrée dishes, a fish knife and a dessert service (Lyttelton Times 15/2/1878: 4). From the rubbish Tippetts threw out, we know he also had fancy glasses, some of which would have been used for serving sherry, as well as rather ornate salad oil bottles, Chinese export porcelain, a rather fabulous jug and a surprisingly pretty chamber pot, alongside your more standard black beer bottles and Willow pattern china.

Two of the sherry glasses Edward threw out. Image: M. Lillo Bernabeu.

It’s the things with specialised forms and functions – the dining room, the entrée dish, the fish knife, the sherry glasses – that are particularly indicative of upper middle class status in New Zealand in the 19th century (Lawrence et al. 2012, Watson 2022: 336). At this point, it’s important to note that, in England, these objects would have been associated with middle class status, demonstrating how class changed between the two settings. The purchase of specialised objects indicates sufficient disposable income to do so. More than that, though, it indicates the desire to embrace the lifestyle – and class – that these things embodied, whether it was because it was the class you had grown up in, thought appropriate for you or because it was the social class you aspired to (Bell 2002: 261). Something else that’s important to note is that it wasn’t just the ownership and use of these things that mattered, it was the ‘correct’ use of them – numerous advice and etiquette manuals of the day provided, well, advice on the correct (upper) middle class ways to behave, both recognising and feeding into social anxieties about not behaving correctly (Fitts 1999: 58-59). Given Edward’s background, it seems likely that he would have known how to use his sherry glasses and fish knives, and that he was replicating the lifestyle he was familiar with from his childhood and one that he felt befitted him. Research suggests that this lifestyle wouldn’t have been familiar to many of his middle class contemporaries in Christchurch.

The story of Edward, his house and his things highlights the twists and turns class takes as the context changes, as well as how the simple ascription of a particular class based on a category such as occupation is not the whole story. This was not news to me, but I loved exploring how this particular example played out. If nothing else, it highlights that everyone’s experience is different, and that it is all to easy to lose the nuance when you start talking about large categories, such as “the middle class”. These terms obfuscate and hide the reality of people’s lived day-to-day experiences, and how they adapted to their circumstances. Edward arrived in a new city, where class definitions and boundaries, although more porous than he was used to, were still very real, but things were changing, and there was the opportunity to move beyond the strictures of the world he had known. Whether or not he saw his life in these terms is hard to tell: while the occupations he pursued might suggest this, the material culture and lifestyle he embraced suggests that he had not left behind many of the cultural norms he was familiar with and that defined his family’s social class.

References

Ancestry, 2024. Edward Watson Tippetts. [online] Available at: https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/70543637/person/392303379650/facts [Accessed 12 July 2024].

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.

Fitts, Robert K., 1999. The archaeology of middle-class domesticity and gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 39-62.

Lawrence, Susan, Alasdair Brooks, and Jane Lennon, 2009. Ceramics and status in regional Australia. Australasian Historical Archaeology 27: 67-78.

LINZ, c. 1860. Canterbury Land Index Deeds Index ‐ C/S 1 ‐ Subdivisions of rural sections register. Archives New Zealand, Christchurch office.

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

Macdonald, G. R., 1952-64. Macdonald Dictionary of Canterbury Biography. [online] Available at: https://collection.canterburymuseum.com/explore [Accessed 12 July 2024].

McAloon, Jim, 2004. Class in colonial New Zealand: towards a historiographical rehabilitation. New Zealand Journal of History 38 (1): 3-21.

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

Watson, K., 2022. 101 demolitions: how a disaster shed light on life in nineteenth century Christchurch. PhD thesis, University of Canterbury.

On fireplaces

On fireplaces

Fireplaces. They were one of the key components of the Victorian-era home in Christchurch, in the sense that, like doors and windows, every house had one (I’m somewhat taking liberties with the definition of fireplace here, and counting a coal range as one). Fire, after all, was required for cooking (at least until the advent of gas, if you want to distinguish that – if you do, gas cooking stoves were being advertised in Christchurch papers from the late 1870s (Press 23/11/1878: 8)). The other essential service that fireplaces provided, of course, was heating, although you have to wonder just how much heat these often quite small fireplaces generated, particularly given the high stud and large size of some of these Victorian rooms, not to mention the lack of insulation. No wonder the Victorians wore so many clothes…

This coal register bears the words “THE CONGO”, with the bust of a mustachioed figure above. The bust is possibly that of Henry Morgan Stanley, who searched for the source of that river. Stanley was also known for his brutality towards African people.

Most houses from the sample I analysed for my PhD research did have more than one fireplace, and those that had only one were amongst the smallest of the houses – and thus amongst the most cheaply built, and occupied by poorer families. For context, in 1883, a double chimney with a cement hearth cost £10-£11 (and the mantelpiece was more in addition to this). Such a cost would have been more than 10% of the cost of building the cheapest cottage described in Brett’s Colonists’ Guide (Leys 1883: 725). Most houses had between two and five fireplaces and, unsurprisingly, the number of fireplaces increased with the number of rooms. But not always: one 11-room house had just two fireplaces and a 14-room house had three. Which, as I write this on a frosty Canterbury morning, seems like it would have particularly cold. But does provide an insight into how people chose to spend their money when building a house, with these families seemingly favouring space over heating (which seems less than ideal, given that increasing the size of a house would have increased the heating requirements).

For those who are interested in such statistics: on average, houses built by working class families had three fireplaces, while those built by middle and upper class families had four fireplaces. Which, if nothing else, serves to prove how minimal the differences between these occupational classes and the houses they built were (although the statistics tell me that these differences were “significant”).

A rather elaborately carved mantelpiece, found in a surprisingly plain house in St Abans.

If a house had just the one fireplace it was, of course, in the kitchen. If there were two fireplaces, the second was almost always in the parlour (or at least, the room intended to have been used as the parlour – some may have functioned as master bedrooms, depending on the size of the family). When there were two fireplaces, they were usually back-to-back, meaning that they shared the same chimney – this would have been cheaper to build than two standalone fireplaces. When there was a third fireplace, it was usually in the master bedroom. A fourth fireplace could go anywhere. Well, not quite. That somewhat flippant remark reflects the fact the houses with four fireplaces had greater complexity, both in the number of rooms and the range of room functions, meaning that there were more options in terms of where to put a fireplace. In general, though, if a room was designed to entertain people, it had a fireplace and, if it was a service room, such as a pantry, scullery or bathroom, it did not. Likewise, an analysis of plans for grand homes in 19th century Christchurch indicates that servant’s bedrooms were highly unlikely to have a fireplace. Which seems a little mean, but in fact few of even these houses had fireplaces in all the family bedrooms. Fireplaces were also unusual in halls, except in the very grandest of homes – Riccarton House, I’m looking at you.

Fireplaces, of course, required fuel, which could be either wood or coal. In the early days of Christchurch’s European settlement, wood is more likely to have been used than coal, as coal had to be imported and would thus have been relatively expensive. Wood, though, was not without its own problems. In late 1861, there was something of a firewood crisis: prices rose dramatically as men who had formerly worked in logging were lured away by the gold rushes (Lyttelton Times 15/8/1860: 4, 29/1/1862: 4). This led to the formation of the Christchurch Coal and Firewood Society (those Victorians did seem to feel like any problem could be solved by a society…; Lyttelton Times 25/9/1861: 6). The aim of the society was to use its larger purchasing power to obtain coal and firewood at a reasonable price for its members – as a bonus, it would also ensure the quality of the wood, that the correct amount was delivered and that it was stacked for you (Lyttelton Times 29/1/1862: 4, 5/2/1862: 5; Press 5/10/1861: 3). In theory, at least – letters to the editor indicate that this was not always the case (Lyttelton Times 5/2/1862: 5). The society also struggled to obtain sufficient wood (Lyttelton Times 29/1/1862: 4). Such factors no doubt contributed to its demise some six months after it was formed.

Some rather glorious fireplace tiles, featuring an intriguing combination of romantic imagery and strawberries. A reference to Strawberry Hill? Who knows. Image: K. Webb, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

What fireplaces did not require were fancy mantelpieces and fire surrounds, but being Victorians, many simply could not resist this possibility (fireplaces also didn’t require fancy chimneys but, seeing as all this analysis relates to post-earthquake recording, there was not a single surviving chimney top amongst the houses in my sample). Unsurprisingly, parlour or drawing room fireplaces were typically the most ornate in the house, and fireplaces became less decorative as the importance of the room declined. This blog from our friends at Underground Overground Archaeology has a few more examples of fabulous fireplaces.

Fireplaces fulfilled some basic needs in houses in 19th century Christchurch: they kept people warm and they provided a means of cooking. To be fair, the warmth factor is debateable – perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they provided an illusion of warmth… And good cheer, for who amongst us does not enjoy the warming crackle of a (safely contained) open fire? Fireplaces, too, could provide an indication of a room’s importance and particularly whether or not the room in question was intended to entertain guests. As with so many architectural features, then, fireplaces fulfilled a practical purpose and a decorative one, and there were messages of wealth and status continued within that decorative aspect.

Katharine Watson

References

Leys, T. W., 1883. Brett’s Colonists’ Guide and Cyclopedia of Useful Knowledge: Being a Compendium of Information by Practical Colonists. H. Brett, Auckland.

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

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

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