buildings archaeology

On women and houses

When I started doing my doctoral research, one of the things I wanted to know was whether or not the houses women built were different from those men built. A naïve question, it turned out. The fundamental flaw was, in the absence of detailed archival records, how do you know if a woman built the house? (And by ‘built’ I mean, commissioned the construction of the house and had significant input into the design, form, layout and appearance of the house.) I analysed 101 houses from 19th century Christchurch for my thesis, and just two of them were built by single people. The remainder were built by people who were married and my assumption throughout was that such houses were built by the couple, rather than by just one of them. It’s often assumed that the person who owned the land (and took out the mortgage) built the house, as opposed to seeing this as a joint project by a married couple. This is an approach shaped by the landownership factor and also by the reality that men tended to be the financial provider in the 19th century Anglo world. There’s an assumption that extends from here to chief decision maker, although there’s no real justification for this.

Plenty has been written about women and houses in the 19th century, most of it in the context of Victorian society in England or the United States. It tends to revolve around the ideal promoted by advice books of the day that the house should be a private, domestic space, created and curated by women to provide men with respite from the evils of the (public, working) world, and in which to raise good moral, Christian children. It’s an ideal that’s often used to suggest that certain spaces within a house were feminine – the drawing room – and others masculine – the dining room – and also that men were responsible for the construction of the house, and women for its interior decoration (it’s easy to see where more recent stereotypes about the gender of architects and interior decorators have their origins). For various reasons (which I don’t have the time, space or inclination to go into today), it’s not an ideal that I think is particularly relevant to the analysis of houses in colonial settler New Zealand (with thanks to my thesis supervisors for helping me get to this point!).

This house was built on land owned by Rose Anna King . Regrettably, I’ve not been a to find out a thing about Rose (I don’t even know if that turret was original), except that she had no children. Image: Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

What, then, can houses tell us about the lives of women in colonial settler society in New Zealand? Quite a lot, I think, but today I want to focus on just one response to that question: they make women more visible, particularly when the construction of the house is framed within the context of a series of decisions made by a couple, as opposed to just the landowner. This point notwithstanding, for the sake of argument (and brevity), today I’m going to focus on some of the 11 houses from my thesis that were built on land owned by women, because this is a situation that particularly foregrounds women. In making these individual women visible, we can learn about women’s experiences more broadly.

These houses highlight that, while it was not common for women to buy or own property in 19th century Christchurch, it wasn’t unusual either. Where the women came by the money to fund these purchases is not clear, and it’s not clear if it was their own money or their husband’s money that was used (women sometimes came into marriages with endowments from their families, although this was typically the preserve of the wealthy). Only one of the women came from an obviously wealthy backgrounds (more on this below) and it’s possible that, in some instances at least, the property was in the woman’s name because of her husband’s financial troubles.

Margaret Stinnear (possibly née Stewart) purchased this land parcel and the adjoining one in 1893 and built two identical rental houses on them (LINZ 1893). Two years previously, her husband’s business had been the subject of a mortgagee sale and, on these grounds, it’s tempting to suggest that his financial woes led to this situation (Lyttelton Times 13/6/1891: 8). However, Margaret would go on to own a number of properties and I suspect it was her financial acumen that kept the family afloat, even financing two return trips to England (Lyttelton Times 3/10/1903: 9, Press 6/10/1908: 12, 24/2/1912: 14). Her estate was worth £2500 at her death in 1911. Another intriguing detail of Margaret’s life is that her only child, a daughter, was adopted (Stinnear 1911). Image: C. Staniforth, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

These women were all either working or middle class. Three were the daughters of farmers. Others were daughters of a carter, a miner, a stone mason and a stone quarrier, all working class occupations. Two of the women are known to have worked before they came to New Zealand. The fabulously named Matilda Sneesby (née Baker) was a stillroom maid in Marylebone, London, while Fanny Jane Langford (née Waite) worked as a nail maker even after her marriage (KenLederer 2025, Walandheather 2025). As noted above, none of the women are likely to have had money from their family – with one exception (see the picture below). Another would go on to be quite socially prominent, counting premiers and the like amongst her circle (Timaru Herald 19/12/1908: 2). But, for the majority of these women, their class background, and the fact that they were able to buy property in Christchurch, is a testament to the much greater opportunities available to working (and even middle) class families in New Zealand than in the British Isles.

Prudence McClurg (née Bassett) almost certainly used family money to buy the land this house was built on. She certainly bought it from one uncle and subsequently mortgaged it to another (LINZ 1894, 1897). She was part of a complex family network of Irish immigrants, a number of whom were quite commercially successful and, between them, owned quite a bit of property. Image: P. Mitchell, Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive.

And what of the houses these women built? Well, they were mostly quite modest, with just one bay villa amongst them. The rest were mostly standard villas, with two being standard cottages, indicating a low level of capital. Similarly, most of them had a villa layout, although again there were two with a cottage layout. In fact, most were typical Christchurch houses – which may go some way towards answering my original question? And, perhaps also testify to the predominance of the plain, flat-fronted, symmetrical standard villa in Christchurch, and everything that was embodied in that. The houses ranged in size from five to 10 rooms, and the women had varying numbers of children. Two of the women had no children, a situation my research indicates would have been unusual, and this on its own makes these women stand out (perhaps it is more than coincidence that these are the two women about whom I have the least information, but perhaps not). Maria Hardie, on the other hand, had seven children (two of whom did not survive infancy). Her family would have lived in particularly cramped conditions in their tiny cottage. Under these circumstances, it’s highly unlikely Maria’s family enjoyed the use of a parlour. Most of the families would have lived in more spacious circumstances, with some children no doubt sharing rooms, but still with a parlour, giving them a reasonable amount of living space. Which brings me to one other thing these women had in common: none of them advertised for servants. Of course, this doesn’t mean they didn’t have servants, and the size of the houses the Bassetts and Sneesbys lived in indicates that the servants would have been a possibility for them.

Scroll through the slideshow below to learn more about the women, their houses and their lives. For each of the women, I tried to find at least one factoid that was unrelated to their parents, husband or children, but for a handful this proved just impossible, highlighting how small a trace they left in the historical record.

While these women left little trace in the historical record, in building, they left a physical mark on the city, contributing to its appearance and the development of Christchurch’s own particular style of domestic architecture. In this, we can also recognise that they shared a desire to improve their situation – and those of their families – and the means to act on that desire. While improvement is a motivator for many migrants, not all in the 19th century were fortunate enough to be able to afford to build. I’ve discussed renting in 19th century Christchurch previously, and last week’s post touched on boarding, and there were certainly homeless people in the city These were much more financially precarious positions than these women enjoyed (with the exception of Maria Hardie – follow this link to the blog I wrote about her family to learn more about that). These women, then, draw attention to some of the experiences of women who came to Christchurch in the 19th century. Their lives are by no means representative of a broad cross-section of women, but they show how the stereotypes of women’s lives in the 19th century can be challenged by looking more closely at their individual lives and the houses they built.

Katharine Watson

References

KenLederer, 2025. Fanny Jane Waite. [online] Available at: https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/person/tree/111401256/person/280097991423/facts

LINZ, 1893. Certificate of title 156/52, Canterbury. Landonline.

LINZ, 1894. Certificate of title 160/219, Canterbury. Landonline.

LINZ, 1897. Certificate of title 173/22, Canterbury. Landonline.

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

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

Stinnear, Margaret Stewart, 1911. Probate. [online] Available at: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/1865481

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

Walandheather, 2025. Matilda Baker. Available at: https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/20142703/person/252127956595/facts

On sitting rooms and parlours and drawing rooms

Where it all started: an 1884 advertisement for a house for a sale that described the house as having both a drawing room and a sitting room. Image: Press 22/11/1884: 5.

There are some fairly standard tropes about drawing rooms and parlours in the Victorian world: they were the best room in the house, reserved for entertaining visitors, rarely entered by family and stuffed full of things, with drawing rooms in posh houses and parlours for everyone else. These tropes are all true to varying degrees. But if that’s drawing rooms and parlours, where on earth do sitting rooms fit in the mix? Until coming across an 1880s house sale notice, I didn’t even know they were a thing in the 19th century (I’d assumed a 20th century date for the sitting room), but the Oxford English Dictionary tells me that the term has been around since 1763 (OED n.d.). So, where did they fit into the picture?

First, a fun and somewhat random fact: house sale/rental notices in Christchurch/Lyttelton mention sitting rooms years before parlours or drawing rooms are mentioned. June 1851 is the first year a sitting room is mentioned in a house sale/rental advertisement in Christchurch newspapers (Lyttelton Times 14/6/1851: 8). It’s 1855 for a drawing room and 1857 for a parlour (Lyttelton Times 14/11/1855: 3, 2/5/1857: 3). I’ve no idea why this would be the case, but could it be that houses with parlours/drawing rooms changed hands in other ways, through word of mouth, rather than requiring a newspaper advertisement – because Christchurch was a small town and the sorts of people who could afford a house with a parlour or drawing room all knew each other? It’s pretty hard to tell if this was the case from the available information, but my research indicates that houses with a parlour or drawing room were almost certainly ‘better’ than houses with a sitting room.

You see, it turns out sitting rooms were associated with boarding. That is, the practice of renting a room (or rooms) to live in, typically because you weren’t in a position to rent an entire house or flat. A boarder might live in a private family’s house (thus providing extra income for that family), or they might live in a larger boarding house establishment, such as the Cambridge Boarding House or Green’s Boarding House (Lyttelton Times 12/7/1879: 8, 10/1/1885: 8). Boarders were typically single men, but I also came across instances of married couples and a family with two young children seeking boarding situations (Lyttelton Times 17/6/1881: 1, 30/10/1897: 1). The latter, in particular, seemed to speak to a precarious (and unfortunate) financial position. Perhaps the most intriguing example of a boarder, though, was a businesswoman with a young daughter, and with a “daily maid” who looked after the daughter (Press 17/11/1897: 1).

This 1897 advertisement placed by a woman seeking a boarding situation for herself and her young daughter hints at the complexities and realities of being a single working mother in Christchurch in the late 19th century. Image: Press 17/11/1897: 1.

While in many instances, I’m sure it was possible for a boarder just to rent a bedroom (no doubt a cheaper option), the examples I came across were necessarily where there was also a sitting room available. By no means were all the sitting rooms mentioned associated with boarding situations, and parlours were mentioned in some boarding advertisements, but this was less common (Press 4/11/1872: 1). However, I didn’t come across a single instance of a drawing room being offered to potential boarders, or being sought by a boarder. That is, boarders did not have drawing rooms.

Outside of boarding situations, houses that were listed as having sitting rooms or parlours were indistinguishable (in the advertisements, at least). In addition to a sitting room or parlour, these houses typically had bedrooms and a kitchen. Occasionally, a dining room or bathroom might be mentioned, but these weren’t common. Houses with drawing rooms, however, were quite different. If you had a drawing room, it was almost completely certain that you also had a dining room. Chances are you may also have had an entrance hall, a morning or breakfast room, a dressing room, a servants’ room, a library, a study and/or a conservatory. That is, unsurprisingly, houses with drawing rooms were big houses, with lots of rooms and much greater separation of space by function than houses with just a sitting room or parlour.

Another thing. Houses with drawing rooms might also have a sitting room. Or two. The former wasn’t common, but it was also by no means unusual. And it was more common than having a drawing room and a parlour, or a parlour and sitting room (which was definitely unusual). In these cases, with a drawing room and a sitting room, I suspect that the sitting room was used as an informal room, for the family, and the drawing room was kept for entertaining guests.

The 1881 sale notice for Middleton, a house with a parlour and not one, but two, sitting rooms. Image: Lyttelton Times 27/4/1881: 8.

There were some other notable features about houses with drawing rooms. Unlike sale advertisements for houses with sitting rooms or parlours, when houses with drawing rooms were sold, the name of the owner or occupant was usually mentioned, indicating that that person’s identity was an important part of the marketing strategy – and confirming the role of social status in the housing market. If that person was male, they were usually an “Esq.” (i.e. esquire, a somewhat ambiguous and loosely applied marker of social status). Further, if the occupants of such houses disposed of their household furniture at the time of the sale (due to their death, departure from Christchurch or the more intriguing, so-and-so is “giving up housekeeping” e.g. Press 24/9/1892: 10), fulsome lists of the items for sale were published in the newspaper. This was not the case for houses with either sitting rooms or parlours, which might have a more generic advertisement that mentioned that the household furniture was for sale, but without going into specific details. 

The array of furniture, etc, from the drawing room that H. P. Lance sold when he sold Ilam House in 1864. Note, in particular, the number and types of chairs. Image: Press 23/4/1864: 5.

These household inventories are, of course, fascinating. They reveal that drawing rooms contained a plethora of different chairs and tables, along with things like a whatnot, a Canterbury and/or a chiffonier, a pier glass and, frequently, some type of clock and a musical instrument (usually a piano). They always had a fender and fire irons (i.e. the room had a fireplace), a carpet and hearthrug and the curtains and associated fittings (poles, etc) were always sold. Sometimes there were bookcases and books listed, and pictures of different types were usually mentioned, along with ornaments. So, yes, a room stuffed full of things.

What’s interesting in all of this is that you (or the real estate agent) could presumably choose how to name the rooms listed in the advertisement for the sale of your house, and yet there are very clear differences in how the different names were used, and those differences are linked to class/social status. While I’m sure there were examples of sale notices embellishing the description of the house, the patterns I observed indicate that this was rare and that most people followed the norm. Which in turn suggests that most people were accepting of these class/social status differences, whether because they simply didn’t care about them or because they didn’t see them as worth fighting against or, some would no doubt argue, because people were so strongly shackled by the class system and kept in their place by it. Class boundaries in New Zealand in the 19th century were far more permeable than in England at the same time, however, and thus this last seems both unlikely and lacking in nuance (although it may well have been true for some colonial settlers). Thus, what started as a simple exploration of sitting rooms in Victorian Christchurch has provided insight into one of the myriad and subtle ways in which class and social status shaped people’s lives in that era, as well as demonstrating just how pervasive class norms were. Really, I should have known when I started looking at things like drawing rooms and parlours that class would come into it!

 Katharine Watson

References

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

Oxford English Dictionary, n.d. “sitting room (n.), sense 1.a,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6617967976.

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

Banner image: [The drawing room at Elmwood, Christchurch]. Ranfurly family: Collection. Ref: PA1-f-195-48. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22675867

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.

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

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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.

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.