Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Sesquicentennial memorial

The other side of the sesquicentennial memorial

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Over the last few weeks Te Ara people have been thinking about what will be needed to keep the site up-to-date over the long term. There are certain obvious events that require updates. There are expected events such as the release of the 2013 census figures, which will call for innumerable changes to statistics and conclusions throughout the site. There are unexpected happenings, like the Christchurch earthquakes, which forced us quickly to add new sections to our entry on Historic earthquakes. There are new political developments such as the revised law on the foreshore and seabed, which will need including in relevant parts of the site.

Then there are more subtle changes – such as new scholarly interpretations. If archaeologists suddenly decide that there is evidence for Polynesian arrival long before 1300, many entries will have to change. And there will be changes in fashion and public interest which might require new entries. For our final theme – on creativity, which we are just scoping now – we will have an entries on conceptual art and on video art, which would have been inconceivable when A. H. McLintock put together the 1966 encyclopedia.

All this seemed clear, but it was only when I went down to Invercargill last month that I realised just how quickly entries can date. A couple of months before I had finished writing an entry on Memorials and monuments, a history of the way New Zealanders have commemorated people and events in free-standing objects. I concluded that the great age of monument-building was from about 1900 to 1960; but since then people have been less interested in commemorating ‘great men’ in stone, and relatively few memorials have been put up.

South African War memorial, Invercargill

I had gone to Invercargill for the wonderful Southland Heritage Forum, a real outpouring of energy and passion about local heritage. I had been asked to talk about – you guessed it – monuments and memorials. So to get a local flavour into my talk I took a walk around central Invercargill. There were some old favourites, such as the magnificent South African War memorial isolated in the middle of a busy round-about; and there was one new ‘great man’ statue of local genius and personality, Burt Munro.

I also discovered four memorials to recent commemorative occasions. Directly opposite the South African War memorial in the centre of the city are two memorials commemorating the sesquicentennial of the Treaty of Waitangi. One, which is very large, is inscribed with the words, ‘Now we are one people’ (which may surprise some New Zealanders from further north committed to multi-culturalism) and the other has a beautiful interweaving of Union Jack and koru beneath the tail of a whale – to express the bicultural traditions of the early whalers. These were the first 1990 memorials I had seen.

Millennium memorial

Then just along the road I discovered a striking memorial to the millennium. It was in the shape of an umbrella, and functioned as a sun dial. Shadows cast by the umbrella handle told the local time, and on the walls around was a fascinating inscription explaining how and why a standard time came to New Zealand  (you will see the story in Te Ara also). This was the first millennium memorial I had seen.

150th anniversary weka

Finally, I discovered a cute bronze of a weka which had been erected in 2006 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Invercargill becoming a city.

So here were four monuments to recent anniversaries, all of which were news to me, a self-professed memorial nut. It looks like I need to go and revise my entry. But, before I do, does anyone know of other 1990 or millennium memorials in New Zealand – or is Invercargill alone in its commemorative splendour?

Around Anzac Day the headmaster of my old school, Broadgreen Intermediate in Stoke, Nelson, would always relate the story of Simpson and his donkey. Australian Private John Simpson, real name John Simpson Kirkpatrick, landed at Gallipoli on the 25th April 1915. He soon ‘acquired’ a donkey, known variously as ‘Murphy’, ‘Abdul’ or ‘Duffy’. Simpson and Murphy then worked together, bringing in the wounded from the firing line.

'Simpson' (centre) and his donkey carrying a wounded soldier, Gallipoli, 1915

The image of the humble private and his donkey bearing wounded soldiers to safety has a universal resonance, with Biblical overtones of donkeys and Good Samaritans. Simpson was killed on 19 May 1915, less than a month into the Gallipoli campaign. He became a folk hero in Australia, his story combining self-sacrifice, mateship, courage and compassion. He was held to represent all the finest qualities of the Anzacs, in particular the stretcher bearers. Simpson’s image is represented in a statue near the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, and another at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. His grave at the Beach Cemetery, Anzac Cove, has become a site of pilgrimage.

There is an ironic New Zealand connection to the John Simpson Kirkpatrick story. The most famous image of ‘Simpson’ is a painting by New Zealand soldier-artist Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones, entitled Private Simpson D.C.M. & his donkey at Anzac. Moore-Jones was at Gallipoli until November 1915, when he was evacuated wounded. He does not appear to have met Simpson. The artist painted at least two versions of his ‘Simpson’ painting, the first of them painted in Dunedin, in 1918. Moore-Jones based his ‘Simpson’ on a photo of a man with a donkey. The photo was in fact of New Zealand medic Richard ‘Dick’ Henderson. There had been a number of men and donkeys rescuing wounded soldiers at Gallipoli, although Simpson was the most well known. Moore-Jones, who died in 1922, appears to have been unaware of his error, which was only cleared up in 1950. There is a statue of Henderson in front of the National War Memorial in Wellington.

Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones's painting of Simpson and his donkey

Despite my assumed familiarity with the Anzac story, I knew nothing of Simpson’s connection to South Shields, my partner Janis’ hometown in the North East of England. During a recent visit, I was surprised to come across a large statue of John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey in the main thoroughfare of Ocean Road. I learned that John Simpson Kirkpatrick, the sum of all Anzac virtues, was in fact a Geordie. He was born in Tyne Dock, a tough working-class neighbourhood of South Shields. Young Jack, as he was known, is said to have always had a love of animals. He was particularly fond of the horse he drove in his childhood job on the milk rounds and the donkeys that people rode at the South Shields seaside.

A statue of John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey in South Shields

In 1909 the 17-year-old Jack went to sea, leaving home a few days after his father died. He jumped ship at Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1910, having long desired to spend time in Australia. Jack worked as an itinerant miner, farm labourer and sailor around Australia and its coasts. Although he liked a drink and the occasional scrap, Jack always sent about a quarter of his pay home to his widowed mother in South Shields. By the time war came in 1914, Jack was thinking of a return trip to England – apparently a motivating factor in his enlistment in 1914. For reasons that remain mysterious, he enlisted under the name John Simpson.

Instead of a direct trip home, Jack ended up at Anzac Cove, where his exploits and early death brought him lasting fame. The figure of Simpson, the man with the donkey, was held up by pro-conscriptionists and recruiting sergeants as a great example of loyalty to king and empire, and support for comrades at the front. This image fed into the huge debate going on in Australia over the introduction of conscription. With casualties mounting and the Mother Country calling for more men, the New Zealand government had introduced conscription in 1916. In contrast to New Zealand’s direct approach, the Australian government held two referendums on conscription. In each of the referendums, held in 1916 and 1917, the majority of voters rejected its introduction.

The Kirkpatrick pub – a fitting tribute to John Simpson Kirkpatrick

The use of John Simpson Kirkpatrick as an image of Australian loyalty to empire had a deep irony. Not only was Jack a recent Geordie immigrant to Australia, he was also a staunch socialist. Having grown up working class in a depressed industrial area, Jack referred to England as ‘that louse bound country’ (quoted in Peter Cochrane, Simpson and the donkey: the making of a legend. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1992, p. 19). He wrote home to his mother, ‘what they want in England is a good revolution that will clear some of these Millionaires and lords and Dukes out of it’ (quoted in Simpson and the donkey, p. 18). Despite these views, Jack still ended up dying in the Great War after having rescued many of his comrades. Along with the memorial statue, there is another monument to him in South Shields: the old South Shields School for Mariners building, right by the statue, is now a pub and nightclub, named The Kirkpatrick in his memory. Jack, a canny South Shields lad who enjoyed a good ‘bit a crack’ (a good yarn), a ‘bloo aat’ (drinking session) and the occasional punch up, would surely have approved of such an honour.

A veteran and a young serviceman at Hamilton cenotaph, Anzac Day 2010

Waitangi Day and Anzac Day are this country’s major occasions for historical remembrance – and which one is the most significant for the nation is one of our more interesting debates.

In April every year since Signposts began we have tried to acknowledge Anzac Day in some way. This year our acknowledgement has taken on unusually large proportions: we are launching no fewer than 13 new entries – a bumper crop of newly minted stories from our Government and Nation theme. They each in their way tell us about the diverse meanings of Anzac Day.

• The First World War was where it all began, with New Zealanders landing on what is now officially called Anzac Cove, halfway up Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915.  Although we now commemorate the day with a dawn service, most of the Kiwis landed in the later afternoon. One of those who landed that day was George Bollinger. Make sure you watch his story, the first of a projected series of War Stories about New Zealanders’ lives in the Great War. As the entry shows, only about 8,000 New Zealanders served on Gallipoli. Far more of the 100,000 Kiwis who went overseas fought, and too often died, on the Western Front.

• Australia and New Zealand picks up from the fact that for New Zealanders, if not for Australians, Anzac Day also recalls the close kinship with our Tasman brothers and sisters. This entry explores the ups and downs of this, perhaps our most important, relationship.

• Public holidays tells us that within a year of the landing Anzac Day was being remembered; and in 1920 Anzac Day became a public holiday.

• In 1949 a new law affirmed that Anzac Day officially commemorated those who had fallen in two other overseas wars. The first of these was the South African War. The entry on that war tells us that some 6,500 went and fought on the veldt (South Africa’s open plains), but more died of disease than from gunshot.

• The Second World War was the other overseas conflict recognised in the 1949 legislation. Ian McGibbon’s entry on that war is a brilliant summary of New Zealand’s involvement. The war re-shaped New Zealand and re-shaped the world.

• At the end of the Second World War, as after the First World War, New Zealanders hoped that they would no longer have to go and fight overseas. It was not to be. The world divided into an ideological conflict between the so-called ‘free world’ and the communist world; and in 1950 New Zealanders once again sailed overseas. They went to fight in the Korean war – the first of a number of engagements covered in Asian conflicts.

• In Europe the ideological conflict was largely a diplomatic, rather than military, stand-off. We cover this in Cold War.

• New Zealand soldiers also began to go overseas to serve as peacekeepers. The extent of our service in this role is covered in Peacekeeping.

• Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001, terrorism has become a major focus for New Zealand’s allies. Our involvement in anti-terrorism is the theme of Terrorism and anti-terrorism.

• For more than a century the major burden of these foreign commitments has fallen on our Armed forces. Our entry shows how the army, navy and air force have evolved over time.

• When members of the armed forces returned from overseas, particularly following the world wars, they were frequently physically and mentally scarred and had missed out on job opportunities. Veterans’ assistance describes how society tried to help them return to full lives as civilians.

• On Anzac Day veterans often march with their mates, and all wear the medals that they have earned from their service. Military medals will help you understand the meaning of those medals.

• In New Zealand the focus of Anzac Day services is the local war memorial, which usually lists those from the area who died in overseas wars. The memorial is where wreaths are laid and services are held. Memorials and monuments provides a history of New Zealand’s memorials, both those that commemorated particular armed conflicts and also those that recalled major people and events of civilian life.

So before you get up on Anzac Day and head off to the local dawn service, take a look at some of these 13 entries. We are confident that this will make your appreciation of the day very much richer.

Headline from the Thames Star, 17 April 1912, p. 2 (from Papers Past)

The centenary of the Titanic disaster on 15 April has brought extensive media coverage of this historic event. But how did the New Zealand media of the time – which in 1912 meant newspapers – cover the tragedy? A glance at the wonderful resource of Papers Past, the National Library’s digital newspaper archive, gives us some clues.

The Titanic disaster received wide-ranging newspaper coverage in New Zealand. The fact that the ship was equipped with modern Marconi wireless meant that word of the sinking was transmitted to Britain and North America as it was happening. This in turn meant that newspapers in London and New York were cabling news outlets around the world with accounts, often not very accurate, of the unfolding drama.

One of the optimist first headlines: Marlborough Express, 16 April 1912, p. 5 (from Papers Past)

Titanic sank at 2.20 a.m. (ship’s time) on Monday 15 April 1912, less than three hours after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. This was around 5.20 p.m. on 15 April in New Zealand. The first reports of the accident were in the New Zealand papers the next day. The Evening Post’s headline was typical ‘Shipping Disaster: Titanic Sinking: Mammoth Liner Collides with Iceberg’ (Evening Post 16 April 1912 p. 7). The Evening Post gave little detail of the accident, but commented on the size of both Titanic and of the ice floes in the Atlantic, plus details of previous accidents with icebergs. Some of the distinguished passengers on board were mentioned. At this point New Zealand papers simply reprinted the cables they received on the disaster, including the line that all the passengers had been saved (Marlborough Express 16 April 1912, p. 5).

The next day’s papers brought the grim news of ‘Fifteen hundred drowned: Titanic gone under: Unprecedented disaster‘. Some papers gave figures for the number of survivors, varying between 675 and 866. These seem to have been more guess work by journalists than based on any hard information. (Bay of Plenty Times, 17 April 1912, p. 5, and Ohinemuri Gazette, 17 April 1912, p. 2.)

Marlborough Express, 24 July 1911, p. 2

The reading public was already familiar with Titanic and its sister ship Olympic, as New Zealand newspapers had carried many reports on the planning and construction of the ‘mammoth’ White Star liners (Grey River Argus, 24 January 1910, p. 4, and Poverty Bay Herald, 22 February 1910, p. 5 ). Titanic had been heralded as the ‘Largest ship afloat’ on its launch at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast (Marlborough Express, 24 July 1911, p. 2).

Within days of the sinking, the papers recounted tales of manly British heroes going down with the ship. Americans were also conceded to be heroic, being of course members of ‘the English-speaking race’. Those passengers and crew from France or from southern or eastern Europe did not rate a mention (Grey River Argus, 18 April 1912, p. 4). Some papers went beyond the tales of heroism to ask why the disaster had happened. Were the liners too big, was the route safe, had the ‘rage for speed’ in trans-Atlantic crossings led to neglect of safety? (Evening Post, 18 April 1912, p. 6.)

New Zealand papers also began to report the accusations against some of the male survivors, in particular Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line. It was reported that Ismay claimed he was ‘simply a passenger’ on the Titanic and did not make any suggestions to the captain regarding the ship’s speed or route. He also claimed to have only entered a lifeboat when there were no women or other passengers remaining on deck (Evening Post, 23 April 1912, p. 7).

Poverty Bay Herald, 19 April 1912, p. 5 (from Papers Past)

Some of the reactions of New Zealand newspapers to the sinking of Titanic seem very familiar. One of the earliest questions asked was ‘Were there any New Zealanders on board?’ (Poverty Bay Herald, 19 April 1912, p. 5.) The papers were unable to identify any New Zealand passengers, but did find the lucky Mr J. A. Frostick, of Christchurch. While in Britain he had booked to cross the Atlantic on Titanic, but was forced to cancel the trip due to business engagements (Grey River Argus, 19 April 1912, p. 5).

A number of papers reported that the ‘adventuress’ May Hallet had been made a widow, as her husband, Donald Campbell, was assistant purser on Titanic. May Hallet was a jewel thief, car thief and confidence trickster who, between 1909 and 1911, had gained notoriety in New Zealand through conning the well-to-do. Her husband, an Australian, had formerly been purser on the Ulimaroa, a trans-Tasman steamer (Wairarapa Daily Times, 14 May 1912, p. 4, The Observer, 18 May 1912, p. 5 and NZ Truth, 30 January 1909, p. 4).

New Zealanders rallied round, raising funds to help the victims of the Titanic sinking (Marlborough Express, 25 April 1912, p. 4). Special church services and concerts were held to raise money for survivors, while sailors gave money from their pay to help the widows of their fellow seafarers (Evening Post, 19 April 1912 p. 7). One unnamed Wairarapa resident offered to adopt the one-year-old child who had been saved from the disaster (Wanganui Chronicle, 2 May 1912, p .4).

The Titanic disaster raised many maritime safety issues, including the shortage of lifeboats on liners and other passenger ships. New Zealanders were led to question whether the ships that plied their own coasts were safe and whether they had adequate provision of lifeboats (Colonist, 23 April 1912, p. 5).

While all parties saw the Titanic’s sinking as a tragedy, the varying conclusions drawn from it illustrate the polarised views common in 1910s New Zealand. A. A. Adams, rector of the state school of Greymouth, lectured his pupils on the King’s Birthday. He explained that ‘the thrilling accounts of the wreck of the Titanic … cause us to thank God we are British’ and went on to hail the heroism of the British seaman ‘from the humble stoker to the commander’ (Grey River Argus, 5 June 1912, p. 2).

Maoriland Worker, 14 June 1912 (from Papers Past)

In contrast James Thorn, writing in the socialist newspaper the Maoriland Worker, analysed the death rate among the different classes of Titanic’s passengera. He argued the disaster illustrated the results of class distinction and that charity towards the survivors was being ‘utilised to shield from well-deserved censure the negligently criminal powers that be.’ (Maoriland Worker, 14 June 1912, p. 2.) He also pointed out that the chivalry of male passengers was being used by British politicians as an argument against giving votes to women.

This assertion was also being used closer to home, as in a Press article that considers whether ‘women and children first’ is an outdated rule (Press, 8 June 1912, p. 10). It concludes:

There comes now and then a time when man proves himself greater than Nature, when he commands the survival of the weakest instead of the strongest. The ’sacred law of the sea’ must abide. And no true man would have it otherwise.

More connections between New Zealand and the North East of England, as discovered during the recent Christmas holiday I spent with my partner Janis, visiting her family in South Shields. Click for part 1.

The city of Sunderland is less than 10 kilometres south of South Shields. Situated at the mouth of the River Wear, Sunderland is another north-eastern city built on coal mining and ship building. The mines and shipyards are now closed, but the Nissan car factory, along with engineering, textiles, paper making and IT, continue to provide work in the area.

The Wearmouth rail and road bridges, River Wear, Sunderland. The first Wearmouth bridge was built in 1796. The rail bridge (foreground) was built in 1879 and the road bridge (behind it) in 1929.

Chartist George Binns (1815–1847) provides a historical link between Sunderland and my own home town of Nelson, New Zealand. Binns was born into a family of Sunderland Quakers. After his parents’ deaths in 1837, he took over his father’s drapers shop. Binns and his friend James Williams became heavily involved in the chartist movement. Chartism was a radical, largely working-class movement. The name came from the People’s Charter of 1838, which called for such utopian measures as voting rights for all men (women’s suffrage was too wild an idea even for the chartists), the secret ballot and the abolition of the rule that only property owners could stand for Parliament. Many chartist leaders were imprisoned, while chartist demonstrations were sometimes violently broken up.

In the 1830s and 1840s Sunderland became a major site of chartist agitation. Binns and Williams set up a mechanics’ institute where local workers could read newspapers, along with a bookshop and newsagent that doubled as a meeting place for local radicals. Binns developed a reputation as a forceful orator at public meetings and wrote poetry based around chartist ideals. Binns and Williams formed the Sunderland Democratic Association, which supported ‘moral-force chartism’, the idea of achieving reform without the use of violence.

The state regarded all radicals as dangerous, regardless of the methods they advocated. In 1840 Binns and Williams were tried for attending illegal meetings and publishing a seditious handbill. They were sentenced to six months in Durham gaol. On their release in 1841 Binns went back to the drapery business, but continued agitating for reform.

Bridge Street in Sunderland. Binns and Williams set up their booksellers, stationers and newsagents at 9 Bridge Street.

Binns’ business struggled in the early 1840s and he was sent to debtors’ prison. Upon his release, Binns embarked in August 1842 for the New Zealand Company settlement of Nelson. Arriving in December, he found work supervising a whaling establishment.

When Binns became involved in a controversy over short-weight bread (bread that may not have been the weight it was advertised), prominent businessman Alfred Saunders attacked him in the Nelson Examiner as a ‘Chartist ringleader.’ Binns replied that he had nothing to do with chartism in New Zealand where settlers were ‘united … by a community of interest’ and ‘where there is no grievance to redress and no enemy to our weal.’ While trying to live a life of ‘peace and good-will’ in Nelson, Binns declared he had not abandoned his principles: ‘When I came to New Zealand it was after I had suffered imprisonment, sacrificed my business, and lost the goodwill of relations in an effort to free my country.’

Around this time, in 1843, Nelson labourers were in dispute with the New Zealand Company for higher wages. Binns did not become involved with this issue, perhaps because he saw New Zealand as the land of opportunity, where class conflict was unnecessary.

Nelson in 1841, the year before Binns arrived, painted by Charles Heaphy

On 17 June 1843, 22 Nelson settlers were killed at Wairau, along with four Māori. The settlers, under Arthur Wakefield, had tried to arrest Ngāti Toa chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, after the Māori leaders evicted surveyors from disputed land. Governor Robert FitzRoy refused to take action against the Māori, maintaining that the settlers had illegally provoked the chiefs. Binns joined with other Nelson settlers in denouncing ‘the ferocious character of the savages’ and protesting at the government failure to act. Binns, like many British radicals, did not sympathise with Māori defending their land. Instead he appears to have seen Māori as standing in the way of progress, preventing the land from going to the encroaching settlers who would supposedly make the best use of it.

Binns took up employment as a baker after his whaling business failed in 1844. He was only to have a few more years in his land of promise. In 1847, at the age of 31, he died of consumption after three years of illness. The Northern Star, the foremost British chartist paper, described him in an obituary as ‘a handsome, high-spirited, talented, true-hearted man – every inch a Democrat.’

In Sunderland the drapery business established by George Binns’ father, George senior, became a household name as Binns Department Store, in business until 1993. In Nelson there is no memorial to show the connection between the fledgling settlement and the heady days of chartist protest in Britain.