Going fishing

I’m not much into fishing for actual fish. I like my fish to arrive steaming hot, wrapped in crispy batter and surrounded by chips. However, growing up with a brother who was, and still is, seriously into fishing, means that I spent hours of my youth dangling lines from assorted wharves and sea-walls. Generally, by the time I noticed the nibbling on my line, the bait and the fish were gone. Either that, or I fell in the water. Iain’s a different matter – when he goes fishing, he catches fish, and he comes home dry. He once tried to teach me the art of fly-casting in the back-yard. I might have been quite successful standing with my back to the fish – I caught a number of things behind me, including the clothes-line and the garage. The only time I actually managed to get the fly to land in front of me, it was half-way up a plum tree – a useful technique for catching that little-known species, the flying trout. I think that’s when Iain gave up on me and the damage I was doing to his fishing gear. He packed up and headed off to the river, and I returned to my regular bookish pursuits.

These days, when I go fishing, I’m casting my lines in the deep ponds of online databases and websites. A family name like Norgrove is an excellent bait – in the first few decades of New Zealand settlement, our Norgroves were the only ones in the country, so any references I fish up are going to be family. Every now and then I pull up something odd, like one of those ugly prehistoric-looking monsters that people find in Wellington harbour – the sort of fish you’ve half a mind to throw back. One such fishy surprise was in an 1877 issue of The Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, an article entitled “On the Habits of the New Zealand Grayling”. The grayling was a small native fish that is now extinct; even in 1877 it was becoming rare, hence the author’s investigation into its habits. Among the sources cited was our William, who said :

I have taken the grayling in the Maitai, just where the tide breaks into the fresh water, in large quantities, and as much as four miles higher up always in shoals. About the month of March they go up to spawn. I have fished at the mouth of the same river at all seasons in the salt water and caught lots of so-called herrings, which are, I believe, a kind of mullet, but never caught a single grayling at any time. They remain about a month, and then not one to be seen higher or lower.

Well, knock me over with a Parson’s Glory, but I never thought of William going fishing. There are probably any number of other blokey activities that I haven’t considered William doing either, but I guess I imagined William spending what little leisure time he had drawing and painting. Now I have to get my head around the idea of him dropping a line over one of Wellington’s many wooden jetties, or wading into Nelson’s Maitai river with his boys and netting a huge haul of graylings.

Then there’s the thought of Sarah – how often was she presented with a flax basket or soggy newspaper parcel of fish to cook for dinner? At least grayling didn’t have to be gutted and filleted – another article from the Royal Society’s learned journal advises that they were boiled whole, and “in eating, the flesh is drawn off the bone by a sucking action of the mouth, the head and bone being thrown behind over the shoulder.” Fun for the whole family, cat included.

The great fire of Wellington

I’ve been doing some more research into the fire on Lambton Quay on 9 November 1842, if only because it struck me as odd that William took his family up onto the Terrace to get away from it.

The wind was blowing from the north-west (“half a gale” according to one local newspaper). The Norgroves lived at almost the northern-most end of Lambton Quay, near the intersection with Mulgrave St. The fire started the best part of half a mile south-east of that and was heading away from them. Of course anyone who has spent more than five minutes in Wellington knows that the wind there can change direction in the blink of an eye, but any wind shift would have been more likely to push the fire up onto the Terrace than not.

The map below is of modern Wellington - the green line marks the Beach as it was in 1842 (everything to the right of the line is on reclaimed land).

The most likely reason for going up onto the Terrace was either that William wanted to seek shelter for his wife and children in the home of a friend, or in one of the wealthier settler’s homes. An exposed beach-front in a howling gale in the middle of the night is no place for a nine-day old baby. William’s priority was probably to get Sarah and the children safely under cover before going back to help fight the fire. Oscar wasn’t the youngest baby affected by the fire though – a Mrs Samuel had given birth to a daughter that day, and was given shelter at Barrett’s hotel during the fire.

The north-western end of Lambton Quay curves away from the Terrace, out to a point at its intersection with Thorndon Quay. This is the end the Norgroves were at, and to get to the Terrace, the family most likely went round the corner onto Sydney Street (now Kate Shepherd Place). They would have crossed the old Government reserve somewhere in the area of Museum Street to reach the Terrace. There were few houses on the Terrace at this early stage – the largest and best of them was Colonel Wakefield’s, which sat high on a town acre which stretched from Lambton Quay to the Terrace. Wakefield himself was out of town the night of the fire.

The fire started at Lloyd the baker’s premises, and from there proceeded to consume a solicitor’s office, a fishmonger’s, two pubs, a shoemaker’s, three butcher shops, Mrs Millar’s boarding house, two carpenters’ premises, two tailors’ shops, a stay-maker, another baker’s, a greengrocer, a hairdresser, a coffee-house and a bootmaker’s. Several stores and warehouses, the entire Kumutoto pa and sundry other private residences also went up in smoke. Jabez Dean, the plumber and painter who I’ve speculated William may have worked for, also lost his premises in the blaze. In all, contemporary accounts suggest 57 or 59 buildings were destroyed, of which around half were “Maori houses” made largely of raupo. Several more raupo buildings were pulled down to prevent the fire spreading even further.

It was quite a night. One account has the residents, aided by local Maori, rushing out of their houses with armloads of possessions and dumping them on the beach. Another account suggests that townspeople took refuge from the heat of the fire in water itself, although given how a north-westerly whips up the harbour, that seems unlikely. Sailors from the Bolina which was moored in the harbour helped with the fire-fighting, as did soldiers based in the town.

The fire was finally extinguished early in the morning – that afternoon, a public meeting, chaired by the mayor, gathered at the Exchange building and it was immediately agreed to launch a fund-raising appeal to help provide for the immediate needs of those affected by the fire. Almost £158 was immediately donated by those at meeting, and the total sum eventually raised was more than £360. The total losses of those affected were estimated to be in the order of £16,000. The economic effects of the fire were widely felt in the community because of the loss of large quantities of goods in the destroyed warehouses, as well as the temporary loss of services from a large number of small businesses. Some businesses recovered quicker than others – within six weeks, Lloyd the baker, in whose premises the fire started, was advertising he was back in business on the site of his former premises.

The morning after the fire, local Maori offered to build, free of charge, several raupo houses as temporary shelter for those who had lost their homes. The offer was declined on the grounds that it was the raupo houses which had made the effects of the fire so disastrous. Many of the dispossessed were accommodated in the New Zealand Company’s immigration barracks. The Maori took up a collection at their Sunday church service, and contributed to the relief fund instead.

The fire resulted in New Zealand’s first building legislation, the Raupo House Ordinance, which prevented the further construction of raupo houses within towns, and severely and punitively taxed the owners of the remaining existing raupo buildings. Later, the 1857 Town Protection Act required householders to keep two buckets full of water for fire-fighting purposes. In 1858, the Council bought itself a fire engine, which was operated by the police. The first volunteer fire brigade formed in 1865, with the help of funding from insurance companies.

Happy birthday!

On 1 November 1842, in a house on Lambton Quay somewhere in the vicinity of the present bus station, Sarah gave birth to her second child, Oscar Alfred Norgrove. Oscar was the first of the Norgrove children born in New Zealand. Today is also the birthday of his great-great-grandson, my nephew Cody, who is 6 – happy birthday Oscar and Cody!

We don’t know very much about Oscar when he was 6, or at any other time during his childhood. He was nine days old when a fire broke out soon after midnight at the Lloyd’s bakery on Lambton Quay. The fire spread quickly among the wooden buildings, and although it headed south and east, towards Te Aro pa, William took his young family up onto Wellington Terrace to be safe. Sarah makes mention of this story in a poem she wrote for her children – I suppose it was an unforgettable night for her, waiting on the hill in the small hours of the morning with a sleepy toddler and a new-born baby. She doesn’t say so, but William had probably gone to join the other settlers, local Maori, and the crew of several ships in harbour in fighting the fire. She would have been mightily relieved to go home in the morning, with William safe. Although many houses were destroyed, no-one was hurt in the fire.

The family moved to Blenheim in 1861, and Oscar seems to have taken up painting and wall-papering as his trade. By then, he was the eldest son, his older brother Ovid having died of tuberculosis three years earlier. In 1878 Oscar married Edith Brook, and their first child (my grandfather) was born later that year. Two girls and two more boys followed at tidy two year intervals.

Apparently Oscar was bright, very bright, scary-genius bright, and was given to tinkering around and coming up with new inventions. There was some concern in the family that he was insane, because some of his inventions seemed pretty wacky and way out for the time. The concern reached a whole new level in March 1888 when Oscar was committed to the Wellington Lunatic Asylum. The Marlborough Express reported :

LUNACY – Oscar Norgrove was committed to the Wellington Lunatic Asylum on Saturday by Mr Allen RM, Drs Cleghorn and Nairn having certified to his being insane. The poor fellow brought to our office a few days ago some models, very cleverly designed, with which he had been working out the theory of perpetual motion. Great sympathy is felt for his family.

I’m sure it was just wonderful for his family to have this announced to the whole town. His father had died two years previously, so was spared the sight of his son being carted off to the loony bin, but mother Sarah was still alive. Poor Edith was probably eyeing the kids and wondering if the insanity was hereditary (it doesn’t seem to have been – we’re all just fine, thanks!)

Although the modern view of nineteenth century definitions of insanity seems to be that the men in white coats carted off anyone who was a bit different, the reality of mental health care in New Zealand at this time wasn’t like that at all. Lunatic asylums didn’t differentiate between those who were mentally ill – treatable and with hope of recovery – and those who were mentally impaired from birth defect, accident or alcoholism. All were lumped in together. An ideal existed of providing a quiet haven with steady routines and therapeutic manual work, but by late in the century the asylums were becoming overcrowded. The country had a large population of early settlers who had never married. These men were aging, and many had mental health problems brought on by alcoholism, as well as age-related disorders. With nowhere else for them to go, the asylums had to take them in and care for them till they died. Wellington Lunatic Asylum (on the site now occupied by Government House) was probably less overcrowded than some in 1888, as the Porirua Asylum had opened the previous year.

Whatever Oscar’s problem was, it had to have been pretty serious if his large extended family couldn’t manage to look after him. It had to have been more than a matter of being misunderstood for his way-out ideas. Whether as a result of treatment or on his own, he seems to have recovered. I’m not sure when he was released (haven’t yet found the newspaper article trumpeting the return of his sanity), but by 1891 he was back in Blenheim, painting the parsonage.

In 1892, the Marlborough Express reprinted a letter titled “A New Zealand Inventor” from an Australian newspaper which makes it pretty clear that Oscar was indeed a clever chap. The writer of the letter (“FM” of Levin) had seen a newspaper article about someone in England who had patented a design for a boat with three keels, and that the admiralty intended to have some vessels constructed on the design. The inventor had apparently derived his idea from the albatross. “FM” went on to say :

I wish to call the attention of the public, through your paper, to the fact that the original inventor is Mr Oscar Norgrove, of Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand; that he constructed a model, which I saw, with plans, which he forwarded to the Admiralty, and that he stated at the time that he had derived the idea from the movements of the albatross. He has been a most enterprising man, and I think should have the credit of his invention, if not the profit. He forwarded the model, &c, about two years ago, while th[is] patent is quite
recent. Models and plans will be found in his possession on inquiry.

Now here’s the only photograph I have of Oscar, posing in front of the house in
Manse Road with Edith, Edgar and Bertha. Judging by the size of the children, the photo would have been taken in the late 1880s. When Mum gave me the photo, she told me Oscar was holding one of his inventions. The photo has faded badly, and between the cricket cap and a beard of old testament proportions, it’s pretty hard to see what Oscar looks like. But it sure looks to me that what he’s holding is a pair of model-size trimaran hulls!