I got back to work after my summer holidays to discover an absolute epidemic of pregnancy in our building, including three young women on the same floor as me. All three are at different stages – one with only a few weeks to go before Baby Day, one at around 20 weeks, and one around 9 weeks. They all sit together in a “pod” of 4 desks – the fourth woman is a grandmother who has stopped drinking the local water just as a precaution!
Discussions in the tea room centre around baby preparations and pregnancy comparisons, all three being first-time mums-to-be. This is endlessly fascinating to me as the biographer of a woman who had 10 children; the three pregnant women know about great-great grandma and are interested in comparing 1840s/1850s pregnancies with their own. They were hardly surprised when I looked at someone’s 9-week scan and commented that Sarah wouldn’t have had one of those, but they were surprised by some of the things I found in my latest research reading on the historical management of pregnancy and childbirth.
In the late eighteenth-century, pregnancy and childbirth were just beginning to be medicalised by doctors. It was greed, pure and simple. Upper class and aristocratic women were making it trendy to have an accoucheur, a male obstetrician, rather than a woman midwife. And doctors were keen to get into the baby business because it was easy money, all these rich women needing their help to pop out babies. Debate was intense as to whether the developing foetus was a separate entity from the mother before birth, and a view of the foetus as having separate rights from the mother was beginning to form – although most practitioners came down pragmatically on the side of the mother if pregnancy complications necessitated a choice between mother or baby.
The stethoscope was invented in 1819. In 1822, a young doctor had the inspiration of applying it to a pregnant belly, expecting to hear the “splashing” of the foetus in the amniotic fluid. To his great surprise, he heard a heartbeat instead, and is now credited with the discovery of the foetal heartbeat. I expect that midwives had probably discovered it long before this, but they were women, and thus didn’t count in the new world of scientific discovery. The foetal heartbeat soon became a significant tool in monitoring a pregnancy, within the bounds of modesty demanded by Victorian decorum.
Early medical intervention didn’t mean much beyond foetal monitoring and forceps deliveries. There was nothing like the wealth of information women have today, from books and medical pamphlets and websites, to scans, measurements and weigh-ins. What seems to have been traded for today’s information, and perhaps the security it provides, is modesty. Modern women usually say that after the first baby, they’ve got no modesty left. Notwithstanding today’s bikinis, low-cut tops, TV nudity and casual sex, today’s pregnant women have to deal with a variety of professionals peering at their nether parts under high illumination on numerous occasions. Great-great grandma, on the other hand, dressed modestly, especially when pregnant, and was unlikely to have experienced any stranger’s hand on her bits, and possibly not even her husband’s. Accepted procedure for the rare physical examination was for the pregnant woman to lie fully dressed on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest, while the doctor, carefully avoiding eye contact, rummaged under layers of garments, and literally groped his way through the examination working by touch alone.
Historically, women couldn’t be sure they were pregnant until around 4 months – the quickening, literally coming to life, as the baby’s first movements were felt. For first-time mums, even then they couldn’t be sure, having not experienced the sensations before. The cessation of periods wasn’t a reliable indicator. Unlike today’s hormone-regulated menstrual cycles, these women may not have even had a period at the time of first pregnancy. And later pregnancies might not be detected by women who spent the majority of their lives pregnant and breast-feeding – the menstrual cycle simply didn’t settle down into a regular pattern.
Technical and medical issues aside, possibly the most striking difference between Sarah’s child-bearing, and that of the young women I work with, is in the matter of choice. It’s not just that today’s young mums can chose whether or not to have children; they can (to a point) choose when, and how many. For Sarah, children were the inevitable outcome of marriage, and while breast-feeding might help to space them out a bit, the average nineteenth-century fertile woman would bear eight children. Sarah had ten live births; we don’t know whether she had any failed pregnancies. Most women today choose fewer children, at wider-spaced intervals. Choosing when to start “trying for a family” (not a phrase that Sarah would ever have heard) now means a myriad of decisions – the ability to support a child, impact on careers, future child-care options, even just feeling ready to have a child. Once the decision to go forth and procreate has been made, and assuming fertility isn’t a problem, that’s just the start of the choices : to know the gender or not; when to stop working; disposables or cloth nappies; home birth or hospital; epidural, or not, or even an elective Caesarian; birth plans and positions and which family and friends will attend; video or just photos; when to go back to work, and if early, bottle-feeding or expressing or having the baby brought into work for feeds; crèche or in-home child-care? Clothes, bedding, nursery decorations, toys, cot, baby capsule, car seats, wipes – the expense mounts up as well.
The choices may be bewildering to modern women navigating their way through first pregnancies; to great-great grandma they would be incomprehensible. She got pregnant when she got pregnant, had the baby when the baby was ready to come, survived or not depending largely on luck and her own strength, breast-fed and used cloth nappies, took care of the rest of the family, had the next baby when the time came, and with good fortune raised most of her children to adulthood. She dressed to hide her pregnancy as much as possible, keeping her corset on until she couldn’t do it up any more; she didn’t flaunt her belly and discuss the details with everyone she met – even her parents back in England might not know of the pregnancy until the birth was announced. She wouldn’t have gone out much in public in the latter stages of pregnancy, and she certainly wouldn’t have had a photo of herself taken while pregnant (let alone a video of the actual delivery!)
The one choice that Sarah had which today’s women don’t, was whether or not to involve the medical profession in her pregnancy. That choice was personal (and possibly economic), barring emergencies – she could have chosen to keep her pregnancy to herself until delivery, and then given birth with the help of a midwife, or friend or neighbour. She didn’t have to have a doctor and a raft of pre-natal checks. Nowadays, it’s nigh on impossible to have a baby without the involvement of the medical profession – and although most women wouldn’t have it any other way, there are always some who want to keep delivery as natural as possible and with the least amount of intervention – and they usually have to fight to achieve this.
Given the choice, would Sarah have traded her modesty and dignity and privacy for information about her own health and the baby’s progress? Would she have wanted the security provided by today’s very low maternal and infant mortality? I think it’s very likely that she would. Would she have wanted the choice of how many children she would bear, and when, and all the other choices and decisions that follow? That’s harder to know because it’s harder to separate from the culture and conventions of her time, her upbringing, her view of the world and her place in it. But if you could show her a scan of her growing baby, I think she’d react just the same as the young mums at work – with wonder and awe and amazement at seeing into the secret world of the tiny clench-fisted creature curled safe inside her.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Birthdays
If you’d been thinking there was something wrong with my blog’s web-page because it was permanently stuck in October 2008, you’d be wrong. I just haven’t updated it for a few months. It’s hard to start back again – do I explain my absence (pressure of the paying job, mostly) or do I jump straight back in? Or a bit of both?
It was Helen who put the hard word on me – “update your damn blog” – a couple of weeks back, on the occasion of my god-daughter Izzy’s first birthday party. A good time was had by all, especially the birthday girl, although she really doesn’t have the hang of presents yet. She’s much more interested in crawling off at high speed.
She enjoyed her birthday cake, a sponge decorated with her name written in marshmallows. I know she enjoyed the cake because I got given the job of feeding it to her, and at one point she chomped down quite enthusiastically on my finger. Those little baby teeth are sharp! Who would want to be breast-feeding when the teeth started to arrive – instead of a mother-baby bonding moment, it would be a desperate race to refuel the little piranha before it drew blood. Poor Sarah, still breast-feeding Ovid when he was sixteen months.
Anyway, Izzy’s birthday party made me wonder about the celebration of birthdays back in Victorian times. I wasn’t sure that they celebrated at all, although you would think, given the infant mortality rate, that Victorian parents might want to mark the first and second birthdays just to acknowledge the child’s survival. Or maybe they didn’t want to make too big a deal of it, in case they somehow jinxed the baby?
Further research revealed that social class and income seem to have played a part. By late in the Victorian period, lavish children’s parties with entertainment like a conjuror, were all the rage in upper-class and aristocratic families. Even the middle-class were doing their best to keep up with the Joneses when it came to birthday bashes. It all seems very much like the McDonald’s / magician / clown parties young children seem to expect today.
On the other hand, most children of the poor struggled to be able to say how old they were, let alone the date of their birthday. It seems unlikely that their birthdays were marked in any special way, or even remembered at all.
Working class families seem to have celebrated birthdays according to their means. The day would be remembered, but whether there was any more to it than recognition that it was Fred or Jane’s birthday depended on the state of the family finances. A special family meal could probably be managed. If there were presents, they were more likely to be things the birthday boy or girl needed – hankies and underwear, those traditional stand-bys – or things lovingly crafted by siblings – embroidered hankies, knitted scarves or pen-wipers, a rag doll or carved animal. Sometimes cards would be sent by relatives, maybe with a little money.
I imagine this is pretty much how birthdays went in the Norgrove household, but whether there were birthday parties is hard to know. If William and Sarah adopted the philosophy that what one got, they all got, then you’re looking at six or seven children’s birthday parties a year in the 1850s. It seems unlikely, although it’s possible that during their school years, the girls at least might have had small gatherings of friends at home. Gertrude and Emma had birthdays a week apart, and although there was a four-year age difference between them, this would be a likely occasion for all of the girls to prepare special treats and invite a friend or two each.
Whether the adults gave each other gifts is uncertain, but it seems likely. William at least, could always give Sarah the gift of a sketch – one of the children, or a favourite place. He seems to have been the sort of person who would spend money if he had it – so might have given quite generous presents when in funds, and more likely to resort to giving a drawing when broke. He doesn’t seem to have come from a family which made a huge deal out of birthday gift-giving, going from a comment in a letter to him from his sister Hannah in 1869 :
Dear Mother’s birthday is on the 7th September and yours she tells me is on the 28th of the same month. We did not allow the day to pass without drinking your health as it is call’d, and most sincerely wishing yourself, dear Sarah and your dear children prosperity and every real happiness.
Later, when the children were older and the family more prosperous, both bought and hand-made gifts were the order of the day. In 1889, Sarah wrote to Gertrude for her birthday – by this time, Gertrude is married and has a family of her own :
Your sisters & Brothers write with me in wishing you many happy returns of the day. Kate has just gone to Mrs Compton’s to leave a small parcel for George Groves to take you - the photos for dear Ovid [Gertrude’s son], the wash stand set for you. I made every stitch since my birthday, so you must please excuse any faults as I insisted on doing it all myself. I intended to line the crochet with Turkey red twill, but Mrs Earll persuaded me that as they would wash easier as they are. Your sisters bought the photo with Joe’s shop [Joe Dempsey, Gertrude’s husband, had a saddler’s shop in Blenheim before the Dempseys moved to Wellington], they thought you would like to see it.
It was Helen who put the hard word on me – “update your damn blog” – a couple of weeks back, on the occasion of my god-daughter Izzy’s first birthday party. A good time was had by all, especially the birthday girl, although she really doesn’t have the hang of presents yet. She’s much more interested in crawling off at high speed.
She enjoyed her birthday cake, a sponge decorated with her name written in marshmallows. I know she enjoyed the cake because I got given the job of feeding it to her, and at one point she chomped down quite enthusiastically on my finger. Those little baby teeth are sharp! Who would want to be breast-feeding when the teeth started to arrive – instead of a mother-baby bonding moment, it would be a desperate race to refuel the little piranha before it drew blood. Poor Sarah, still breast-feeding Ovid when he was sixteen months.Anyway, Izzy’s birthday party made me wonder about the celebration of birthdays back in Victorian times. I wasn’t sure that they celebrated at all, although you would think, given the infant mortality rate, that Victorian parents might want to mark the first and second birthdays just to acknowledge the child’s survival. Or maybe they didn’t want to make too big a deal of it, in case they somehow jinxed the baby?
Further research revealed that social class and income seem to have played a part. By late in the Victorian period, lavish children’s parties with entertainment like a conjuror, were all the rage in upper-class and aristocratic families. Even the middle-class were doing their best to keep up with the Joneses when it came to birthday bashes. It all seems very much like the McDonald’s / magician / clown parties young children seem to expect today.
On the other hand, most children of the poor struggled to be able to say how old they were, let alone the date of their birthday. It seems unlikely that their birthdays were marked in any special way, or even remembered at all.
Working class families seem to have celebrated birthdays according to their means. The day would be remembered, but whether there was any more to it than recognition that it was Fred or Jane’s birthday depended on the state of the family finances. A special family meal could probably be managed. If there were presents, they were more likely to be things the birthday boy or girl needed – hankies and underwear, those traditional stand-bys – or things lovingly crafted by siblings – embroidered hankies, knitted scarves or pen-wipers, a rag doll or carved animal. Sometimes cards would be sent by relatives, maybe with a little money.
I imagine this is pretty much how birthdays went in the Norgrove household, but whether there were birthday parties is hard to know. If William and Sarah adopted the philosophy that what one got, they all got, then you’re looking at six or seven children’s birthday parties a year in the 1850s. It seems unlikely, although it’s possible that during their school years, the girls at least might have had small gatherings of friends at home. Gertrude and Emma had birthdays a week apart, and although there was a four-year age difference between them, this would be a likely occasion for all of the girls to prepare special treats and invite a friend or two each.
Whether the adults gave each other gifts is uncertain, but it seems likely. William at least, could always give Sarah the gift of a sketch – one of the children, or a favourite place. He seems to have been the sort of person who would spend money if he had it – so might have given quite generous presents when in funds, and more likely to resort to giving a drawing when broke. He doesn’t seem to have come from a family which made a huge deal out of birthday gift-giving, going from a comment in a letter to him from his sister Hannah in 1869 :
Dear Mother’s birthday is on the 7th September and yours she tells me is on the 28th of the same month. We did not allow the day to pass without drinking your health as it is call’d, and most sincerely wishing yourself, dear Sarah and your dear children prosperity and every real happiness.
Later, when the children were older and the family more prosperous, both bought and hand-made gifts were the order of the day. In 1889, Sarah wrote to Gertrude for her birthday – by this time, Gertrude is married and has a family of her own :
Your sisters & Brothers write with me in wishing you many happy returns of the day. Kate has just gone to Mrs Compton’s to leave a small parcel for George Groves to take you - the photos for dear Ovid [Gertrude’s son], the wash stand set for you. I made every stitch since my birthday, so you must please excuse any faults as I insisted on doing it all myself. I intended to line the crochet with Turkey red twill, but Mrs Earll persuaded me that as they would wash easier as they are. Your sisters bought the photo with Joe’s shop [Joe Dempsey, Gertrude’s husband, had a saddler’s shop in Blenheim before the Dempseys moved to Wellington], they thought you would like to see it.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Earthquakes and aftershocks
Last week was Disaster Awareness Week, and the “featured disaster” was an earthquake – a big deal for most New Zealanders, and especially those of us who live or work in Wellington. And while disaster awareness and preparation is of professional interest to me, there’s also the fact that earthquakes seem to have been quite significant in early Norgrove history.
Prior to the arrival of settlers, Maori were well-used to earthquakes. They had a word for them (ru) and an explanation – the god Ruamoko, son of Ranginui, the sky, and Papatuanuku, the earth, buried at his mother’s breast. Ruamoko is the god of volcanoes and earthquakes, and the earth’s tremors are caused by his subterranean movements.
Early settlers from 1840 onwards had already experienced many minor earthquakes, and one or two real doozies. On the 4th of December 1846, Wellington was jolted by a severe earthquake lasting several seconds, which caused people to run outside in panic. Perhaps not Sarah, though, as only the day before she had given birth to son Horace, and was probably still in bed recovering. There were at least 10 aftershocks over the next few days; then began a series of smaller earthquakes which went on for the next two years, about one a month.
Then on 16 October 1848 came the first major quake to affect Wellington. At about 1.40am on Monday morning, during a horrible night of severe gales and heavy rain, residents were woken, and in some cases thrown from their beds, by a major earthquake now estimated to have been of magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale. The earthquake was actually centred in Awatere Valley in Marlborough, but was felt from Hawke’s Bay to Canterbury. The bulk of the damage was in Wellington, which was the most densely populated area at the time, with around 4500 settlers in addition to the Maori population. Three people in Wellington died as a result of the earthquake – a sergeant from the Mt Cook barracks, and two of his small children, who were buried by the collapse of a brick wall.
Sarah’s daughter Emma claimed to have been born during the earthquake, but in fact she was born during the tail-end of the big aftershocks, on 23 October. I have to wonder whether the shock and stress of the big earthquake and the ongoing aftershocks caused Sarah to go into labour prematurely; if that was the case, it doesn’t seem to have done Emma any harm, as she outlived the rest of her siblings and died at a ripe old age, two days after her 97th birthday.
In an attempt to “avert the recurrence of any similar visitation”, Lieutenant-Governor Eyre proclaimed Friday 20th October as a day of “public and solemn fast, prayer, and humiliation”. He also took the somewhat bizarre precaution of shifting most of the coinage from his treasury aboard a naval ship anchored in the harbour, although why he thought it would be safer there suggests how little he understood about earthquakes.
The 1848 earthquake badly damaged brick and stone buildings. Wooden buildings fared better, although many lost their brick chimneys. A major aftershock on the Tuesday afternoon finished off many of the buildings which had been badly damaged – fortunately by then the weather had improved, and people weren’t trying to keep the rain out of the holes where their chimneys had once been. On Wednesday morning the tide came in rather higher than it should have, and a number of Lambton Quay and Te Aro properties were inundated. William and Sarah and their family were living on Lambton Quay at this time – the houses here generally fared better in the earthquake than those at Te Aro and Thorndon, but didn’t escape completely because of the disastrous high tide.
We know that some time in 1849 the family moved from Lambton Quay to Thorndon Quay – could the 1848 earthquake have been a contributing factor in the decision to move? Was their house so badly damaged that they had to move? Did they think that Thorndon Quay might be safer in an earthquake? Or had William managed to put together enough money to buy a property rather than continue renting? Did they simply need more room, now that they had five children?
The next major earthquake was The Big One – a massive shock of 8.2 on the Richter scale, on 23 January 1855. This earthquake was on the Wairarapa faultline, and it visibly changed the landscape in ways that can still be seen over 150 years later.
Wellingtonians were in the middle of a two-day celebration of the 15th anniversary of the founding of the settlement. On the day before, there had been whale-boat races in the harbour; on the day of the earthquake, crowds of people had travelled to Miramar for horse-racing. Whether Sarah attended any of the events is unknown, but William and Ovid were still in the Victorian goldfields, leaving Sarah alone in the Thorndon Quay house with six children ranging in age from 12 (Oscar) to 2 (Kate).
At 17 minutes past nine on the Tuesday evening, the great earthquake struck. The first shock last 50 seconds, but must have seemed much longer as houses shook, windows broke, ornaments and furniture were thrown to the ground, and chimneys collapsed. Many people had trouble getting out of their houses because doors and windows jammed. The tide was high at the time, and the water level suddenly rose over two metres, flooding many of the shops and houses in Lambton Quay. The water then receded to a level several metres below the previous low tide mark, and for the next 8 hours it rose and fell every 20 to 25 minutes. A tsunami about ten minutes after the earthquake caused flooding in the sea-side suburbs, but didn’t have any appreciable effect in the inner harbour.
Most people spent the rest of the night outside, in makeshift tents or huddled in sheets and blankets, as the aftershocks continued. When daylight came, the extent of the damage was visible, from fallen and damaged to buildings to the unexpected change in Lambton Quay where the beach-front had experienced an uplift of about 1 metre. Many of the roads contained deep fissures which oozed mud. Aftershocks continued throughout the day, causing no little danger to the 65th regiment, who from daybreak had started pulling down the worst-damaged buildings. Amazingly, only one person was killed in Wellington, local identity Baron von Alzdorf, flattened by a falling chimney in his hotel.
Repairing the damage took months. How Sarah and the children coped is not known; however, it would seem that the earthquake brought William and Ovid home from Australia as fast as they could get there. In 1855, this wasn’t all that fast. It would have taken weeks for a letter from Sarah to reach William; in fact, it’s likely that he saw newspaper reports of devastation and catastrophe in Wellington, and immediately set off from the diggings, taking the first ship that would get him and Ovid back to New Zealand. This was the Wild Irish Girl, which landed them at Nelson on 10 May 1855. I haven’t yet found any record of how he and Ovid travelled back to Wellington, but perhaps a day or two spent looking around Nelson while waiting for a ship gave William a favourable opinion of the town, which had suffered much less earthquake damage. By October 1855, fourteen years after arriving in New Zealand, the whole family had removed to Nelson – driven away by Wellington’s shaky situation?
Prior to the arrival of settlers, Maori were well-used to earthquakes. They had a word for them (ru) and an explanation – the god Ruamoko, son of Ranginui, the sky, and Papatuanuku, the earth, buried at his mother’s breast. Ruamoko is the god of volcanoes and earthquakes, and the earth’s tremors are caused by his subterranean movements.
Early settlers from 1840 onwards had already experienced many minor earthquakes, and one or two real doozies. On the 4th of December 1846, Wellington was jolted by a severe earthquake lasting several seconds, which caused people to run outside in panic. Perhaps not Sarah, though, as only the day before she had given birth to son Horace, and was probably still in bed recovering. There were at least 10 aftershocks over the next few days; then began a series of smaller earthquakes which went on for the next two years, about one a month.
Then on 16 October 1848 came the first major quake to affect Wellington. At about 1.40am on Monday morning, during a horrible night of severe gales and heavy rain, residents were woken, and in some cases thrown from their beds, by a major earthquake now estimated to have been of magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale. The earthquake was actually centred in Awatere Valley in Marlborough, but was felt from Hawke’s Bay to Canterbury. The bulk of the damage was in Wellington, which was the most densely populated area at the time, with around 4500 settlers in addition to the Maori population. Three people in Wellington died as a result of the earthquake – a sergeant from the Mt Cook barracks, and two of his small children, who were buried by the collapse of a brick wall.
Sarah’s daughter Emma claimed to have been born during the earthquake, but in fact she was born during the tail-end of the big aftershocks, on 23 October. I have to wonder whether the shock and stress of the big earthquake and the ongoing aftershocks caused Sarah to go into labour prematurely; if that was the case, it doesn’t seem to have done Emma any harm, as she outlived the rest of her siblings and died at a ripe old age, two days after her 97th birthday.
In an attempt to “avert the recurrence of any similar visitation”, Lieutenant-Governor Eyre proclaimed Friday 20th October as a day of “public and solemn fast, prayer, and humiliation”. He also took the somewhat bizarre precaution of shifting most of the coinage from his treasury aboard a naval ship anchored in the harbour, although why he thought it would be safer there suggests how little he understood about earthquakes.
The 1848 earthquake badly damaged brick and stone buildings. Wooden buildings fared better, although many lost their brick chimneys. A major aftershock on the Tuesday afternoon finished off many of the buildings which had been badly damaged – fortunately by then the weather had improved, and people weren’t trying to keep the rain out of the holes where their chimneys had once been. On Wednesday morning the tide came in rather higher than it should have, and a number of Lambton Quay and Te Aro properties were inundated. William and Sarah and their family were living on Lambton Quay at this time – the houses here generally fared better in the earthquake than those at Te Aro and Thorndon, but didn’t escape completely because of the disastrous high tide.
We know that some time in 1849 the family moved from Lambton Quay to Thorndon Quay – could the 1848 earthquake have been a contributing factor in the decision to move? Was their house so badly damaged that they had to move? Did they think that Thorndon Quay might be safer in an earthquake? Or had William managed to put together enough money to buy a property rather than continue renting? Did they simply need more room, now that they had five children?
The next major earthquake was The Big One – a massive shock of 8.2 on the Richter scale, on 23 January 1855. This earthquake was on the Wairarapa faultline, and it visibly changed the landscape in ways that can still be seen over 150 years later.
Wellingtonians were in the middle of a two-day celebration of the 15th anniversary of the founding of the settlement. On the day before, there had been whale-boat races in the harbour; on the day of the earthquake, crowds of people had travelled to Miramar for horse-racing. Whether Sarah attended any of the events is unknown, but William and Ovid were still in the Victorian goldfields, leaving Sarah alone in the Thorndon Quay house with six children ranging in age from 12 (Oscar) to 2 (Kate).
At 17 minutes past nine on the Tuesday evening, the great earthquake struck. The first shock last 50 seconds, but must have seemed much longer as houses shook, windows broke, ornaments and furniture were thrown to the ground, and chimneys collapsed. Many people had trouble getting out of their houses because doors and windows jammed. The tide was high at the time, and the water level suddenly rose over two metres, flooding many of the shops and houses in Lambton Quay. The water then receded to a level several metres below the previous low tide mark, and for the next 8 hours it rose and fell every 20 to 25 minutes. A tsunami about ten minutes after the earthquake caused flooding in the sea-side suburbs, but didn’t have any appreciable effect in the inner harbour.
Most people spent the rest of the night outside, in makeshift tents or huddled in sheets and blankets, as the aftershocks continued. When daylight came, the extent of the damage was visible, from fallen and damaged to buildings to the unexpected change in Lambton Quay where the beach-front had experienced an uplift of about 1 metre. Many of the roads contained deep fissures which oozed mud. Aftershocks continued throughout the day, causing no little danger to the 65th regiment, who from daybreak had started pulling down the worst-damaged buildings. Amazingly, only one person was killed in Wellington, local identity Baron von Alzdorf, flattened by a falling chimney in his hotel.
Repairing the damage took months. How Sarah and the children coped is not known; however, it would seem that the earthquake brought William and Ovid home from Australia as fast as they could get there. In 1855, this wasn’t all that fast. It would have taken weeks for a letter from Sarah to reach William; in fact, it’s likely that he saw newspaper reports of devastation and catastrophe in Wellington, and immediately set off from the diggings, taking the first ship that would get him and Ovid back to New Zealand. This was the Wild Irish Girl, which landed them at Nelson on 10 May 1855. I haven’t yet found any record of how he and Ovid travelled back to Wellington, but perhaps a day or two spent looking around Nelson while waiting for a ship gave William a favourable opinion of the town, which had suffered much less earthquake damage. By October 1855, fourteen years after arriving in New Zealand, the whole family had removed to Nelson – driven away by Wellington’s shaky situation?
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Winter colds
The other day my friend Helen asked how Sarah would have managed with a houseful of kids and babies with colds. Much like Helen herself was managing, I guess, except without the Vicks…
My first thought was – no tissues! All those extra handkerchiefs to wash, dry and iron – yucky. And there were none of the over-the-counter medications that make colds a bit easier to live with these days. For Sarah, dealing with colds would have meant the old-fashioned home remedies:
My first thought was – no tissues! All those extra handkerchiefs to wash, dry and iron – yucky. And there were none of the over-the-counter medications that make colds a bit easier to live with these days. For Sarah, dealing with colds would have meant the old-fashioned home remedies:
- Hot drinks, like lemon and honey, with or without whisky, and lemon-barley water;
- Essential oils of camphor or cloves, inhaled in steam or mixed with grease or fat to be used as chest rubs;
- Mustard plasters or mustard baths
If Sarah had any Maori friends, they might have suggested a tea of hoiheri bark (lacebark) and an inhalation of vapours from boiled kahikatea bark. Plenty of warmth and rest, and a lot of time to recover, would have been the order of the day.
The common cold would have been far more of a threat to Sarah’s family than it is to us today. For one thing, there was no sick leave. If William had developed a heavy cold and had to take to his bed, he would have lost working days and income, which would have put the whole family at risk. For another thing, the potential complications of a simple cold were far more dangerous in a world without antibiotics and modern medical care.
Sarah’s number one priority would have been to prevent her family from getting sick in the first place. Whether she sewed them into flannel from autumn to spring, as was often recommended, we don’t know, but you would have to hope that the spring-time unwrapping of such a family coincided with the annual bath! She would certainly have made sure they were warmly-dressed and well wrapped up for winter weather. She might not have had much idea how colds spread (come to that, neither do most of my work-mates and fellow commuters, who so generously bring their germs to share) but she would have been concerned that no-one took a chill from getting caught out in the rain or breathing damp night air. And like most mums, if she got sick herself, she would probably have had to soldier on taking care of the family, rather than taking to her bed with a hot toddy and a good book.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Weaning the baby
My god-daughter Izzy is 7 months old and she just got her first tooth, not that she was very keen to show it to me yesterday. She’s getting started on solid food. Her Mum Helen says she likes sweetcorn and potato, peas and broccoli, kumara and carrot, but she’s not that impressed with the sharper tastes of apple and plum. Banana is OK though. Izzy gets mushy veggies into spooned into her and she smears them back all over her Mum, who wants to know what great-great grandma weaned the babies onto.
My assumption was that Ovid would be weaned onto mushy veggies, just like Izzy, except that his wouldn’t come in convenient little jars and tins from the supermarket. Then I consulted Dr Thomas Bull’s 1840 manual, The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease, and discovered that nineteenth-century babies were weaned onto things like boiled cereals, which were sieved and mixed with milk. Sometimes they were started on flour boiled with milk and water. Dr Bull also suggested “tops and bottoms, steeped in hot water, with the addition of fresh milk and loaf sugar to sweeten”. Tops and bottoms of what? Carrots? Swedes? No, there’s not a vegetable to be seen in the weaning plan of C19th infants. “Tops and bottoms” are apparently small rolls of dough, baked, cut in halves and then baked in the oven, used as food for infants. Mmmmm, not much nutritional value. Dr Bull said beef tea and chicken broth could be added occasionally, along with a little cooked egg. “Animal food” was strongly discouraged as being bad for the digestion, however sugar was regarded as a necessary condiment, as was salt, which stimulated the digestion and prevented worms! Fruit was OK, and water the preferred beverage, although apparently toast-and-water might be more palatable. [Really? This seems to be a drink for infants and invalids found in a number of old recipe books. Toasted (but not burnt) bread is soaked in water and then strained. It’s supposedly a refreshing drink. Can I bring myself to try it?] Finally, Dr Bull spoke out strongly against the maternal practice of giving wine, beer or any stimulant to any child, except medicinally!
From around twelve to 24 months, Dr Bull suggested the following meal plan :
Still not a vegetable in sight!
The weaning of Ovid Norgrove is something of a puzzle for me. These days, solids start appearing in baby’s diets after 6 months. Back then, Dr Bull was suggesting between 9 and 12 months as the optimum time to start introducing solids. His view was that with mother and baby in good health, weaning shouldn’t be delayed after 12 months of age. His colleague Dr Jacobi agreed, noting that while many mothers continue breast-feeding to prevent conception, sometimes until the child is four years old, breast-feeding is not a guaranteed way of avoiding pregnancy. However, Sarah tells us that on the voyage to New Zealand, Ovid was breast-fed; she didn’t start weaning him until they reached New Zealand 4½ months later. The Gertrude sailed from England on Ovid’s first birthday, so he would have 16 months old before she started weaning him off the breast. His brother Oscar was conceived about 3 months later, so either the breast-feeding or the close proximity of the neighbours on Gertrude had been acting as contraception!
Rations weren’t provided for children under one year of age on the immigrant ships – they were expected to be breastfed. However, a number of “comforts” were provided for the breast-feeding mums and their babies – stout for the mums, and good old sago, tapioca and arrow-root for the babies. Chances are Ovid actually started on solids while on Gertrude – the cereals, a little bread soaked in preserved milk, and maybe a ship’s biscuit to gnaw on when his teeth started to come through. Once in New Zealand, fresh cow’s milk was available – he had his first taste within hours of coming ashore – but if Sarah followed the traditional approach, he probably didn’t see a mashed vegetable until he was much older. Sarah had eight siblings; twins Alfred and Anne were born when she was five, and by the time she turned eight, she had five brothers and sisters. No doubt she had been helping her mother raise babies since she was a small child; sister Caroline was born six months after Sarah had Ovid, so she went straight from caring for her siblings to raising her own babies. She probably did the same things with her children as her mother did, and fed them the same sorts of foods as her mother, and her mother’s mother, had traditionally prepared.
So there we are. Nineteenth century baby food was cereals and breads, seasoned with salt and sugar – not quite as nutritious as what modern babies receive, but less likely to stain than when baby lovingly wipes a face-full of mushy pumpkin all over mum’s blouse.
My assumption was that Ovid would be weaned onto mushy veggies, just like Izzy, except that his wouldn’t come in convenient little jars and tins from the supermarket. Then I consulted Dr Thomas Bull’s 1840 manual, The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease, and discovered that nineteenth-century babies were weaned onto things like boiled cereals, which were sieved and mixed with milk. Sometimes they were started on flour boiled with milk and water. Dr Bull also suggested “tops and bottoms, steeped in hot water, with the addition of fresh milk and loaf sugar to sweeten”. Tops and bottoms of what? Carrots? Swedes? No, there’s not a vegetable to be seen in the weaning plan of C19th infants. “Tops and bottoms” are apparently small rolls of dough, baked, cut in halves and then baked in the oven, used as food for infants. Mmmmm, not much nutritional value. Dr Bull said beef tea and chicken broth could be added occasionally, along with a little cooked egg. “Animal food” was strongly discouraged as being bad for the digestion, however sugar was regarded as a necessary condiment, as was salt, which stimulated the digestion and prevented worms! Fruit was OK, and water the preferred beverage, although apparently toast-and-water might be more palatable. [Really? This seems to be a drink for infants and invalids found in a number of old recipe books. Toasted (but not burnt) bread is soaked in water and then strained. It’s supposedly a refreshing drink. Can I bring myself to try it?] Finally, Dr Bull spoke out strongly against the maternal practice of giving wine, beer or any stimulant to any child, except medicinally!
From around twelve to 24 months, Dr Bull suggested the following meal plan :
Its breakfast between seven and eight o’clock, to consist of tops and bottoms, steeped in hot water, a little milk added, and the whole sweetened with sugar; or bread may be softened in hot water, the latter drained off, and fresh milk and sugar added to the bread. Its dinner about twelve o’clock, to consist, every other day, of a small quantity of animal food (chicken, fresh mutton, or beef, being the only meats allowed) with a little bread and water; on the alternate days, well boiled rice and milk, a plain bread, sago, tapioca, or arrow-root pudding, containing one egg; or farinaceous food, with beef-tea. Its afternoon meal, about four o’clock, the same diet as formed the breakfast. At seven, a little arrow-root, made with a very small proportion of milk, or a biscuit, or a crust of bread, after which the child should be put to bed.
Still not a vegetable in sight!
The weaning of Ovid Norgrove is something of a puzzle for me. These days, solids start appearing in baby’s diets after 6 months. Back then, Dr Bull was suggesting between 9 and 12 months as the optimum time to start introducing solids. His view was that with mother and baby in good health, weaning shouldn’t be delayed after 12 months of age. His colleague Dr Jacobi agreed, noting that while many mothers continue breast-feeding to prevent conception, sometimes until the child is four years old, breast-feeding is not a guaranteed way of avoiding pregnancy. However, Sarah tells us that on the voyage to New Zealand, Ovid was breast-fed; she didn’t start weaning him until they reached New Zealand 4½ months later. The Gertrude sailed from England on Ovid’s first birthday, so he would have 16 months old before she started weaning him off the breast. His brother Oscar was conceived about 3 months later, so either the breast-feeding or the close proximity of the neighbours on Gertrude had been acting as contraception!
Rations weren’t provided for children under one year of age on the immigrant ships – they were expected to be breastfed. However, a number of “comforts” were provided for the breast-feeding mums and their babies – stout for the mums, and good old sago, tapioca and arrow-root for the babies. Chances are Ovid actually started on solids while on Gertrude – the cereals, a little bread soaked in preserved milk, and maybe a ship’s biscuit to gnaw on when his teeth started to come through. Once in New Zealand, fresh cow’s milk was available – he had his first taste within hours of coming ashore – but if Sarah followed the traditional approach, he probably didn’t see a mashed vegetable until he was much older. Sarah had eight siblings; twins Alfred and Anne were born when she was five, and by the time she turned eight, she had five brothers and sisters. No doubt she had been helping her mother raise babies since she was a small child; sister Caroline was born six months after Sarah had Ovid, so she went straight from caring for her siblings to raising her own babies. She probably did the same things with her children as her mother did, and fed them the same sorts of foods as her mother, and her mother’s mother, had traditionally prepared.
So there we are. Nineteenth century baby food was cereals and breads, seasoned with salt and sugar – not quite as nutritious as what modern babies receive, but less likely to stain than when baby lovingly wipes a face-full of mushy pumpkin all over mum’s blouse.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Let there be light
I have a theory that humans are meant to hibernate in winter, like bears. Come late autumn, I’m ready to disappear into my cave and doze away the winter in the company of a pile of good books and DVDs. I’d like to emerge in spring, somewhat skinnier, better-read and well-rested, raring to go. Unlike the bears, though, I have a mortgage to pay……
I do think we’re out of touch with the natural order of things. We’ve extended our day at both ends with artificial lighting, and we try to hold to pretty much the same routine, summer and winter. Back before artificial lighting, winter meant going to bed not long after sunset, and staying there till sunrise – human hibernation! No wonder I get grumpy in winter – out of bed long before dawn, while the sensible sparrows still have their heads tucked under their wings. It’s barely light when I get to work, and it’s dark when I leave again.
I couldn’t function in winter without electric lighting. Click on the switch, and there’s light – easy, except for the increasing price of it. I do wonder how William and Sarah managed. When I think about them, I can’t help but imagine them in the same quality indoor lighting that I’m used to. I have to remind myself that lighting for them was a completely different thing, and that by comparison with what we have today, the quality of their indoor light was very poor.
William and Sarah had to make far better use of daylight than I do, and get as much done between sun-up and sun-down as possible. Even working indoors, Sarah would have needed to be close to a window to see what she was doing, whether sewing or peeling potatoes. Cloudy overcast winter’s day? Too bad. She couldn’t switch on a light as we do.
Eventually it would get so dark, Sarah would have no choice but to light the lights, and what a choice she had – slush lights, candles and oil lamps. It’s a good thing those Victorians ate so much meat – they needed the fat not just for making soap, but also for making candles and slush lights. Victorian lighting leads me into a whole lot of new terminology to go with the old technology.
The slush lights were basically fat melted into any suitable container, left to harden with a wick in the middle. They must have smelled disgusting, but the candles weren’t much better, being more likely to be tallow than beeswax. Even the lamp fuel was most likely to be smelly whale oil. Lamp and candle wicks were different – they didn’t burn up and disappear like modern ones, they just hung around. The charred bit of wick was called the “snuff” and candle-snuffers weren’t for putting out candles, they were scissor-type arrangements to cut and catch the snuff. You put out your candle by smothering it with a candle “duffer”; blowing or pinching it out left you with a room full of stinky smoke.
Most women made their own candles; home-made being more economical than the store-bought kind. Apparently the candles available in Wellington in the 1840s were imported from Australia and were of very poor quality. William and Sarah might have had to buy a few until Sarah accumulated enough tallow to make her own. A candle-mould was probably one of the household items the Norgroves brought from England, along with at least one metal candle box – metal to keep out the rats and mice, who would have been only too happy to eat the candles. Some women made all their winter candles during the summer; others left it until autumn because the candles would harden quicker in the cooler temperatures.
When it came to lighting the candles, they might have used a paper taper or even wood splinter lit from the fire. Tinder boxes were still in use, but Lucifer matches had been around since the 1830s. Whether William and Sarah would have had money to spend on such things is another matter, but even if they did, they would have used them sparingly, just like the candles.
Along with all the different terminology and equipment – the candle-sticks and chamber-sticks, snuffers and duffers, lucifers, lamps, chimneys, candle-lanterns and moulds – Victorian lighting was labour-intensive. Women had to make the candles and the slush-lights, and store them where the rats couldn’t get at them but people could. They had to clean lamp chimneys and trim candle wicks, and scrape wax out of candle-sticks, and roll paper spills to use as tapers. Flicking a light switch and changing the occasional light bulb is much easier, not to mention cleaner. And it’s lighting that doesn’t smell like dead animals.
While these days candle-light might be fun for a romantic dinner, and it might be manageable for a few hours during a power cut, our candles are clean-burning wax ones, often scented, and we’re not trying to read or sew by their light. William and Sarah’s candles would have flickered and sputtered, and cast deep shadows in corners. They wouldn’t have had a lavish array of candles and lamps lighting up the house – they would have used as few as possible. In winter they would have sat close to the fire, to make the best use of its light; and they wouldn’t have sat up late after sunset anyway.
William and Sarah would have hibernated in winter, getting up with the sun and going to bed when it did. Their days were short and their nights were long – although interestingly, this didn’t result in a whole bunch of little Norgroves. Out of ten children, only Kate, Zoë and Sidney appear to have been conceived from winter night snuggling. William and Sarah were probably too tired to do anything but sleep.
I do think we’re out of touch with the natural order of things. We’ve extended our day at both ends with artificial lighting, and we try to hold to pretty much the same routine, summer and winter. Back before artificial lighting, winter meant going to bed not long after sunset, and staying there till sunrise – human hibernation! No wonder I get grumpy in winter – out of bed long before dawn, while the sensible sparrows still have their heads tucked under their wings. It’s barely light when I get to work, and it’s dark when I leave again.
I couldn’t function in winter without electric lighting. Click on the switch, and there’s light – easy, except for the increasing price of it. I do wonder how William and Sarah managed. When I think about them, I can’t help but imagine them in the same quality indoor lighting that I’m used to. I have to remind myself that lighting for them was a completely different thing, and that by comparison with what we have today, the quality of their indoor light was very poor.
William and Sarah had to make far better use of daylight than I do, and get as much done between sun-up and sun-down as possible. Even working indoors, Sarah would have needed to be close to a window to see what she was doing, whether sewing or peeling potatoes. Cloudy overcast winter’s day? Too bad. She couldn’t switch on a light as we do.
Eventually it would get so dark, Sarah would have no choice but to light the lights, and what a choice she had – slush lights, candles and oil lamps. It’s a good thing those Victorians ate so much meat – they needed the fat not just for making soap, but also for making candles and slush lights. Victorian lighting leads me into a whole lot of new terminology to go with the old technology.
The slush lights were basically fat melted into any suitable container, left to harden with a wick in the middle. They must have smelled disgusting, but the candles weren’t much better, being more likely to be tallow than beeswax. Even the lamp fuel was most likely to be smelly whale oil. Lamp and candle wicks were different – they didn’t burn up and disappear like modern ones, they just hung around. The charred bit of wick was called the “snuff” and candle-snuffers weren’t for putting out candles, they were scissor-type arrangements to cut and catch the snuff. You put out your candle by smothering it with a candle “duffer”; blowing or pinching it out left you with a room full of stinky smoke.
Most women made their own candles; home-made being more economical than the store-bought kind. Apparently the candles available in Wellington in the 1840s were imported from Australia and were of very poor quality. William and Sarah might have had to buy a few until Sarah accumulated enough tallow to make her own. A candle-mould was probably one of the household items the Norgroves brought from England, along with at least one metal candle box – metal to keep out the rats and mice, who would have been only too happy to eat the candles. Some women made all their winter candles during the summer; others left it until autumn because the candles would harden quicker in the cooler temperatures.
When it came to lighting the candles, they might have used a paper taper or even wood splinter lit from the fire. Tinder boxes were still in use, but Lucifer matches had been around since the 1830s. Whether William and Sarah would have had money to spend on such things is another matter, but even if they did, they would have used them sparingly, just like the candles.
Along with all the different terminology and equipment – the candle-sticks and chamber-sticks, snuffers and duffers, lucifers, lamps, chimneys, candle-lanterns and moulds – Victorian lighting was labour-intensive. Women had to make the candles and the slush-lights, and store them where the rats couldn’t get at them but people could. They had to clean lamp chimneys and trim candle wicks, and scrape wax out of candle-sticks, and roll paper spills to use as tapers. Flicking a light switch and changing the occasional light bulb is much easier, not to mention cleaner. And it’s lighting that doesn’t smell like dead animals.
While these days candle-light might be fun for a romantic dinner, and it might be manageable for a few hours during a power cut, our candles are clean-burning wax ones, often scented, and we’re not trying to read or sew by their light. William and Sarah’s candles would have flickered and sputtered, and cast deep shadows in corners. They wouldn’t have had a lavish array of candles and lamps lighting up the house – they would have used as few as possible. In winter they would have sat close to the fire, to make the best use of its light; and they wouldn’t have sat up late after sunset anyway.
William and Sarah would have hibernated in winter, getting up with the sun and going to bed when it did. Their days were short and their nights were long – although interestingly, this didn’t result in a whole bunch of little Norgroves. Out of ten children, only Kate, Zoë and Sidney appear to have been conceived from winter night snuggling. William and Sarah were probably too tired to do anything but sleep.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
First, catch your pukeko
I’ve been reading Tony Simpson’s A Distant Feast : The Origins of New Zealand’s Cuisine, looking at the sort of food our immigrant ancestors might have been eating. For someone who sticks to basic beef, pork and chicken, the vast number of recipes for offal and game has just about given me nightmares. Those Victorians ate anything and everything.
Despite the complaints about food on the immigrant ships, for many of the steerage passengers, the food in the embarkation depots and on ships was better than what most of them had seen in a long time. Many immigrants grew quite stout on board ship; children often became ill at the quantities of food their loving parents stuffed into them.
On arrival in New Zealand, the immigrants discovered that beef and pork were generally plentiful and cheap. Maori had enthusiastically adopted the practice of raising pigs and cattle, and growing fruit and vegetables, for sale or trade to the Europeans. The New Zealand climate made growing vegetables pretty straightforward, and veggie gardens flourished at most early Wellington homes. Raw vegetables were still regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, and most people preferred them to be thoroughly cooked to remove any lingering trace of the poisons they were thought to contain. Even my grandmother’s cookbook from the early 1900s recommends boiling cabbage for 20 minutes – and adding a piece of washing soda to ensure it retained its green colour. Mmmmmm…..
In Britain, fish had been regarded as food for the poor – it was free for the catching, after all. It seems most settlers also avoided sea-fish – whether because the taint was of poverty or the raw sewage in the harbour is not clear. Chicken wasn’t eaten much either – chickens were kept for eggs rather than for food, and only the old ones that had given up laying found their way into the pot.
Then there was game and wild food – pheasants, rabbit, hare, wild pork, eels, koura – if Dad could catch it, Mum would cook it. Even, if you were short of cash and the larder was bare, the ubiquitous swamp hen :
Pukeko Cream Soup
Prepare the bird and set in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add three kumaras and one onion and salt to taste. Now simmer until the bird is tender [this may take some hours] then remove from stock and vegetables. Sieve kumaras and onion and add to stock with half a pint of milk. Heat again and thicken with one tablespoon of cornflour. Before serving, add a small quantity of cream and garnish each serving with chopped parsley and freshly-ground pepper. [And presumably, throw away the pukeko?]
Despite the complaints about food on the immigrant ships, for many of the steerage passengers, the food in the embarkation depots and on ships was better than what most of them had seen in a long time. Many immigrants grew quite stout on board ship; children often became ill at the quantities of food their loving parents stuffed into them.
On arrival in New Zealand, the immigrants discovered that beef and pork were generally plentiful and cheap. Maori had enthusiastically adopted the practice of raising pigs and cattle, and growing fruit and vegetables, for sale or trade to the Europeans. The New Zealand climate made growing vegetables pretty straightforward, and veggie gardens flourished at most early Wellington homes. Raw vegetables were still regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, and most people preferred them to be thoroughly cooked to remove any lingering trace of the poisons they were thought to contain. Even my grandmother’s cookbook from the early 1900s recommends boiling cabbage for 20 minutes – and adding a piece of washing soda to ensure it retained its green colour. Mmmmmm…..
In Britain, fish had been regarded as food for the poor – it was free for the catching, after all. It seems most settlers also avoided sea-fish – whether because the taint was of poverty or the raw sewage in the harbour is not clear. Chicken wasn’t eaten much either – chickens were kept for eggs rather than for food, and only the old ones that had given up laying found their way into the pot.
Then there was game and wild food – pheasants, rabbit, hare, wild pork, eels, koura – if Dad could catch it, Mum would cook it. Even, if you were short of cash and the larder was bare, the ubiquitous swamp hen :
Pukeko Cream Soup
Prepare the bird and set in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add three kumaras and one onion and salt to taste. Now simmer until the bird is tender [this may take some hours] then remove from stock and vegetables. Sieve kumaras and onion and add to stock with half a pint of milk. Heat again and thicken with one tablespoon of cornflour. Before serving, add a small quantity of cream and garnish each serving with chopped parsley and freshly-ground pepper. [And presumably, throw away the pukeko?]
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Moving house
A bunch of us spent yesterday helping our friend Helen move house. It wasn’t the greatest of days – it always seems to pour with rain as soon as you’ve got the beds on the back of a trailer. So there we were, somewhere between cloudbursts – Helen and I were stuffing stereo components and soft toys in the boot of her car, Mac was tying down furniture on the back of his trailer, Em was trying to persuade baby Isobel that sleep was a good idea, and Murray, Dennis and Ivor were hefting furniture onto another trailer at the front of the house – when Helen said, “how do people who don’t have friends manage this?” Good question – I guess they pay people, or struggle along by themselves. And, as I’m still working through William and Sarah’s first few days in Wellington, the big question for me was, how did the Norgroves manage their move from the immigration barracks at Kaiwharawhara to their first house on Thorndon Flat?
The Norgroves had friends, yes, although possibly not like 6-foot, six and a half inch Dennis, able to pick up large sofas and “persuade” them through narrow doorways. They didn’t have family on hand – no parents looking after the kids and organising sandwiches and bacon-and-egg pie for the workers’ lunch, no sister and brother-in-law to help out. But then again, they didn’t have beds and sofas, sideboards and fridges either. The assisted immigrants who travelled steerage to New Zealand couldn’t bring any furniture with them, unlike the cabin passengers, who could bring whatever they could squeeze into their cabins. The only furniture William and Sarah had for their home was the table that William made for that first cup of tea when they came ashore from Gertrude. There might have been some very basic items of furniture on the mud whare that became their first home – maybe shelves and hooks on the wall, perhaps a rough chair or bench, but probably not even a bed.
Many settlers slept on the floor to start with. The first primitive bed was often made from stout stakes rammed into the earth floor, with a rope and sacking hammock base slung from them, and a sacking mattress stuffed with plant material on top. The wooden boxes that brought possessions from England served double duty as both storage and seating. One large tin tub would have been used for everything from washing dishes to bathing them and the baby.
If William and Sarah couldn’t bring furniture, what would they have brought in the boxes that travelled in Gertrude’s hold? William’s tools were a priority – not just the tools of his plumbing trade, but general purpose tools as well. Sarah tells us that on that first day, William unpacked “saw, hammer and nails”, and began making a table.
Sarah would have brought her essential kitchen cooking equipment, including a camp oven; their first kitchen would also have had their tin or pewter plates, cutlery and mugs from the voyage, as well as their share of Gertrude’s left-over provisions. The immigrant ships stocked provisions for six months, and each mess could elect to use less and draw the remainder on landing. Sarah would have had their share of a month’s rations – around 15 kgs of preserved meat, 25kg of ship’s biscuits, and lesser amounts of flour, rice, preserved potatoes, peas, raisins, suet, butter, sugar, tea, salt, coffee, pepper, mustard and vinegar. She wouldn’t have had anywhere to store it, and one of William’s early priorities would have been the manufacture of some kind of food safe, to keep rats and mice away from the supplies, and perhaps some storage bins to keep the flour, rice and sugar dry.
We have no idea of what else William and Sarah brought with them. They would have had their own clothes, and Ovid’s, and Sarah would probably have brought quantities of several different fabrics along with her sewing bag. Would they have brought a china dinner set, or like many settlers, assumed it could be readily replaced on arrival? I’m sure William would have brought books as well as his painting and drawing materials. And Sarah would have asked, just as friends and family have asked me every time I move house, “do you really need all these books?” And like me, William’s reply would have been, “of course”. In fact, like me, William would have probably jettisoned shirts and trousers and jerseys to fit in a few more essential books! Did Sarah have quantities of best linen – embroidered pillow-cases and table cloths – in addition to the sheets, blankets and towels brought along for use on the ship? Would she have tucked treasured knick-knacks and ornaments, sugar bowls, and glasses, in amongst the clothes? What difficult choices had to be made by these people who had far fewer possessions than most of us these days; what should go to the new country, and what should be left behind?
At least having little luggage and only one piece of furniture should have made moving from the immigration barracks to the new house relatively easy. The distance was around two to three kilometres – half an hour to an hour’s walk. John Plimmer tells us that he “hailed a man who was driving a team of bullocks, and asked him if he would take my luggage to town”; Plimmer viewed the man’s rates as extortionate, but accepted them, and so the Plimmer family left the immigration barracks. The Norgroves had no friends and family rolling up in cars with trailers, and there were no household removal firms. Did they find someone to carry their belongings in a bullock cart, or did they walk to the new house, William perhaps making several trips to bring their boxes? I don’t know; for the purposes of the story I have to guess, and my guess is that they walked, carrying Ovid and their bags. At least it would have given William time to try and prepare Sarah for the fact that their new home was nothing like what they had left behind, although probably nothing could have really prepared her for the first sight of that mud whare with clay floors. And while Sarah might have wanted to collapse on the floor and cry her heart out in disappointment, I bet she just straightened her shoulders and set about turning that rough dwelling into a home for her little family.
The Norgroves had friends, yes, although possibly not like 6-foot, six and a half inch Dennis, able to pick up large sofas and “persuade” them through narrow doorways. They didn’t have family on hand – no parents looking after the kids and organising sandwiches and bacon-and-egg pie for the workers’ lunch, no sister and brother-in-law to help out. But then again, they didn’t have beds and sofas, sideboards and fridges either. The assisted immigrants who travelled steerage to New Zealand couldn’t bring any furniture with them, unlike the cabin passengers, who could bring whatever they could squeeze into their cabins. The only furniture William and Sarah had for their home was the table that William made for that first cup of tea when they came ashore from Gertrude. There might have been some very basic items of furniture on the mud whare that became their first home – maybe shelves and hooks on the wall, perhaps a rough chair or bench, but probably not even a bed.
Many settlers slept on the floor to start with. The first primitive bed was often made from stout stakes rammed into the earth floor, with a rope and sacking hammock base slung from them, and a sacking mattress stuffed with plant material on top. The wooden boxes that brought possessions from England served double duty as both storage and seating. One large tin tub would have been used for everything from washing dishes to bathing them and the baby.
If William and Sarah couldn’t bring furniture, what would they have brought in the boxes that travelled in Gertrude’s hold? William’s tools were a priority – not just the tools of his plumbing trade, but general purpose tools as well. Sarah tells us that on that first day, William unpacked “saw, hammer and nails”, and began making a table.
Sarah would have brought her essential kitchen cooking equipment, including a camp oven; their first kitchen would also have had their tin or pewter plates, cutlery and mugs from the voyage, as well as their share of Gertrude’s left-over provisions. The immigrant ships stocked provisions for six months, and each mess could elect to use less and draw the remainder on landing. Sarah would have had their share of a month’s rations – around 15 kgs of preserved meat, 25kg of ship’s biscuits, and lesser amounts of flour, rice, preserved potatoes, peas, raisins, suet, butter, sugar, tea, salt, coffee, pepper, mustard and vinegar. She wouldn’t have had anywhere to store it, and one of William’s early priorities would have been the manufacture of some kind of food safe, to keep rats and mice away from the supplies, and perhaps some storage bins to keep the flour, rice and sugar dry.
We have no idea of what else William and Sarah brought with them. They would have had their own clothes, and Ovid’s, and Sarah would probably have brought quantities of several different fabrics along with her sewing bag. Would they have brought a china dinner set, or like many settlers, assumed it could be readily replaced on arrival? I’m sure William would have brought books as well as his painting and drawing materials. And Sarah would have asked, just as friends and family have asked me every time I move house, “do you really need all these books?” And like me, William’s reply would have been, “of course”. In fact, like me, William would have probably jettisoned shirts and trousers and jerseys to fit in a few more essential books! Did Sarah have quantities of best linen – embroidered pillow-cases and table cloths – in addition to the sheets, blankets and towels brought along for use on the ship? Would she have tucked treasured knick-knacks and ornaments, sugar bowls, and glasses, in amongst the clothes? What difficult choices had to be made by these people who had far fewer possessions than most of us these days; what should go to the new country, and what should be left behind?
At least having little luggage and only one piece of furniture should have made moving from the immigration barracks to the new house relatively easy. The distance was around two to three kilometres – half an hour to an hour’s walk. John Plimmer tells us that he “hailed a man who was driving a team of bullocks, and asked him if he would take my luggage to town”; Plimmer viewed the man’s rates as extortionate, but accepted them, and so the Plimmer family left the immigration barracks. The Norgroves had no friends and family rolling up in cars with trailers, and there were no household removal firms. Did they find someone to carry their belongings in a bullock cart, or did they walk to the new house, William perhaps making several trips to bring their boxes? I don’t know; for the purposes of the story I have to guess, and my guess is that they walked, carrying Ovid and their bags. At least it would have given William time to try and prepare Sarah for the fact that their new home was nothing like what they had left behind, although probably nothing could have really prepared her for the first sight of that mud whare with clay floors. And while Sarah might have wanted to collapse on the floor and cry her heart out in disappointment, I bet she just straightened her shoulders and set about turning that rough dwelling into a home for her little family.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Why I'd want to hug a tree
I get a lot of thinking done in the shower. In fact, I have some of my best ideas when I’m in the shower. Standing with my head under a stream of hot water, the sound of the water a kind of white noise blanking out everything else in the background – this guarantees ideas. Of course, quite a lot of ideas go straight down the drain with the shampoo, because there’s no way I can stop and write things down…
This morning it occurred to me to wonder what I’d want most when
I got ashore if I’d spent five months on a sailing ship like William and Sarah did. It didn’t take me long to decide on my top priorities :
This morning it occurred to me to wonder what I’d want most when
I got ashore if I’d spent five months on a sailing ship like William and Sarah did. It didn’t take me long to decide on my top priorities :
- fresh water. After months of drinking brackish, tainted, mud-coloured water which probably wasn’t of great quality to start with, I think I probably would have staggered ashore and thrown myself face down into the Kaiwharawhara stream and slurped like a dog. How many of the Gertrude passengers would have done likewise? I bet most of them at least bent to scoop up a handful to taste – how else would William have known how sweet and clear the water was?
- privacy. Not a concept that the Victorians were particularly familiar with, given the large numbers in their families. But it’s something I cherish, and if I’d spent twenty weeks cheek by jowl with 170 men, women, children and babies, I’d want to go somewhere very quiet, all by myself, for a while. The immigrants might not have the same concept of privacy, and desire for it, as I do, but they were probably looking forward to getting away from their fellow passengers, especially the ones whose voices or manner or very appearance had begun to grate after such a long time together. No wonder the Gertrude passengers were less than thrilled when they discovered they were expected to squash themselves together again in the immigration barracks, and no wonder men like William wasted no time finding new accommodation.
- cleanliness. I’ve grown up in a society that places a very high value on personal hygiene, unlike those early settlers. I wouldn’t just be face down in the stream, I’d be in there clothes and all with a bar of soap, scrubbing myself raw. Five months on a sailing ship with minimal washing facilities? Assuming the passengers were even moderately clean to start with, by Wellington they would be scurfy, greasy, smelly, lice-infested and disgusting. Apparently, if the wind was blowing onshore, the townspeople could smell the immigrant ships some distance off. Lovely. A good scrub might not have been a top priority for the Gertrude passengers, but it would be for me. This could also help answer point 2 above – my desire for privacy – I suspect I’d have the stream to myself!
- salad! Five months without fresh vegetables would be almost unbearable. I’m not a fanatic for salads, but I’m pretty sure that by the end of five months eating boiled salt beef, doughy puddings and bad spuds, I’d be dreaming about crispy lettuce, juicy tomatoes and crunchy carrots. Not sure that my fellow passengers would be thinking the same way – the view that the only good vegetable was a well-cooked one dominated English and New Zealand cuisine well into the twentieth century. However they might feel about salads, the Gertrude passengers would have been looking forward to a change of diet, and fresh food.
And after all that, how about a nice walk, enjoying the sights we’ve been deprived of for so long? Trees, grass, simple stuff like that – contemporary accounts indicate that the immigrants were craving perfectly ordinary land-based scenery by the time their ships reached New Zealand. I think I’d probably feel like hugging a tree or two…
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friends and neighbours
I’ve been pursuing my quest to find Norgrove friends from their earliest days in Wellington, living on Thorndon Flat. First up, I had to figure out where Thorndon Flat was, because it’s not a locality name that is used today. In a general sense, Thorndon Flat was the area north of Clay Point (now Stewart Dawson’s corner, at the intersection of Lambton Quay and Willis St) – the government end of town in the 1840s. In a more particular sense, Thorndon Flat referred to the area to the east of Molesworth Street. It would have encompassed the flattish land now roughly bounded by Molesworth Street to the west, Katherine Mansfield Place to the south, Hobson St to the east and not quite to Tinakori Rd in the north (there being a bit of a gully between the “flat” and Tinakori Rd where the motorway is now). It’s quite a large area, and presumably a stranger looking for the Norgrove house in 1842 could have wandered around quite a bit of Thorndon before finding it. At least I can be confident that wherever the house was, it wasn’t on any of the streets that actually existed at the time (Mulgrave, Murphy, Molesworth, Pipitea) because those street names would have been given as the address rather than “Thorndon Flat”.
The area had some of the prime Wellington sections, but the wealthy owners were all absentee, and the land was mostly idle, or rented to settlers who couldn’t afford to buy their own land. Only one of the wealthy owners actually lived on Thorndon Flat – Charles Clifford Esq, gentleman, grazier and later JP, arrived as a cabin passenger on the George Fyfe in November 1842 and took up residence on his town acre. Chances are, he didn’t have much contact with his steerage class neighbours, and it’s unlikely that he invited the Norgroves round for tea and cucumber sandwiches.
To identify William and Sarah’s neighbours 1841 and 1842, I looked at the earliest available electoral records, the burgess rolls of 1842 and 1843, to see which other passengers from Gertrude lived nearby.
After a couple of false starts at obtaining some form of local government, Wellington was proclaimed the first borough in New Zealand on 21 May 1842. An electoral roll was immediately drawn up, although elections were not held until October. All adult males were eligible to be on the roll – they just had to enrol and pay a fee of £1. The fee may have disenfranchised many – William Norgrove does not appear on the 1842 roll, but does appear in 1843, when the fee had been reduced to 2/6. Despite the 1842 fee, a surprising number of would-be electors made their home on Thorndon Flat – 21 men, most of whom can be tracked back into passenger lists as being married men with families.
I had already identified John and Amelia Gill as steerage passengers from Gertrude and Thorndon Flat residents. Other possible Gertrude friends were Adrian Lowe, a 27 year old printer and engraver and his 28 year old wife Frances, and their six month old daughter.
A fellow Gertrude passenger, but possibly not bosom buddy, was William Pike. He was accompanied by his wife Elizabeth and their two sons and three daughters, who ranged in age from five months to eight years. William gave his occupation as “agricultural labourer” but on arrival in Wellington he became a storekeeper. Amongst his wares, Pike sold wines and spirits, although without a license. During the 1840s, Pike made numerous court appearances for illegal liquor sales, and was sentenced to jail at least twice. It seems he was well-known to the locals as a supplier of liquor, as there was no shortage of people willing to testify to their purchases – presumably the only illegality was selling without a license, and purchasers weren’t prosecuted. This must have made the neighbourhood interesting, with people dropping by under cover of darkness to purchase untaxed and illegal alcohol. Did the Norgroves know what was going on, or not? Did they even buy liquor from the Pikes? Did Mrs Pike carry on running the store, liquor and all, while her husband was in jail? Would William and Sarah have been supportive of her in her time of need, or would they have quietly avoided her?
William and Eliza Fisher were a young couple with an infant daughter who arrived on the Catherine Stewart Forbes in June 1841. William Fisher was a painter and plasterer, so it’s even possible he might have worked with our William in the early days, although later in the 1840s he would have become a business rival.
Eliza Fisher may have been one who, by virtue of having lived in Wellington for fourth months, was able to help Sarah settle in, show her where to go and how to get things done. Other women who were already settled nearby included Mary Ann Buxton, who arrived on Adelaide in 1840 with her husband and children; Jessie Evans, a young nursemaid who also arrived on the Adelaide, accompanied by her brother John; Mrs John McBeth, who arrived on Bengal Merchant in February 1840; and Sarah Pratt, who was 29 and childless when she and her husband arrived on Martha Ridgeway in November 1840. Another Martha Ridgeway passenger would have been one of the few middle-aged women in the neighbourhood – Elizabeth Hunt was 47 when she set off for New Zealand with her husband, nine children, one daughter-in-law and a grandson. The younger women of Thorndon Flat may have turned to her for the kind of advice and support they were used to getting from their own mothers.
In all, in May 1842, there were 21 families in Thorndon Flat whose men enrolled to vote, as well as 2 single men. There must have been others who, like William, couldn’t spare £1 to exercise their vote, or who perhaps were not interested in participating in democracy. By May 1843, when the next burgess roll was drawn up, only seven of the original families can be confirmed as remaining in Thorndon Flat, although there may have been others whose menfolk weren’t on the burgess roll. It would be an interesting exercise to figure out where they all went, but that’s not why I’m here………………
The point of this exercise was to figure out who was living near William and Sarah in 1841/1842. Thorndon Flat turns out to have been a larger neighbourhood than I was expecting – physically, it’s a space which has a huge number of buildings crammed into these days, including the building I work in. In the early 1840s, the houses must have been reasonably widely separated, with lots of empty space – it’s where the gentlemen of the Wellington Cricket Club first played their cricket matches, and it was also used as a military parade ground. Even so, it’s clear that William and Sarah would have found plenty of congenial company among people of similar backgrounds.
The area had some of the prime Wellington sections, but the wealthy owners were all absentee, and the land was mostly idle, or rented to settlers who couldn’t afford to buy their own land. Only one of the wealthy owners actually lived on Thorndon Flat – Charles Clifford Esq, gentleman, grazier and later JP, arrived as a cabin passenger on the George Fyfe in November 1842 and took up residence on his town acre. Chances are, he didn’t have much contact with his steerage class neighbours, and it’s unlikely that he invited the Norgroves round for tea and cucumber sandwiches.
To identify William and Sarah’s neighbours 1841 and 1842, I looked at the earliest available electoral records, the burgess rolls of 1842 and 1843, to see which other passengers from Gertrude lived nearby.
After a couple of false starts at obtaining some form of local government, Wellington was proclaimed the first borough in New Zealand on 21 May 1842. An electoral roll was immediately drawn up, although elections were not held until October. All adult males were eligible to be on the roll – they just had to enrol and pay a fee of £1. The fee may have disenfranchised many – William Norgrove does not appear on the 1842 roll, but does appear in 1843, when the fee had been reduced to 2/6. Despite the 1842 fee, a surprising number of would-be electors made their home on Thorndon Flat – 21 men, most of whom can be tracked back into passenger lists as being married men with families.
I had already identified John and Amelia Gill as steerage passengers from Gertrude and Thorndon Flat residents. Other possible Gertrude friends were Adrian Lowe, a 27 year old printer and engraver and his 28 year old wife Frances, and their six month old daughter.
A fellow Gertrude passenger, but possibly not bosom buddy, was William Pike. He was accompanied by his wife Elizabeth and their two sons and three daughters, who ranged in age from five months to eight years. William gave his occupation as “agricultural labourer” but on arrival in Wellington he became a storekeeper. Amongst his wares, Pike sold wines and spirits, although without a license. During the 1840s, Pike made numerous court appearances for illegal liquor sales, and was sentenced to jail at least twice. It seems he was well-known to the locals as a supplier of liquor, as there was no shortage of people willing to testify to their purchases – presumably the only illegality was selling without a license, and purchasers weren’t prosecuted. This must have made the neighbourhood interesting, with people dropping by under cover of darkness to purchase untaxed and illegal alcohol. Did the Norgroves know what was going on, or not? Did they even buy liquor from the Pikes? Did Mrs Pike carry on running the store, liquor and all, while her husband was in jail? Would William and Sarah have been supportive of her in her time of need, or would they have quietly avoided her?
William and Eliza Fisher were a young couple with an infant daughter who arrived on the Catherine Stewart Forbes in June 1841. William Fisher was a painter and plasterer, so it’s even possible he might have worked with our William in the early days, although later in the 1840s he would have become a business rival.
Eliza Fisher may have been one who, by virtue of having lived in Wellington for fourth months, was able to help Sarah settle in, show her where to go and how to get things done. Other women who were already settled nearby included Mary Ann Buxton, who arrived on Adelaide in 1840 with her husband and children; Jessie Evans, a young nursemaid who also arrived on the Adelaide, accompanied by her brother John; Mrs John McBeth, who arrived on Bengal Merchant in February 1840; and Sarah Pratt, who was 29 and childless when she and her husband arrived on Martha Ridgeway in November 1840. Another Martha Ridgeway passenger would have been one of the few middle-aged women in the neighbourhood – Elizabeth Hunt was 47 when she set off for New Zealand with her husband, nine children, one daughter-in-law and a grandson. The younger women of Thorndon Flat may have turned to her for the kind of advice and support they were used to getting from their own mothers.
In all, in May 1842, there were 21 families in Thorndon Flat whose men enrolled to vote, as well as 2 single men. There must have been others who, like William, couldn’t spare £1 to exercise their vote, or who perhaps were not interested in participating in democracy. By May 1843, when the next burgess roll was drawn up, only seven of the original families can be confirmed as remaining in Thorndon Flat, although there may have been others whose menfolk weren’t on the burgess roll. It would be an interesting exercise to figure out where they all went, but that’s not why I’m here………………
The point of this exercise was to figure out who was living near William and Sarah in 1841/1842. Thorndon Flat turns out to have been a larger neighbourhood than I was expecting – physically, it’s a space which has a huge number of buildings crammed into these days, including the building I work in. In the early 1840s, the houses must have been reasonably widely separated, with lots of empty space – it’s where the gentlemen of the Wellington Cricket Club first played their cricket matches, and it was also used as a military parade ground. Even so, it’s clear that William and Sarah would have found plenty of congenial company among people of similar backgrounds.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Women friends
There are always emails circulating on the internet about the importance of a woman’s friends. I was reading one yesterday that had been sent to Mum, which she wanted to share with her friends. It reminded me that the last bit of research I was working on was to try and identify some of Sarah’s friends – and that the main reason I hadn’t been researching and blogging for the last couple of weeks (apart from exhaustion – I’m sure humans are meant to hibernate in winter) is that I’ve been spending time with and helping my friends.
The reason it’s important to me to identify some of Sarah’s friends is because, like all those emails say, it’s your women friends who get you through the tough times, who share life’s joys and pains and humdrum moments with you. Your friends are the ones who tell you where to find the super-duper on-sale bargains. They go shopping with you, and know how to answer the question, “does my bum look big in this?” They hold your screaming baby so you can have five minutes peace and quiet in the loo. They put the kettle on and make cups of tea while you go and wash the tears off your face. They put your 10 year old daughter in make-up and high heels and smuggle her past the no-children-under-16 sign to visit you in hospital. They turn up in the afternoon and cram you and the kids in the car for an impromptu trip to the beach. They come to the fence to hand you cake still warm from the oven because they just had to tell you how happy they were that they’ve finally cracked the perfect marble cake recipe. They help you shift house. They lend you a table when you don’t have one. They sew with you. They send you cheery texts when you’re sick. Your women friends are there to hold you up when you can’t cope, when your marriage falls apart, when the kids are driving you crazy, when you don’t know how you’re going to pay the electricity bill, when you want to kill your boss. Your women friends celebrate with you when you’ve found a new love or had a baby or passed a test or just because it’s Friday.
When Sarah came to New Zealand, she left behind her mother, her sisters and her friends. Many of those relationships survived through letter-writing – we know about the family ones because some of the letters have survived, but we know nothing of the friends she left behind. And letters would have been small comfort in a new and unfamiliar country. New women friends would have been Sarah’s support, sharing with her the experiences of the rawness of early Wellington, the longing for the familiar things and people of home, the struggle to make do and get on in their new life. They would have watched out for each other’s children, helped deliver each other’s babies, shared news of home and worries about money. They would have laughed together at the small things women manage to find funny, and they would have cried together at heartbreaks and fears, tragedies and pains.
For the early days in Wellington, I can only speculate about who Sarah’s friends may have been. Eliza Plimmer is likely to have been a shipboard friend – the Plimmer and Norgrove bunks were adjacent, and like Sarah, Eliza was a young mum following her husband to a new country. How much time they might have spent together after arriving in Wellington is debatable – the Plimmers lived initially in Vivian St, while the Norgroves lived on Thorndon Flat. With busy lives and no access to transport, opportunities to meet must have been very limited. They would rapidly have grown apart socially, as well – John Plimmer’s quicly found success in business, as well as increased social and political influence, while William’s business ventures met with only patchy success.
Also on board Gertrude with the Norgroves were John and Amelia Gill, and their one-year old son, Frederick. The Gills settled in Thorndon Flat, so for the first year or so would have been close neighbours. With sons of the same age, and the shared experience of the voyage, it seems likely that Sarah and Amelia could have been friends. There are one or two other Gertrude families who also lived in the area who I’m targeting for some further research. Some time soon, a surprised descendant of a Gertrude passenger is going to get a email from me asking if they mind their great-great grandma being written into my great-great grandma’s story!
One friend we do know about is Emma Lumsden, who arrived in Wellington with her husband William on the Oriental just a few days before the Norgroves arrived on Gertrude. William Lumsden was a gardener and nurseryman. The Lumsdens don’t seem to have ever lived particularly close to the Norgroves – newspapers, almanacs and electoral rolls show them in Wadestown in the mid-1840s, Hawkestone St in 1849 and Tinakori Rd in the 1850s and 1860s. Somehow, though, a connection was made, and a friendship formed that lasted even after the Norgroves left Wellington – evidenced by one surviving letter. In 1863, by then widowed, Emma sends bulbs and seeds to Sarah, along with a very affectionate note to Emma Norgrove, then about 14 – could the young Emma have been named for Emma Lumsden even?
Then there’s Mrs Earll. We have a couple of letters written by Sarah later in life, one to daughter Gertrude and her husband Joe, who had moved to Wellington, and one to the family in Blenheim while Sarah was herself in Wellington visiting family and friends. The Earlls are mentioned in both letters – in fact Mrs Earll accompanied Sarah on the Wellington trip – Sarah says in her letter that “I should have been very dull but for Mrs Earll”, although her letter outlines a very busy and sociable time. William Earll seems to have been a joiner who had a sash and door factory in Blenheim, so it’s possible that the women may have met through their husbands who would have been connected by their jobs.
I’ve pondered long enough on Sarah’s friends. I’m going to and eat some of my friend Anne’s marble cake before it goes cold!
The reason it’s important to me to identify some of Sarah’s friends is because, like all those emails say, it’s your women friends who get you through the tough times, who share life’s joys and pains and humdrum moments with you. Your friends are the ones who tell you where to find the super-duper on-sale bargains. They go shopping with you, and know how to answer the question, “does my bum look big in this?” They hold your screaming baby so you can have five minutes peace and quiet in the loo. They put the kettle on and make cups of tea while you go and wash the tears off your face. They put your 10 year old daughter in make-up and high heels and smuggle her past the no-children-under-16 sign to visit you in hospital. They turn up in the afternoon and cram you and the kids in the car for an impromptu trip to the beach. They come to the fence to hand you cake still warm from the oven because they just had to tell you how happy they were that they’ve finally cracked the perfect marble cake recipe. They help you shift house. They lend you a table when you don’t have one. They sew with you. They send you cheery texts when you’re sick. Your women friends are there to hold you up when you can’t cope, when your marriage falls apart, when the kids are driving you crazy, when you don’t know how you’re going to pay the electricity bill, when you want to kill your boss. Your women friends celebrate with you when you’ve found a new love or had a baby or passed a test or just because it’s Friday.
When Sarah came to New Zealand, she left behind her mother, her sisters and her friends. Many of those relationships survived through letter-writing – we know about the family ones because some of the letters have survived, but we know nothing of the friends she left behind. And letters would have been small comfort in a new and unfamiliar country. New women friends would have been Sarah’s support, sharing with her the experiences of the rawness of early Wellington, the longing for the familiar things and people of home, the struggle to make do and get on in their new life. They would have watched out for each other’s children, helped deliver each other’s babies, shared news of home and worries about money. They would have laughed together at the small things women manage to find funny, and they would have cried together at heartbreaks and fears, tragedies and pains.
For the early days in Wellington, I can only speculate about who Sarah’s friends may have been. Eliza Plimmer is likely to have been a shipboard friend – the Plimmer and Norgrove bunks were adjacent, and like Sarah, Eliza was a young mum following her husband to a new country. How much time they might have spent together after arriving in Wellington is debatable – the Plimmers lived initially in Vivian St, while the Norgroves lived on Thorndon Flat. With busy lives and no access to transport, opportunities to meet must have been very limited. They would rapidly have grown apart socially, as well – John Plimmer’s quicly found success in business, as well as increased social and political influence, while William’s business ventures met with only patchy success.
Also on board Gertrude with the Norgroves were John and Amelia Gill, and their one-year old son, Frederick. The Gills settled in Thorndon Flat, so for the first year or so would have been close neighbours. With sons of the same age, and the shared experience of the voyage, it seems likely that Sarah and Amelia could have been friends. There are one or two other Gertrude families who also lived in the area who I’m targeting for some further research. Some time soon, a surprised descendant of a Gertrude passenger is going to get a email from me asking if they mind their great-great grandma being written into my great-great grandma’s story!
One friend we do know about is Emma Lumsden, who arrived in Wellington with her husband William on the Oriental just a few days before the Norgroves arrived on Gertrude. William Lumsden was a gardener and nurseryman. The Lumsdens don’t seem to have ever lived particularly close to the Norgroves – newspapers, almanacs and electoral rolls show them in Wadestown in the mid-1840s, Hawkestone St in 1849 and Tinakori Rd in the 1850s and 1860s. Somehow, though, a connection was made, and a friendship formed that lasted even after the Norgroves left Wellington – evidenced by one surviving letter. In 1863, by then widowed, Emma sends bulbs and seeds to Sarah, along with a very affectionate note to Emma Norgrove, then about 14 – could the young Emma have been named for Emma Lumsden even?
Then there’s Mrs Earll. We have a couple of letters written by Sarah later in life, one to daughter Gertrude and her husband Joe, who had moved to Wellington, and one to the family in Blenheim while Sarah was herself in Wellington visiting family and friends. The Earlls are mentioned in both letters – in fact Mrs Earll accompanied Sarah on the Wellington trip – Sarah says in her letter that “I should have been very dull but for Mrs Earll”, although her letter outlines a very busy and sociable time. William Earll seems to have been a joiner who had a sash and door factory in Blenheim, so it’s possible that the women may have met through their husbands who would have been connected by their jobs.
I’ve pondered long enough on Sarah’s friends. I’m going to and eat some of my friend Anne’s marble cake before it goes cold!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Making soap
We were talking at lunch yesterday about the Depression, and things women did back then, like turning sheets side to middle, and making soap. Actually, with rising mortgage rates and petrol prices, and the drive for less waste and more sustainable lifestyles, there has been quite a bit in the media lately about the simpler life and rediscovering the thrifty tricks of our fore-mothers. Not to mention the health gurus recommending eating the way our [great] grandparents did (if not the way our cave ancestors did) – food in its closest-to-natural state, rather than processed and packaged beyond recognition. I heard a doctor the other night who said to imagine you were taking your grandmother or great grandmother to the supermarket – anything that she wouldn’t recognise as food shouldn’t go in the shopping trolley.
Which would be great, if only grandma was living at my place, so that when I staggered home from a day spent fighting corporate fires, there would be a great steaming plate of fresh cooked veggies from the garden waiting for my dinner. My grandmother wouldn’t recognise 50% of things in my kitchen cupboards and fridge. Great-great grandmother Sarah wouldn’t recognise 95% of the food in my kitchen, and she probably wouldn’t recognise my kitchen either, being as she didn’t have a fridge, electric oven, even hot and cold piped water, let alone a microwave.
Anyway, Dad said he was really surprised one day, arriving at my Mum’s parents’ place, to find my Nan making soap in the copper. This would have been the late 1950s or early 1960s, so there can’t have been many women still making their own soap. Mum says it was the soap they used for washing the dishes (well, thank goodness for dolphin-friendly detergent, I say). When Granny Norgrove (that would be Edith, wife of Oscar, Sarah’s second son) was still alive and living with Mum’s family, it was her particular job to make the soap. So, there’s soap-making for domestic use still in living memory in my family, and I can see the line of my soap-making fore-mothers stretching back into the distant past.
Sarah would absolutely have made her own soap. She would have saved all the fat and tallow that came into the house for this – right down to the last bacon rind, probably – until she had enough to make a big boil-up worthwhile. Storing fat without refrigeration – stinky. There were ways of granulating the fat for long-term storage without the pong, which involved boiling and straining, and reheating in water until the granular stage was achieved. Great choice – extra hours of back-breaking work, or putting up with rancid fat?
When it was time for soap-making, out came the copper or the kettle, and the lye and the fat, for a great boil-up. [Nasty stuff, lye. Soap-making time would have been one of those occasions when you’d want to be quite sure that your adventurous toddler was firmly tied to a solid piece of furniture far, far away from the soap-making operation.] The fire was lit and stoked up and fed well to keep it hot. Once the fat and lye were melted and creamy, salt was added to harden it, and then it was stirred like mad until the soap started forming and leaving a ring around the stirring stick. Then the fire was put out and the soap left to harden, or poured out into moulds. When hard, it was cut up with wire and stored for use – for washing dishes, or grating into the copper to wash the clothes, and even as bath soap. Unless you had something sweet-scented to add to the brew, you wouldn’t have come out of the bath smelling all that sweet and clean...
So soap-making was hot, hard physical work involving dangerous chemicals and reeking rancid fat. We might yearn for a return to simpler times, but I’d rather sleep on the hard seam of sheets turned side-to-middle than have to make soap. I’ll be more grateful in future for the dolphin-friendly squeezy-bottle detergent, the low-suds sensitive-skin washing powder, and the vanilla-scented body-wash……………
Which would be great, if only grandma was living at my place, so that when I staggered home from a day spent fighting corporate fires, there would be a great steaming plate of fresh cooked veggies from the garden waiting for my dinner. My grandmother wouldn’t recognise 50% of things in my kitchen cupboards and fridge. Great-great grandmother Sarah wouldn’t recognise 95% of the food in my kitchen, and she probably wouldn’t recognise my kitchen either, being as she didn’t have a fridge, electric oven, even hot and cold piped water, let alone a microwave.
Anyway, Dad said he was really surprised one day, arriving at my Mum’s parents’ place, to find my Nan making soap in the copper. This would have been the late 1950s or early 1960s, so there can’t have been many women still making their own soap. Mum says it was the soap they used for washing the dishes (well, thank goodness for dolphin-friendly detergent, I say). When Granny Norgrove (that would be Edith, wife of Oscar, Sarah’s second son) was still alive and living with Mum’s family, it was her particular job to make the soap. So, there’s soap-making for domestic use still in living memory in my family, and I can see the line of my soap-making fore-mothers stretching back into the distant past.
Sarah would absolutely have made her own soap. She would have saved all the fat and tallow that came into the house for this – right down to the last bacon rind, probably – until she had enough to make a big boil-up worthwhile. Storing fat without refrigeration – stinky. There were ways of granulating the fat for long-term storage without the pong, which involved boiling and straining, and reheating in water until the granular stage was achieved. Great choice – extra hours of back-breaking work, or putting up with rancid fat?
When it was time for soap-making, out came the copper or the kettle, and the lye and the fat, for a great boil-up. [Nasty stuff, lye. Soap-making time would have been one of those occasions when you’d want to be quite sure that your adventurous toddler was firmly tied to a solid piece of furniture far, far away from the soap-making operation.] The fire was lit and stoked up and fed well to keep it hot. Once the fat and lye were melted and creamy, salt was added to harden it, and then it was stirred like mad until the soap started forming and leaving a ring around the stirring stick. Then the fire was put out and the soap left to harden, or poured out into moulds. When hard, it was cut up with wire and stored for use – for washing dishes, or grating into the copper to wash the clothes, and even as bath soap. Unless you had something sweet-scented to add to the brew, you wouldn’t have come out of the bath smelling all that sweet and clean...
So soap-making was hot, hard physical work involving dangerous chemicals and reeking rancid fat. We might yearn for a return to simpler times, but I’d rather sleep on the hard seam of sheets turned side-to-middle than have to make soap. I’ll be more grateful in future for the dolphin-friendly squeezy-bottle detergent, the low-suds sensitive-skin washing powder, and the vanilla-scented body-wash……………
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