NZHistory, New Zealand history online - child welfare

Home of Compassion Crèche

Home of Compassion Crèche (1914)

Charity for the urban poor

Sweated pay rates and dirty, dangerous workplaces were not the only problems faced by female Victorian- and Edwardian-era shop and factory workers. Prevailing mores stigmatised those mainly widowed or deserted women whose work took them away from their children during the day. Childcare - where it could be found - was expensive, as Mother Mary Joseph Aubert knew. We remember her best for founding the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion and for working among Whanganui Māori, but in 1899 she and three of her sisters moved to the capital, where they would devote the rest of their lives to caring for the urban poor.

Legend has it that they arrived with just 2s 6d between them. ‘Mother Orbit’, as some called her, settled in a cottage in Buckle Street and began begging to feed the poor, pushing prams laden with donated food through working class Te Aro. ‘I am always begging,’ she buttered up the mayor, ‘but it is for the poor in who[m] you take such a kind interest.’ In 1900-01 Aubert opened a home for incurables (against bureaucratic opposition) and St Anthony’s soup kitchen in Buckle Street for ‘Wellington's Workless, Wet and Weary Wandering Willies’, its unemployed and casual workers. In 1903 she added a crèche (day nursery) in Buckle Street. During the day the sisters and volunteers cared for the children and patched their clothes, all for a contribution towards the milk.

John Swan designed this building, the first purpose-built crèche in the country. It opened at the end of September 1914, replacing earlier wooden cottages used for this purpose. Of brick and concrete ‘with “compo” dressings of simple Tudor-Gothic design’, the crèche’s walls were thick enough to support a second storey should one be required. A wide glazed-in veranda at the rear offered children a safe play area.

You can still see the Sisters’ crest in the clumsy crenellated parapet above the Buckle Street porch. Inside it was basically a simple domestic structure. A large playroom and sleeping room ran off one side of the central passageway; two smaller amenity rooms, pantry, bathroom and toilet off the other. Later the building became a classroom and library for the (now demolished) St Patrick’s College, and in more recent times it has been an arts studio and a car parts shop, marooned by the one-way street system. At present (2013) it sits forlornly, its windows boarded up in preparation to be moved to make way for services supporting the construction of the controversial Basin Reserve flyover.

The Sisters, like the poor, are still with us, at a modern centre nearby.

Further information

This site is item number 82 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

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Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Images: Andy Palmer (2012) & Gavin McLean (2001)

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Date established:

1914

Karitane nurses and babies in 1929

Karitane nurses holding babies and toddlers outside the Karitane Hospital, Whanganui, in 1929. The Karitane movement, like the Plunket Society, had been founded by the renowned health reformer Frederic Truby King, whose strong eugenic beliefs helped set the public health agenda in the 1920s. He urged New Zealanders to do all they could to breed an ‘Imperial race’ and condemned birth control and abortion as instruments of ‘race suicide’.

Truby King was also a member of the 1924–25 Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders, whose report concluded that the ‘unchecked multiplication of the feeble-minded and epileptic’ was causing ‘the serious deterioration of the race’ and was ‘a most serious menace to the future welfare and happiness of the Dominion’. Among its recommendations were the compulsory segregation and sterilisation of ‘incurable’ mental defectives.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference Number: 1/1-016980-F
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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1920s

Family benefit cartoon

In 1926 Parliament passed the Family Allowances Act, which provided for the payment of a means-tested benefit to families with more than two children aged under 15 whose breadwinners earned less than £4 (equivalent to about $360) a week. As the image of the stork in this cartoon from the NZ Observer (25 August 1926) suggests, the initiative was partly motivated by concern about the birth rate, which had been falling for decades.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: H-711-016
Cartoonist: Blomfield, William, 1866-1938
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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1926 - key events

DSIR established

Following pressure from scientists (including Ernest Rutherford) and the recommendations of a visiting British expert, the government established a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Although it was based on the British DSIR, the New Zealand organisation focused on agriculture, rather than industrial manufacturing as in the UK. The DSIR coordinated the work of the newly established Dairy Research Institute (1927) and Wheat Research Institute (1928), which made important contributions to their industries. In 1928 it joined with the Department of Agriculture to establish a Plant Research Station which produced some important results, especially on pasture plants. Along with superphosphate fertiliser, this work provided the basis for New Zealand’s ‘grasslands revolution’.

Anna Pavlova wows New Zealand

Anna Pavlova defined the art of ballet in the first third of the 20th century. The famed Russian ballerina arrived in Auckland on 25 May 1926, during a five-month Australasian tour. Accompanied by a troupe of 50 dancers, a 22-member orchestra and conductor Lucien Wurmser, she thrilled audiences in Auckland, Whanganui, Hastings, Napier, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, Timaru and Dunedin, performing a stamina-sapping 38 shows in 39 days. Her troupe included a New Zealander, Thurza Rogers, who had travelled to London to study ballet in 1920 and joined Pavlova’s company two years later. Today Pavlova is perhaps best remembered in Australasia for the popular dessert that was named in her honour, apparently by a Wellington hotel chef.

First Miss New Zealand crowned

New Zealand’s first national beauty contest, organised by leading daily newspapers, featured provincial heats, public voting and a lavish finale at Auckland’s His Majesty’s Theatre. The winner was Miss Otago, Thelma McMillan. The contest was hugely popular, but not everyone was enchanted: NZ Truth, perhaps jealous of its rivals’ success, accused the newspapers of manipulating the voting to boost their circulation. Truth slammed the contest as:

The most pernicious and audacious advertising stunt ever perpetrated in the Dominion because the youth, beauty, grace and intellect of New Zealand girls were brutally commercialized to provide trade and furnish profits for the soulless exploiters from whom the scheme originated.

Family benefits introduced

Gordon Coates’ Reform government introduced the world’s first fully state-funded family benefit, partly in response to concerns over New Zealand’s falling birth rate. The Family Allowances Act 1926 provided a weekly allowance of 2s (equivalent to about $9 today) for the third and each subsequent child in a family. The means-tested benefit was restricted to families earning less than £4 ($360) a week, but covered the self-employed as well as wage-earners. Payment was made directly to the mother of the family, an important official recognition of women’s role in the household economy. Although the assistance provided was meagre, the 1926 benefit set a precedent for the more far-reaching social security system introduced by the Labour government in 1938.

Other events in 1926:

The first women Justices of the Peace were appointed on 20 December. The 18 appointees included Janet Fraser, Annie McVicar and Elizabeth McCombs, who in 1933 would become New Zealand’s first woman MP.
Bessie Te Wenerau Grace became the first Māori woman to receive a university degree, graduating with a BA.
The Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board was established following a settlement with the government over ownership of Taupo’s lakebed.
New Zealand novelist Jean Devanny’s best-known work, The butcher shop, was banned for obscenity; the Censorship Appeal Board denounced it as ‘sordid, unwholesome and unclean’.
In New Zealand’s first radio sports broadcast, Allan Allardyce commentated on a rugby match at Christchurch’s Lancaster Park.
The New Zealand Railways Magazine was launched in May. Initially intended as a ‘shop journal’ for the Railways Department’s 18,000 staff, it soon evolved into a highly popular general-interest magazine, and was published each month until 1940.
Nine coalminers were killed in a mine explosion at Dobson on the West Coast.
Former Premier Robert Stout retired as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a post he had held since 1899.
The Catholic nun and social worker Mother Mary Aubert, who had been active in New Zealand for more than 60 years, died in Wellington on 1 October, aged 91.
American writer and big-game fisherman Zane Grey visited New Zealand, promoting the Bay of Islands as an ‘Angler’s Eldorado’.
English daredevil Bobby Leach, who had famously gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1911, slipped on an orange peel during a New Zealand publicity tour. His injured leg became infected and he died of gangrene two months later.

1923 - key events

The Newlands baby farmers

Daniel Cooper was convicted and hanged for murder after a sensational trial that recalled the infamous Minnie Dean baby-farming case of 1895. After being under police surveillance for some time, Cooper was arrested on 30 December 1922 for performing an abortion. Following the discovery of a female baby’s body at the Coopers’ property in Newlands, near Wellington, on 3 January, he and his wife Martha were charged with four counts of illegally detaining children and one of murder. Before the start of the murder trial on 14 May, two more babies’ bodies were unearthed at Newlands.

After months of feverish press coverage, the Wellington Supreme Court was jam-packed for the trial. The jury cleared Martha of murder, but Dan Cooper – dubbed ‘Herod the Horrible’ by NZ Truth – was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington, on 16 June.

Katherine Mansfield dies in France

One of the few New Zealand writers to achieve international acclaim, Mansfield revolutionised 20th-century English short-story writing. Born and raised in Wellington, she left ‘provincial’ New Zealand for the centre of the English literary world, London, in 1908 and never returned. She died from tuberculosis in France on 9 January, aged 34. Mansfield’s work has been translated into more than 25 languages. The house in Thorndon where she was born has been restored and is one of New Zealand’s most popular heritage sites.

Rails through the Alps

The opening of the 8.5-km Ōtira tunnel on 4 August completed the transalpine railway between Christchurch and Greymouth. At the time it was the longest tunnel in the southern hemisphere and the sixth-longest in the world. Tunnelling work had begun in 1908, but the project was plagued by engineering problems and labour shortages. Due to the tunnel’s length and steep gradient, electric locomotives were used to haul trains through it.

From the 1920s to the 1960s popular Sunday excursions were run from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass and Ōtira. Today, the line is a vital route for carrying West Coast coal to Lyttelton for export, while the TranzAlpine passenger train has become a thriving tourist operation, conveying 200,000 passengers a year across the Southern Alps.

Cowan’s New Zealand Wars published

The second volume of James Cowan’s two-volume The New Zealand Wars: a history of the Maori campaigns and the pioneering period (1922–23) was published. The work was funded by the Department of Internal Affairs, which paid him a salary from 1918 to 1922. A pioneer of oral history, Cowan talked to both Māori and Pākehā war veterans and visited many of the battle sites. Although his work was rather uncritical of the imperial cause and largely ignored the origins of the conflict, The New Zealand Wars was the definitive account of the wars until the 1980s. It remains a classic of New Zealand history and literature.

Other events in 1923:

The Dairy Produce Control Board was established as a counterpart to the Meat Producers’ Board.
Social campaigner Ettie Rout’s book Safe marriage, which discussed contraception, was banned for indecency.
Henry Wigram’s Canterbury Aviation Company was taken over by the government to become the basis of the New Zealand Permanent Air Force.
On 1 July New Zealand Breweries was established following the merger of 10 breweries, including the country’s largest, Speight’s of Dunedin.
Industrial disputes involving freezing workers and West Coast coalminers ended in defeats for the unionists.
In the early hours of 6 July an Auckland−Wellington express train crashed into a huge landslip that had slumped across the tracks at Ōngarue, north of Taumarunui in the King Country. Seventeen people were killed and 28 injured. This remains New Zealand’s third worst train disaster.
A Board of Maori Ethnological Research was formed.
On 10 October Seacliff of Otago beat Wellington YMCA in the final of the first Chatham Cup knockout football tournament. The competition was named after the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Chatham, whose crew had gifted the impressive trophy – a replica of the English FA Cup.
The Native Bird Protection Society (later the Royal Forest and Bird Society) was established.
Britain declared sovereignty over Antarctica’s Ross Dependency, with administration allocated to New Zealand.

Kids at the Wilson Home for crippled children, 1943

Children lying in their beds in the solarium at the Wilson Home for crippled children in Takapuna, Auckland, 1943.

The crippling disease Paralytic Poliomyelitis (Polio) affected hundreds of children before it was virtually eliminated by a mass vaccination campaign in 1962. It wasn't until 2000 that New Zealand was officially declared Polio free.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Photographer: John Pascoe
Reference: 1/4-000643-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Domestic Purposes Benefit demonstration

Demonstration relating to the Domestic Purposes Benefit outside the Department of Social Welfare, Wellington in 1977.

The DPB was introduced in 1973 with the aim of helping women with a dependent child or children who had lost the support of a husband, or were inadequately supported by him. While men could claim the DPB the vast majority of those claiming the benefit were women.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference:1/4-028276-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Salvation Army Boys' Home in Eltham

Salvation Army homes were the only option for many 19th-century orphans and abandoned children. Institutional life could be highly regimented: in this image residents of the Salvation Army Boys' Home in Eltham line up to salute a visitor to the institution.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library,
Reference: 1/2-044824-F.
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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The Newlands baby farmers

The sensational 1923 murder trial of Daniel and Martha Cooper revealed that the difficulties facing single mothers and unwanted children continued well into the 20th century.

The Coopers had moved to Wellington in 1919, a year after their marriage and two years after the suspicious death of Daniel's first wife. Describing himself as a health specialist, Cooper sold ointments, hair restorers and face creams – and also performed illegal abortions. A sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl under his care led to his ejection from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

In 1921 the Coopers moved to a farm at Newlands, north of Wellington, where they ran a 'rest care home' for women and children. They also opened an office for their health care business in Lambton Quay. The police became suspicious and kept both properties under surveillance.

Reporting the Cooper case

On 30 December 1922 Daniel Cooper was arrested for performing an abortion. Two days later he and Martha were charged with illegally detaining a child. Following the discovery of a female baby's body at the Coopers' Newlands property on 3 January 1923, the couple were formally charged with four counts of illegally detaining children and one of murder. Before the start of the murder trial on 14 May, two more babies' bodies were unearthed at Newlands.

After months of feverish press coverage, the Wellington Supreme Court was jam-packed for the trial. Daniel faced four murder charges and Martha three. The charges were to be dealt with separately, with the outcome of the first determining whether the others would proceed. Martha's lawyer, T.M. Wilford, portrayed his client as a victim of Daniel's mistreatment, describing her as 'a soulless household drudge without a mind of her own'. This impression contrasted sharply with a reporter's depiction of Daniel: 'a small man … with dark piercing eyes set far back in his head and a mouth like the seam in a saddle bag'.

The jury cleared Martha of any guilt in the murder, and the other charges against her were dropped. She later remarried and lived until 1975. Daniel was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington, on 16 June 1923.

Minnie Dean

The 'Winton baby-farmer'

Minnie Dean

In 1895 Southland's Williamina (Minnie) Dean became the first – and only – woman to be hanged in New Zealand. Her story exposed the stark realities of paid childcare and the lack of choice that many women faced in this period.

Dean had looked after children, for a fee, since the late 1880s at her rural Winton home, The Larches. At any one time there could be up to nine children under the age of three in her care. In an era of high infant mortality, it was perhaps inevitable that some of the children would fall ill and die, especially if they were disadvantaged to begin with and lived in cramped conditions.

A six-month-old infant died in 1889, and two years later a six-week-old baby died of inflammation of the heart valves and congestion of the lungs. The inquest concluded that the dead infant and other children at The Larches were well cared for but that the premises were inadequate. Dean was already under police investigation by then. Police had found that she had been looking for more children to take into her care and that she had tried, unsuccessfully, to take out life insurance policies on some of the infants.

The death of the baby brought closer surveillance. In 1892 Christchurch police took charge of a three-week-old child that Dean had adopted from its single mother for £25. Police traced Dean to a boarding house and found the child in very dirty clothes and being fed from a bottle containing sour and curdled milk. The baby's mother said she could scarcely recognise her child as it had ‘so altered for the worse' in the two days that Dean had looked after it. The police thought that they had probably saved the baby's life. They remained suspicious and kept Dean under surveillance; in 1893, the commissioner of police wrote to the Minister of Justice with renewed concerns about Dean's activities.

Murder on a train

Still from Minnie Dean music video

Events moved quickly in 1895. On 2 May a railway guard saw Dean board a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox. On the return trip he noticed she only had the hatbox, which, as railway porters later testified, was suspiciously heavy. After a fruitless search along the tracks, police unearthed from Dean's garden the recently buried bodies of two babies – identified as Eva Hornsby and Dorothy Carter – and the skeleton of an older boy (whom Dean later claimed had drowned). An inquest determined that Dorothy Carter had died of an overdose of the opiate laudanum, commonly used to calm irritable infants.

Minnie Dean went on trial for Carter's murder in Invercargill on 18 June 1895. She was defended by the renowned defence lawyer Alfred Hanlon, who later wrote that:

Sober, home-loving folk from end to end of the country shuddered … when the grim and ghastly story of Minnie Dean's infamy was narrated by the prosecution. Imagine a being with the name and appearance of a woman boldly using a public railway train for the destruction of her helpless victims, sitting serene and unperturbed in a carriage with one tiny corpse in a tin box at her feet and another enshrouded in a shawl and secured by travelling straps in the luggage rack at her head.

Report of the execution

Despite Hanlon's defence that the baby's death was accidental, on 21 June Dean was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. She was hanged at Invercargill gaol on 12 August 1895, earning the dubious honour of being the only woman ever executed in New Zealand.

The legend of Minnie Dean

After her death Minnie Dean became part of New Zealand folklore; local legend even claimed that no plants would grow on her grave. Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Helen Henderson, who was raised in Southland, recalled that 'Minnie was like the bogeyman of our town when I was a kid. If you were giving cheek to your mum or being naughty, it was like, "You better watch out or I'll send you off to Minnie Dean's farm and you'll never be heard of again."' Henderson captured the macabre fascination with the case in her song 'Minnie Dean':

She dressed in black and she carried a hat
In a hatbox when early to the station she came
And on her way back she always wore the hat
Invercargill to Winton on the 5 o'clock train.