Islington comes to New Zealand

An Odd Walking Tour of Early Radio in New Zealand

Part Three

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of what happened in World War One will find the following appreciation of Lord Islington and his class darkly humourous.

He is a fine example of that kind of ability – all round ability – which has always been displayed by the British governing class…. His instinct is to be a man first and last, a man for a man’s work, and New Zealand will be a good field for it.

Evening Post, 24 May 1910

It is a little unclear from this “appreciation” if (a) Islington’s second instinct was to be a woman, or (b) if New Zealand was enthused about Islington’s desire to prove his manhood willy nilly all over our country.  Nevertheless, it was certainly a belief in the ruling class’ all round ability that led to such corking decisions as having old Winnie Churchill plan the Gallipoli campaign.  And it was certainly a totally naive attitude to manhood that led the first waves of soldiers over the top into a withering machine gun welcome from Germany.

As it happens, Islington was friends with Winston Churchill, and with a chap who was always called Colonel Seely (who wrote a book called Fear and be Slain, and a biography of his horse).  Of the three, Islington had the least glittering career.  In fact there are enough hints among the glowing tributes to suggest that Izzy was a bit dull.  Aside from being told that he was not eloquent, the readers in New Zealand eager for news of their new Governor General could glean that he was “eager and interested, hard-working, and a glutton for detail”; that his personal motto was to be “thorough”; and that he liked to dig down for detail (that word again) ”and always his digging is solidly good.”

At the farewell his tenantry arranged at the Angel Hotel in Chippenham (in which Islington was admired and appreciated by his loyal tenants), the Lord explained how much he had enjoyed his work on the Royal Commisions, and how much he looked forward to witnessing New Zealand’s “experiments” (women voting, old people having some money, etc).  His real duty as Governor, he felt, was to strengthen “the ties which bind that distant Dominion to the Mother Country”; Dominions which must “increasingly support” Britain (Evening Post, 15 June 1910).  Apparently he was also a good speaker on agricultural reform; a field that has contributed much to the annals of great oratory.

The prospect of a dull toff arriving galvanised the New Zealand of 1910.  Two things needed to be got ready.  The new Governor General’s residence, and a welcoming parade.

How to Welcome a Governor General: (1) Organise a parade

When you organise a parade in an egalitarian country like New Zealand it is very important that you get the marching order right: non-entities at the front, and VIPs clustered about his Lordship at the climax of the parade (think of his Lordship as being like Santa at the Santa Parade).  Let’s see then who the unimportant and important were in 1910.

Procession Order

Non-entities (to be a front of procession, out of sight Izzy)

• Boy Scouts
• Sons and Daughter of Temperance
• British Independent Order of Oddfellows
• Independent Order of Rachibites
• United Ancient Order of Druids
• Ancient Order of Foresters

Entities (can be seen but not spoken to by Izzy)

• People with proper jobs (judges, soldiers, politicians)

Celestial Bodies (may talk with Izzy)

• The Prime Minister

Hopefully the Prime Minister’s staff warned him to stay away from the topics of agricultural reform, imperialism, and trade in the West Indies.  Mind you, Sir Joseph Ward was a fairly dull man himself.

Getting the Governor General off his ship and into Parliament was essentially an exercise in fitting in as many speeches and reponses as possible so that important people could say how happy they were that Islington was here, and Islington could say how happy he was to be here.  The Prime Minister would get to do this a few times, the Mayor of Wellington a little bit.  The riff raff got to clap.  It was going to be marvellous.

The planned route was onto Post Office Square, up Panama Street, along Lambton Quay, up Molesworth Street and then into Parliament.  There was a great deal of planning around where people could park their carriages, and who they should leave their cards with, and what people should wear (members of Friendly Societies were to wear small streamers of red, white and blue).

Stands had to be erected, marching bands prepared, and everything along the route given a once over.  Wellington was to be looking its best.

How to Welcome a Governor General: (2) Build the Governor a House

I was delighted to discover that the current Governor General’s residence in New Zealand was built on the site of Wellington’s former lunatic asylum.

On 24 May 1910, the Marlborough Times reported on building progress,

There is a general belief “on the job” that the work will easily be completed by the middle of June, in ample time for the new Governor’s immediate occupation upon arrival.

Good to know that the builders in New Zealand were as reliable in 1910 as they are now.  The Governor’s new digs weren’t ready when he arrived, nor for two months afterwards.  In fact much of the reporting around this new house is pretty funny (more on that soon).

So, a bit of a let down about the house, but the parade was all ready for Lord Islington when he arrived on the 22 June, 1910.  Let’s imagine, then, that it is the 21st of June now, 1910, and we are going to bed in Wellington with our fingers crossed for good weather.  The Mayor has checked and rechecked his speech.  The Premier has made sure his best suit is pressed.  The stands at Post Office Square and Parliament have been swept clean and hung with bunting, and somewhere out at sea is a Lord, tucked up in his sheets, as the Ulimaroa steams through night towards an expectant city.

A tour around Islington

An Odd Walking Tour of New Zealand’s Radio History

Part One

Part Two

Across the road from Post Office Square, and through the Harbour Board gates, is Queen’s Wharf; a wharf that used to be the gateway to Wellington.  In the era before air travel, various royals, Governor Generals, Premiers and senior officials came down the gang plank of their ships there, sometimes into a sea of people, sometimes with strings of pennant flags whipping about in the wind and a brass band playing, and were taken in a horse and carriage out onto Waterloo Quay, past the General Post Office Building and towards Parliament for their official engagements.  In 1910 it was the turn of a relatively obscure Governor General in New Zealand history to be met at this wharf: Lord Islington.

Queen's Wharf

Lord Islington was a newly minted Lord, and a newly minted Islington when he came to New Zealand.  His name until shortly before he left for Wellington was Sir John Dickson-Poynder.  Before he became hyphenated he was John Dickson.  Not that he was just any old John Dickson.  He was very much of the upper classes, but of the type that were interested in affairs of state, and welfare, and Empire.  Most of his career was political, and much of that to do with colonies whether they were relative non-entities like New Zealand, or tremendously important like India.  He was well-liked, affable, serious-minded and capable.  In New Zealand the role of Governor General may have suited his title and bearing, but it cannot have suited his temperament which was political and active.

Lord Islington’s appointment as Governor General coincided with a sober moment in the Empire’s history.  On 6 May 1910 Lord Islington and a Mr. Robinson of Queensland “kissed hands” with King Edward VI at Buckingham Palace.  Mr. Robinson presented the King with an inkstand to commemorate Queensland’s jubilee.  The King expressed pleasure at the gift and retired.  Concern was running high for the monarch and doctors were in the Palace.  The bronchial king (who was a forty a day man) had suffered heart attacks since returning from Biarritz on 27 April.  By 6 May the situation was grave.  The streets around the royal residence were deadened with peat and cotton lest the rattle of a carriage plunge him into the arms of death.  Loyal subjects rushed out of the theatres to grab late editions of the papers which reported that the King was still alive.  He finally expired at 11.45pm.  Which means that Mr. Robinson and Lord Islington were the last people to have an audience with the late King (“long live the King”).

After the new Governor General was announced New Zealand had a couple of months to find out what kind of man Lord Islington was likely to be and get his house ready (the current Governor General’s residence was brand new in 1910, and Lord Islington the first to live in it).  In 1910 it took about a month to sail to New Zealand from Britain – this included a few days in Australia on the way to fit in a couple of dinners and toasts, and change ships to get to Wellington – and about a month before that to go to official dinners, organise your massive retinue (the Islingtons brought about 23 staff with them), and visit your tenants so they could present you with some token to show how much they enjoyed tugging their forelocks.

It was not an age of investigative, celebrity reporting in the mainstream media, and certainly no one was going to look for the sharp angle when it came to the King’s newly chosen representative in one of the Empire’s most devoted outposts.  Nevertheless, among all the reporting on Islington’s accomplishments we can glean a little.  The Evening Post did a long piece on 24 May based on their interview with the man:

Tall, well knit, with ruddy complexion and grey hair, he looks the personification of energy and hard work.  The hair and the heavy moustache are both greyer than his age, and his well-defined eyebrows and square jaw lend strength to an altogether handsome face.

The political correspondent for the Daily News in London noted,

Lord Islington has an admirable presence, a ruddy complexion, hair rapidly whitening, and a pleasant and frequent smile.  He is most kind of heart, and would not willingly say a word to hurt anyone.  He likes to be friends with all the world.  He is not actually eloquent, but he possesses a good sound style of speaking.

His Lordship’s official photograph (taken in New Zealand) seems to confirm and contradict much of this.

Lord Islington

I’m seeing the white hair, but not the well-defined eyebrows and square jaw, and we are certainly not getting any hint of a man who likes to smile.

What of the Lord’s lovely wife?

Lady Islington is of medium height, dark and strikingly handsome.

She is also a strikingly irritating interview subject.

Laughingly protesting that she did not wish to be “interviewed,” Lady Islington admitted that she was looking forward to the change with a great deal of interest.  “Of course,” she said, “it is quite a new thing for me, and one cannot tell how one will like a new life…”  It was only natural I should ask Lady Islington to express herself on the subject of Female Suffrage… “In my public speeches I have always said I am very much opposed to it here in England, because I do not think it would be a good thing for us.”  As for hobbies?  “What does it mean exactly?” she asked.  “If it means that one writes books, or paints pictures, or sings in public, then I have no hobbies.  But I am very fond of literature and of art and of music.”  Asked if she did anything in the way of philanthropic work, Lady Islington pleaded not guilty.  Lady Islington is very popular among the tenantry on the estates in Wiltshire.

Hmmm.

Lady Islington

One is not very drawn to Lady Islington.  In her farewell speech to her tenants in Wiltshire (where she received the de rigueur gift of the season: an inkstand) she noted her great happiness and then noted (presumably standing next to her daughter as she said it) that the one shadow in her life was her inability to produce a son.  The Wiltshire tenants presented the daughter – Joan – with a riding crop.  Perhaps to use on her mother.

In fact it is this kind of stuff that makes you appreciate the efforts of the satirist working at the Observer in Auckland in 1910 who also claimed an interview with Lord Islington.

 The whole thing is jolly good (a bit racist, but you can’t have everything); certainly much better than the official (real) interviews in which Lord Izzy explains his views on proposed land taxation changes (bad), the housing of the poor (good), the feeding of children at school (also good), the regulation of London’s tube (useful), or trade with the West Indies (fascinating work apparently). 

He also, as it happened, had a hand in reforming the laws around wireless telegraphy.

An odd walking tour of New Zealand’s radio history (1/5)

There used to be a huge hole in the ground in Featherston Street.  It was fenced with those eight foot high sheets of wood that are always around construction sites, but someone had cut a viewing hole so you could look in.  Looking in you could see the massive concrete gap tooth in the city scape.  It was sort of a celebrated hole and fascinating to a child for it covered an entire city block and was very large, deep and square.  It was probably also a symbol in the adult mind of loss, or economic stagnation or potential (depending on the adult who glanced down through the viewing slot).

As far as I can gather this site was a hole in the ground from about 1974 until, perhaps, 1990 when a faceless conglomerate mustered up sufficient funds and confidence to build the Park Royal Hotel (now the Intercontinental).  The Park Royal at the time it was built was quite glamorous and I suppose it is not surprising that I forgot about the giant hole that fascinated me as a kid.  Not surprising that I forgot, but a little bit odd that I never once wondered what had been on that site before it was turned into a hole.

As it happens, thanks to my curious tangent into exploring the history of early radio in Wellington, I have now discovered what used to be on that site.  On the other side of the Park Royal, facing Waterloo Quay, is the clue.  The clue is in the name of the little paved plaza with a kiosk on it where people gather at the lights before crossing to the waterfront: it is called Post Office Square. 

Post Office Square with the Intercontinental Hotel behind

Until now I had never wondered why that place was called Post Office Square.  From 1884 until the 1970s it was in fact the square in front of the General Post Office Building: headquarters to the Post Office in New Zealand.  After a fire in 1887 the General Post Office Building was rebuilt and reopened in 1889 on the same site.  It was this building that stood on the site until the 1970s.

General Post Office, Waterloo Quay, 1905

On the left hand side of this building, in the square itself, you can see the statue of Queen Victoria that now sits, somewhat pointlessly, on a strip of lawn between Kent and Cambridge Terrace on the other side of town.  We should also note the clock tower as it will be important in the story to come. 

In 1912 the General Post Office building was extended so that it filled the entire city block, and also had a frontage on Featherston Street which was less imposing but still self-confident.

Which explains the nods to nostalgia that you can find in Post Office Square now.

Which are fairly paltry remnants of a once grand institution, but they are useful to me, because they include not only a post box, but a telephone booth.

When the telegraph and then radio technology were introduced into New Zealand they were run by the Post Office.  Eventually the phones would be run by them too.  Radio was often called wireless in its infancy, which happens to be a nice connection to our modern desire to be wireless, and also to the technology of the internet which has been the death knell of the post.

But let’s scoot back to 1910 when wireless radio transmission was a new kind of magic brought to you by the wonderful world of science.  In an article in the Evening Post (14 December, 1910) you can sense the wonder of the reporter as he witnesses technology’s latest miracle connecting some chaps in Wellington with a ship far out at sea.

No wires! 

To the Edwardian mind (and to my mind too) this seemed truly incredible.  The precursor to radio was telegraphy which made some kind of tactile sense as it relied on a wire to connect two points, but radio seemed an impossibility.  One that was being keenly pursued by the Post Office.

Ethergrams is such a cool name. 

You may notice however that we are not talking about broadcasting radio to any Tom, Dick or Harry, but about sending messages from point A to point B.  And to be clear, we are also not talking about sending verbal messages over the radio, we are talking about sending morse code signals.  The early days of radio are really about a bunch of boffins not seeing the full implications of their technology, or wanting to monopolise it for important and official business, and not the frivolity of entertainment.

By 31 December, 1910, the Evening Post was reporting further developments in wireless in Wellington with antennae wires (ironically) being strung from the clock tower of the General Post Office building to buildings on either side, and even across Waterloo Quay to a pole erected on the Harbour Board building.  The two watt plant was up and running by the middle of January 1911 which marked New Zealand’s official launch into the world of radio.

This problem of being in the “shadow of the land” was to be a major factor in the decision to move New Zealand’s first radio station out of the clock tower of the General Post Office, and up the Tinakori Hill.

But before we head off up that hill we should note two things.  Firstly, when we stand in Post Office Square in Wellington we are standing at the birthplace of radio in New Zealand.  Secondly, we should take a moment to put a human face to the men who were involved in all the excitement, and think about what lay ahead for them. 

Here then is a picture of the men who were at the cutting edge of communication technology in Wellington in 1912.  They are pictured in the telegram section of the General Post Office building. 

And when they left work that day they would have stepped out of their rather grand building and walked across the square: the statue of Queen Victoria glaring over the heads of the men in suits and bowler hats, the bell of the trams clanging in the distance, and the ships tugging at anchor at the wharves across Waterloo Quay.  There was probably a wind, the smell of the sea, a horse and cart making its way along the road, as they turned for home in the fading light of King Edward’s Wellington.

Rather grimly I can’t help but wonder how many of those young men survived the Great War which loomed just ahead.  Some of them perhaps took their skills with them into that war and found jobs that may have preserved them.  The First Expeditionary Force that left New Zealand to capture Samoa from the Germans included four radio operators and two radio engineers who had volunteered from the P & T Department.  Later the First New Zealand Wireless Troop was formed that included 60 linesmen and telegraphists from the same department.  It is hard not to believe that we are looking at some of those men when we look at this photograph.

I would like to think that their skills kept them safe from harm, and they came back to Wellington to carry on their lives, and not merely as a name to be cut into the stone of a freshly minted war memorial.

The jaws of physical idleness

When you read a history book it appears a solid stable thing.  The author will have stitched together the facts, opinions and lies into a seamless whole.  When they wrote their book they probably had in their mind some kind of notion of being fair.  Really though there is no particular need to respect the professional historian merely because they followed correct historical procedures and have had their work reviewed by a body of reputable academics.  So did historians one hundred years ago and most of their books now look like the works of deluded fantasists or fanatics.

Truby’s reputation remains healthy I believe because Plunket is still a worthwhile organisation; because his stated goals appear noble, and because a brief glance at his writing suggests an air of sensible sanity.

Whenever Truby makes a list of fundamentals in his essays they usually sound good:

Summary of the absolute necessties for good nutrition

• Fresh air day and night
• Bathing in fresh air and water
• Correctly balanced food with an abundance of fresh natural foods and sufficient water to drink

Truby King, Alexander Turnbull Library

This is all sensible stuff.  That’s the problem with it.  It’s the kind of thing that most parents will wind up doing most of the time anyway.  What is good in King’s books is sensible and obvious and rises smoothly to the surface; what is bad in his books is often submerged and bobs up unexpectantly:

The normal woman is never safer, healthier, happier or more uplifted than during pregnancy.

That tricky little word “normal” must have played on the mind of the expectant mother who read this sentence and felt unready, anxious, or maybe even a little overwhelmed and depressed during their pregnancy.  Not “normal” feelings according to Dr. King, director of Seacliff lunatic asylum.  King also makes declarations which are simply untrue and must have made countless women despair that they had not prepared during their pregnancy adequately:

Morning sickness rarely troubles women who fit themselves for pregnancy by active healthy habits.

Of course there is also plenty of material that can be dismissed with a good natured laugh about “how times change”:

The bowels [of the expectant mother] must be trained to move regularly and easily once a day.

Rubbing, fingering or other stimualtion of the nipples should not be carried to excess: moderation in all things.

But finally, in all of King’s work about babies, there is the slight whiff of the eugenicist and misogynistic, Empire builder:

If we lack noble mothers, we lack the first element of racial success and national greatness….  The main cause of modern bodily unfitness and inefficiency lies with our women….  Motherhood is woman’s exclusive profession – and yet the only one for which no training is considered necessary.

He finds an illustration of his point about the racial decline of the honky when he compares the teeth of the Maori and the European:

To us white intruders the contrast shown ought to appear as the ‘writing on the wall’.  No race or family can remain great or even perpetuate itself if it fails to develop properly and give due exercise to jaws and teeth….  The old time Maori… chewed and ground tough fern root between his molars….  He reaped the reward of honest work; he developed perfect jaws and teeth, which turn us almost green with envy when we see them in museums, side by side with the jaws of our own race – the jaws of physical idleness.

The pre-European Maori tended to die in his mid thirties without any teeth left, and generally afflicted by arthritis.

This is the curious thing about the writings of Truby King: he consistently constructs a list of sensible fundamentals out of the most hair-brained, misinformed nonsense.  It’s like an incredible magic trick where a man is given arrogance, misogyny and racism and somehow pulls Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of the hat.  Luckily for the man everyone judges him on the symphony.

Busy body

One thing I noticed when I became a parent was that a lot of people who have had children wanted to give me advice.  Sometimes I wanted their advice and sometimes I even sought it out, but most of the time I didn’t.  I should quickly add that this unwanted advice came from strangers not from family who were wonderfully supportive and caring of Eleanor and her nervous parents. 

Being a first time parent I was particularly vulnerable to the advice of others as I didn’t have a damn idea what I was doing, and what I was doing seemed very important.  Being confronted with a living being that is utterly dependent on you is, well, quite confronting, as are those first nappies, feeding times, etc, baths, etc….  At first it seems a great boon that there are so many people who are willing to tell you how to do something, and then it seems like a curse.  Once I had survived the first few months of self doubt and crippling insecurity as a dad I began to realise that raising a baby was essentially quite straightforward (please notice that I didn’t say easy).  A baby needs sleep, and warmth, and food, and baths and love.  I think that’s about it (aside from nappy changes).  The only people screwing this simplicity up are the experts.  It doesn’t matter whether they are experts because they had five kids, or because they wrote a book about childcare, they are still messing up something simple, and this is what began to annoy me so much as I read the story of Truby King.

Truby King established himself internationally as an expert on raising children.  He founded an organisation called Plunket (which thankfully bears little resemblance to its original form today).  He had his face on a stamp, had a state funeral and was granted permission to be buried on private land.  Quite recently he was in a book by Joseph Romanos about famous New Zealanders.  And yet, increasingly, I have the feeling that he was a self-righteous prig who felt not only no shame, but an actual compulsion to tell mothers off.  His advice is sometimes sound, often it is laughable, occasionally it is offensive.

While you read this please consider that Dr. King had no children of his own.  In his late forties he and his wife adopted a girl.  This was their solitary experience of being parents.

Every baby responds to wise sensible mothering, the reverse of capricious, fussy, anxious, over-stimulation, and meddling which too often usurp the place of the real thing nowadays, and may even do more harm than comparative indifference or even neglect….  Nervous and mental wrecks too frequently owe the origin of their disorder to want of repose in early infancy, due to injudicious stimulation.  In this connection let it be understood that all evidences of mental precocity, called “smartness” should be regarded as danger signals, and call for repression rather than encouragement.

Here we have learned that an anxious mother is worse than a neglectful one, and that a precocious child must be repressed.  One of the things that particularly offends me about King is his tone towards mothers.

Nature has specially marked out the first twelve months of life as the appointed time, for growing the body and even more emphatically for growing the brain of the human being.  If the mother fritters away this one golden opportunity instead of making the most of it and doing the best possible for her baby, no after care can make up for her mistakes and neglect.

So you better get it right!  Remember that Dr. King was well known as the boss of Seacliff, the country’s largest mental institution, and would have been considered an expert on mental health.  Throughout his book on childcare there is a disturbing sub-text concerning mental illness.  It is a sub-text that implies than failed citizens, the immoral and the deranged in society can be blamed on bad mothers.

Such children [children who won't eat their crusts] merely exemplify the ineptitude of their parents – parents too sentimental, weakly emotional, careless or indifferent to fufill the primary laws of Nature.

This kind of talk makes me angry.  I am not angry because of the advise itself which is consigned to the stack room of the Wellington Public Library, I am angry because Truby King still seems to maintain a very high, slightly saintly reputation in New Zealand when he strikes me as a misinformed, over-opinionated misogynist.  Of course I am not really angry.  To be really angry about this would be silly.  After all Dr. King and the authority of his views have long since passed, but still, I do feel a residual resentment on behalf of all those parents who were made to feel inadequate and small by King and his acylotes for the forty or so years when his views held sway. 

But we are not free of it; this double-edged blade of the expert opinion.  Of course we need doctors and their advice is usually sound and useful.  This makes it even harder to tell when they’re wrong.  When Eleanor was a very new baby she had three injections for meningococcal.  It was horrible for her because each time she was injected she couldn’t understand what had happened.  One minute she was safe in daddy’s arms and the next there was this horrible sharp pain in her thigh.  It was the first time I had seen a face crumple into tears.  We did it though and steadfastly followed the course of three injections because we were told that it was the best thing to do; that the Ministry of Health advised it.  We were given pamphlets.  The pamphlets were friendly and useful, and quietly implied that you would be a pretty poor sort of a parent if you didn’t get your baby immunised.  The Ministry of Health is running a very similar campaign right now for a vaccine against cervical cancer.

I think it was in November or December of last year that a small piece in the news announced that the meningococcal immunisation programme was being discontinued because the vaccine had been found to be almost entirely useless.