Newspapers in New Zealand

Scholefield, Guy H. (Guy Hardy), A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, N.Z., 1958

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The original publication details are as follows:

Title: Newspapers in New Zealand

Author: Scholefield, Guy H. (Guy Hardy)

Published: A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, N.Z., 1958

NEWSPAPERS IN NEW ZEALAND

By the same author:

New Zealand in Evolution

Captain William Hobson

The Pacific

Notable New Zealanders: Twelve Prime

Ministers

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

GUY H. SCHOLEFIELD

NEWSPAPERS IN NEW ZEALAND

WELLINGTON

A. H. & A. W. REED

First published 1958

A. H. & A. W. REED

Publishers of New Zealand Books

182 Wakefield Street Wellington

Copyright G. H. Scholefield

Printed by Wright & Carman Ltd., Wellington

CONTENTS

Foreword page ix

Preface xi

1. Journalism in a Colony 1

2. Revolution by Electric Telegraph 10

3. The Crest of the Wave 16

4. The Press in Wellington 24

5. Wellington Provincial Press 46

6. Newspapers in Auckland 69

7. Auckland Provincial Press 99

8. The Press of Taranaki 127

9. The Hawke’s Bay Press 141

10. Nelson and Marlborough 156

11. Otago Journalism 167

12. The Otago Provincial Press 186

13. The Press in Southland 203

14. Newspapers in Canterbury 211

15. Canterbury Provincial Press 228

16. West of the Alps 240

17. Maori and Religious Papers 258

18. Newspaper Proprietors’ Association 261

Newspapers of Today 265

Sources 268

Index 270

ILLUSTRATIONS

Alphabetical Index to the Plates

Alexander, W. F. facing 165

Atack, W. H. 228

Bain, J. W. 212

Ballance, John 21

Bell, G. 149

Berry, Wm. 84

Blundell, Henry 20

Bracken, T. 164

Brett, Sir H. 37

Bristed, A. H. 229

Brown, C. 85

Bums, A. M. 229

Carleton, H. F. 84

Carson, Gilbert 36

Claridge, J. H. 101

Cohen, Mark 164

Cutten, W. H. 149

Denniston, T. 212

Domett, C. M. G. 148

Earle, C. W., C.M.G. 21

Edgecumbe, G. 85

Elliott, C. 148

Feldwick, H. 212

Fenwick, Sir G. 149

Fenwick, Wm. 149

Fitzgerald, J. E. 213

Furness, S. J. 148

Geddis, W. J. 101

Gollin, E. T. facing 20

Gilmour, R. 212

Holland, H. E. 21

Horton, A. G. 37

Horton, Sir H. 37

Huie, E. C. 228

Hutchison, Sir J. 165

Hutchison, W. 36

Ivess, J. 229

Johnson, S. 148

Jones, George 165

Joyce, LP. 212

Keane, M. C. 228

Kerr, E. G. 212

Knowles, E. W. 100

Leys, Dr T. W. 37

List, T. C. 100

Loughnan, R. A. 228

Lucas, R. 148

Lukin, Gresley 21

McDougall, J. W. 101

McKenzie, T. W. 20

Matthews, J. A. 165

Muir, A. R. 101

Penn, W. J. 100

Pirani, F. 36

Reed, G. M. 84

Reeves, W. P. 213

13

ILLUSTRATIONS

Revans, S. facing 20

Wakelin, Richard facing 36

Sale, G. S 213

Wells, B. 100

Seffern, W. H. J. 100

Weston, H. 85

Shrimpton, I. 213

Wilkinson, Wm. 84

Smith, C. S. 164

Williamson, J. 36

Wilson, W. C. 36

Steward, Sir W. J. 229

Tyrrell, John 148

Wood, Jas. 100

Vogel, Sir J. 164

Woon, G. W. 85

Reproductions of First Issues

The New Zealand Gazette page 26

The Wanganui Chronicle 48

The Taranaki Herald 128

The Otago Daily Times 172

FOREWORD

From humble beginnings the newspapers of New Zealand, growing with the development of the country, have played no small part in the progress of a virile dominion. The standard of our press is praised frequently by visitors, and in all modesty we can accept that praise, knowing that we give a comprehensive world coverage and strive to maintain a high standard of ethics.

All the daily newspapers are now old established. Four have already celebrated their centenaries, and many others will do so during the next decade. In many cases over the years changes in ownership and in the form of ownership have loosened —even broken altogether—the links with the early days, and consequently much early history is liable to be forgotten. This applies equally to those papers now owned by public companies and to the considerable number still under family control, since shareholders in the latter are now as far removed as five generations from the original founders.

We are proud of our newspaper history, and it is a matter for great satisfaction that we now see the fruits of Dr Scholefield’s research recorded not only for those engaged in journalism but for everyone interested in New Zealand’s history. With the meticulous care of the historian he has sifted the mass of material within his reach and has produced a unique record which will increase in value with the passing of the years.

On behalf of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of New Zealand I congratulate Dr Scholefield on the result of his labours and tender him our sincere thanks for his service to the press.

S. D. Smith,

Dunedin,

President

February 1958

ix

PREFACE

This history of the newspaper press of New Zealand originated in a suggestion made in 1922 by a noted Maori scholar and bibliographer, Bishop H. W. Williams. Writing to the association, he pointed out that Dr T. M. Hocken in his standard bibliography of New Zealand literature had omitted newspapers and he suggested that the Newspaper Proprietors Association should fill the gap by publishing a detailed bibliography of the newspaper press.

When the matter was discussed (during the presidency of Mr C. W. Earle) it transpired that two veterans of the press, Sir George Fenwick and Sir Henry Brett, had broken the ground by copying from the Supreme Court records all registrations under the Printers and Newspapers Registration Act 1868. In later discussions it was recognised that a mere bibliography would not adequately document the story of the Fourth Estate in New Zealand. Sooner or later—possibly at the Centennial in 1940 there would inevitably be a demand for a comprehensive history of a profession which had exercised so powerful an influence upon the making of the New Zealand nation.

As chief librarian of the General Assembly the present writer had for many years paid special attention to the newspaper collection. Commencing with the newspaper files kept by the Colonial Secretary from 1840, and augmented from year to year by papers delivered to the Parliamentary Library under the copyright acts, the collection now amounts to about 10,000 volumes and is unsurpassed in scope and comprehensiveness in any English-speaking community. To make our newspaper resources more readily available to students who come in increasing numbers from universities in New Zealand and abroad, the Library published in 1938 a Union Catalogue of the holdings of all libraries, local bodies, and newspaper offices in the Dominion.

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xii

PREFACE

With the approach of the Centennial Mr Earle commissioned me to write the history of the press, and after a lapse of some years owing to the war, this is now brought to completion. The major part of the research, both for this history and for the Union Catalogue, was carried out in the General Assembly Library. I am deeply indebted, however, to librarians and newspaper executives all over the Dominion for the patient courtesy with which they investigated a stream of questions, many of which may have seemed to them to be trivial.

Only a few of the pioneers of New Zealand journalism published their memoirs, but during my 30 years in journalism I enjoyed the friendship and helpful co-operation of many belonging to a generation earlier than my own. These included the Blundell brothers, Sir Henry Brett, Andrew Burns, J. H. Claridge, Sir G. Fenwick, Joseph Ivess, R. A. Loughnan, Gresley Lukin, T. L. Mills, the Hon. J. T. Paul and Samuel Saunders. A good deal of information was derived also from special numbers upon which staff members and local historians had evidently lavished a discerning enthusiasm. The staff of the Newspaper Proprietors Association and the secretary (Mr C. E. Owen) were most helpful.

Newspapers in New Zealand is neither a story of professional journalism nor a textbook of newspaper production. It is essentially a narrative of the origins and progress of newspaper organs, with special regard to leading personalities and significant phases on both sides of the industry. It is not a bibliography, but a modicum of bibliographical detail has been retained.

The amount of space devoted to individual newspapers in no sense purports to evaluate their importance. No comparison is possible between the smooth stories of certain long-lived dailies and the tribulations of some interesting small-town papers. Success is often not spectacular or eventful, whereas failure may be exciting and even heroic.

As the writing of history is largely a marshalling of individual experience I hope that there are some amongst the present generation of newspaper men who, realising that facts are fugitive, are finding time to record, in letters or diaries, some of the small happenings and reflections that find no place in the daily papers.

G. H. SCHOLEFIELD

CHAPTER 1

JOURNALISM IN A COLONY

The Newspaper a Democratic Necessity

In every community which holds to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of democracy the existence of a free newspaper press is an axiom, since the unhindered flow of information and expression of opinion are vital to self-government.

The men and women who more than a century ago were contemplating emigration to New Zealand had as a background more than a decade of open disputation on the reform bills and the com laws. As a consequence, they asserted, sometimes with fantastic earnestness, the right to manage their own affairs. Inside Parliament and out, self-government was held to be an essential ingredient of the Wakefield plan of colonisation.

When eventually the New Zealand Company started to colonise New Zealand in direct defiance of the Colonial Office few of the colonists who sailed in 1839 from the Thames, the Clyde and Plymouth did not confidently expect that when they reached the new land they would automatically have a voice in the conduct of their own affairs. Whether their destination was Port Nicholson, or Bay of Islands or Nelson they would be managed by men of their own choice, accessible to their praise or censure. And how could the rank and file make their voices heard except through a newspaper press?

Edward Gibbon Wakefield would leave nothing to chance. He saw to it that New Zealand would have a newspaper of its own without any doubt: the first issue of the New Zealand Gazette was actually published in London on 21 August 1839, before the printer and his machinery were loaded into the ship.

As it happened, the Adelaide did not reach her destination for six months, but Samuel Revans had no sooner stepped ashore at Port Nicholson that he set up his press on the Petone beach, champing to print No. 2 of the paper. On 18 April 1840, just three

1

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JOURNALISM IN A COLONY

months after the first settlers landed, the colonists received their own newspaper printed in New Zealand, No. 2 of the New Zealand Gazette and Britannia Spectator. Thereafter, year by year, the tiny settlements which were established round our lonely coasts set up their local organs of opinion and intelligence. The New Zealand Gazette at Port Nicholson had the field to itself for more than two years. At Bay of Islands, where for more than a decade a considerable European population had been living, the New Zealand Advertiser came into existence on 15 June 1840, four months after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and two months after the first paper appeared at Port Nicholson. In the next four years the people at the Bay saw four newspapers come and go. Meanwhile, in May 1841, the seat of Government was moved from the Bay of Islands to the Waitemata. Two months later Auckland had its paper, the first New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette. Before the end of 1846 five others were started, but in the prevailing atmosphere of bitter partisanship and official interference only two survived.

And what of the southern settlements? Nelson’s first paper, the Examiner, was published on 12 March 1842, two months after the arrival of the pioneer settlers. It stood alone for 15 years. Otago had its first paper in December 1848, nine months after the immigrant ships arrived. The Otago News lived just two years, but it was succeeded at once by the Otago Witness, which was to live for 80 years, the first six years with no competitor.

Canterbury, the last of the six original settlements, had to wait for its paper only long enough for the plant to be unloaded at Lyttelton. The Lyttelton Times, founded by James Edward FitzGerald on 11 January 1851, had one competitor within 18 months, another in 3i years, but its first enduring rival was the Press, founded in 1861 by the same leader of the colonists, FitzGerald. The Times and the Press had to fight off much opposition, but survived to share the field till the 19305.

New Plymouth was an exception to the general rule. Though it was settled in 1841 this tortured little province was so retarded by native land troubles that the people were without a newspaper till 1852. The Taranaki Herald (4 August 1852) had no competitor till 1857, but it is significant that these two New Plymouth papers, the Herald and the News, survive today—two of the three oldest papers in the Dominion.

THE NEWSPAPER A DEMOCRATIC NECESSITY

'.

The earliest newspapers generally appeared in the seaport towns where the pioneers landed, and where eventually the provincial capitals grew. From these centres settlement radiated inland, small townships grew up and before long their people demanded local organs of opinion and publicity. Such haphazard origins confuse the historian’s desire to construct a systematic narrative. Since newspapers did not always keep step with the pace of settlement, any attempt to observe strict chronology yields merely a concatenation of births, tribulations and failures. The only feasible pattern to follow is the regional development in the different provincial districts. This has been done, taking the districts generally in order of priority of the first papers to be established in each: Wellington, Auckland, Taranaki, Hawkes Bay, Nelson, Otago, Canterbury, Westland.

Early Obstacles

Numerous handicaps inevitably await hopeful journalists who start newspapers in small colonial communities. Of these it would seem that want of capital is not the most serious. The outlay required to establish a paper in New Zealand a century ago was not considerable. Apart from the proverbial hatful of type, the main item of expenditure might be a handpress—an Albion or an Eagle—which would be employed on job printing most of the week and turn on one day to work off a hundred or two copies of the newspaper. The paramount necessity, of course, was a practical printer, a man who could manage the office, write an occasional article for the paper, and read the proofs.

By far the most serious handicap facing the infant journal was the paucity of the white population and their isolation. In 1851 the six settlements in New Zealand, which were scattered over a thousand miles of latitude, had a total white population of only 26,707. Four of the provinces had newspapers—the seven survivors out of 16 that had been established. Obviously in such limited circumstances the best managed paper could not be sure of success even if the editor printed nothing to antagonise a section of his readers. The earliest papers at the seat of Government—Bay of Islands or Auckland as the case may be—were exposed to a special peril arising from “beach gossip” and small-town animosity between civilians and officials. It was natural that a newspaper should criticise the administration

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JOURNALISM IN A COLONY

and that officials should retaliate in kind. If the punishment was merely the loss of Government advertising and the withdrawal of official support that would be serious enough, but it might be the seizure of the press or foreclosing on the printers. These and other pressure devices were actually practised in the early days of the New Zealand press.

On the whole, however, the most debilitating influence upon a young paper was the hot partisanship of the settlers. Political feeling ran high. Personal rivalries and petty disputes were rife. In the provincial capitals, and at a later date in smaller towns, it was almost impossible for the writer of a newspaper article or letter to conceal his identity, and frequently it seemed to be more important to the aggrieved to unveil the writer than to rebut the statements he made. There was no such thing as impersonal journalism. Libel was freely indulged in and outbursts of hair-raising vehemence and slander against political opponents or business rivals. Little wonder that diaries and local histories bristle with records of fights, horse-whippings, tar-and-feathering and even challenges to a duel.

In 1853, when the machinery of the New Zealand constitution was being brought into action, William Brown, one of the proprietors of the Southern Cross at Auckland, sued Williamson and Wilson, owners of the New Zealander, for libels on his character and political conduct. Read today, these allegations certainly seem outrageous. The jury had no difficulty in finding for the complainant, but the damages were assessed at only 205.

The Attorney-General (William Swainson) explained that the Government had not previously brought an action against the press because “it has been thought more for the advantage of Her Majesty’s subjects in these islands that there should be occasional excess on the part of the press rather than continual restraint, and that, so long at least as the people of New Zealand had no direct voice in the government of the country they should enjoy without limitation or restraint ‘that true liberty that freeborn men, having to advise the public, might speak free’.” Did he really believe that the grant of fully responsible government would lay upon the press the obligation to be more dignified and restrained?

But the public did not always approve of the partiality shown in some papers. The Port Nicholson settlers generally disliked the administration at Auckland, but their animus against Governor

22

EARLY OBSTACLES

Hobson was tempered by the fact that he was 500 miles distant. They exercised the British privilege of grumbling but they were content to leave it to their leaders to voice their complaints against the Government. Samuel Revans, however, was an inveterate opponent of Downing Street and all of its offspring. Moreover the Gazette owed its existence to the New Zealand Company, and to the Company Revans looked for his prosperity. Naturally he did not fail in subservience to his powerful patron. He rejoiced that the old vendetta against the Colonial Office was thus committed to his hands, and criticised with the utmost truculence every act of the administration at Auckland. Visitors to New Zealand in 1842 were aghast at the vehemence of his diatribes and the settlers themselves, when they had time to consider it, were not pleased. It was to this disapproval, and not to official hostility, that the first paper in New Zealand succumbed after a life of four years. The more normal maladies of the early press—too many papers and too few readers—might have left the Gazette unscathed if Revans had not squandered his resources by stubborn adherence to a cause which had ceased to interest the settlers. Many papers before the end of the century were to die of the same complaint.

Half a Century’s Growth

The sporadic settlement of New Zealand produced in the long run a confused pattern of journalistic expansion, but there is discernible a faint sequence of regional tendencies. Before 1870 an alternation of spurts, booms and depressions had been experienced in each of the settlements. In the first two decades (1840-59) papers were planted by optimists wherever settlement happened to show some progress, but, since agricultural expansion was so slow, few of these early essays achieved any stability. In the North Island much of the accessible and favoured farming land was withheld by its Maori owners. In the South the settlements were more recent, the population scanty and markets remote. Until 1860 little progress was made in either island. The white population of New Zealand in 1858 was 59,413, living in six provinces. In all they had 15 papers. Thirteen others had failed and five more were to fold up in a year or two.

There was a radical change in the Colony’s affairs in the sixties. A substantial discovery of gold in Otago in 1861 preci-

N 2

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JOURNALISM IN A COLONY

pitated a rush of population from abroad. In the next few years gold was found also in Nelson and Marlborough, on the West Coast and at Thames, sufficient in each instance to give a fillip to immigration. In the years 1861-71 the white population of the Colony increased from 99,021 to 256,393. By 1870 most of the provinces had enjoyed—or suffered—a boom. Then followed another strong influx, mainly of robust men chosen for work on the railways under the Vogel policy. Meanwhile many who had come in the sixties to serve in the wars remained as settlers on the land. Whatever the motive for their coming, most of those who arrived between 1860 and 1880 applied themselves to developing the country and so strengthened the home market for New Zealand’s produce. Generally speaking, the later arrivals were less conservative than those who had been settled since the forties; more enterprising, more vocal and disposed to participate in affairs. Those from Australia included some of our future political leaders and some were journalists who had experience of the craft on both sides of the world.

In that golden era few townships appeared too small to support a local newspaper or were reluctant to offer it hospitality. The agricultural districts were not so much interested, yet until recently some of these, especially in Otago and Southland, were still supporting papers which owed their origin to the bright hopes of adjacent goldfields.

During the period 1860-79, 44 newspapers were established in Otago. On the West coast, during the shorter period 1865-79 there were 23 foundations. For the whole Colony in 1860-79 there were 181 foundations, partly offset by 87 cessations. Actually that was the peak of newspaper pioneering, when an average of nine new papers started each year while about half that number were extinguished. In the following two decades (1880-99) 150 papers were started and 85 ceased.

In this maelstrom of hopeful adventure it is interesting to observe the occasional flittings of a piece of newspaper machinery. Many a paper in the boom days owed its existence to the mere fact that there happened to be at hand a printing machine which, however inefficient, was capable of turning out a paper. Some dead journals were actually resuscitated to give employment to a still serviceable machine. Retired machines were bought up after failures, or held on bills of sale, either to prevent the revival of competition in the town or to await a new owner

HALF A CENTURY’S GROWTH

24

elsewhere. Handpresses which had arrived originally for the mission presses were sometimes employed secularly to produce a newspaper. Notable amongst the peripatetic printing machines is that which R. O. Garrick and James A. Matthews brought from Melbourne in 1863 to start the Riverton Times. It passed on to Waikouaiti, to Okarito, Hokitika and Reefton before disappearing from the record. Until quite recent years small-town proprietors would boast that their printing machines had come from some more distinguished office in New Zealand, and before that from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Argus, or perchance the London Times.

A survey of the press in the sixties shows that 23 of the papers then publishing in New Zealand were to last well into the present century. Clearly, therefore, the purely speculative period in newspaper enterprise had passed. It was in 1861 that the Otago Daily Times was established, the first daily in the Colony. It soon discarded its political motives and devoted itself to the simple business of being a newspaper. In 1863, at Auckland, William C. Wilson, frustrated by problems of policy which were bringing the New Zealander to its downfall, withdrew to establish the New Zealand Herald which was to subordinate political interests to the prime object of newspaper production. In the same year at Dunedin the Henningham brothers founded the Evening Star, and in 1865 at Wellington the Blundells started the Evening Post, a family enterprise intent on financial independence.

Since the printing craft was still predominant in management it is not surprising that in the early days many of the newspapers in New Zealand were very well produced. Many of them also were ably edited and well written. The scholastic talent evident in the first decade or two was noteworthy. A newspaper of any sort was an organ of influence of which leading colonists were glad to make use. When Richard Wakelin came to New Zealand in 1850 there were only two paid editors in the Colony, Hugh Carleton (of the Southern Cross) and Dr J. B. Bennett (of the New Zealander). But amongst the settlers were many graduates of English, Scottish and Irish universities, classical scholars and professional men whose talents were not fully employed. They had time and inclination to influence affairs through journalism, and thus newspaper proprietors often had the services of capable men to write their leading articles or to edit the paper.

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JOURNALISM IN A COLONY

To mention a few of these educated men, who generally gave their services unpaid, we may list Dr Featherston, Alfred Domett, (Sir) David Monro, (Sir) F. Dillon Bell, (Sir) R. D. Hanson, James Crowe Richmond, (Sir) William Fox, Crosbie Ward, Dr G. S. Evans, Alfred Saunders and Dr Daniel Pollen. In the correspondence columns, too, were many letters which were obviously the work of classical scholars. Nor was it only political controversy that attracted them. Philosophy and theology had an occasional airing. It was, for instance, the Press (Christchurch) that first gave hospitality to the philosophical writings of Samuel Butler.

The majority of the white population in the sixties were still immigrants, closely linked with their families in the Old Country. For them the exchange of newspapers across the ocean was the most convenient medium of intercourse. Since so many households made a practice of posting papers to their relatives overseas the rate of postage was a social matter which no Government could afford to ignore. The first responsible administration, indeed, treated the subject with real generosity. The scale of rates gazetted in 1858 provided for the free carriage of newspapers within New Zealand and also to England if they were sent by direct ship, but if addressed by way of Marseilles they were charged 3d. a copy. When the Government, in 1864, decided to charge postage overall at the rate of Id. a copy there was an outcry against this “tax on knowledge” and before long it was revoked.

Newspapers in 1865 of all categories had an aggregate circulation of five and a quarter million copies or 29 copies per head of population. On such a scale the newspaper business was obviously too large to be so liberally subsidised by a Government which was chronically hard up. Accordingly, in 1867 the “tax” was again levied at Id. per copy posted within New Zealand or to England by Suez, and 3d. by Panama or Marseilles. This reduced the number of papers posted in six months by half a million copies, while the revenue received by the Government amounted to only £B,OOO. The colonists never ceased to agitate and no Government was strong enough to insist upon a strictly economic rate.

But if Parliament was considerate in the matter of postage, it was not unaware of the need for some control over a press which occasionally got out of hand. At that time political partisanship was at its height. Libel actions and threats came in shoals

HALF A CENTURY’S GROWTH

26

during elections and costly legal proceedings put several papers to sleep. What the libel laws were to achieve later, Parliament in 1868 sought to provide for by compulsory registration of newspapers. The Hon. J. C. Richmond, who was himself a journalist, said in introducing the Printers and Newspapers Registration Bill that in certain cases of injury being done by newspaper criticism it had been found difficult to prove responsibility for the publication. “As the press is an engine of enormous power to which we have accorded absolute freedom, it is quite right that there should be a prompt responsibility on the part of those wielding the engine.” Since no division was called for it seems that the House was agreed on the principle of registration.

The pill administered in this act was sweetened by a promise to carry postage-free copies of papers exchanged between newspaper offices. This object was achieved by an amendment of the Post Office Act, which was approved by 40 votes to 10 and became operative in 1869. In 1873 the inland postage on newspapers was reduced to id. per copy, and the overseas rate was fixed at Id.

CHAPTER 2

REVOLUTION BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH

Cables and Copyright

In the sixties an important scientific invention, the electric telegraph, wrought a radical change in the character and tempo of New Zealand journalism. What may be regarded as the horse-and-buggy era covered our first quarter of a century from 1840. During that period the leading papers depended for their New Zealand news either on their own correspondents in the other provinces or on files received in exchange from their colonial contemporaries.

For news from the Old Country and abroad they depended mainly on the contents of English and Scottish papers, copies of which arrived haphazard by every ship from Home. The fastest clippers did not often make the voyage in less than three months and dates of arrival could not be predicted with any precision. Accordingly when a ship appeared in the offing at any port in the Colony excited newspaper men rushed to the waterside and took boat to meet it far down the harbour. Swift rowboats were kept for this strenuous rivalry to gain possession of the first precious files of English papers. From these our papers would get the latest news of world events and they would glean top-line items for the next week or two. Chronicles from the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny, Garibaldi's campaigns and the American Civil War were eagerly snatched up and appropriated, since no consideration of authorship or copyright stood in the way.

The advent of the electric telegraph did not at one stroke abolish this dependence upon the press of Great Britain, but it radically changed the functional character of the Colonial press.

The first private telegraph line in New Zealand, between Dunedin and Port Chalmers, was opened in 1861. The Canterbury Provincial Government in 1863 erected a line between Christchurch and Lyttelton, and in 1864 Southland connected Inver-

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CABLES AND COPYRIGHT

28

cargill with the port of Campbelltown (or Bluff). These three lines were assumed by the General Government in 1865 as the first fragments of a national telegraph system. As the first port of call and the last of departure for steamers carrying the English and Australian mails, Campbelltown enjoyed an immediate access of importance with the coming of the telegraph. Anticipating this, Gerard George FitzGerald opened there the New Zealand General Telegraphic Agency to transact commercial business and “to supply the press throughout New Zealand with the latest English and Australasian intelligence.” There was soon a heavy telegraphic traffic to serve the demands of rival newspapers.

A few years later the Government, under the inspiration of the Postmaster-General (Julius Vogel), took a hand at journalism by distributing to newpapers a telegraphic summary prepared by an agent in Australia from the news brought by the English and Australian mails. A few months’ experience convinced Vogel that the receipts from press telegrams were a promising source of government revenue. He accordingly terminated the unremunerative service of state news. The Otago Daily Times thereupon proceeded to organise a Press Association on the lines of those in the United States. This also had to depend on summaries of English news compiled in Australia, but there was a novel proposal for the collection of New Zealand news. Agents were to be appointed in the provincial towns to collect local news and telegraph it to other members of the association. This plan did not at first commend itself to members and it was allowed to lapse. The Press Association and the Press Agency each continued to pay the Government £2,000 a year for the lease of a private wire. In 1876 a submarine cable was opened between Australia and New Zealand. Articles of association were adopted in 1878 and in 1879 the United Press Association was formed, open to all papers in the Colony with the obligation on each to transmit local news.

The collaboration thus imposed upon the New Zealand press to overcome the high cost of news transmission was an early example of that co-operation which was to be a dominating feature of our national life. In its long-term effects the electric telegraph added greatly to the cost of production of newspapers. It forced development by competitive action and eventually, after the elimination of weaker organisations, led the survivors towards further significant measures of co-operation.

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REVOLUTION BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH

The question of copyright in cable news was tested in 1878, when Holt’s agency proceeded against a Gisborne newspaper for copying telegraphic abstracts of foreign news. In a noteworthy judgment the Court of Appeal held that there was no copyright in news. Joshua Strange Williams, J., declared that “the publication of any compilation of news in a newspaper is a dedication of it to the whole world, and in the absence of any statutory prohibition anyone is at liberty to produce copies thereof.” Plaintiffs request for recognition of its property in telegrams before publication was refused.

Parliament was interested in 1880 when the contract with the Press Association for the lease of its private wire was drawing to a close. It was alleged that this concession had killed effective competition and was being used to create a monopoly. This charge was based on the entrance fees proposed by the Press Association, which were £5OO for a daily paper in the four chief centres, £3OO for dailies in seven of the large provincial towns and £lOO for papers in smaller towns. The United Press Association was registered in 1880 as a limited joint stock company under the management of E. T. Gillon.

The matter of copyright was not set at rest until 1882, and then only after a severe parliamentary struggle. The Protection of Telegrams Act 1882 provided that when any message which had been lawfully received for publication from any place outside the Colony was published in a newspaper “no other person should print or publish such telegram until after the period of eighteen hours from such first-mentioned publication”. After 24 hours publication was permitted, or, if Sunday intervened, after 48 hours. Matter claiming protection of the act had to bear the legend “By electric telegraph—copyright”. Thus originated the inscription in the columns of New Zealand newspapers which for decades was so familiar as to be almost unnoticed.

“Kalogram” or “Calogram”, a news heading which occurs in some papers in the seventies indicated telegrams of overseas news based on cables received by Reuters and other agencies and supplied to their subscribers. “John Blunt”, a columnist in Public Opinion, expressed dismay at the bastard origin of the word “cablegram”, which seemed to be half Greek and half English. Kalogram, he contended, was “equally expressive and philologically justified”.

Cable news was provided for at first by arrangement with

CABLES AND COPYRIGHT

30

Reuters. In 1887 an agreement for the use of the new Australian services required the New Zealand Association to open an office in Sydney, of which Alexander Fraser was in charge. The Sydney office continued till 1956, when its functions were transferred to Melbourne, which had become the Australian terminal of the leased radio channels carrying news to which the N.Z.P.A. subscribes. This gave the association immediate access to the news and a much faster relay to Wellington by means of its own leased radio channel.

Telegraph Press Rates

The inland telegraph rates for press matter, assessed in 1866 according to distance, ranged from 4v. per 100 words between Picton and Nelson to 12 s. 6 d. per 100 between Picton and Bluff. In 1869 a uniform (or universal) rate was adopted—ls. 6 d. for the first 10 words and 6 d. for each additional 10. In 1870 the basic rate was reduced to 6 d. for 10 words and in 1872 to 6 d. for 25 words. By 1890 the night rate had been reduced to 6 d. per 100 words and evening papers were allowed a limited volume at that rate during the day. All overseas news was distributed at 6 d. per 100.

During the first war the pendulum began to swing the other way. In 1919 the rates were doubled; and by 1921 the normal rate had advanced to Is. 6 d. per 100. Evening papers were subject to a restriction in the volume of daytime traffic at ordinary press rate until 1938, when they were placed on the same footing as morning papers. In 1939, as a war economy, the rate took a further upward trend, and in 1956 it was increased to 2s. 3d. per 100.

Since 1950 the bulk of press traffic has not been subject to the rates charged for distribution by public channels. It has been distributed by the Press Assocation by means of its own leased telegraph network which has its terminals in newspaper offices themselves.

Amongst earlier newsgathering devices of individual papers pigeon services played an interesting part. The pioneer of “Pigeongrams” was Henry Brett, who in the late sixties made use of these carriers between the busy Thames goldfields and the Star office in Auckland. Pigeons were also used extensively by the Christchurch newspapers. Baskets of birds were taken to country sports meetings and they were also used between the

31

REVOLUTION BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH

Addington Racecourse and the paper offices as late as 1930. The Cup Race was usually run shortly before the main afternoon editions and anxious eyes scanned the sky and the pigeon lofts for birds bringing back the all important news.

The cable rate from England to New Zealand, which in 1893 was 25. 6 d. a word, severely restricted the service of news. Relief did not come until the Pacific cable was opened. This link had been strongly advocated by Sir Joseph Ward, who as PostmasterGeneral was mainly responsible for the inauguration in 1901 of “universal” penny postage. The Pacific cable, owned in partnership by Great Britain and the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, was opened for business in 1902. The press rate was forthwith reduced from 25. 6 d. to 15. 6 d. a word. New Zealand in 1908 offered to reduce its moiety from Id. to id. on condition that the press rate was reduced from 15. to Id., but the American companies refused to make any concession. The Imperial Press Conference in London in 1909 made fresh representations which resulted in a reduction to 9 d. a word. When a new line between Auckland and Sydney was opened in 1912, the Board had an alternative route to Australia and the press cable rate was reduced to lid. a word. A further reduction, to 6 d., coincided with the Imperial Press Conference in Australia and New Zealand in 1925. In 1939 there was another reduction in the London cable rate to 2 id. a word.

The rate from Australia to New Zealand had progressively decreased from 85. for 10 words in 1876 to 3 d. per word in 1886, and to Id. per word in 1893. In 1941 a press rate of Id. per word was adopted for cables exchanged between all British Commonwealth countries.

The leased channel —in most cases a radio teleprinter channel —has recently become the vehicle for a high proportion of press traffic between the principal countries of the Commonwealth. Here again rates charged for public channels do not apply. The channels are leased by the hour and economy and speed are achieved by eliminating ancillary services such as local delivery and counting of words. In New Zealand approximately 80 per cent, of overseas news is received by radio teleprinter.

A National Institution

In 1942 the name United Press Association was changed to “New Zealand Press Association” to avoid confusion with news

A NATIONAL INSTITUTION

32

services overseas. At that time the re-broadcasting of 8.8.C. news bulletins was comparatively new, and there were frequent references to the “United Press” or the “United Press Association”, one of the leading American agencies. “N.Z.P.A.” is now the unambiguous legend of the New Zealand Press Association.

The managers of the Association, following E. T. Gillon, were George Humphries (1884), William Harrington Atack 1 (1886), Alexander Buchan Lane (1930), and (since 1937) Trevor Miall Hinkley.

In effect a national institution, the Press Association has profoundly contributed to the character and integrity of New Zealand journalism. The consistent reliability of the news columns is based on this co-operative distribution of New Zealand news.

I W. H. Atack (1857-1945) was educated at Christ's College and joined the Lyttelton Times in 1875 on the suggestion of his schoolmate William Pember Reeves. A keen cricketer, he made a feature of cricket reporting. He was in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906.

CHAPTER 3

THE CREST OF THE WAVE

Rag-planter’s Paradise

Newspaper development to the end of the nineteenth century was essentially extensive in character. Each new district that was opened to settlement offered a temptation to hopeful promoters which was eagerly accepted.

The cry for roads and bridges was chronic. Ambitious politicians echoed it gratefully from the public platform, and the “ragplanter” was never deaf to the call. By 1900 there were few settled districts or new clearings which had not their own paper. Whatever form they took—whether weekly, bi-weekly or triweekly I —these local “rags” were protected against competition by miles of dense bush or by mud roads which were impassable in winter and forbidding enough in summer.

The gold rushes at first brought a succession of booms in the different provinces. Thereafter there was a long period of calm until towards the end of the century another sudden expansion of settlement created flushes of prosperity in turn in Taranaki, the Seventy Mile Bush, the central plateau south of Lake Taupo, Poverty Bay, the King Country and the far north of Auckland. During these years the rag-planters waged a picturesque struggle in the backblocks, vying with each other for the favour of bush farmers and “cow cockies”. As each new block was thrown open young pioneers hastened in with axe and torch, steadily pushing the frontier back. If any new clearing exposed rich soil or other token of promise it soon developed a township and before long, amongst other amenities, the residents would demand a newspaper.

There were always experienced journalists on the alert for

1 The terms bi-weekly and tri-weekly are used to denote papers published respectively two and three times in the week.

33

RAG-PLANTER’S PARADISE

34

such opportunities. Energetic, enterprising and optimistic, they perhaps owned a handpress and a small quantity of type —all that was necessary to hoist in the wilderness the banner of a free press. The golden age for these gallant pioneers was about half a century, say roughly from 1870 to 1920. The first of them, Joseph Mackay, was active in south Otago in the early sixties. The most picturesque is certainly Joseph Ivess. Others whose footprints occur in our history are James H. Clayton, T. E. Wilson, J. H. Claridge, C. G. Beckett and F. C. Smithyman. Taken together, these few men were in at the birth of four score newspapers in New Zealand and at least five others in Australia.

Though Joseph Mackay’s ventures were undoubtedly premature, he stands out as the founder of two of the oldest country papers still extant, the Bruce Herald (1864) and the Mataura Ensign (1878). He was also the pioneer of the chain-paper idea, which he inaugurated from the Bruce Herald but failed to get firmly established.

A Happy Band

Joseph Ivess (1844-1919), a volatile Irishman reared in Australia, takes priority by virtue of the number of papers that he established or leased. He was a typical frontiersman. Gay, adventurous, optimistic against every discouragement, aggressive, impatient and inconstant, he flitted from province to province, from New Zealand to Australia and back, planting papers left and right. Frequently he had several irons in the fire at a time, and as often as not he sold out before he had fairly tested the field. He never sought the large towns. What need, when for every little bush clearing he could conjure up a glowing future? Many a vista of canvas whares and weatherboard huts he contemplated, enhanced the bright prospect, and gave them all a paper. Actually he founded 26 papers in New Zealand and five in Australia. But the grass over the fence always looked greener than that in his own paddock. No sooner had he put up his shingle in one settlement than another tempted him. Though seeming to court competition he did not hesitate to flee the field when a new siren beckoned.

Perhaps there is a clue to this inconstancy. Ivess was the only one of the recognised rag-planters who had ambitions in public life. He could not resist entering the lists against a conservative, even to the extent of fighting Sir Harry Atkinson on

35

THE CREST OF THE WAVE

his own doorstep (Egmont) and the Hon. J. D. Ormond in Napier. He contested the mayoralty of Ashburton and won two parliamentary elections in Canterbury. Between 1868, when he managed the New Zealand Celt at Hokitika, and his swansong at Raetihi in 1907, he had newspaper enterprises in every province of New Zealand. It is not surprising that of all the “rags” he planted only two survive today, the octogenarian Akaroa Mail and the Greymouth Evening Star. In the late nineties Ivess tried out Joseph Mackay’s chain-paper idea. He was already interested in two papers on the Thames goldfield when he decided to use the Ashburton Standard office as headquarters of a group of local publications (for Fairlie, Pleasant Point, Temuka and Geraldine). In a few weeks they were all dead. Yet a year later the indomitable had started the Riverton Times, with affiliates for Orepuki and Otautau.

James Henry Clayton (1851-1929), chronologically Ivess’s successor, was not nearly so picturesque a figure. Beginning his career on the Dunedin Evening Star, he joined William Fenwick in the Evening News, of which he was owner in 1878. Thereafter Clayton was associated with 10 papers. The five he is said to have founded are all defunct.

Then comes Thomas Elliott Wilson (1853-1918) who was first partner with his brother in the North Canterbury News (1877). He was associated with 11 papers, the five he founded being all dead.

James Henry Claridge (1862-1946) was the most successful founder of all. Five of the 11 papers that he started between 1898 and 1920 are still alive (Eltham Argus, Martinborough Star, Taumarunui Press, Huntly Press and Morrinsville Star). One of the few journalists who published their recollections, he says; “The small-town paper is ever at the mercy of its advertisers. If the editor does not see eye to eye with them advertising favours may be withdrawn, business men forgetting or ignoring the fact that the establishment of a local paper helps trade and gives the township tone, as Seddon, Ward and Massey have declared from the public platform. After planting my second paper I took care to obtain a written guarantee for a year for my next six, thus placing me on a safe foundation.”

A pioneer who might easily be overlooked is Charles Gilbert Beckett, who first appeared in 1878 as co-founder of the Wairarapa Valley Guardian. Altogether by 1907 he too started 11

A HAPPY BAND

36

papers. The only survivor is the North Auckland Times (Dargaville).

F. C. Smithyman’s ventures (all deceased) were at Nenthorn, Helensville, Te Aroha, Kaitangata, Mangaweka, and Raetihi.

At the end of the century New Zealand had 177 newspapers (registered at the Post Office), including 54 dailies, 31 tri-weeklies, 26 bi-weeklies and 66 weeklies. But already roads and bridges were bringing the backblocks within the orbit of larger and stronger papers and so menacing the existence of the small-town sheets. By 1910 the number of papers registered at the Post Office had reached its peak (193), and the dailies also stood at their highest (67). Meanwhile the rate at which new papers were being established (49 in the decade 1900-09) was scarcely sufficient to counterbalance the cessations. In the next decade there was a marked shrinkage: 30 ceased as against 25 new foundations; and this trend continued till 1930-39 when against 17 foundations there were 48 extinctions.

Main factors militating against investment in new papers were the more expensive machinery, rising wages and the cost of newsprint.

Stability in the Twentieth Century

The last thirty years are noteworthy not so much for a rise or fall in the total number of papers as for the triumph of the modem type daily. In 1911, when there were 193 publications which could be classified as newspapers, 67 were dailies, 32 tri-weeklies, 26 bi-weeklies and 68 weeklies. Besides the dailies only seven of the tri-weeklies were taking the Press Association service. Today, using these same categories, there are 119 registered newspapers, of which there are in the Press Association 41 dailies and one tri-weekly. Clear evidence this that the role of providing news for the country at large has fallen to the well established daily papers. Under the steady pressure of competition mergers were effected in a number of provincial towns to reduce the quota of papers, generally to a single daily.

The acceleration of motor-transport had a speedy and decisive effect on the small-town press. Many local papers which, by publishing once, twice or three times a week, had been serving adequately the needs of district and backblocks came suddenly to a full stop when the city papers were able to reach the remotest settlements within a few hours of publication. To country dwellers

37

THE CREST OF THE WAVE

these now offered superior attractions, e.g. daily publication, full services of New Zealand and world news, sporting news and attractive magazine features.

While the pioneer, or extensive, phase of journalism in the country was working itself out the older journals in the cities were steadily consolidating their position. Typesetting machines and the fast rotary presses enabled them to prevail in the rivalry for circulation. One by one redundant city papers were eliminated until by 1940 each of the four main cities was reduced to one morning and one evening daily. The only new daily successfully established in the cities since 1900 was the Dominion (Wellington). It was floated in 1907 against the feeble opposition of the New Zealand Times (which it absorbed 20 years later). The Sun, Wellington, barely breathed in 1902. The Sun, Christchurch (1914-35), and the Sun, Auckland (1927-30), both succumbed to determined opposition and adverse circumstances. The Southern Cross, with its special backing of trades union finance, lasted only five years (1946-51).

Small-town Survivals

The elimination of country newspapers in the last half-century —inevitable in any case—was hastened by the impact of two wars and a long depression, all leaving an additional burden of higher costs. In 1900 there were still many papers controlled by their founders or by local companies in which the founders’ families held an interest. In certain districts, like Otago and the West Coast, small-town papers survived for almost a century mainly through the devotion of family owners and local patriotism. Reefton at one time had three dailies. Taihape for a year or two had two. Wyndham and Otautau each had two bi-weeklies till 1940, but in most cases these were the despairing survivors of more prosperous times, or one-man or family businesses in which capital investment was small and the goodwill of the community enduring. In all small towns job printing is an important adjunct to the paper.

Country papers were sometimes preserved as a matter of prestige or local pride, perhaps by the formation of local companies in which leading citizens and business men took an interest. Some venerable titles have more than once been salvaged by this means. In the process, the old school of printer-editors or

Samuel Revans ( 1808-88) The father of the New Zealand Press

Henry Blundell (1814-78)

T. W. McKenzie (1827-1911)

E. T. Gillon (1842-96)

C. W. Earle, C.M.G. (1871-1950)

Gresley Lukin (1840-1916)

John Ballance (1839-93

H. E. Holland ( 1868-1933)

SMALL-TOWN SURVIVALS

40

managing editors gradually gave way to the new class of executives brought up in newspaper production.

Until recently both Houses of Parliament contained a number of newspaper proprietors and directors, amongst whom, besides Julius Vogel and John Ballance, we might recall the Hons. John Williamson, George Jones, Gilbert Carson, James Kerr, Henry Feldwick, Sir William Steward, Sir Walter Carncross, Mark Cohen, W. J. Geddis, W. McCullough, W. T. Jennings, F. Mander, C. H. Mills and G. J. Anderson. Some of these, representing quite modest small-town papers, exercised a good deal of influence behind the scenes.

There were still in the twenties and thirties a few country papers subsidised by individuals or groups to secure their support at election times. Few papers, if any, survive today on the hope or fulfilment of political promise. Their maintenance is too expensive and influence quite problematical.

Ways of Escape

In some progressive towns of medium size local papers continued to carry on for a- few years as dailies. A few even survived the ordeal and developed permanently as dailies, but the majority, finding the pace too strong, dropped the gesture of presenting general news and concentrated on purely local news and reading matter of the magazine type. Some again, taking the hint early from what had occurred in Great Britain, resigned themselves to the impending changes and sought to meet competition by co-operative measures. Here and there since 1910 small-town papers in adjacent districts weathered the storm for a while by co-operation. In some cases old titles like the Dunstan Times and the Lake Wakatip Mail sank their identity in a new publication with a wider district scope (e.g. Central Otago News, Central Hawke’s Bay Press, Thames Valley Newspapers, etc.). In others a printing office provides a separate sheet, usually a weekly, for several neighbouring towns (e.g. Couriers Ltd.).

Yet another solution, which was tried tentatively in Wellington 80 years ago, seems to be flourishing in some closely settled districts (e.g. Hutt Valley and Auckland suburbs). Generally the publishers, using an established general printing plant and adopting an appropriate title, address themselves to the public through a local news sheet with magazine features delivered free to every household in the area. They usually depend for revenue upon

N 3

41

THE CREST OF THE WAVE

advertisements, but in some cases a subscription is subsequently introduced. None of these sheets has yet ventured to purvey news from beyond its own boundaries.

In this twentieth-century period of adjustment, New Zealand’s special type of weekly newspaper soon became outdated. This interesting feature originated about the middle of the nineteenth century, its function being to provide news for settlers who lived out of reach of road, railway or coastal services. Since mails were rarely more frequent than weekly it was useless for backblocks settlers to take the dailies. To meet their needs many established dailies published weekly editions, which were largely a reprint of the daily. The forerunner of this type of journal, the Otago Witness, began as a weekly in 1851 and remained so throughout. In 1900 the Colony had 22 such weeklies. By 1910 the number had fallen to 16; in 1940 there were only six. Of the more important titles, the Canterbury Times ceased in 1917, the Weekly Press in 1928 and the Otago Witness in 1932. The only survivor of these 19th century weeklies, the Auckland Weekly News, met the new conditions as a national modem-type weekly, with a circulation which now exceeds 133,000.

Statistics compiled from various sources disclose that from 1840 to 1940 altogether 468 newspapers (of all categories) were established in New Zealand. There are records of the decease of 321, either by failure and liquidation or by incorporation in another publication.

Milestones in a Century

The main phases of development in New Zealand journalism may be correlated with certain outstanding events in mechanical progress. Of these the most revolutionary in its effects was the electric telegraph, which emancipated our press from its functional dependence upon that of the United Kingdom and launched it upon a new kind of competition with its own standards of efficiency, outlook and ethics.

An important by-product of the telegraph was the organisation of the Press Association. The Association’s news service may be regarded as the fans et origo of the integrity and objectiveness which has so strongly characterised our news columns. In the long run it was the reliability and consistency of the news columns that weaned the average reader from journals which relied upon the political colour of their leading articles rather than the

42

MILESTONES IN A CENTURY

consistency and completeness of the news. Through the quality of their news services the successful papers of today have gained their ascendancy.

The introduction of mechanical typesetting and fast rotary printing machines enabled the stronger papers to increase their size and extend their circulation over the wider radius made available by improved transport. This sounded the knell of other-than-daily newspapers or forced them to revert to a strictly local character. The triumph of the daily paper is the outstanding fact of the last half century.

The population of New Zealand is now 2,174,062. The eight dailies in the four main metropolitan areas have a total circulation of 615,000 (the largest being the New Zealand Herald, 180,000). In the smaller cities and provincial towns are 34 dailies with a total circulation of 170,000. Other-than-dailies are estimated to increase the aggregate circulation per day to 850,000. In addition there are three national weeklies circulating over 300,000 copies. Such figures reflect the high literacy of the New Zealand people, all of whom by virtue of the national education act of 1877 will have been taught to read and write.

Describing a corresponding phase in British journalism, Francis Williams says that the emergence of newspaper-owning as “big business” profoundly changed the character of the national press. 1 It “tore apart the whole structure of the provincial press. Some found themselves turned into mere units in great financial deals, bought and sold like so much merchandise. Some were forced out of existence by the rising costs of newspaper production, others by the competition of national popular dailies, still others were forced into amalgamation with former rivals, often of different political views, or became members of chains controlled by great newspaper trusts centred in London.” Of 13 provincial cities which in 1921 had more than one morning newspaper there are now only two (Manchester and Glasgow).

What direction competitive journalism in New Zealand will now take is mere conjecture. How far the consolidation of the city daily will go remains to be seen. Will any of them, or some other superprovincial publication, aspire to the national circulation and influence which Julius Vogel adumbrated when he launched his New Zealand Times in 1874?

A.D. 2000 may possibly hold the answer.

1 Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers (1957).

CHAPTER 4

THE PRESS IN WELLINGTON

New Zealand’s First Paper

When edward gibbon Wakefield persuaded the directors of the New Zealand Company to establish a newspaper at their first settlement, which was to be at Port Nicholson, he had at hand a man whom he knew and who seemed qualified to undertake the task.

Samuel Revans (1808-88) had been apprenticed to the printing trade in London. In the thirties he went to Canada and there became involved in the agitation for self-government. This he promoted in the Montreal Daily Advertiser and other journals with such vigour that at the time of the Papineau rising he found it advisable to leave the country. In England again, he associated with J. A. Roebuck (whom he supported as second in a duel). From Chartism he transferred his enthusiasm to the New Zealand Company, and he appears to have been quite ready to go as its official journalist to Port Nicholson. This was in the middle of 1839

The New Zealand Gazette

Impatient to start, Revans issued on 21 August 1839, from his own office at 16 Little Pulteney Street, the first number of the New Zealand Gazette, a demy sheet with a column of 141 inches, printed by Francis Thomas Yates and published by Edward Roe. This issue, which is very rare, contains a poem by Thomas Campbell to commemorate the sailing of the Company’s Scottish emigrants from the Clyde. To meet the demand for the Gazette a second impression was printed on 6 September.

Then on 18 September, with a prefabricated house (20 feet square), Revans sailed from Gravesend in the Adelaide. The voyage was protracted by a call at Capetown, and it was not till 7 March 1840 that the Adelaide cast anchor off Petone.

43

THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE

44

Already many earlier arrivals were established on the Petone shore, where the town of Britannia was being laid out. Writing to Judge H. S. Chapman, Revans reported: “My life has been unceasingly active since I arrived. I have had to erect the house for the press, to which I put my hand in right good earnest. I had one of Manning’s completely erected, and the press put in it in a day and a half; myself, two carpenters, and three labourers did the work”. Some of the woodwork of the plant was in the Glenbervie, which arrived on the same day as the Adelaide, but was slower in unloading. Revans had hoped to get the first issue out by 11 April, but it was the 18th before it appeared. Nevertheless, it preceded by two months the first paper at Bay of Islands, and thus fully established Revans’s status as the father of the New Zealand press. Besides being editor of the New Zealand Gazette and Britannia Spectator, he was till 1844 its virtual owner. His first staff included Roe and Yates and a youth Thomas Wilmor McKenzie (1827-1911) who signed up as an apprentice. The press was a Columbia, which was capable of printing two or three hundred copies of a four-page paper in an hour.

After a few months the settlement moved from Petone to Lambton harbour. Its name was changed from Britannia to Wellington, and Revans altered his title to New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator. The office was in Taranaki Place. In 1841 the Gazette became a bi-weekly and in 1844 it reverted to weekly.

Visitors to Port Nicholson at that time remarked on the Gazette’s “virulent abuse of Auckland and the Governor, combined with a slavish reverence of the New Zealand Company”. Though Revans was the titular editor and the ostensible owner of the paper, his livelihood depended so much upon the goodwill of the Company that he was not likely to fail in subservience to so powerful a master. For a year or so the editor was William Fox, who refrained from practising at the bar rather than take an oath which he considered derogatory to an English barrister. His style was more scholarly but the tone of the criticism scarcely changed. In fact it seemed that rabid criticism of the administration at Auckland was to be a permanent feature of the Gazette. Some prominent settlers complained that it strove to advance the cause of a party in defiance alike of justice and policy.

Eventually fifty of these dissentients found the capital to

The first issue of New Zealand's first newspaper.

THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE

46

establish a new paper, the New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, a bi-weekly which made its appearance on 2 August 1842. The editor was Richard Davies Hanson 1 , the publisher Edward Catchpool and the motto Non tua te moveat sed publica vota. The circulation was only 250. By the end of the year a call of 20s. per share had to be declared and the unfortunate sub-editor was authorised to collect it from the shareholders. The difficulties of the Colonist culminated when fire gutted the office in Lambton Quay, and the last issue appeared on 2 August 1843, the anniversary of the first.

The quick failure of his rival brought small relief to Revans. He managed to carry on into 1844, but fresh opposition was already being prepared when the Gazette quietly folded up (on 25 September 1844). 2

The Columbia press which had produced the Gazette was used in several offices in Wellington and Wairarapa and finally deposited in the museum of the Masterton Central School.

On 15 September 1841 appeared the single issue of a minority journal, the Victoria Times, a small lithographed sheet published by Thomas Bluett.

The Spectator and the Independent

The vacuum left by the New Zealand Gazette was quickly filled (on 12 October 1844) by the New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Straits Guardian. Beginning as a weekly and selling at Is., it was the first paper in Wellington which achieved anything approaching permanence. It claimed to be a settlers’ paper and it was conducted by a committee elected at each half yearly meeting. In March 1845 the Hon. H. W. Petre was in the chair and the committee included Charles Clifford, Robert Stokes, T. M. Partridge and William Lyon. To meet an expected shrinkage in revenue during the winter the subscription was increased and an effort was made to increase the subscribers from 130 to 150.

1 (Sir) R. D. Hanson (1805-76), an English barrister, had been associated with Durham in Canada and with Edward Gibbon Wakefield in the South Australia scheme. He came to New Zealand as agent for the New Zealand Company in the purchase of land and was appointed Crown Prosecutor (1841). Later he became Chief Justice of South Australia and Chancellor of the University of Adelaide.

2 Revans published in 1843 the first Wellington Almanac. In 1847 he took up land in Wairarapa. He was in Parliament and the provincial council (1853-58).

47

THE PRESS IN WELLINGTON

The business was running smoothly enough until it was disturbed by the covert intervention of Revans, who persuaded the printers to publish an advertisement reflecting upon the conduct of a Wellington lawyer, Daniel Wakefield (later Crown Prosecutor) . The committee angrily insisted that it must have absolute control over the contents of the paper and set about arranging for the printing to be done elsewhere. Thomas McKenzie and his partners complained that the committee were trying to prevent them from making a living and they decided to establish a paper of their own (afterwards honourably known as the Wellington Independent). This move the Spectator’s committee countered by buying the leased premises and plant with which McKenzie and his associates were working. For the moment they appeared victorious, but within four months new machinery was procured from Sydney and the Independent appeared again.

The difficulties of the Spectator were by no means ended. To limit its losses the committee contracted with a printer to publish the paper at his own risk and the revenue from advertisements and extra copies was used to pay the salary of the sub-editor. The shareholders, glad to be free of responsibility, transferred the paper to Stokes, who was the virtual owner until 1858, when he settled in Hawke’s Bay.

When Richard Wakelin arrived in New Zealand in 1850 the Spectator was the only paper in the colony which supported Sir George Grey’s policy. In the sixties it advocated a peaceful native policy and opposed the confiscation of native lands. It was always in low water and at one time was printed on pink blotting paper. Sheer inanition led to its death on 5 August 1865. The type was sold by Stokes.

The quartet who brought the Wellington Independent into existence (on 2 April 1845) were Thomas Wilmor McKenzie and Edward Roe (practical printers), William Edward Vincent and George Bellingham. The title blocks used at first were cut out of maire wood by Dr W. B. D. Mantell. The hiatus in publication (August - November 1845) caused by the hostile proceedings of the Spectator brought the printers an accession of public sympathy which grew with the years. Under its first editor, Dr Isaac Earl Featherston, the Independent strongly opposed the policy of Sir George Grey. Later editors were R. A. Wakelin, John Knowles, Henry Anderson, and John Hay, a classical scholar.

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THE SPECTATOR AND THE INDEPENDENT

Towards the end (which came on 30 May 1874) the paper was controlled by W. H. Harrison, A. F. Halcombe, H. C. Thomson and Florence McCarthy. Amongst its distinguished contributors were James Edward FitzGerald, William Fox, Dillon Bell, Daniel Wakefield and Edward Stafford. It was one of the best papers in New Zealand and wielded considerable influence.

Depending heavily for news on newspaper files from England, the Independent maintained its own rowing boats and crews in constant readiness to meet incoming ships. One of these whaleboats was taken to England in H.M.S. Acheron in the early fifties as a sample of New Zealand boatbuilding. The last stages of the Independent belong to the activities of Julius Vogel.

An Early Experiment

The only other newspaper started in Wellington before the sixties was a precocious experiment in free distribution based on prospective revenue from advertising. Calling itself frankly the New Zealand Advertiser and guaranteeing a circulation of 5,000, it was the venture of Joseph Bull (of Dublin), who was printer, his brother Edward, and the brothers Charles and Edward Roe (the latter being editor). The manifesto (13 April 1859) declared:

All parties advertising in these columns may rest satisfied that their merchandises and goods for sale will meet the eye of every resident in the province. Four copies of the paper will be left with every merchant, two with every hotelkeeper and one at each shop or store in this city, the same rule being observed with regard to the Hutt. A large number will also be despatched to the other settlements of this Colony. By this means the Advertiser will have the largest circulation of any paper in New Zealand.

The Advertiser was an excellent specimen of newspaper production. In seven months the proprietors claimed to have achieved their object. They then introduced a subscription (3d. a single copy), enlarged the paper and replaced the gratis legend with one more exalted: “Be just and fear not. Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy Country’s, thy God’s and truth’s”.

In 1867 the Advertiser, now a tri-weekly, was in financial difficulty. The partnership was dissolved and the property was sold (nominally) to a clerk in the stamp department (Richard Samuel Fry Parsons). Actually it came into possession of John

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Martin 3 . Using Martin’s warehouse as a publishing office, Parsons scrapped the title of the Advertiser and on 16 September 1867 brought out a daily, the New Zealand Times, which he declared could only consider itself a new journal because it had a new name “never before adopted by any newspaper in the country” and was printed “every morning instead of only three days in the week”. No government was possible for New Zealand, it believed, than that which then held sway (Stafford’s) and no superintendent of a province could excel the “able, enlightened and unyielding administrator then in office” (Featherston).

The steady old Independent refused to be bustled into daily publication. After a month’s experience the Times became triweekly and after six more issues it ceased.

A crop of legal actions ensued, including a claim for £3O salary by Edward T. Gillon, who seems to have been editor. Martin bought the plant under a bill of sale for £lO and sold it to the promoters of the Herald at Wanganui.

Edward Bull in June 1868 made a gallant attempt to resuscitate his paper as the New Advertiser, first as an evening daily and then as a morning tri-weekly. It lasted only till the end of the year. In 1870 William Joseph Mahony registered the Daily Advertiser and Wellington Register, of which Joseph Bull later appeared as proprietor. Joseph Roe, senior, and William Bartleet Langridge later edited the paper, of which there is no trace later than November 1871.

The Evening Post: Enterprise of a Family

During the sixties, that very troubled decade for the press in every province, an event took place in Wellington which receives little notice, and less notoriety, in the recollections of the time. The establishment of the Evening Post in 1865 was an outstanding event in our newspaper history.

Henry Blundell (1813-78) was born in Dublin and spent 27 years in the service of the Dublin Evening Mail. When he was manager he disapproved of the paper’s policy towards its employees and decided to emigrate. Bringing his family to Melbourne in 1860, he visited New Zealand in 1861 and again in 1863 (when he joined the Otago Daily Times).

On the opening of the Wakamarina goldfields in 1864 he

3 Hon. John Martin (1822-92); M.L.C. 1878-92.

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decided to start a paper in Havelock, and on 1 June the Havelock Mail appeared for the first time. But there were already signs that the Marlborough diggings were failing. At the end of the year the Mail closed down and the party —consisting of Henry Blundell, his sons Henry and John, and David Curie 4 —packed up the plant and sought a better site in the North Island. Deterred by the Maori war from settling in Wanganui, they considered Wellington, which had just become the capital of the Colony. Port Nicholson already had two tri-weeklies—the sturdy Independent and the Advertiser of doubtful stability—and one weekly, the Spectator, which was obviously languishing. At that moment, three years after the first daily had been established in Otago, the capital city had no daily. The partners decided to take the risk. Erecting their machinery in a store in Ellers Lane, off Willis Street, they published there on 8 February 1865 a four-page daily measuring 16i in. by 10 in., the Evening Post. In a few months they began to doubt whether the prospect was good enough for two partners, and in July Curie withdrew.

The Blundell family, reinforced now by the arrival of Louis, who had finished his schooling in Dunedin, put their shoulders to the wheel. Henry Blundell, senior, besides being manager, wrote most of the leaders and even assisted his sons John and Louis at case. Henry, junior, was canvasser and reporter.

The order of reference of the new paper was to record every happening “within a mile of Martin’s fountain”, which was then at the corner of Featherston Street and Lambton Quay. Following this rule, and paying close attention to detail, the family within a decade had the Post so firmly established that in 1874 Henry Blundell, now 61 years of age, was able to revisit his native land. Four years later he died, leaving the business in the capable hands of his family, with the assistance as editor of Frank Gifford. Henry Blundell made it a rule of the business, followed in general by later generations, to take no direct part in public life, thus holding the paper free to criticise, if necessary, the conduct of public bodies and companies.

By concentrating on newspaper production as a vocation the Blundell family steadily consolidated its position. The develop-

4 D. Curie (1837-1917) born in Glasgow, was later associated with the Feilding Guardian, Evening Chronicle (Wellington), Hokitika Guardian (1881-93) and Dannevirke Advocate (1894-1901).

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merit of the Evening Post was steady and unspectacular, undisturbed by internal upheaval or outside pressure. In politics the paper has generally kept towards the middle of the road and has thus at times been able to exercise an influence upon affairs which is denied to papers with strong party affiliations. Its literary standard has always been high. Gifford was succeeded as editor by Charles William Purnell, who was something of a poet and philosopher. Then came Henry Anderson, who resigned in 1878 to edit the Evening Chronicle and was followed by David Mitchell Luckie, a former editor of the Southern Cross. The news editor, Charles Rous Marten, who was prominent in musical life, left the Post in 1884 and was later its London correspondent. Edward Thomas Gillon, who was twice editor, in between ran a news agency, attempted politics and edited the Argus. He was a fearless champion of the rights of the press, both in court and against governors and prime ministers. Gresley Lukin, another strong personal force, had left the Queensland civil service to edit the Queenslander and the Boomerang. In 1892 he came to New Zealand and was soon recognised as a fine journalist, a convinced democrat and humanist. His literary control of the Post, in which the proprietors fully concurred, marked a period of occasional intervention in politics, always from a non-party standpoint. Lukin was succeeded by Joseph Parker (1916), Jesse Richards Smith (1942-56) and the present editor, Gordon Freeman (who joined the staff in 1916).

From the first office in Ellers Lane, the Post moved to a succession of homes in Willis Street, the first at the corner of Mercer Street, the second just south of the Grand Hotel, the third on Kings Chambers corner, the fourth adjoining what is now Stewart Dawson’s comer. Since 1896 it has occupied the present site facing Mercer Street.

On the death in 1894 of Henry Blundell, junior, the business was formed into a private company composed entirely of members of the family, with the two surviving sons, John and Louis, as directors. Blundell Brothers, Ltd., was registered in 1897 and in 1917 the directorate was reconstituted to include several members of the third generation. John Blundell died in 1922 and Louis in 1934 (having had as co-directors in his last years Walter John, Henry Percy Fabian, Ernest Albert and Leonard Blundell). Members of the fourth generation are now taking an active part. The success of the Evening Post is an outstanding example

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of expert management directed to the single object of producing a good newspaper and maintaining a judicious independence of political parties. Though not always unimpeded its progress was on the whole free from serious competition. In 1868 it discouraged the revival of the New Zealand Times by publishing a morning edition.

Vogel’s New Zealand Times

In the seventies the progress of established papers in Wellington was profoundly disturbed by the impact of the new political order enunciated by Julius Vogel. This sprightly journalist came to New Zealand from the Australian goldfields, where he had established one newspaper and edited another. He founded in 1861 the first daily in New Zealand, the Otago Daily Times. Eight years later he moved to Auckland and acquired an interest in the Southern Cross. As his political ambitions could not be achieved so far from the capital city he soon divested himself of his northern interests, and in 1873 he gained a foothold in Wellington by acquiring the New Zealand Mail, a weekly established in 1870 by T. W. McKenzie.

Vogel’s vaulting mind aimed at consolidating his political position through the medium of a national newspaper. The New Zealand Times Co., which he formed in 1873, had a capital of £lO,OOO and a board of directors which included the Mayor (Joe Dransfield) and two M.H.R.s (George Hunter and W. W. Johnston).

A few weeks later the Independent, which in its 28 years had enjoyed a substantial measure of success, announced that its own business and the New Zealand Mail had been purchased by the New Zealand Times Co. McKenzie was only 46 years of age, vigorous in mind and body and under no necessity to think of retirement, but he succumbed to the blandishments of Vogel and merely retained a sizable interest in the new company.

Vogel’s manifesto introducing his paper to the public was characteristic of his spacious ideas. As this was to be a national, rather than a provincial, paper, this might

require sacrifices in the interest of the public good which no private citizen could be expected to undergo. ... A journal, if not of a cosmopolitan, at least of a colonial, character was required. It was no longer Wellington but New Zealand which the only morning journal in the capital of the Colony was

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required to represent. It was only fair, therefore, that aid should be tendered to Mr Thomas McKenzie ... to enable that idea to be carried out. So long as the leading journal of the province was in private hands it was open to the suspicion that its course and the expression of its views would be more or less influenced by those private reasons that are inseparable from business considerations. It is equally as certain that no such suspicion should be attached to a journal which aspires to represent a nationality, or at least so much of a nationality as a colony can represent. The Mail was taken over at once but the Independent con-

tinued till 30 May 1874 5 . The morning paper which appeared in its place bore the title of the New Zealand Times but assumed the serial number of the Independent (vol. 29, No. 4118).

With machinery and type from England the Times now entered upon its new role as the Times of New Zealand. The Weekly Times was registered on the same day, but this did not in fact supersede the Mail, which was later acquired by John Chantrey Harris (best known as a columnist, “Asmodeus”). Captain Baldwin bought it in 1890 and sold it in 1892 to the New Zealand Times Company of that day. Charles Wilson ran the Mail with considerable ability until 1901; in 1907 it was incorporated in the New Zealand Graphic.

A writer in the Australasian Review of Reviews (July 1893) thus commented on Vogel’s projected national newspaper:

A national organ must get to the breakfast tables, or the supper tables, of at least one half of the nation on the day of publication. That is an impossible condition now, and it was a still more severely impossible condition in 1874. But in an evil hour a number of choice spirits, with Sir Julius Vogel at their head, determined to attempt the impossible. . . . The brave old Independent disappeared and the New Zealand Times took its place. The paper, of course, did not achieve the impossible; it did not become the colonial journal par excellence.

Vogel’s interest in the Times weakened pari passu with his involvement in politics. Its editors included Alexander Reid, R. J. Creighton, J. M. Perrier, C. C. Bowen, E. B. Fox, W. H. Harrison, J. C. Hay, Dr Daniel Pollen, G. G. FitzGerald, C. Rous Marten and G. S. Searle. Robert C. Reid was manager in

o In Oct 1874 the prospectus was issued of a penny morning paper to be published in Wellington under the title Independent. It did not materialise.

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1879 when the paper came into the hands of John Chantrey Harris, who was the ostensible owner throughout the lean eighties. By the time of the Liberal victory at the polls (1890) Captain William Baldwin was in a position to dispose of both Times and Mail to any politically minded capitalists.

Copyright, goodwill and plant were bought for £4,500 by a company with a capital of £lO,OOO, which promised to make the papers “the leading organs in the Colony for the advocacy of true Liberal political principles.” Who could doubt the political loyalty of a directorate which included John Ballance (Premier), W. Pember Reeves (chairman), John Plimmer, J. W. Poynton and Martin Kennedy? Also, as a novelty, there were three represenatives of trades unions. The new proprietary inaugurated yet another succession of editors, including Robert A. Loughnan 6 , who had edited the Lyttelton Times from 1875-89, John Liddell Kelly, Alexander Wilson, M.A. 7 , Ernest D. Hoben, and Pierce C. Freeth. Some of the managers were Patrick Sarsfield Cassidy (1895), James Hunter, S. H. Jenkinson, Sir Walter Carncross, N. Mcßobie, W. H. Gifford and George H. Dixon. William J. Geddis was managing director and editor from 1913 to 1925, then Charles A. Marris was editor till 1927, when the paper was incorporated in the Dominion.

The precarious career of the Times was mainly due to bad management and political pressure. It had only occasional competition. There was for instance an upstart New Zealander, which came on the scene in 1878 to support Grey’s Liberal government. John Ballance, who had just taken office in the ministry, was a director, while Grey’s nephew, Seymour Thorne George, was chairman and managing-director. Another director was Patrick Buckley (later Attorney-General in the Ballance Government).

Well written and ably edited by E. T. Gillon, this New Zealander was one of the best morning papers in the Colony, but it was frankly a party organ. As Grey’s mana slumped the enthusiasm of the founders dwindled, until R. C. Reid, M.H.R., confessed that “the proprietors by the stern logic of facts have had the

6 R. A. Loughnan (1841-1934) was born in India, educated at Stonyhurst College and the Catholic University of Dublin, and came to New Zealand in 1865. After some years on the land and in business he entered journalism. M.L.C. 1908-14.

7 A. Wilson (1849-1929) had been rector of the Otago Girls’ High and Boys’ High Schools.

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conviction forced upon them that on the support of a political principle they have expended quite enough.” The New Zealander was “no longer an unmeasured supporter of the Grey Government”. Gillon, refusing to accept the dictation of the directors, was succeeded by Richard Arundell Augur Sherrin. On the defeat of the Grey Government the company went into liquidation: the paper appeared for the last time on 17 February 1880. John Chantrey Harris, on behalf of the New Zealand Times Company, acquired the copyright and title and thus disposed for a quarter of a century of opposition to the Times in the morning paper field.

Evening Papers in Wellington

The evening paper field was not left uncontested till after the turn of the century. The Post’s first rival seems from the records to have been an Evening Telegraph, published by William Bright, James Mitchell and Edmund McKeig Andrews in 1872. (Three years later there are traces of a morning paper, the Daily Telegraph, run by William Mahony, junior.)

The imminent abolition of the provinces prompted more than one adventure in the evening paper field. The longest sustained gesture of opposition to the Post was initiated in 1874 when William Hutchison 8 , who had retired from his newspaper activities in Wanganui, settled in Wellington. On 25 February 1874 the first issue appeared of the Tribune, a Daily Chronicle and Advertiser of Colonial Commerce, Agriculture and Politics. Abolition of the provinces was in the forefront, followed by equal consideration for the rights of labour and capital. Speaking prophetically Hutchison declared; “A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work should keep pauperism from this colony if the people are only true to themselves.” Besides the penny daily there was a Weekly Tribune. The Tribune commenced as a morning paper but soon changed to evening publication. By the end of 1875 the undertaking had not established itself, but in view of the approaching general election political factions cast covetous eyes upon the hopeful invalid. It was sold to E. T. Gillon, Robert Kent and John Waters, who changed the title to Evening Argus, but retained the name The Tribune on their title page “simply

8 W. Hutchison (1820-1905), the father of Sir Janies Hutchison, came to New Zealand in 1866. He edited the Wanganui Chronicle for seven years, was mayor of Wanganui (1873-74), twice mayor of Wellington, a member of the Wellington provincial council and M.H.R. (1879-84, 1890-96).

Gilbert Carson (1842-1924)

F. Pirani (1859-1926)

J. Williamson (1815-75)

W. Hutchison ( 1820-1905)

Richard Wakelin (1816-81 )

W. C. Wilson (1810-76)

Sir H. Brett (1842-1927)

A. G. Horton (1842-1903)

Dr T. W. Leys (1850-1924)

Sir H. Horton (1870-1943)

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to preserve our copyright and for business purposes”. Gillon had resigned the editorship of the Evening Post to contest a seat in Parliament, and the Evening Argus was heralded as an independent Liberal paper pledged to support abolition of the provinces. With Hutchison and J. M. Perrier as editor in turn it still failed to influence the fluid politics of the late seventies. Nor did it prosper financially.

In March 1878 the Argus passed off the stage, but in name only, for on the following day, issued from the same office and bearing the next serial number, came the Evening Chronicle. The architect of this tergiversation, by which the Chronicle was born in the guise of a grown man with a certain venerable aspect, was an American, Thomas Gardiner, who claimed to have spent 24 years in journalism and to have owned the Sacramento Union. He declared himself so deeply impressed with the “goaheadativeness” of the people of Wellington that he had bought the Argus lock, stock and barrel to show them how to make the best of their resources. He would give them a commercial and family paper with Liberal views, and the first issue would number 5,000 copies. Gardiner soon had the Chronicle involved in a libel action with the Evening Post, the result of which he evaded by leaving the country. With the help of David Curie and with Hugh Thomson and Henry Anderson as editors, the paper carried on for over two years. Its incursions into politics, however, did nothing to improve its economic health and eventually plant and goodwill were vainly offered for public tender. The last issue was on 16 December 1880.

Yet another challenge to the Evening Post came in 1884 when William Francis Roydhouse brought out a non-party daily, the Evening Press, which amongst other popular features was one of the earliest dailies in New Zealand to use lithography and engraving. The editor was Edward Wakefield who, like most of his name, was unduly combative and allowed his political diatribes to get out of hand. One argument culminated in a writ for £lO,OOO on behalf of Sir Julius Vogel. When Wakefield left for England (in 1889) Roydhouse had help occasionally from Henry Anderson and Robert Samuel Hawkins. In 1891 he sold the paper to John Law Kirkbride, who brought with him from the Rangitikei Advocate a brilliant young Australian journalist, John

N4

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Claude Francis A’Hearne 9 (commonly called Hearn). A’Hearne’s death in 1893 the Press barely survived. Early in 1894 an attempt was made to re-establish it through a public company as “the paper of the people, for the people and owned by the people”. On 31 October it bade its readers farewell.

The Post Office official list is our only authority for the existence of the Echo, an evening daily promoted in 1896 by Harry Longueville Snow and George Pamment.

The last attempt to challenge the Evening Post was made by George Thomas London of Petone in 1902. London had little newspaper experience but he had with him two bright young men, Thomas C. List and Henry Ernest Carey. Their paper, the Sun, was published at 48a Cuba Street from 11 January to 19 April. Though the price was a half-penny the Sun never got over to the public. Since then the Post has had the evening paper field to itself.

The Dominion: Success Unchallenged

The Dominion, now the only morning daily in Wellington, is the outstanding example of a newspaper established originally with a political motive, planned and carried through to success by its promoters. At the turn of the century, when Liberalism was already on the wane, there were two dailies in the city-—one strongly Liberal and the other uncommitted. The Conservative party urgently needed a better press and steps were taken soon after the death of the Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon in 1906 to meet the need.

On the board of directors of the Wellington Publishing Company were half a dozen of the Government’s staunchest parliamentary opponents: Sir Charles Johnston, Sir William Russell, John Duthie, Walter C. Buchanan, A. L. Herdman and J. G. W. Aitken. Early in 1907 premises in Boulcott Avenue and Plimmers Steps were acquired and newspaper machinery was ordered from England. At this stage Charles Westwood Earle 10 , who was in

9 J. C. F. A’Hearne (1845-93) was born in Victoria, graduated at Melbourne University in arts and economics and came to New Zealand to teach in the Catholic School at Greymouth. He was editor of the Wanganui Chronicle till 1880 and of the Rangitikei Advocate till 1890.

1° C. W. Earle, C.M.G. (1871-1950), born in Wellington, started in journalism on the Evening Press (1887) and was afterwards on the New Zealand Times, the Evening Post and the Press (Christchurch), editor of the Referee (1901) and subeditor of the Post (1902). He was president of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association (1921-48).

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fact the principal promoter of the enterprise, was appointed editor.

The New Zealand Times had been unopposed in the morning paper field since 1880, but unstable management had cheated it of the fruits of its advantageous situation. Its directors were now, however, determined to offer a worthy resistance to a rival which was assembling a strong staff from the New Zealand press, including some from the Times itself.

The choice of a title for the new paper was a matter of considerable interest. The directors were divided between Morning News and New Zealand News. The latter had actually been adopted when the Prime Minister (Sir Joseph Ward) returned from a visit to England with the intelligence that New Zealand’s constitutional designation was to be elevated from “Colony” to “Dominion”, a title which had recently been conferred on other self-governing colonies. This change was to be made if the New Zealand Parliament desired it, and that would be decided by the House of Representatives on 12 July. In haste to seize such a suitable title, Dr. G. E. Anson proposed that the name New Zealand News, which was already registered, should be changed to Dominion News. This was done forthwith, but later in the same day it occurred to the board that the simple title The Dominion would effectively embody the aim and scope of the paper. This suggestion was adopted at once, and the title The Dominion was registered later in the same day (10 July). The date fixed for the designation of the colony to be changed was 26 September 1907, and the Dominion staff accordingly bent all their efforts to publishing on that day. This was achieved and the paper thus linked its title with the history of the country.

In 1912 Earle was appointed a director and in 1914 managing director, a position he held until his death. The first manager, William Harold Munro, came from the Timaru Morning Post. His successors were Albert Blanton (1909), Archibald Sando (1914-29), and Percy Raymond Scoble (1939) who came to the Dominion after experience on the Otago Daily Times and Manawatu Evening Standard. He was appointed managing director on the death of Earle in 1950. Mervyn V. Chapman is now manager.

The only editor during the Earle regime was John Herbert Hall (1933-37), now supervisor of talks in the Broadcasting

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Service. Amongst Earle’s associates may be mentioned Michael C. Keane, M.A. (1907-13), later editor of the Press (Christchurch), Norman E. Burton and Harold G. Bell, B.A. (1929-33), now editor of the New Zealand Herald. Arthur N. Field, a distinguished columnist, was on the staff (1907-28) and William F. Alexander (later editor of the Timaru Herald and the Evening Star, Dunedin (1907-10). Claude T. C. Watson became editor in 1950. Harcus Plimmer, chief of staff at the outset, remained with the Dominion till his retirement in 1958.

The first offices of the Dominion were soon inadequate, and on its coming-of-age in 1928 the business moved into a sevenstory building in Wakefield Street, with frontages to Mercer Street and Bond Street.

The New Zealand Times sustained for 20 years the competition of its progressive competitor, but steadily languished until 22 January 1927 when the Dominion proprietary purchased the goodwill and other assets, including the files of the Times and the New Zealand Mail.

The Dominion is one of the few papers in New Zealand, apart from family properties, which continued steadily on its course without change of ownership, and substantially achieved the object for which it was originally projected. In more recent years it has become a non-party newspaper with no political affiliations. At the annual meeting in 1951 its chairman (Sir Donald McGavin) said; “The Dominion has its own policy worked out over the years and has no need to follow the sometimes vacillating course pursued by modem politicians of all grades”.

Labour Party Journalism

The last attempt to establish a daily morning paper in the capital was the culmination of a movement which had originated in the eighties towards the creation of a Labour newspaper.

As early as 1887 Thomas Henry Smith and Arthur Gyles brought out a periodical, the Anti-Chinaman and Working Man’s Gazette, which reflected the dominant left-wing sentiments of the day. It ceased in 1890. Fifteen years later James Bruton made a short-lived effort, the Worker, and four years after that appeared what may be regarded as the first official labour organ, the Weekly Herald. This double-demy sheet, which sold at Id., was

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edited by John Rigg 11 for the Trades and Labour Publishing Society , Ltd., which was said to represent “the Trades and Labour Council and 21 other labour organisations of Wellington City”. “No well-established paper in this Dominion,” wrote Rigg, “has ever sought to impress the workers with a proper sense of the enormous power they possess and to urge them by combination and loyalty to each other to use it as an independent party for the purpose of improving their social and industrial condition”. The Labour party in New Zealand was then organising for political action.

In 1910 the Maoriland Worker was started by the Federated Shearers’ Association as a monthly devoted to the general interests of labour. In 1911, after a few weeks in Christchurch (under the control of Ettie A. Rout and Alexander Wildey) it returned to Wellington as the organ of the New Zealand Federation of Labour. Robert Hogg was editor and Alexander Grigg printer and publisher. Hogg was succeeded by Robert Ross and Patrick Hickey. Then in 1912, Henry Edmund Holland 12 , who had come to the Dominion for his health after strenuous years as a labour organiser in Australia, was appointed editor and for six years he conducted the paper with vigour and ability.

From surpluses left over after the Waihi strike funds became available for building an office. In 1915 seven leaders of the Federation acquired the property and in 1916 the Maoriland Worker Company was formed. In 1923 the publication was taken over by the New Zealand Worker Printing and Publishing Company, the capital of £14,000 being subscribed by labour unions. The paper, still a weekly, became the New Zealand Worker: and in 1935 the title was again altered to the Standard. Editors after Holland included W. Kraig, James Thorn, Ivan Levy, W. J. Green, W. Wilson and now S. B. Pickering. John Glover was

11 J. Rigg (1858-1943), C.M.G., born in Melbourne, joined the New Zealand Government Printing Office in 1872 and had many years’ experience organising trades unions. M.L.C. 1892-1914, He was chairman of the Labour Unity Congress 1913-15 and published books on public meetings and oratory.

12 H. E. Holland (1868-1933), born near Canberra, New South Wales, was apprenticed on the Queanbeyan Times. He was M.P. for Grey (1918) and Buller (1919-33) and at his death was leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He published many pamphlets and a volume of verse. Before coming to New Zealand he edited the Vedette and the International Socialist.

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manager from 1912, followed by the present manager, H. R. Hill. Though the Standard was fairly successful, Labour was no

longer satisfied to have the official support of only a single daily in the Dominion (the Grey River Argus). When Michael Savage became prime minister (1935) the slogan was promulgated: “Work daily for Labour dailies”. Next year Edward C. Huie tried to float a company with a capital of £lOO,OOO to acquire the Christchurch property of the Sun. The names of Walter Nash and Daniel G. Sullivan appeared on the prospectus, but nothing materialised until after the leader’s death (which occurred in 1940).

Eventually New Zealand Labour Newspapers Ltd. was registered with a capital of £125,000. The honorary secretary was the Hon. David Wilson and the Directors included Michael Connelly, John Glover, A. McLagan, M. Moohan, James Roberts, D. G. Sullivan and James Thorn. The immediate object was to acquire a newspaper plant or a going concern, before the election of 1941. This project did not materialise —nor was the general election held owing to the war—but in 1945 New Zealand Labour Newspapers Ltd. was floated with a capital of £150,000 (of which £lOO,OOO was already subscribed from within the Labour movement). “A daily morning newspaper”, the prospectus said, “will be published in Wellington on 4 March 1946.” The Southern Cross duly appeared on the date mentioned, a morning daily well produced and efficiently edited. Conforming to the latest style in 1950 it reduced the length of the column, and it kept pace with its contemporaries both in news and in attention to social and intellectual interests. The Southern Cross had a lively and not discreditable existence of just over five years. The last issue appeared on 17 March 1951 (vol. 6, no. 12). The editors were R. Harper, Winton Keay and R. Clayton and the manager was H. R. Hill. The Hon. Jas. Roberts was chairman throughout.

Meanwhile the Standard, as a weekly, survived the whole period: it is still the only important Labour organ in the metropolitan towns.

Wellington Weeklies

After the New Zealand Mail, the next weekly to attain any stability in Wellington was the New Zealand Free Lance, founded on 7 July 1900 as an offshoot of the New Zealand Observer at Auckland. When Geddis and Blomfield, the Auckland publishers,

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conceived the idea of a sister paper in the capital city William John Geddis and George H. Dixon (manager of the 1905 All Black team in England) were sent to establish it. The editor, James Mcßoberts Geddis 13 , was later governing director and sole proprietor. In 1920 the family formed a private company which still controls the paper. Artists who served the Free Lance included E. F. Hiscocks, W. A. Bowring and Tom Glover. Amongst leading writers is Nelle Scanlan, who had an early success in a prize essay competition. Arthur Claude Geddis (1883-1948) succeeded his father in 1935 as editor and managing director. Miss Esme Stewart Geddis, who followed in the dual office, retired in December 1956 (but remains a member of the board of H. E. Geddis & Co.). William Geddis Blundell was appointed managing director in 1957 and Guy Natusch editor.

A few months before the birth of the Free Lance George Hutchison and Joseph Spence Evison started a 3d. weekly, the Critic, which used the cartoons of Hiscocks. It ceased on 2 October 1899.

Another weekly, New Zealand Truth, fashioned on John Norton’s Australian Truth, was established by Norton in 1905. In 1928 a company, N.Z. Truth Ltd., was formed. Managing editors of Truth included Frederick J. Dawson, Robert Hogg, F. J. Earle, C. H. Bateson, R. N. Burns, and B. R. Connolly (1939). In 1949 a new company, Truth (N.Z.) Ltd., bought out Norton’s interest. Connolly retired in 1953 and Edmund G. Webber was appointed editor 14 .

Wellington Suburban Press

The capital city, by reason of its configuration, never nurtured separate communities like those of Auckland and Christchurch. Nevertheless there are traces of the passing existence of small local sheets. In 1895, for instance, Arthur James Billows and Walter James Petherick published a gratis weekly entitled the Newtown Advocate. In 1932 the Onslow Review and Advertiser

13 J. M. Geddis (1856-1935), born in Belfast, Ireland, came to New Zealand in 1864 and was reporting on the N.Z. Herald, the Evening Age (Dunedin), the Auckland Star and the Hansard staff (1888-1924). He was president of the Unitarian Association of New Zealand.

14 E. G. Webber, M.8.E., was editor of the Rotorua Post (1931-40) and then spent five years overseas as editor of the N.Z.E.F. Times, official war correspondent and public relations officer, Middle East.

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and in 1933 the Karori and Northland Mail passed across the stage.

Petone had only 2,000 inhabitants in 1887 when the first effort was made to start a paper. Edgar James Chatwin, who had served his articles with the Chines Gazette in Australia, established the weekly Hutt and Petone Chronicle, which he sold five years later to Andrew Burns. When Burns wished to retire, in 1898, he leased the paper to an apprentice, Thomas Currie List, who with Charles Berntsen was financed by George Thomas London (later Mayor of Petone). Realising that the outlook was not very promising, London sold the Chronicle in 1902 to Frederick Pirani and established the Sun in Wellington. Pirani was followed as lessee in turn by J. T. M. Hornsby, Pierce C. Freeth and Ben Warnes, until in 1912 the paper was bought by James Kerr (1875-1938), who had been managing the Grey River Argus since the death of his father (the Hon. James Kerr, M.L.C.) in 1901. The Chronicle was tri-weekly from 1917 till about 1935, and since then has been distributed gratis weekly. After Kerr’s death his sons carried on till 1953, when the paper was taken over by the Hutt Printing and Publishing Co., in which the Kerrs were interested. To maintain the local association it was renamed the Petone Chronicle and it now appears weekly from the Hutt Printing office.

Meanwhile the trend of settlement up the Hutt Valley tempted several promoters to try their fortune as far afield as Upper Hutt. There in 1911 Angus John McCurdy (1860-1941) a vigorous and picturesque figure in the Farmers’ Union, brought out a weekly, the Hutt Valley Independent and Upper Hutt Advertiser. As a member of the town board McCurdy was disqualified from advertising his own election, so he transferred the paper to his daughter, Flora Mary McCurdy. It continued, latterly at irregular intervals, until the depression in 1930.

During the first war (1915-17) H. R. Gibbs (a chemist) and Philip Davis (a farmer) published under the imprint of the Upper Hutt Publishing Co. the Hutt Valley Weekly News and Advertiser.

The first paper edited in the district was the Upper Hutt Weekly Review, a free issue founded by Ralph Hilton Ashford in 1935 and printed at first in Wellington. In 1938 Ashford moved to Upper Hutt, and changed the title to Upper Hutt Leader and in 1939 to the Leader. It now appears weekly with a gratis circulation

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of 6,500. In 1953 the Leader incorporated the Upper Hutt Times, which had been running for four years.

In the Post Office registrations for 1922 is a paper called the Hutt Local News which was printed in Wellington for Eric Mason and Francis E. Santa Maria.

Hutt News

Walter Harold Smith 15 , who had been living in retirement at the Hutt since 1922, founded the Hutt News on 1 April 1927. It was a small 4-page weekly, the object being to foster interest in the Hutt Horticultural Society and the Progressive League. A Hutt firm —Hayes and Sivell—undertook the printing of the paper for Smith, the circulation at that period being 2,500 copies free to householders.

Early in 1928 Smith was joined in partnership by James and William Oliver McLean Kerr (brothers) who purchased the plant of Hayes and Sivell, and organised the Hutt Printing and Publishing Works Ltd., to publish the Hutt News. Hayes then became a shareholder. Linotypes were immediately installed and in 1940 the News was printed on a rotary press. The paper made steady progress while the borough of Lower Hutt advanced towards the status of a city. Smith was managing editor and later managing director until his death in 1948.

The original issue of 2,500 was distributed through the post office, but as the circulation grew this method was inadequate and today the News, with a free circulation of 16,000 handles its own delivery. The control is in the Kerr family. W. O. M. Kerr succeeded Smith as managing director and his son (William Edward Conway Kerr) is manager.

During the First World War Silverstream had a small war paper, the Camp Courier, a bi-weekly printed by the Petone Chronicle for Norman J. Bennington.

The eastern suburbs of Wellington harbour from 1921 to 1924 had its Eastbourne Sun. It was printed by the Petone Chronicle and owned at first by C. Hartridge and P. N. Young and towards the end by Hartridge alone.

15 W. H. Smith (1874-1948), an educated Englishman, came to New Zealand for his health in 1902 and farmed for some years in the South Island. His death occurred while he was addressing the Lower Hutt Rotary Club on the history of the Hutt News.

CHAPTER 5

WELLINGTON PROVINCIAL PRESS

From Backblocks to Cities

It IS NOT SURPRISING that the first town in the hinterland of Wellington which had a newspaper of its own was Wanganui, or Petre, as it was called until 1854. The native troubles which overhung the settlement in its early years account for Wanganui being without a press for more than a decade. The first settlers arrived at the river port in 1841 and had been there for twelve years when a local resident, Francis H. Watts (1832-67) ventured to try the market with a newspaper. On 16 November 1853 he published a minute weekly, the Wanganui Record. A reproduction in the General Assembly Library shows that it had a column of 81 inches and sold at 3d. The New Zealand Spectator says that it was printed on one side of a half sheet of foolscap. It did not live more than a few weeks.

Wanganui Chronicle’s Centennial

Wanganui had a few years yet to wait for a more robust newspaper. The Wanganui Chronicle was projected in 1856 by a local resident, Henry Stokes, but there was no newspaper plant in the town and he had to go afield in search of one. Meanwhile his associates, E. J. Jones and Charles Dawson, overcame some of their obstacles in an interesting manner. In Wanganui Sir George Grey had established one of his industrial educational institutions for the benefit of both races. This school (which developed into the Wanganui Collegiate School) was in charge of the Rev. C. H. S. Nicholls, a progressive teacher who had successfully managed a modern-type school in the diocese of Leeds. He was an enthusiast on manual education, and some of his pupils made good progress in carpentry, smith work and printing. Nicholls enlisted the help of another settler, Peter

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McWilliam, and together they constructed, of maire wood and iron, a makeshift printing press.

The deadline for the first issue of the paper was 18 September 1856. They managed to publish on that date but the second issue did not appear till a fortnight later. The Wanganui Chronicle and Rangitikei Messenger was a morning paper, demy folio size and sold at 6 d. The motto, Verite sans peur, which soon appeared under the leader, breathed the high aspiration of most young newspapers. Stokes, who was the first editor, was shortly back in Wanganui with printing machinery which he had purchased in Sydney. This he erected in the store of his friend Thomas Powell in Taupo Quay, and there the Chronicle had its home for some months. In 1859 Dawson withdrew from the undertaking and the next publisher was Charles Parkinson, followed a year or two later by Archibald Duddingston Willis.

The sixties were a trying time for newspapers, and the Chronicle was particularly sensitive to fortune’s ups and downs. Stokes was succeeded as editor by John Tylston Wicksteed (who had been on the staff of the Spectator in London) and he was followed in 1862 by James Urquhart Taylor, who resigned in 1865 to become a Presbyterian minister. A milestone in the life of the paper was 1866, when William Hutchison acquired an interest and took control as editor and managing director. To meet the competition of an evening paper which was about to be established, he made the Chronicle tri-weekly and expanded the second title to face both ways, east and west: “Patea and Rangitikei Advertiser”.

Hutchison’s lively political ambitions, however, militated against the prosperity of the paper. In 1870 he reduced the price to Id. and in 1871 he made the paper a daily. In 1870 Henry Anderson (of Wellington) after issuing a prospectus for a new journal, the Wanganui Sentinel, negotiated with Hutchison to take over the Chronicle as a going concern. He actually took possession of the paper, but within six months he and Hutchison disagreed and Hutchison resumed control. His partner, James Duigan, in the early seventies disposed of his interest in the Chronicle, which was run for some months by William Hogg Watt and Charles William Purnell until Hutchison found a substantial purchaser.

The incomer, Gilbert Carson (1842-1924) was soon to be virtual owner. He controlled the paper as managing editor (1875-88) and then sold an interest to the Wanganui Chronicle Company, of which he was chairman and managing director.

The first issue, September 18, 1856

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Carson too had considerable success in public life, a striking example of that personal journalism which was already on the way out. He was mayor of the city, M.H.R. and M.L.C. The managers following him were James Alfred Young (1889), G. W. Worth (1917), Lionel C. Young (1923-57) and J. A. Burnet (1957- ).

Some interesting journalists acted as editor under the regime of Gilbert Carson. Notably in the seventies, the young Australian John Claude Francis A’Hearne; then Gerard G. FitzGerald, brother of the Hon. James Edward FitzGerald and afterwards editor of the New Zealand Times and the Timaru Herald. John Ball, who began his newspaper career on the Chronicle, was 20 years editor and latterly chairman of directors. Retiring from journalism, he was for 10 years manager of 2YA station of the National Broadcasting Service. In 1929 came Hugh C. Jenkins, whose experience began in Fleet Street, and he was succeeded in 1957 by David Grimond Strachan 1 .

The Wanganui Chronicle celebrated its centenary in September 1956. It is the second oldest paper in New Zealand.

In 1875 Carson started the Weekly Chronicle which lived till 1911. In 1888 he printed the bi-weekly Waimate Witness, sending it by horse or coach to Manaia till that town produced its own paper.

When the Chronicle was nine years old a group of local businessmen (including W. H. Watt and T. B. Taylor) with machinery and personnel from Marlborough, started the bi-weekly Wanganui Times, which lasted from 1865 to about 1869. The only recorded copy of this paper is in the British Museum (vol. iii, no. 355, 13 June 1868). John Ballance is said to have written for the Times before launching in 1867 the Wanganui Herald, which is the only substantial competitor the Chronicle ever had to deal with.

The Wanganui Herald: John Ballance’s Foundation When John Ballance 2 arrived in Wanganui (in 1865) the district was still under the cloud of the Maori war. Settlement

1 D. G. Strachan served overseas in both wars. He joined the Chronicle in 1926 and was associate editor from 1955.

2 J. Ballance (1839-93), born in County Antrim, Ireland, had a business training in Birmingham and some experience of British politics and public speaking before coming to New Zealand. He was M.H.R. (1875-81, 1884-91), a member of the Grey and Stout-Vogel ministries (1878-9, 1884) and Premier (1891-93).

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had made little advance and business was at a standstill. While in Australia, Ballance had purchased a quantity of jewellery and other goods with which he opened up a small shop in Wanganui. This and the piece of land which he took up did not fully occupy his time and the controversial topics of the day lured him into the practice of journalism, for which he had both education and aptitude.

The newspaper field in Wanganui was not very strongly held. The Times and the Chronicle were both bi-weeklies. The letters and occasional articles Ballance wrote for the Times showed that he had acquired a competent knowledge of local needs. In 1867, with Archibald Duddingston Willis, he purchased from Wellington newspaper machinery which was temporarily in the hands of John Martin. Getting wind of their plans, the Chronicle promptly converted itself into a tri-weekly. A week later, on 4 June 1867, Ballance and Willis brought out the first issue of a penny paper, the Evening Herald.

The prospects of the Herald were clouded for some years by the stagnation of the war. Ballance’s strong political opinions coloured his recording of events, but as a citizen he enlisted in the Wanganui cavalry troop, which he helped to establish. His cornetcy was about to be gazetted when the Herald’s criticism of the conduct of the campaign brought him into conflict with the military command. The calling out of the militia he condemned as a senseless scare. Refusing to withdraw, he was put under arrest and ordered for court-martial. Counsels of caution then prevailed: Ballance apologised to his superiors and returned to duty. He showed steadiness and gallantry in General Whitmore’s escort at Weraroa and at Nukumaru, and was promoted corporal.

In these years the Herald lost a good deal of money. The partnership was dissolved and Ballance, becoming involved in public affairs, took in first J. S. Birchall and then John Notman. At the close of the seventies, he was still the virtual owner of the Herald, but to free his hands for politics he formed the business in 1882 into a company. James Duigan 3 became editor in 1891, followed by F. Webb-Jones (1903-38) and W. H. Bickley (1938-44).

The present editor Harold Ferens Low (1944) was the last

3 J. Duigan (1843-1903), born in Ireland, was a shipmaster before coming to New Zealand. He was in the post office at Charleston, and later engaged in shipping and flourmilling.

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occupant of the chair on the Rangitikei Advocate. Since the death in 1950 of C. L. Duigan (eldest son of James Duigan) his brother, H. J. Duigan, has been chairman of directors (with G. W. Currie and H. G. Horsley as co-directors). Successive managers have been Henry V. Duigan (1911-24), S. H. Palmer-Jones (1924-48), and S. Vernon Smith (1948- ).

The Herald has had a steady run of prosperity and has kept itself in pace with both technical and professional developments. From 1869 to 1906 it published one of the conventional weeklies (at first under the title Weekly Herald and from 1880 as the Yeoman).

An interesting venture for a period (from 1926) was the publication as an inset of a children’s newspaper (the first of its kind in New Zealand).

Rangitikei Advocate

With the termination of the Maori wars and the opening of a large part of the North Island for settlement, the open country of Rangitikei attracted attention. The town of Marton was a natural centre, and here in 1875 was established the first district paper, the Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus. The publishers were John Law Kirkbride and Charles Monaghan, and Alexander McMinn was editor till 1880.

The Advocate had scarcely been launched when Kirkbride was so enthusiastic about the opening at Palmerston North that they set up a printing office there and started the Manawatu Times. They kept an interest in the Advocate, which before 1880, to hold its place against competition, was changed to bi-weekly, tri-weekly and daily. When McMinn retired in 1880 the Advocate claimed that its circulation of 800 was the largest of any inland paper in the Colony. Charles Woolcock and J. C. F. A’Hearne edited from 1880 till 1891 when the Advocate was transferred to two west country Englishmen, Nicholas Andrew and Francis Phillips Kellow.

In 1896 Andrew sold to William Henry Smith, who had gained experience in Wairarapa, Marlborough and Palmerston North. He formed a company in 1907 and managed till 1915, when the paper was sold to the Rangitikei Advocate Company. The Advocate for many years exercised an influence not inferior to that of some city organs. It survived the war of 1914-18, but with weakened vigour in face of rural motor services, and it

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succumbed on 1 February 1941 to the impact of the second war. The assets were acquired by Mindon Clennell Fenwicke.

A minor activity of the Advocate was the Farmers Advocate, a weekly established in 1903 in the interests of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. It was succeeded in 1905 by the Farmers’ Union Advocate published in Wellington.

The Rangitikei Advocate had a shortlived rival between 1891 and 1896 in the Marton Mercury, a penny daily established in anticipation of the general election of 1890. It was promoted by the Hon. Francis Arkwright, M.L.C., and its first editor was Charles Wilson, who left a year later to edit the New Zealand Mail. The Mercury was kept going under a local company, being edited part of the time by Arkwright and part by William Alfred Ellis. In 1895 it was sold to the Wanganui Herald and it closed down in the following year.

Marton has recently essayed two small weeklies, the Rangitikei News (E. W. Beckett, 1948-55) and the Rangitikei Mail (H. P. Melody, 1955).

Feilding received its first newspaper in the seventies—when Marton was languishing and Palmerston North was unborn. The impulse was the settlement of the Manchester Block by the Colonists’ Land and Loan Corporation, of which Colonel W. H. A. Feilding was the agent. In 1878, almost as soon as the settlers were established on their holdings, the Feilding Guardian was started by George Capper and David Curie. A boy on the staff at the outset was James H. Claridge, later the most successful promoter of small-town papers. In 1882 Capper sold his interest to George Kirton and Augustus Robert Curtis, who changed the title to Feilding Star and made the paper a tri-weekly. In 1893, as competition threatened, the Star became daily and it carried on with modest profits into the new century. Frederick Pirani 4 (who had been M.H.R. for Palmerston North 1893-1902), with Louis J. Pirani (his son) and Tom L. Mills acquired it in 1906. Mills, who was to edit the Star for 28 years, served his apprenticeship on the Timaru Herald and was a well known journalist in Wellington. For many years he contributed to Wimble’s Reminder notes on the press of New Zealand.

4 F. Pirani (1859-1926) was born in Melbourne, a son of H. C. Pirani, with whom he came to the West Coast. He was apprenticed to the Wanganui Herald. Pirani took an active part in affairs wherever he was. David Pirani was a brother.

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In 1936 the Star was leased for five years to a local company of which Edmund Goodbehere was chairman. It ceased publication on 14 October 1939.

A few months later Mrs Mabel Ellis Allen (who had conducted the Eketahuna Express for some years) started a daily which she called the Feilding Express. It now appears weekly under the title Feilding Express and Counties Gazette.

The small town of Kimbolton, a few miles north of Feilding, was in 1903 seriously regarded as a newspaper site by James Claridge. For eighteen months he published the tri-weekly Kimbolton Times and County News, and then closed down and moved to Martinborough.

Upper Rangitikei Valley

The Advocate at Marton was almost a generation old before closer settlement made a spurt. This followed the decision of the Government to construct the Main Trunk railway through the high plateau beyond Taihape. The potentiality of the papa belt running east and west across the island was now realised and new settlers were pushing hopefully ahead of the railway. The story of this phase of backblocks journalism has not been easy to unravel. At the turn of the century optimists like Joseph Ivess, Thomas Elliott Wilson and Frederick Charles Rowton Smithyman were darting from point to point whenever the railhead reached a likely clearing, often to move away within a few months to brighter prospects.

One of the first blocks to be thrown open in the Rangitikei valley was Paraekaretu (which we now know as Hunterville). Thither the light-hearted Ivess sped in 1893 with his “handpress and hatful of type”. The Paraekaretu Express (better known as the Hunterville Express) did not keep him long. Within a year his glowing optimism dragged him away, leaving his fledgling to a kindred but less volatile spirit, Thomas Elliott Wilson. Wilson was not to know, of course, that the Express would survive all alarms until 1950. He left Hunterville to start a paper at Waitara, but a few years later came back to the mud and the bush clearings of the Upper Rangitikei.

In 1897 Frederick Smithyman came north from Kaitangata (Otago), wandered along the railway works beyond Hunterville and took a fancy to a rough clearing known as Three Log Whare (now Mangaweka). There he paused long enough to start a

N 5

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bi-weekly, the Mangaweka Settler. A year later he put up his shingle in Raetihi, well in advance of the railhead, and established the Waimarino Argus (which lasted four years). He had leased the Settler to Wilson, but Wilson’s confidence in the clearing weakened when a competitor, the Mangaweka Mail, appeared and he too turned his face northward. The Settler actually lasted till 1925, whereas the rival which had startled Wilson was dead in two years.

Wilson meanwhile had taken note of the advantages of Taihape, perched high on bushclad papa hills at a point where four coach roads met. There in 1901 he established a morning weekly, the Taihape Post, which did so well that in 1904 Ivess (who since Hunterville Days had planted or leased a dozen papers elsewhere) came back to Taihape to share in its prosperity. His Taihape and Mangaweka News made the pace so hot that both papers had to become dailies—a ruinous situation that even Taihape could not tolerate. In 1905 a local company acquired both papers and amalgamated them as the Taihape Daily Times and Waimarino Advocate. Alfred Weller was managing editor till 1913, when the paper was taken over by the Taihape Printing and Publishing Company, with David S. Papworth as managing editor. In 1924 John E. Hamill obtained control. In 1930 the Times changed from daily to tri-weekly and as such it has been able to complete its half century without further competition.

The fight for the outdistricts, however, did not cease. Before parting with his interest in the Taihape News, Ivess opened a printing office at Ohakune, where in 1907 he brought out the Waimarino and Ohakune Times. He was at once challenged by Laurence Fryer, who published from his office in Raetihi two tri-weeklies, the Ohakune Times and the Waimarino County Call. E. G. Allsworth seems to have intervened to acquire Ivess’s dwindling interest at Ohakune, for in 1909 he began publishing there a tri-weekly which he called the Ohakune Times, Rangataua Advocate and Waimarino Gazette.

And so the years passed till 1916 when Charles Cecil Nation, a newcomer from Levin, settled at Raetihi and acquired Allsworth’s paper. Two years later he bought from Fryer the Waimarino County Call, and thereafter Nation (and later the Nation estate) published the two papers on the same days of the week, the Ohakune Times and the Waimarino County Call. Having survived two wars, both at last closed down (1 June 1948) to make

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way for a tri-weekly, the Central District Press, published by Nations at Raetihi till 23 December 1949. The Taihape Times came to the help of the Press when its office was destroyed by fire in the middle of 1949. Yet another attempt was made to revive the paper, which came out weekly as the Waimarino News from 1954-56.

Of this whole interesting flight of frontier papers, the only survivor today is the Taihape Times, now in its 52nd year.

Palmerston North: The Manawatu Times

Laid out on the site of the old pa Papaioea, Palmerston North was the last centre west of the Tararua mountains to develop into a town of any importance. Once the wars were over it seemed the most likely provincial centre to have a prosperous future. That at any rate was the firm opinion of John Law Kirkbride and his partner, Joseph Poulter Leary, who had just started the Rangitikei Advocate. Leary spent a fortnight in Palmerston and came away satisfied. Without delay the partners erected a small plant in an office in Main Street, and on 23 October 1875—only five months after launching the Advocate—they brought out the first issue of the Manawatu Times. Almost at that moment the first train from the river-port of Foxton arrived at Palmerston North.

George Bond had some part in the publication. The first editor was C. J. Pownall, followed in 1877 by Mark Lemon. Leary, who began business in the town as a land agent, was able to assist as editor and publisher. The Times was managed for a little by John Boulger Dungan (1878) and George Warren Russell (1882-84) and then came into the hands of W. H. Smith, who ran it successfully till 1896. Later owners and lessees were John Ruffell Russell and Thomas Lindsay Buick, Pierce C. Freeth (1904), Ernest D. Hoben (1908) and H. T. B. Drew (1912).

In 1915 the Manawatu Daily Times Company Ltd. was floated, with Alfred Seifert as chairman. Freeth was then editor (1915-21) and Charles Spurgeon Rush manager (1916-21). In 1918 the capital was increased from £9,000 to £12,000 and in 1929 to £20,000.

In 1922 Robert Hewitt Billens 5 and H. G. Kerslake, owners

5 R. H. Billens (1882- ) was apprenticed to the printing trade in Palmerston North and afterwards held various positions on the Manawatu Standard and the Times. He was chairman of the N.Z. delegation at the Empire Press (London) conference in 1946.

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of the paper at Levin, acquired an interest in the Times, Billens becoming managing director of the company and Seifert continuing as chairman till his death in 1945. Billens was then chairman and managing editor till his retirement in 1955. The present editor is D. A. Davis and the manager E. R. Harris. In 1937 the title became simply the Times.

For two years (1889-91) a weekly edition, the Manawatu Weekly Times, was published.

Manawatu Evening Standard

Within five years of the founding of the Times, the inevitable competitor, the Manawatu Daily Standard, appeared. It is noteworthy that these two papers, founded so early in a virgin field, survive today.

The Standard was conceived by Alexander McMinn while he was editing the Rangitikei Advocate. His project was a newspaper which would serve the whole district west of the Manawatu river. He had selected Feilding as a suitable centre, but he was forestalled there by the Feilding Guardian. Eventually, on the advice of Sylvester Coleman he decided to establish himself at Palmerston North, notwithstanding it already had one paper. McMinn was a man of strong personality and vision. Bom in Ireland in 1842 and educated at Grace Hill Moravian College in Dublin, he came to New Zealand to report the Maori War for a London paper. He was a short time teaching at Wanganui College before joining the Wanganui Herald. A giant in stature (6 ft. 3i ins., 18st. 10 lb.), as a writer he was versatile, imaginative and bright. He earned the good opinion of John Ballance, then owner of the Herald, and Ballance wrote the first leader for the Manawatu Standard. A feature of the plant with which McMinn started was an old handpress from the Wanganui Herald (afterwards used by the Woodville Examiner).

McMinn had Henry Lyes and Edward Roe as practical printers when he published, on 29 November 1880, the Manawatu Standard, Rangitikei Advertiser and West Coast Gazette, which he described as “the first daily paper between Wellington and Wanganui.” His energy was proportionate to his stature. He had no sooner got the Standard on its feet than he initiated his scheme of a chain of papers in the middle district of the North Island. The first offshoot was the Woodville Examiner, but the physical

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difficulties taxed his strength so heavily that he did not pursue his plan.

In 1890 McMinn sold the Standard to Frederick Pirani, who was soon joined by his brother David. The paper changed over to evening publication. It was a useful factor in Pirani’s political campaigns, but, needless to say, politics did not prosper the paper. In 1903, having lost his seat in Parliament, Pirani sold the paper to Norman Henry Nash 8 and John Coombe, who had been running the Dannevirke Advocate. In 1921 a private company, of £30,000 was formed in which the partners had an equal interest till 1935, when Nash bought Coombe’s holding. On his death in 1937 he was succeeded by his son James Henry Nash, now managing director and editor, while another son, Norman Alfred Nash, became a director. The capital of the company is now £45,000. The company has recently installed a Hoe-Crabtree 3-unit press.

The two Palmerston North papers had practically no opposition throughout. In 1894 the Rev. William Thomson and Arthur Phelps Hopkins published for a few weeks the Manawatu Weekly, Oroua and Rangitikei Record. In 1909 H. L. Goldthorpe started a shortlived Saturday publication, the Manawatu Press.

A Sunday weekly, the New Zealand Sunday News, was published at Palmerston North from 1933-35 by the New Zealand Sunday News Publishing Co. Starting as a 30 page illustrated magazine paper with a late sporting supplement, it failed to make good and ceased within 18 months.

Skandia, a vernacular paper for Scandinavian settlers, who played a robust part in the Manawatu settlement, was intended to be published on 23 October 1875, simultaneously with the first Manawatu Times. A bookseller named Hjalmar Graaff was editor. Owing to the absence of accented type the first issue was delayed. It contained a translation of Vincent Pyke’s novel Wild Will Enderby.

6 N. H. Nash (1866-1937) was born in New South Wales and commenced newspaper work under G. W. Russell on the Manawatu Herald. He had varied experience in Wellington and on the Manawatu Times (under W. H. Smith and J. R. Russell) and the Standard (under A. McMinn). He was subediting on the Times in 1901 when he joined Coombe (then of Feilding) in the Bush Advocate.

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Southern Manawatu

Yet another North Island district west of the Tararua mountains remains to be considered—what is loosely known as the Manawatu. Foxton, at the mouth of the Manawatu River, was a useful seaport and ferry on the land and seaway between Port Nicholson and Wanganui. Roads were expected to creep outwards east and west and the river itself was a feasible highway into the interior and even to southern Hawke’s Bay.

As early as 1873 Arthur J. Hoskin, of Blenheim, tried without success to establish at Foxton a bi-weekly, which he intended to call the Manawatu Guardian. A few years later (in 1878) a bi-weekly actually did appear, the Manawatu Herald, published by George Warren Russell 7 and John Ruff ell Russell and printed on a flatbed machine obtained from the Evening Post in Wellington. George Russell, in order to venture in the larger sphere of Palmerston North, soon sold out to his brother and the latter in 1889 transferred the paper to Earnest Stephen Thynne, who made it a tri-weekly. In 1906 John Knowles Hornblow acquired the Herald, which he and his son controlled until its demise on 26 February 1943. It was incorporated later in the Foxton Herald, now weekly.

The only opposition the Manawatu Herald encountered was during 1896-1900 when W. C. Nation and Son ran the Foxton Telegraph and West Coast Advertiser, a tri-weekly printed at Levin.

Otaki and Levin

Until the nineties the future of the district between the Manawatu River and Wellington was rather uncertain. The Wellington and Manawatu Railway was opened in 1887 but it was some years before there was a marked concentration of settlers in small townships. The oldest town was laid out at Otaki in the forties, and it was here that the first newspaper was launched 50 years later.

Liberalism was then in the ascendant and the Premier (John Ballance) encouraged Frederick Webbe to start (on 9 June 1892) the Horowhenua Times. In 1893 Francis Clark Millar took over

7 G. W. Russell (1854-1937), born in London and educated in Tasmania, was apprenticed to the Evening Post. After his Palmerston North investment he ran the Gazette at Cambridge and in 1889 founded the Spectator at Christchurch. He was many years in Parliament and was twice in the ministry.

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the frail infant and changed the title to Otaki Times. A few months later Howard Charles Ferdinand Jacobson, from Akaroa, came to the rescue, making the paper a 4-page bi-weekly and changing the title again to West Coast Mail and Country Advertiser. Yet a new group of owners in 1896 and another name—the Otaki Mail.

Henry A. Solomon (1897) and Frederick Unwin (1901) left the Mail to Frank Penn, to make the best of a tri-weekly. Some of his compositors were Maori and for a while he printed a Maori section (contributed by Samuel Cook). Quite early Penn abolished hand setting in favour of the barotype, which he was soon glad to change for linotypes. His right-hand man for some years was Hector Martin Jeffery Nicolson, a prominent athlete, whose invigorating influence tided the paper over until his death in 1948. Following a fire in 1914 Penn built new premises in Aotaki Street. In 1920 he bought the Cambridge Independent and sold the Mail to Kerslake and Billens (of the Horowhenua Chronicle). For some years they set it up in Otaki and finally in the Levin office. The Mail ceased publication in 1946 when it was absorbed by the Chronicle.

The small township of Shannon actually had one of the first papers in Horowhenua. In 1893 William Charles Nation 8 and his son Charles Cecil published there a tri-weekly, the Manawatu Farmer and Horowhenua County Chronicle. After three years of slow development they met what seemed to be the needs of the district by making it the Manawatu Weekly. Others took a more optimistic view of the situation, notably the veteran Joseph Ivess. In 1896 he appeared with a printing plant at Levin and established the Levin and Manukau Express and Horowhenua County Advertiser. He sold immediately to William John Reid and John McKellop, but not before the Nations had taken alarm and moved from Shannon to the more promising township. They soon acquired the newcomer, incorporated it in the Farmer in 1897, and carried it on as a tri-weekly for many years while Levin grew from a village to a flourishing county town.

8 W. C. Nation (1840-1930) came to New Zealand with his father (W. Nation) in 1857, learned his trade with the Nelson Colonist and was jobbing overseer of the New Zealand Times before taking over the Wairarapa Standard. An ardent spiritualist, he published from 1903 till his death a monthly, the Message of Life, and was for 13 years president of the National Association of Spiritualistic Churches in New Zealand.

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In 1909 D. S. Papworth founded the bi-weekly Levin Times, which survived only a few months. The Farmer was then acquired by him for the Horowhenua Publishing Company which turned it into a daily as the Horowhenua Daily Chronicle. It was edited by George Powick Brown (1910-17). For a short while a special edition called the Shannon Advocate was published for the sister town.

In 1917 Herbert George Kerslake (1883-1934) and Robert H. Billens bought the paper, which under stress of war conditions reverted to tri-weekly (as the Levin Chronicle) but again became a daily in 1923. They started in 1920 the Shannon News, which became weekly shortly before its demise in 1940. Eventually Kerslake, Billens and L. Humphrey concentrated the production of their various local sheets in Levin, where since 1946 the Chronicle has appeared as a district daily to serve the towns of Horowhenua.

This does not exhaust the list of adventurous foundations in the district at the foot of the Tararuas. In 1911-12 James Knight published the Horowhenua County Record, in 1915-16 J. W. Thompson the Tararua Newsnet, and in 1923-25 Archibald C. Holms published the Horowhenua Review. All were weeklies.

Early Efforts in Wairarapa

The pattern of newspaper development in Wairarapa is illdefined. Since Greytown was the first township to be laid out and was for many years regarded as the capital of the valley the first paper appeared there as a matter of course. In the decades following the establishment of the Wairarapa Mercury other townships arose in the valley, but none was large enough to support a newspaper. Again and again, in one or other of those isolated centres, a hopeful promoter set up his shingle and endeavoured to fight off opposition by catering for outlying communities. Only the Times in Masterton and the Standard in Greytown can be said to have had any stability from the outset. The truth is that Wairarapa developed all too slowly. In 1900, when five towns aspired to support their own newspapers, the population of the whole valley was under 20,000.

Greytown had the field for ten years before another paper was established with any prospect of stability. The first paper, the Wairarapa Mercury, was a very early foundation (5 January

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1867). The promoters were Edward and Charles Grigg, who had editorial assistance for a few months from Richard Wakelin. On Edward Grigg’s death, Archibald Kennedy Arnot purchased his interest and eventually he became sole owner, editor and manager until the paper ceased (on 3 August 1872), a few weeks before his death. The price of the Mercury at one stage was increased to Is. on the understanding that Arnot would restore the leading article, which he had been compelled to drop while attending his extraneous duties as farmer and clerk of the court. After one of the two fires which the Mercury suffered in its early life, Arnot bought the plant of the Wairarapa Journal and was able to publish again within a month.

It was to start the Wairarapa Journal (1 January 1868) that Richard Wakelin withdrew from the Mercury. At the outset he produced the Journal in a small building on the Moroa in which he lived. He soon realised, however, that a certain amount of jobbing was necessary to make the paper pay. Greytown already had a job printing office so he moved his newspaper plant to Wellington and there, from March 1868, he brought out a triweekly which he called the Wellington Journal. The experiment did not last long. On 25 November 1868 the plant, including an Albion double demy press, was sold for £2OO to the proprietors of the Mercury. The last copy of the Wellington Journal of which there is a trace (22 July 1868) is in the British Museum.

On the cessation of the Mercury, Wakelin 9 took steps to fill the gap. It is clear that he anticipated Arnot’s death, for the first issue of the bi-weekly Wairarapa Standard was published within a fortnight of the Mercury’s cessation. After a few months Wakelin took in as partner his son-in-law, Joseph Payton, who had been headmaster of the Pahautanui school. During the next six years Payton’s careful management helped materially to make the paper a success. After his departure Wakelin employed Richard A. Sherrin and George Kenrick Wakelin and on his death the Standard passed into the hands of William Charles Nation (fore-

9 Richard Wakelin (1816-81) was born in Warwickshire, spent some years in Canada and the United States and in 1839 opened a bookshop in Coventry. To evade press restrictions on the publication of Chartist literature he moved to the Isle of Man and published there the Cause of the People. His letters when he arrived in Wellington in 1850 attracted some attention. He edited the Independent (1852-59) and in 1870 launched the New Zealand Mail for T. W. McKenzie.

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man of the New Zealand Times) and his brother Edward James Nation.

In 1893 William Francis Roydhouse assumed control. He considerably improved the Standard before transferring it in 1896 to John Robert and George William Nicol, who in 1898 adopted the title the Standard and Featherston Advocate and carried on to 1905. Later owners were Thomas McCracken, from Cromwell, and (after his death in 1922) Mrs McCracken (with Archibald Crawford Holms and Robert George Vile as editors). After a fire in 1937 the paper was printed in Masterton and it eventually became the property of William John Palamontain and Eugene John Coleman. As a tri-weekly it published on alternate days with the Eketahuna Star till 1942 when it ceased (vol. 76, No. 13,046).

Wairarapa Times-Age

Joseph Payton had not been long with Wakelin on the Wairarapa Standard when he came to the conclusion that Masterton would be the largest town in the valley. With Morgan Francis O'Meara he convened a public meeting in Masterton to consider starting a paper, and towards the end of 1874 the bi-weekly Wairarapa News and Valley and East Coast Advertiser made its appearance. Smith was editor and O'Meara printer (succeeded shortly by John George Fawcett). The News suffered the usual teething troubles of the country paper—the office in Main Street was burned down, forcing Smith to move elsewhere, while Fawcett continued publishing a paper which was printed at Greytown.

Meanwhile John Martin Rockel, who had been working for the Independent in Wellington, returned to his home town, and in May 1876 started a paper called the News Letter, which starred an occasional contribution by the father of the New Zealand press, Samuel Revans (then living in Greytown). When the News office was rebuilt (November 1877) Smith joined forces with Rockel, amalgamated the News and the News Letter and produced a 2d. tri-weekly, the Wairarapa Register. Again the inevitable hazard. In July 1878 the premises were burned to the ground. A few more issues were printed by the Standard at Greytown and then the Register disappeared. Something good for Masterton, however, arose from its ashes. A volunteer fire brigade was organised and the jury at the fire inquiry recommended that in future all buildings in the centre of the town should be covered with galvanised iron.

Nor was journalistic enterprise quenched. Immediately after the

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fire James Brown established in Bridge Street a tri-weekly, the Wairarapa Free Press (11 September 1878). It had scarcely got under way when Payton, who had now associated with him W. F. Roydhouse and Edward Samuel (headmaster of the Carterton School) proposed to start a new daily. The outcome was the appearance on 4 November 1878 of the Wairarapa Daily, which superseded the Wairarapa Free Press and absorbed the Wairarapa News (of which the last known issue is dated 30 October). The Daily’s fanfare asserted:

We do not believe in newspapers that do not pay. They may for a season dazzle their readers with their brilliance and overwhelm them with an unlimited quantity of reading matter, but the time comes when they have to carry less sail and often furl their canvas altogether. We much prefer to begin in a more modest manner; to give our readers as much news as we can afford to offer them . . . and from time to time to make such improvements as can be made safely and judiciously. The Daily was printed at first in Bridge Street but soon acquired

premises in Church Street. In 1887 Payton started the customary weekly edition, called the Wairarapa Weekly, which closed down in 1898. In 1892 the word “Times” was added by legal process to the titles of both daily and weekly. The Wairarapa Daily Times was conspicuous amongst the provincial papers of New Zealand for the excellence of its production. Payton kept plant and type up to date and for many years used a smooth white paper superior in quality to ordinary newsprint. Handsetting was ousted by the Simplex in 1904, but linotypes were afterwards put in.

After Payton’s death (1910) the business was formed into a private company consisting of members of his family, with Douglas Moore Graham as managing director. In 1938 a merger was effected with the Wairarapa Age. In the new Wairarapa Times-Age Co. Graham was general manager and E. J. Brown business manager. Graham was succeeded on his retirement by Brown, who in turn was followed by S. D. Leitch (1952). The long association of the Payton family is maintained by E. W. Payton (a son of Joseph Payton) who is now a director. The Times-Age is now the only daily between Wellington and Dannevirke.

W. A. Michael, who was editor of the Age, continued after the merger till his retirement in 1957. He was succeeded by M. R. Keane.

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Within three years of the birth of the Wairarapa Daily it had competition from Joseph Ivess with an evening daily, the Wairarapa Star, which gave 18 columns of advertising and 10 of reading matter. In a few months it was transferred to Joseph James Smith (printer) and Alexander Wilson Hogg 10 (editor). There is some doubt, indeed, whether Ivess was ever connected with this paper. Assisted by A. W. Renall, Smith and Hogg ran in partnership for eleven years. Besides publishing the daily in Masterton they turned out (from 1882) a 3d. weekly, the Weekly Star and South Wairarapa Advocate. In 1889 the firm reached out in the other direction by publishing the Eketahuna and Pahiatua Mail, which was printed in Masterton throughout.

In 1892 Smith and Hogg disposed of the property to William Clement Cargill, who changed the title to include Eketahuna and Pahiatua. In 1902 Arthur Cecil Major joined him, after some experience on the New Zealand Herald. Major’s idea was to change to morning publication so as to provide Masterton with one morning and one evening paper instead of two evening papers. Accordingly on 14 April 1902 appeared the first issue of the Wairarapa Age, of which he became sole proprietor and editor. The Weekly Star ceased publication in 1906. In 1907 Major formed a private company and in 1910, having abandoned journalism for law, he disposed of his interest to James Brown, who had been editor and manager of the Wairarapa Observer. After Brown’s death (1913) his son, E. James Brown, became managing director. A. H. Vile was editor for some years. In 1918 the office was burned out.

In 1921 the business was acquired by Guy Hardy Scholefield and the Wairarapa Age Co. Ltd. was floated, with a capital of £10,300. Scholefield was editor and a director till 1926, when he became Parliamentary librarian and W. A. Michael became editor. In 1938 the two Masterton newspapers amalgamated as the Wairarapa Times-Age, a daily evening paper. E. J. Brown was manager till the amalgamation.

In 1893 Richard A. Butchers registered the Wairarapa Liberal which was printed in Wellington. A few months later it was taken

10 A. W. Hogg (1845-1920), born in Glasgow, came to New Zealand in 1877. He was manager and editor of the Age (Dunedin) and later edited the Ashburton Mail and the South Canterbury Times. He was M.H.R. for Masterton (1890-1911) and Minister of Labour in the Ward Government (1909).

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over by Robert John Acheson (afterwards a stipendiary magistrate).

The Wairarapa Weekly, a 12-page paper printed by the Hutt and Petone Chronicle for the Universal Publishing and Advertising Co. of Masterton from October 1937 was soon taken over by W. J. Palamontain and ceased in December 1938.

Carterton and Lower Valley

Carterton’s first newspaper, the tri-weekly Wairarapa Valley Weekly Guardian and East and West Counties Advertiser and Reporter, was started early in 1878 by Thomas Bennett and Charles Gibbs Beckett. (It was actually registered by Robert Carrick as proprietor and publisher.) After passing through the hands of Edward Hankins and Adam Armstrong and then of Raymond White Marshall and J. G. Fawcett, it ceased publication late in 1880.

For a while the plant lay idle. Beckett meanwhile had erected a new office in Belvedere Street. Here he installed the plant and produced a new tri-weekly, the Wairarapa Observer, East Coast Advertiser and West County Gazette. In 1882 he is recorded as proprietor, printer and publisher of the Wairarapa Weekly Observer and Featherston Chronicle and in 1888 he published from the same office the Featherston Chronicle and Martinborough Gazette. Both papers were sold in 1889-90 to William McKenzie, who had been interested in the Wairarapa Standard. He showed considerable enterprise, and in 1891 amalgamated the two under the clumsy title of Wairarapa Observer, Featherston Chronicle, East Coast Advertiser and South County Gazette. James Brown was manager and editor for some years. In 1901 he acquired the paper (with George Godfrey Taylor) and made it a daily. It was sold in 1903 to William Francis Roydhouse, who was to carry it on (with his son Reginald Walter Roydhouse) for many years.

In 1897 a local company started an opposition tri-weekly, the Leader, with John Thomas Marryat Hornsby 11 as editor and F. McKenzie as manager. Hornsby became sole proprietor and

n J. T. M. Hornsby (1857-1921), born in Hobart, came to New Zealand about 1873. He ran the Observer at Arrowtown, started the Lake County Press in 1882 and then edited the Evening News (Napier) and the Waipawa Mail. He was M.H.R. for Wairarapa (1899-1902, 1905-11 1914-1919).

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was manager and editor until 1903, when parliamentary duties compelled him to hand over to his son Marryat D. Hornsby. In 1906 Marryat entered into the practice of law and the two Carterton papers were amalgamated as the Wairarapa Daily News, R. W. Roydhouse (1884-1957) taking over Hornsby's interest. In 1928 the office was destroyed by fire and a new concrete building was erected. The News was vigorously conducted until war exigencies compelled it to cease publication (31 May 1940). Thereafter Roydhouse published weekly the Wairarapa News (now continued by his son Alan Roydhouse).

In 1908 William Jason Hill published for a short time in Carterton a tri-weekly, the Echo.

The Featherston Independent, established by Norman Joseph Bennington in 1930, was a 4-page weekly, issued gratuitously, and described as "the first real all locally printed newspaper in the . . . township of Featherston."

A local paper which never had competition is the Martinborough Star, now over 50 years old. Founded in 1904 by James Henry Claridge, it was sold in the following year to Arthur Charles Nicol, who made it tri-weekly and sold in 1908 to Andrew Nicol (who was no relation and had gained experience in Glasgow). Claridge records that his main asset in starting the Star was a Columbia or American Eagle handpress, made in Boston in 1834. It had a counter-balance or lever in the form of a heavy cast iron bird with outstretched wings. A passing group of Maoris, seeing the bird moving up and down as the machine worked, believed it to be a kea and tried to buy it for the ridgepole of their meeting house. Andrew Nicol had the paper till 1916, when it was acquired by Frederick Sutherland Michell (of the Akaroa Mail) who controlled it till his death (27 October 1944). The Star ceased publication but resumed in 1945 as a tri-weekly: and is still published by a son (C. A. Michell).

The Forty Mile Bush

The first adventure in journalism in the Forty Mile Bush came from the north some years before Hogg and Cargill wooed the Bush district from Masterton. On 11 June 1886 Alexander Black and Edward Alexander Haggen founded the bi-weekly Pahiatua Star and Eketahuna Advertiser. Pahiatua was then a very small town. According to Dr F. W. Pennefather such prosperity as there was was due to expenditure by the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour on

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his property in the district. The Star succumbed in 1893 to the competition of the Wairarapa Star, which sent a morning edition to Pahiatua by train.

The plant was bought by a local group led by W. Tosswill, who published on 24 May 1893 the first Pahiatua Herald. Black was manager, and Baillie editor to the end of the year, when the Pahiatua Herald Co. took over (Baillie carrying on as managing director). In 1895 Joseph Ivess established a tri-weekly whose title, the Pahiatua Argus, Ballance, Mangatainoka, Makuri, Kaitawa and Makakahi Advertiser, took cognisance of every little settlement in that part of the Bush. The Herald became daily to frustrate its rival. John McKellop was the first publisher of the Argus and then Charles Cuming. The paper seems to have died in 1896. Baillie purchased the Herald property from the company and there was another change of ownership in 1901. William Henry Hawkins was editor and manager (until being elected to Parliament in 1904).

Yet another rival to the Herald appeared in 1905, when the veteran George Renner, who had been for years associated with the Kaikoura paper, started the daily Pahiatua Era, which lasted less than two years. In 1907 Samuel Bolton and Edward L. Barley acquired the interests of the Baillies, Hawkins and Nisbet Mcßobie, and the Pahiatua Herald Co. was formed in 1909 with Barley as manager. A private company was formed by Samuel Bolton in 1916 with a capital of £6,000, Barley having a third interest. Others associated with the Herald since 1910 were Ernest E. Muir, R. W. Carpenter, Colin A. Macdonald (1918), William Jack (1921), William A. Barley (1924) and Oliver Johnson. Buring World War II the Herald wilted. It was revived in 1943 as the North Wairarapa Herald and finally ceased in 1954. A gratis weekly, the North Wairarapa News, is now published by Gabriel F. Bavid.

The township of Pongaroa, not far from Pahiatua, made several little essays in journalism. In 1912 J. H. A. Skipper established a 10-page demy quarto weekly, the Pongaroa Mail, which ceased when he went on active service in 1915. In 1916 the Pongaroa Midget, a news budget, appeared several times in aid of war funds, and in 1917 the Pahiatua Herald published the Akitio Midget, described as “the smallest patriotic paper in New Zealand”. It was the size of a lady’s pocket handkerchief and later was edited and managed by women.

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Eketahuna had the first semblance of a paper of its own in 1889 when Smith and Hogg, of the Wairarapa Star, printed the Eketahuna and Pahiatua Mail for distribution in Eketahuna as an evening daily. Subsequent owners of the Wairarapa Star published a special edition for the Bush towns till 1898.

In 1894 Thomas William Sparks and Joseph John Boden Blakemore established the Eketahuna Express and North Wairarapa Courier, which three years later was acquired by Frederick Taylor Redman and John Knowles Homblow. Arthur Henry Vile 12 had the Express from 1899 to 1906. In 1902, while it was let to James H. Claridge, fire destroyed the office. As there was some delay in re-erecting it Claridge started a new paper, the Clarion and Eketahuna Echo, but after two issues a mutual friend arranged that the Clarion should cease. In 1907 George Thomas Allen bought a share in the Express and later formed a company (with F. C. Tumor as chairman). After the First World War Allen became sole proprietor and made the Express a daily. After his death in 1938 his widow carried on till the end of 1939, when the paper ceased.

The field at Eketahuna was occupied in 1940 by the tri-weekly Eketahuna Star (published by William John Palamontain in Masterton for the Eketahuna Star Company). Later it appeared on alternate days with a companion sheet, the Wairarapa Standard, until August 1941, when it ceased.

12 a. H. Vile (1867-1946) began his career on the St. Arnaud Mercury (Victoria). He edited the Wairarapa Star in 1893 and the Hastings Standard in 1899, and later the Wairarapa Age and other papers. He owned the Wairarapa Sparkler (1936-37).

CHAPTER 6

NEWSPAPERS IN AUCKLAND

At Bay of Islands: Journalism Under the Lash

For some time after the systematic colonisation of New Zealand started at Port Nicholson, the white population at Bay of Islands was the more important and numerous community. The Lieutenant-Governor (Captain William Hobson, R.N.) established his administration there in February 1840 and on 15 June a newspaper made its appearance at the settlement of Kororareka. Thus, just two months after Revans had set his press going at Petone, the second newspaper in New Zealand was born. The New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette was printed by G. A. Eagar and Co., of Turner Terrace, and the editor was the Rev. Barzillai Quaife, a Congregational minister who kept a school at Kororareka.

Aware that he was in the close presence of a newly fledged bureaucracy, Quaife walked at first with circumspection, but he was a nonconformist at heart, and as the first year drew to a close he was outspoken in criticism of the Government. Early in December he was summoned before the Colonial Secretary (Lieut. Willoughby Shortland, R.N.) to make the affidavit required under a recent act passed in the Mother Colony (New South Wales) to control the freedom of the newspaper press. The Colonial Secretary was not present when Quaife called, but it is significant that the Advertiser did not appear after 10 December 1840. When this situation became known on the “beach” a public meeting was called to protest against the repression; and a deputation was appointed which included Frederick Whitaker and C. B. Brewer to wait upon the Governor. Whether this interview took place we are not aware.

The administration took its own steps, however, to fill the gap. On 30 December there was published from the Mission

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Press at Paihia a “Gazette Extraordinary No. 1” in which the following notification appeared:

Notice is hereby given that in consequence of the Editors of the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette having declined publishing any advertisements for Her Majesty's Government, all communications from this Government inserted in the Gazette Extraordinary are to be deemed official. Given under my hand at Government House, Russell, this 24th day of December in the year of our Lord 1840. William Hobson, Lieutenant-Governor by His Excellency's Command, Willoughby Shortland. That Gazette, which was distributed free, contained a notifica-

tion of the appointment of the New Zealand Land Claims Commission, a certain amount of news and public and private advertisements. The reason given for the establishment of this official publication did not explain why a struggling little paper had the temerity to reject government advertising. Whatever the reason was, the press at Port Nicholson, at Sydney, and the New Zealand Journal in London agreed that the Advertiser had virtually been suppressed by the Administration.

This New Zealand (Government) Gazette was published at irregular intervals at Kororareka till the seat of Government was removed from the restricted and vitiated atmosphere of Bay of Islands. Its successor officially was the New Zealand Government Gazette, an orthodox organ for the publication of government notices. As this Gazette (first published at Auckland on 7 July 1841) was not a newspaper, there is no need to follow its fortunes. The newspaper press of New Zealand has always recognised its indebtedness to the Government Gazette as a frequent source of information and news of the highest importance.

The Government had not been long away from Bay of Islands before a company was formed to protect the public interest against its “continuous misrule and indifference”. On 24 February 1842 it published at Kororareka the first issue of the Bay of Islands Observer, a shilling weekly which charged for advertising 35. 6 d. for 12 lines. The Observer was at first printed and published by James Belford “for the trustees of the Bay of Islands Printing Company”, whose rules prohibited any government officer from being a trustee. It claimed a maximum circulation of 150.

The Rev. Mr Quaife, who was again editor, proclaimed the paper “a free institution for the public good. Its freedom from party control, in order that its general political, commercial and

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moral utility may be maintained, is to be considered of far greater importance than the pecuniary emolument arising therefrom to the Company”. Battle was waged fiercely against the Administration and the Land Claims Bill, which were the major grievances of the colonists. In the Observer Quaife lashed out far more vehemently than in his previous editorship. The Government was now 100 miles away and burdened with perplexities within and without, but it was not indifferent to castigation and it quietly let Quaife understand that he was walking on thin ice.

Following the first apology for libel, in June 1842 the chairman of the company, W. Wilson, appears as publisher, followed by J. Norman. A new threat of a libel action, on behalf of an official who was afterwards found to have committed extensive defalcations of public funds, increased the peril to the Observer and shortly afterwards (on 27 October 1842) the paper closed down. According to the Wellington Spectator the Government Printer visited Bay of Islands to buy up the plant “to stop up the only channel of free discussion within the reach of the northern part of these colonies”.

Then for more than a year Bay of Islands was without a newspaper to champion its views. Yet another paper was to be attempted—the Bay of Islands Advocate, a weekly which first appeared on 4 November 1843 and was sold at Is. The printer was Benjamin Isaacs, of John Street, Kororareka. The motto Nil desperandum was appropriate to the last of a line of four newspapers at the Bay whose average life was only 10 months. The Advocate lasted three months. The centre of journalistic activity had moved to the new capital at Auckland, where already mushroom papers had risen and shrivelled in quick succession.

Turmoil at Waitemata: The First New Zealand Herald As we have seen, the settlement at Bay of Islands enjoyed the benefits of a public press for more than twelve months before the new capital of the Colony achieved that distinction. In September 1840 the Governor and chief officials moved to the Waitemata, and a month or two later the Queen signed the Order-in-Council erecting New Zealand into a Crown Colony, independent of New South Wales.

The Crown Colony came into existence in New Zealand on 3 May 1841 and on 10 July Auckland had its first newspaper, the New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette. The capital of the

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Auckland Newspaper and General Printing Co., amounting to £3,000, was raised partly in Sydney, and from New South Wales came a rather expensive printing plant suitable for commercial printing and newspaper production. The printer, John C. Moore, was one of the 20 shareholders listed in 1841 as qualified to vote for the election of five trustees. Half of the shareholders were officials, including some senior members of the Administration (e.g. Willoughby Shortland, Matthew Richmond, Felton Mathew, James Coates, George Cooper, John Johnson, William Mason and W. C. Symonds). The largest shareholder was John Israel Montefiore.

The prospectus stated that the paper would be conducted entirely upon independent principles. “It shall contain no misrepresentation, exaggeration or abuse, and care shall be taken to avoid any approach to offensive personalities.” In spite of the large number of officials who were shareholders and the fact that (inevitably) the bulk of the Government printing was entrusted to the company 1 the editor denied emphatically the imputation that the paper was established under the auspices of the Administration.

The New Zealand Herald was a weekly with a column of 151 inches and sold at Is, Its literary policy was controlled by a committee consisting of Major Richmond, Dr. Johnson, J. I. Montefiore and William Mason (afterwards mayor of Dunedin). The first editor, and perhaps the most influential of the five trustees, was Charles Terry, F.R.S., F.S.A. He was a profound scholar, a pioneer of the flax milling industry in New Zealand and “the first resident of Auckland”. By his calm and dispassionate temperament and high literary talent Terry was admirably suited to make the Herald the paper the Colony needed without yielding to the prejudices of the official faction of the trustees. The rapidly increasing population was demanding not only land but streets, wharves, public offices and houses. To attain them the Herald constantly prodded the Administration, and for the Maori it advocated liberal treatment and education and the dissemination of laws relating to the race. Thus was initiated the movement which provided, in the Maori Messenger (Te Karere o Niu Tireni), an invaluable organ in their own language.

1 In the first nine months of its existence the company received £1,298 14r. o d. for government printing.

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At the outset four of the five elected trustees were non-official: Major Richmond was the only government officer, but at the meeting on 4 August 1841 only one non-official was elected (J. I. Montefiore). The capital being exhausted, more was called up but not easily obtained. Terry resigned to visit England and William Corbett succeeded him as editor. At this juncture rumours of an opposition paper materialised (in the Auckland Chronicle).

Corbett, who had the temerity to criticise the land policy of the Administration, was summarily dismissed by the official majority of the trustees (which included the Land Claims Commissioner, Major Richmond). The trustees sought a new editor in New South Wales and offered a two years’ engagement to Dr Samuel McDonald Martin. This warm-spirited Scot was well acquainted with northern New Zealand. In 1840 he had organised the land claimants to seek the protection of Governor Hobson. Believing that through the Herald he could obtain a speedier settlement of their claims, he stipulated for full control of the paper, of which he took charge on 23 January 1842. When the Land Claims Bill was debated in the Legislative Council he criticised the complaisance of the non-official members. Suspecting that the writer of one of these articles was a member of the Council, the Government ordered the Registrar of the Supreme Court to demand the manuscript from the printer of the Herald. Moore weakly yielded, and Martin angrily challenged the Registrar to a duel. This being refused, the Registrar was “posted in a conspicuous place in Auckland as a coward and a blackguard”. He received a challenge also from E. B. Earp, who asserted his right to say and write what he chose. The trustees gave Moore instructions that he was not to print Martin’s copy without their authority. Martin thereupon disclaimed all responsibility for the policy of the paper, the Company was dissolved and the plant sold. All of this happened before the Herald had celebrated its first anniversary. The plant was bought by the Government for £1,425 and thus, we are told, the only medium for public criticism was destroyed.

Martin in May 1842 sued the trustees for salary for the balance of his contract. In spite of a counter action for libel brought by the Attorney-General on behalf of Lieutenant Willoughby Shortland (the Colonial Secretary), Martin won his claim and was awarded £641 13s. 4 d.

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Calumny and Assault

When the official party were already strengthening their hold on the Herald, a small but doughty antagonist stepped into the breach. On 8 November 1841 a bi-weekly, the Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist, was published by G. A. Eagar, who made it clear that he would undercut the Herald and even take away its hired employees. The editor was John Kitchen (who was said to have been employed in London on the United Services Gazette). Before long the two papers were at odds and John Moore, who had managed the Herald from the outset and had done most of the government printing, was fined for assaulting Kitchen. Though the Herald was embarrassed, the Chronicle was in no position to force the pace. By the end of the year it also was at loggerheads with the authorities and had to suspend publication.

This defection was made good in a few weeks by the appearance on 18 February 1842 of the Auckland Standard, printed by John Moore (on the Government press) for the sole proprietor, Abraham John Dombrain. It was supposed to support the Administration and W. Swainson, the Attorney-General, was credited with being the editor. Moore in April 1842 declared himself the sole proprietor and announced quaintly to his subscribers; “No resignations received until all arrears are paid”. The last issue of the Standard seems to have been on 25 August 1842.

The fourth of these early creations, the Auckland Times, began on 28 August 1842. Its path was to be no smoother than that of its predecessors who had to use the Government press. The publisher, Henry Falwasser, was an educated Englishman who had been a storekeeper in Sydney and whose sister had married the Rev. J. F. Churton. After a few issues he too ventured to criticise the Government. Lieutenant Willoughby Shortland, R.N.,having taken office as Administrator on the death of Governor Hobson (September 1842), at once intervened with a warning, and after the ninth issue he refused to allow the Government press to be used for the production of such an unfriendly sheet. Falwasser reacted with vigour, but he was put to desperate expedients to gather enough type to set the paper, which went to press obviously short of capital Cs and lower case Ks. The leading article, a newspaper’s symbol of sovereignty, was often set in several founts.

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Finally, having no printing machine, Falwasser carried on by pulling his copies on a mangle. In these arduous circumstances he produced 30 issues on coarse paper, presenting them to his readers gratis until such time as the publication should be more worthy of being paid for.

The Times changed its heading three times and its motto twice. The first motto was Veluti in speculum (as in a mirror), and the last, a somewhat sportive swan song, Tempera mutantur; nos non mutamur in illis (times change, but we do not change with them). After suspending publication from April to November 1843, Falwasser obtained better equipment, and in spite of all obstacles carried on with high courage for another two years, gradually improving the appearance of the paper. Altogether there were 42 issues.

In 1844 Falwasser was called out by the eccentric Lieutenant Philpotts, R.N., of H.M.S. Hazard, for comments on the conduct of operations against Hone Heke. In an exchange of shots near where the Northern Club is now, he is said to have received a bullet through his coat tail and his antagonist to have lost a button. Philpotts (a son of the Bishop of Exeter) was killed at Ruapekapeka. Governor Fitzßoy, whose administration the Times freely criticised, is said to have threatened Falwasser with deportation, but the doughty journalist lived to see the Governor depart for England. A week later (on 17 January 1846) the last number (159) of the Times appeared and within a week the gallant spirit of Falwasser passed away.

The Chronicle, which had suspended publication under duress in December 1841, reappeared almost a year later (November 1842). The Herald had been extinct for seven months. Its successor, the Standard, had come and gone, and the Auckland Times had already fallen foul of the government of the day. It was, in fact, this crisis which called the Chronicle back from the grave in an enlarged form, to engage in robust combat with its reptile contemporary. From the moment of its reappearance (on 12 November 1842) it bandied invective and sarcasm with the Times. Kitchen referred contempuously to “Our Lady of the Mangle”, and Henry Falwasser replied that Mr Kitchen’s name was where he came from. Society was distinctly in the rough. Aggrieved persons did not yet aspire to the fine art of horsewhipping, but they did occasionally call out an offending journalist. In 1843 R. C. Joplin (editor of the Chronicle) having slighted

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the four cantos of the poet A. Johnson, was challenged to fight. Even the Southern Cross, relatively restrained and dignified,

indulged in rustic pleasantries at the expense of its contemporaries. A few days after its advent it published this advertisement:

For sale or hire, in about a fortnight, a defunct Government engine used for stifling the fire of the people; rather shaky, having lately stuck fast in the swamp of Queen Street. Has been well greased lately, its head turning with marvellous facility in any direction. Apply at the Chronicle office. The Chronicle again suspended publication (from July to

October 1843); reappeared reduced from 5 to 4 columns and staggered on for a few months longer. The last issue of which there is a copy preserved is dated 10 October 1844, but Hocken suggests that the Chronicle lived into 1845. It was one of the best literary papers of the day. Kitchen went to Tasmania and contemplated in 1842 publishing a Maori Gazette. Another editor whose name is on record was Barrow.

The disreputable measures adopted by the Administration at Auckland to stifle criticism left the citizens without any means of expressing their opinions; it was made clear that no newspaper could thrive in which government officials had any influence or which they could starve into submission. The ideal organ of opinion must be independent of government and, if possible, of party considerations. It must, in short, be conducted as a business by journalists free to assert themselves on questions of public concern.

The Southern Cross

Strangely enough it fell to Dr Martin, who had entered New Zealand journalism as an avowed partisan, to take steps towards establishing the first Auckland newspaper which offered a reasonable hope of stability. Martin says in one of his books that no sooner had the Herald closed down than “the people of the settlement one and all” urged him to go to Sydney and bring back a new press and type. He happened to have the cash in hand —the £634 which had been awarded to him in his action against the trustees of the Herald. This enabled him to buy in Sydney a quantity of type and the press which produced the first issue of the Southern Cross, New Zealand Guardian and Auckland, Thames and Bay of Islands Advertiser. The actual proprietors of the paper were the mercantile firm of Brown and Campbell, whose principals, William Brown and Dr J. Logan Campbell,

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were already prominent in the public life of the province. Brown was the active promoter and manager, and Martin the first editor. Beginning on 22 April 1943 as a weekly (4 page demy folio) the Southern Cross was the first paper in Auckland province either to become a daily or to achieve reasonable stability. The subscription was 10s. a quarter and the advertising rate 3s. per inch.

The title of the paper was suggested by the name of a hotel in Adelaide at which Dr Campbell stayed in 1839. The motto Luceo non uro (I enlighten but do not burn) was a pacific gesture in the heated atmosphere of Auckland. At the moment when this new star appeared in the firmament there were already two papers in the city sparring angrily for a living. The Auckland Chronicle had been running five months after a prolonged suspension, and the Auckland Times had just retired for a few months. The office of the Southern Cross was in Shortland Street, and early printers were Philip Kunst, then G. E. Hunter, and later R. Skeen.

The Southern Cross went along reasonably well until 1845 when Heke’s war fell like a plague upon the business world of Auckland. Late in 1844 Brown paid a business visit to the United Kingdom in company with Martin, who proposed to pursue his campaign against the Administration by publishing his letter to the Secretary of State (19 September 1842) on “the effects of a bad government on a good country”. In England he saw through the press a considerable book about the Colony and with Brown petitioned the House of Commons. Martin did not return to New Zealand. He died in 1848 in British Guiana, where he was a resident magistrate.

During Brown’s absence, Campbell had an anxious time carrying on the Southern Cross. Finding that the paper was steadily losing ground, he suspended publication from April 1845 until 10 July 1847 (after the return of his partner). Brown had previously been a member of Fitzßoy’s Legislative Council and he was again summoned in 1847 by Governor Grey. In these circumstances he thought it imperative to revive the Southern Cross in order to counteract a new paper, the New Zealander, which had come into existence in 1845 and had burgeoned into a bi-weekly. For some time the Southern Cross laboured wearily in the wake of its capably-run rival. It had a succession of more or less competent editors, including Charles Terry, David Burn, Thomas S. Forsaith and Hugh Carleton (who took control in 1856). The powerful advocacy of the paper no doubt helped Brown forward in public life. In 1852 he was elected to the Legislative Council

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of New Ulster and in 1854 to Parliament (for Auckland city). Early in 1855 he was chosen as Superintendent of the Province. At this juncture urgent family affairs summoned him to Scotland, and he did not return.

In 1861 Brown engaged an experienced journalist, Robert James Creighton (1835-93) to take control of the paper. Carleton having resigned, James McCabe, the son of an Irish doctor, became editor, and when he died a year later Creighton became editor and manager. On the same day (20 May 1862) the Southern Cross became the first daily paper in the Province. Soon Creighton was ostensibly the sole proprietor.

The Southern Cross under Martin was the champion of the land claimants and a trenchant critic of all governments. Under Carleton, it supported landed interests and opposed vigorously the administration of Sir George Grey. This policy was not popular with the people of the Province. Brown is said to have lost £lO,OOO in the paper up to 1862. Later he secured the services of Charles Williamson, who had associated with him two junior partners in the firm of Brown and Campbell (James McKelvie and Wardrop). During the Maori Wars Creighton spent much time in the field as a war correspondent. In 1865 he was rather unexpectedly elected to Parliament and, as this interfered with his editorship, Robert Henry Eyton was appointed editor.

At this point Julius Vogel intervened. Having established the Otago Daily Times in 1861, he was convinced of the possibilities of a friendly press in support of an able politician. After glancing at press speculations in Wellington, he came north at an auspicious moment. Politics had almost weaned Creighton from journalism and the Southern Cross was by no means flourishing. Vogel acquired a controlling interest for £4,600. Forming a company which took over the property at £12,000, he assumed control of both sides of the business, with Charles Williamson 2 as manager.

Vogel had just effected these transactions when the end of the war (1869) brought Sir William Fox into office as Premier. Vogel became Colonial Treasurer and Postmaster-General and forthwith took up his residence in Wellington (where again he acquired

2 C. Williamson (1837-1928) was engaged in England at the same time as Creighton and had filled the positions of reader, compositor and reporter. He also distinguished himself as a war correspondent in the Waikato, and represented the Southern Cross in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

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newspaper interests). The Southern Cross was entrusted to Williamson as manager and sub-editor and when eventually the paper was taken over by a company he became manager, with Warwick Weston as managing director. D. M. Luckie was the last editor.

The Company was in very low water financially—it had lost £B,OOO in three years—when the Improvement Commissioners decided to run a street through the property to Shortland Street. Faced by large expenditure for a new building and burdened by mortgages, the directors were also at loggerheads on the policy of the paper. The only way they could see out of their dilemma was to sell out. Providentially a political difference between the owners of the Thames Advertiser brought a purchaser into the field. Alfred George Horton 3 , who became the owner of the Southern Cross in 1876, soon entered into partnership with the Wilson brothers (owners of the New Zealand Herald) and at the end of the year the Southern Cross was incorporated in the Herald and the Weekly Herald was amalgamated with the Weekly News. At the time of the merger the Southern Cross is said to have had a circulation of 2,000 and to employ 70 hands. In its swan song it plaintively confessed: “We regard provincialism as dead”. In the same year Vogel’s company was wound up.

As long ago as 28 November 1863 the Southern Cross established a weekly called the Weekly News: a journal of Commerce, Agriculture, Politics, Literature, Science and Art (of which William Hutchison was once editor). After the amalgamation the title was the Weekly News and Weekly Herald and from 1877 simply the Auckland Weekly News (q.v.).

The New Zealander

This paper, established during the depression caused by Hone Heke’s war, was for many years the principal competitor of the Southern Cross. It originated in the feeling that the other paper (the Auckland Times in this case) was preoccupied with the land claimants and did not pay sufficient attention to the average settler. It was too critical of everything that the Government

3 A. G. Horton (1842-1903) was born at Hull, gained his first experience in journalism on the Daily Express there, and came to New Zealand in 1861. Three years later he established the Timaru Herald.

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might do. A further purpose of John Williamson 4 in establishing the New Zealander was to champion the rights of the Maori, and that helped him in acquiring a printing plant from the Rev. H. H. Lawry, head of the Wesleyan mission in New Zealand.

The first home of the New Zealander, which made its debut as a 6 d. weekly on 7 June 1845, was in Thompson’s Lane, Shortland Crescent. Shortly after the new paper appeared the Auckland Times closed down, and Williamson had the field to himself till 1847, when the Southern Cross was revived. To this challenge he responded by making his paper bi-weekly, and on 1 January 1848 (the day on which Sir George Grey took office as GovernorGeneral under the charter of 1846) he took into partnership William Chisholm Wilson, a progressive printer and business man who came to Auckland in 1841 to work on the government press. To provide light for the New Zealander Wilson established one of the first gasworks in the Colony. The firm in 1856 imported a Caxton printing machine by Myers of Southampton, which was worked at first by a man turning a flywheel and later by steam power. A news-folding machine was also installed, and during the partnership a lithographic plant was established (mainly to produce mining plans).

The partners steadily increased the influence of the paper, which in 1859 was the leading journal in the Colony. In 1863 it became a daily. In that year Williamson’s political activity led to a dissolution of the partnership. Like Bishop Selwyn, Sir William Martin and William Swainson he was a strong philoMaori and opposed in principle to carrying on the war. Wilson, on the other hand, believed it was for the good of the Maori that the Government should assert its supremacy as early as possible. After the dissolution Williamson carried on as sole proprietor, with George Martin Main (1839-1902) as printer and publisher. The paper continued to suffer rebuffs on account of the tone of some of its war correspondence and comments on the conduct of the operations. On 6 June 1864 fifty men from H.M.S. Esk marched upon the office to demand an apology for a correspondent’s suggestion that Captain Hamilton was killed at Gate Pa

4 J. Williamson (1815-75) served his apprenticeship in Northern Ireland, and came to New Zealand from Sydney in 1841 under engagement to the Auckland Printing Co. He was a member of the Auckland Provincial Council for 22 years, superintendent of the Province (1856-62, 1867-69, and 1873-75) and a member of Parliament (1855-75).

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owing to the desertion of his men. Equipped with a heavy hawser they threatened to pull down the office. Arriving late on the scene, Williamson declined to apologise but placated the angry seamen by offering to publish their statement in rebuttal. Williamson indignantly protested to the Government for the complacency with which this affront to the press was regarded by the naval authorities.

The New Zealander was clearly losing its influence in 1864, when Williamson transferred it to a group of citizens, including W. H. J. Seffern and Dr Robert Kidd (afterwards joined by Charles Featherston Mitchell). Its pro-native policy was moderated, but it called on the Imperial Government to do its duty to the Maori by civilising them. The business was removed to new premises in Shortland Street and the New Zealander became (on 3 April 1865) the first penny morning paper in the Colony. The company started the Weekly Argus (which lived just the year). When Williamson resumed control the daily was losing ground so fast that he was compelled to revert to bi-weekly publication and even for a few weeks to suspend publication. Revived in January 1866 as a bi-weekly, the New Zealander ran till May, when its career was terminated by the burning of the office.

Though it lasted only 20 years the New Zealander was one of the best and most influential papers in the Colony. Amongst its distinguished contributors were Charles Terry, Daniel Pollen, Dr. John B. Bennett, George Smallfield (later of the Southland News), T. S. Forsaith and Sir John Gorst. The last manager was Gilbert Carson (later of the Wanganui Chronicle).

Some Minor Foundations

In 1864, when Williamson’s hands were partially free of the New Zealander, he published the Onehunga Warden, with James Hosking as editor and manager. It ceased in 1865. Mitchell and Seffern, after returning the moribund New Zealander to its founder, ran a weekly, the Penny Journal, from May 1866 to June 1867.

Amongst the less successful creations of the fifties and sixties was an offshoot of the New Zealander, the Auckland Weekly Register and Commercial and Shipping Gazette. First published on 7 February 1857, it was edited by David Burn (1805-75), who after some years as a naval officer had been engaged in journalism in Tasmania. The printer was Alfred Henry Burton, later a well-known photographer in Dunedin. The Register file

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in the General Assembly Library is complete to 27 January 1862.

There were already five papers publishing in the city when the Auckland Independent came on the scene (3 October 1859), a 3 d. bi-weekly printed by John Joseph Moore. Its short life of three months was enlivened by bitter encounters with the New Zealander and the Examiner.

The Aucklander, a vigorous bi-weekly, was established on 2 May 1861 by James Busby (who was British Resident at Bay of Islands from 1833) to advocate his claims to land in the north. He took as the motto of his crusade “Not party but truth.” James Hosking (father of the Hon. Sir John Hosking) was his printer and publisher. In his farewell article Busby announced cryptically that his mission was ended—not fulfilled.

We have given up hope of rousing our fellow colonists to a sense of their duty and of their danger. We shall, however, take care that this paper shall reach the hands of some leading statesmen in England with whom the present state of New Zealand may be considered as a national question of sufficient magnitude to be worthy of their attention.

The Aucklander’s last issue was on 11 April 1863 (no. 195). A week later appeared the first number of a weekly entitled the Auckland Weekly News and Farmers Gazette, produced by the same printer and adopting 196 as its serial number. It was obviously the direct successor to the Aucklander. The printer explained, however, that the old title bore no relation to the character of the new paper, and hence he had adopted “a more useful name”. This Auckland Weekly had quite a short life; a better-known publication with that title appeared in November 1863 as a new and independent paper.

Auckland journalism early distinguished itself by its devotion to particular schools of thought. In 1855 there was a free-thought newspaper, John Richardson’s Trumpeter. In that year, too, there arrived in New Zealand, with Foley’s theatrical company, a tragedian and lecturer named Charles Southwell (1814-60) who had suffered imprisonment in England for alleged blasphemy in his free-thought paper the Oracle of Reason. From lecturing he passed into New Zealand journalism and, with Richardson and others, brought out a newspaper, the Weekly Examiner (11 December 1856). Under Southwell, as editor, this paper was always bright but often controversial and provocative. In whole columns of “answers to correspondents” he expressed his views

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on public affairs and voiced the free thought of the day. The Examiner was suspended for a few months in 1860, and ceased in March 1861, a few weeks before Southwell’s death. Amongst its contributors were Bernard Reynolds, William Griffin (a leading advocate of the eight-hour day), Hugh Carleton and Captain William Powditch.

The Blue Jacket Examiner, published from the same office on 26 March 1860, reprinted papers (nos. 1 to 13) published on the ship Blue Jacket during her voyage from England.

The New Zealand Herald: The First Permanent Foundation The year 1863 was noteworthy for the founding of another New Zealand Herald, which has been a striking example of a newspaper founded as a business rather than as a political organ. The founder, William Chisholm Wilson 5 , was a partner in the New Zealander, in which his sons received their training. He withdrew from that partnership in 1863 to start a paper which would be more in sympathy with public opinion. The family took a temporary office in Queen Street and there on 13 November 1863 appeared the first issue of the New Zealand Herald. A few months later the business was moved to a new building in Wyndham Street. The policy of the paper was declared by the editor to be measures, not men; they would prosecute the war with unrelaxing vigour and would defend Auckland against the sort of spoliation which was threatened in the movement to shift the capital to Wellington.

The Southern Cross was still vigorous enough to be a serious competitor. There was also in 1868 the disturbing spectre of Julius Vogel acquiring a dominant holding in the Cross—no favourable augury for the prosperity of the Herald, especially as Wilson was no longer a young man. He had now, however, good support from his sons (William Scott and Joseph Liston Wilson). The first editor, David Burn, had retired and the brunt of the new situation fell upon Frederick John von Sturmer, an Englishman who had studied for the Church and spent several years in Victoria. The turning point in the Herald’s history came in 1876, when Alfred G. Horton sold his share in the Thames Advertiser and bought the ailing Southern Cross. A few weeks

S W. C. Wilson (1810-76), born at Nigg, Ross-shire, learned his trade in Edinburgh and emigrated to Tasmania (1833). He came to New Zealand eight years later under engagement to the Auckland Printing Company and worked on the first New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette.

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later (on 5 July 1876) Wilson died, leaving the Herald soundly established but involved in costly competition with a rival which might still become powerful. Negotiations were opened for an amalgamation of the two properties, with the result that William S. Wilson, Joseph L. Wilson and Alfred G. Horton entered into partnership as owners of four papers, a daily and a weekly published from each office. On 1 January 1877 the Southern Cross was incorporated in the New Zealand Herald and the two weeklies were merged in one. The new company thus had a clear field for its morning daily and its weekly edition.

Commenting on the negotiations, the Otago Daily Times (on 30 December 1876) said that forty leading advertisers in Auckland had signed a bond not to advertise in any morning paper but the Herald “as they have long complained of the heavy charges for advertising in two papers”. The Herald reaffirmed the principles of independence and freedom of opinion upon which it was founded:

The public look to newspapers to watch and criticise those who are placed in political office. This is one of the safeguards —perhaps the most important of all —against maladministration in a constitutional government, and the public expect that a newspaper shall be ever ready to speak frankly and fearlessly respecting the doings of those in power. We shall be in a position to do this. No influence can be brought to bear upon us from outside; we are as free to form our own conclusions and to express our own thoughts as any newspaper can possibly be. We shall be ever mindful that our duty is to the people and not to any man, or set of men.

D. M. Luckie, who had been editor of the Southern Cross, was leader writer of the Herald till 1878. After the resignation of von Sturmer, the Herald was edited for a while by R. J. Creighton and James Snyder Browne pending the appointment in 1875 of William Berry (1839-1903) who had been brought up on the Scotsman in Edinburgh and came to New Zealand in 1864 under engagement to the Southern Cross. In 1868 he joined the Thames Advertiser (under Wilkinson and Horton). The influence of Berry for the next 28 years was very marked and the character of the paper when he died was very high indeed. George McCullagh Reed was for some years leader writer and contributed a column under the noms de plume of “Calamo Currente” and “Colonus”.

Berry’s successor as editor was William Sholto Douglas, who

Wm Berry (1839-1903)

Wm. Wilkinson (1838-1921

G. M. Reed (1832-98)

H. F. Carleton ( IXIO-90)

G. W. Woon ( 1831-95)

G. Edgeciimbe (1845-1930)

C. Brown ( 1820-1901 )

H. Weston ( 1838-1920)

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in 1878-81 was editor of the Leeds Daily News. On his death in 1913 the chair was filled by William Lane 8 , one of the most interesting figures in Australian and New Zealand journalism. He was succeeded by Robert Mundie Hacket, who joined the Herald as chief reporter in 1898. (Sir) Leslie K. Munro was editor from 1942 to 1951, when he was succeeded by Harold G. Bell (son of Robert Bell q.v.) who had been associate editor since 1942.

In 1903 there were changes in the control of the Herald. Within 12 months death removed the three partners (W. S. Wilson, J. L. Wilson and A. G. Horton) and the editor, W. Berry. The management then devolved upon Henry Horton, B.A. (1870-1943, son of A. G. Horton) and W. R. Wilson (son of W. S. Wilson). With them were associated at different times other sons of the three original partners. In 1925 the partnership was formed into a company, Wilson and Horton Ltd., with a capital of £650,000, the directors being Henry Horton, William R. Wilson, Robert C. Horton, Edwin Horton, Frederick W. Wilson, Arthur L. Wilson, John Martyn Wilson and Joseph M. Wilson. The position of manager, created in 1914, was filled by George Charles Codlin till 1933, and after that by J. M. Hardcastle till his retirement (1957). In 1935, on the occasion of the jubilee of King George V, Henry Horton was knighted as a compliment to the profession in which he had spent 43 years. Besides being managing director of the Herald Company he was a director and chairman of the Press Association and a director of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association. Since 1948 Ronald Duncan Horton, B.A. (a son of Sir Henry Horton) has been chairman and managing director.

In essential characteristics, general appearance and systematic make-up, the Herald of today differs little from that of 50 or 60 years ago. It has consistently led in technical improvements and was the first paper in New Zealand to adopt classification of wanted advertisements (1909), an innovation which was immediately copied by others. The Herald obtained two of the

6 W. Lane (1861-1917), born in Bristol, wrote for English and Canadian papers before coming to Australia about 1881. In Queensland he edited the Boomerang and the Worker. He took a prominent part in the Australian Labour movement, organised and led the New Australia colony in Paraguay (1893) and on returning came to New Zealand. In 1900 he became leader-writer on the Herald and under the nom de plume "Tohunga" wrote a noteworthy column. A strong Imperialist, he promoted the National Defence League.

N 7

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earliest web printing machines in New Zealand. The first rotary press in the Colony was installed in 1883, and another web machine was erected in 1887. Later additions to the plant included a Hoe octuple press of four-unit balcony type, also the first of its kind in New Zealand. Linotypes were introduced in 1898.

The Herald premises in Wyndham Street were extended in 1893 to a new frontage in Queen Street. Developments since then include a paper store erected in Mills Lane in 1929 with a floor space of 42,000 square feet.

A Lusty Survival

The Auckland Weekly News is the successor of two weekly papers, one of which was established by the Southern Cross Company on 28 November 1863 as the Weekly News. This was preceded by a few months (18 April) by the Auckland Weekly News and Farmers Gazette, which grew out of the ashes of the Aucklander. The two were amalgamated to produce an illustrated paper entitled the Weekly News, the proprietors of which till 1866 were R. J. Creighton and Alfred Scales. In 1866 Scales withdrew and Charles Williamson was printer until 1873, when the paper was acquired by the Daily Southern Cross and Weekly News Co. Ltd. Meanwhile in 1866 the proprietors of the New Zealand Herald had also established a Weekly Herald, Onehunga and Otahuhu Courier and General Country Advertiser. When the two weeklies merged in 1876 the title for the time being was Weekly News and Weekly Herald. In 1877 it was simplified to Auckland Weekly News, which it remained till 1934 when once more the old title Weekly News was resumed. Illustrations were introduced in 1898. In 1913 the proprietors acquired from the Brett Publishing Co. and incorporated the New Zealand Graphic.

It is not clear who was the first editor of the Auckland Weekly News. William Hutchison is said to have been editor of the Southern Cross weekly in 1866 and a Scots journalist, William Will, who had been for some years subeditor of the Southern Cross, continued in that capacity on the Herald after the amalgamation and in addition edited the Weekly till his retirement in 1904. His successors were Harold King (1904), R. M. Hacket (1905-17), Ernest D’Esterre (1918) and H. I. Macpherson since 1934.

The persistence of backblocks conditions over a wide area enabled the Weekly News to survive lustily into the second decade

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of the century, although so many of its kind closed down. In recent years the paper was transformed to meet changing conditions, and today the Weekly News is unique—the sole survivor of a type of publication which for 70 years was a feature of New Zealand journalism.

The Auckland Star: A Successful Establishment

According to a statement made in the jubilee number of the Auckland Star, that venerable Liberal daily originated in the mind of William Tyrone Ferrar, a young man on the commercial staff of another paper in Auckland. The existing evening newspaper (the Evening News) seemed to him to propagate rather narrow political views, and when its proprietor brought out a morning edition Ferrar decided that this was his moment. He published an advertisement inviting collaborators.

The Rev. George McCullagh Reed 7 had arrived in Auckland in 1869 with an open mind as to his future occupation. He and Ferrar came to an understanding without difficulty. Neither knew much about practical journalism, so they enlisted the assistance of Charles Williamson (then manager of the Southern Cross).

The Evening Star, which first appeared on 8 January 1870, started off in a promising manner. Though the competition of the Evening News was not strong, Ferrar and Reed were soon conscious of the need for more capital and an experienced collaborator. Hearing that Henry Brett 8 was negotiating for the Evening News, they made a proposal to him with the result that in March 1870 he purchased a third interest in the Star. The printing was transferred from the Southern Cross Office to that of the New Zealand Herald (where Brett retained his post for

7 G. M. Reed (1832-98), graduated B.A. at Queen’s College, Belfast and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. Coming to Melbourne in 1858 he was moderator of the united Presbyterain churches of Victoria, and resigned his charge at Ipswich to enter Parliament (1866-67). In New Zealand he was a member of the Auckland Provincial Council and assisted Sir George Grey to enter into politics. After three years as immigration agent in North Ireland he went to London as correspondent of the New Zealand Herald.

8 Sir Henry Brett (1842-1927) learned his trade on his uncle’s paper, the St. Leonards Gazette, and came to New Zealand with the Albertland settlers in 1862. He was mayor of Auckland (1878) and served on many local and educational bodies. He was a government commissioner for several exhibitions.

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some time). In 1871 Ferrar sold out and went to New South Wales, and Reed and Brett were now the owners. Starting as a 4-page paper the Star was so well patronised by advertisers that it had seldom more than seven columns of news. By 1879 it had increased its size several times and the Saturday supplement, inaugurated in 1875, had become popular.

Unlike its contemporaries, the Star began life without a motto over the leader. Shortly afterwards it adopted the simple legend “Press Onward” and in 1871 a slight adaptation of the verse from G. Linnaeus Banks:

For the cause that lacks assistance,

For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance

And the good that we can do.

This legend survived till 1941, when shortage of newsprint dictated the saving of even this small space.

Rivalry ran high between the two evening papers until the end of 1871, when the Evening News and its morning edition were purchased by Reed and Brett and the News was formally incorporated in the Star. The proprietors then took premises in Wyndham Street and issued the paper from their own press. The circulation of the Star in 1872 was 2,700 copies.

The Brett and Leys Regime

Shortly afterwards Thomson Wilson Leys 9 , subeditor of the Southern Cross, joined the Star, taking over the direction of news services. Thereafter the names of Henry Brett and T. W. Leys are indissolubly associated with the success of the Star. An ardent Liberal in politics, Leys exercised a strong influence in New Zealand affairs.

Before the days of the telegraph, to make sure of getting English exchanges at the earliest possible moment, the Star kept speciallybuilt boats to board ships at the entrance of the harbour. The first news by telegraph come to the Star from Thames in July 1870. By 1871 the line from Wellington had reached Tauranga, whence until April 1872 the final gap was covered by steamer. Leys presided over the meeting at Wellington in 1878 at which the Press Agency (forerunner of the Press Association) was formed,

9 T. W. Leys (1850-1924), born in Nottingham, came to New Zealand in 1863 and was apprenticed to the Southern Cross. With his brother, William Leys, he founded and endowed the Leys Institute. He was chairman of Auckland University College Council, 11.d., McGill Univ. Canada.

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and later visited Sydney to arrange a cable service. Brett performed a similar duty for the United Press Association in 1883.

A specialty of the Star’s news service was the use of carrier pigeons to operate over a radius of 50 miles. With twelve Antwerp pigeons from Tasmania, the service was inaugurated in 1873 during a contest for the superintendency. As the poll closed at 4 o’clock in the afternoon the Star was able to make a complete scoop of the result. Another outstanding success was in 1875 when Sir George Grey spoke at Thames. The Star and the Thames Advertiser pooled their report, which filled a full page of the Advertiser. This was photographed and sent to Auckland by pigeon post. The photographs were then deciphered through a strong magnifying glass, rewritten and handed to the compositors. On several occasions pigeons were placed aboard the mail steamer Hero running between Sydney and Auckland, and released when near the New Zealand coast with early news for the Star. Until the nineties pigeons were used to carry reports of race meetings. The Star’s most sensational use of the aeroplane for news-carrying was at the time of the Napier earthquake in 1931.

In 1874-75 the Star had short but sharp opposition from the Echo, which it absorbed in 1875. Early in 1876 Reed and Fenwick bought the Otago Guardian and Reed sold his Auckland interests for £4,000 to Henry Brett, who thus became sole owner of the Star and part owner of the Coromandel Mail and other papers. Leys was now editor of the Star.

The business side of the Star and its allied publications, which was controlled by Brett, showed uninterrupted progress. In 1875 the Star had a circulation of 4,700. In 1884 it had reached 10,000 and by 1914 it had passed 35,000. The most determined opposition came from Reed’s Evening Bell, but it succumbed in 1888 after a three years’ struggle. Competitions for cash prizes figured in the Star during this rivalry.

In 1889 Leys became a partner, and in 1900 the Brett Printing and Publishing Company was registered as publishers of the Star, the Graphic, the New Zealand Farmer and other publications. Twenty years later a public issue of £lOO,OOO was made in shares and stock, the proprietors retaining £150,000 of the total capital of £250,000. The directors in 1920 were H. Brett, E. Anderson, T. W. Leys, T. H. Macky, A. S. Bankart, G. H. Wilson and J. H. Upton. Brett and T. W. Leys remained managing directors until they died (in 1927 and 1924 respectively). (Sir) W. Cecil Leys (1877-1950) after serving in the first war, was appointed editor,

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to become managing director in 1926 and chairman and managing editor in 1927. The vigour of his administration was put to an early test during the three years’ competition with the Sun (1927-30). In 1931 he, too, was knighted. Sir Cecil had joined the reporting staff in 1895, represented a group of New Zealand newspapers in London, and in 1903 was appointed assistant editor of the Star. Shortly before his death his son, T. Hilton Leys, was appointed managing director. Chairmen succeeding Sir Cecil Leys were Edward Anderson, Sir William Goodfellow and (since 1953) Eric Rhodes.

In 1929 an important development occurred when New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. was formed, following the purchase of the Lyttelton Times and the Christchurch Star. The directorate of the company consisted of W. Cecil Leys, E. Anderson, A. S. Bankart, C. H. Hewlett, and W. Wood.

The Star’s first home was a small building in Wyndham Street later occupied by the Observer. In 1884 a move was made to a building with frontages on Shortland Street and Fort Street. In 1915 a ferro-concrete building of eight storeys was opened in Fort Street. In 1927 a six-storey building was completed fronting Shortland Street. In 1954-56, with substantial interior addition, provision was made for extension to the Shortland Street frontage when the demolition of old business premises became practicable. The lower floors of this building house the most modem of the Star’s rotary presses.

The Star was the first paper in New Zealand to abandon handsetting for machines. One at least of the five linotypes which it acquired in 1897 was still working at the Seddon Technical College half a century later. Since 1926 the paper has been fully illustrated. In 1955 the Star pioneered the Australian and New Zealand field with the introduction of teletypesetters (keyboard tape perforators). Three of these machines, at which no operator sits, were added to the considerable battery.

The Star has a substantial provident fund for its employees, lunch and recreation rooms, and sports and social club.

The New Zealand Graphic, which Henry Brett founded in 1890 (as the New Zealand Graphic, Ladies Journal and Youths Companion), was a slight departure from the special type of weekly which had been developed in New Zealand. It was rather a separate magazine than a news budget, and was illustrated from the outset. In 1907 the Graphic acquired the goodwill of the

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New Zealand Mail (Wellington) and changed its title to Weekly Graphic and New Zealand Mail. In 1913 it was sold to Wilson and Horton Ltd., and incorporated in the Auckland Weekly News.

The New Zealand Farmers Weekly, founded by Henry Brett in 1880 as a 32-page monthly, became in 1901 the New Zealand Farmer and since 1937 was published weekly, and more recently fortnightly.

A popular production, the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, which was founded by a small company in 1932, was taken over by New Zealand Newspapers in the following year. It has now a circulation exceeding 100,000.

Rivals of the Star

The first determined opposition which the Auckland Star had to face was that of the Echo, started on 9 November 1874 avowedly to combat the Star’s trenchant criticism of certain organisations then dominating the city. The promoter was James S. Macfarlane, but the real founder, editor and manager was George Jones (1844-1920), who two years earlier had established the Waikato Times at Ngaruawahia.

The Echo showed considerable enterprise, and its leaders, written mainly by Hugh Hart Lusk, hit the mark with emphasis, but it failed to make headway against the Star and ceased on its first anniversary. Jones remarked in his farewell: “As the very evils we were called into existence to put down became removed the burden on the public of supporting a second evening journal ceased to appear necessary”. The Echo is said to have lost £3,000 before it was bought by Reed and Brett and incorporated in the Star.

The narrative of the Star’s competitors discloses some interesting ramifications. One of these is the Free Lance, whose origin was bound up in the fortunes of several other papers. John Dickson Wickham 10 , who established it on 11 January 1879, had intended to call it the Free Press, but was cheated by a prior registration. Writing under the nom de plume “Redcap”, Wickham freely criticised the powerful mining interests in Auckland. He had not got well established when a weekly of similar character was

10 J. D. Wickham (1837-1919), born in Edinburgh and educated in London, came to New Zealand in 1855. He was a sharebroker at Thames before entering journalism. In later years he contributed to the Auckland Weekly News under the nom de plume “A Tramp Esq.”

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brought out by Alfred Stewart Rathbone, an English journalist who had been running the Bay of Plenty Times. The New Zealand Observer started life on 18 September 1880 as an illustrated paper. Rathbone ran it personally for a year or two and then sold it to C. Williamson, publisher of the Southern Cross. An artist, William Sylvester Pulford, became business manager and Charles O. Montrose was editor.

In 1883 Williamson sold the Observer to the Rev. David Bruce (a prominent figure in the Presbyterian Church), and William Wilkinson (formerly proprietor of the Thames Advertiser). Bruce was anxious to start an evening paper in opposition to the Star and Wilkinson soon sold his interest to the promoters. From this deal originated the publication (on 3 July 1884) of the Evening Telephone, a halfpenny daily. It was soon evident that the new paper would be a drag on the Observer and that fresh capital would have to be obtained. In 1885 Wickham amalgamated his Free Lance with the Observer and Telephone combination. The promoters of the paper which it was hoped would make effective opposition to the Star included Bruce and Edwin Mitchelson, and the manager was William McCullough, from the Thames Star.

The Telephone disappeared, and in its place came (on 12 May 1885) the Evening Bell. To encourage circulation the Bell announced the distribution of £5O in prizes. In 1886 G. M. Reed was appointed editor. He entered upon his task with ability and high courage, but in two years was compelled to acknowledge defeat. “The people of Auckland”, he wrote (on 12 May 1888), “have been educated to expect in their newspaper a larger and more costly literary production than is given in any other part of New Zealand”. The promoters are said to have spent £lO,OOO in the three years. When he bought the property, Brett discovered that the Bell’s circulation never exceeded 500. (Reed afterwards edited the Melbourne Standard, a costly effort to oust the Herald, by which in due course it was absorbed.)

Having incorporated the Bell, Brett sold the Observer in 1889 to his cousin Henry John Baulf and John Liddell Kelly, who conducted it with more vigour than discretion until 1892 when they suffered damages in a libel suit. Kelly retired and the paper (then known as the New Zealand Observer and Free Lance) came into the hands of W. J. Geddis, J. M. Geddis and William

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Blomfield 11 . W. J. Geddis was editor and a little later George H. Dixon 12 joined the firm as manager. Assisted by Brett, the new owners acquired plant and a building of their own in Wyndham Street. Not only did they put the Observer on a satisfactory footing, but in 1895 they started the Spectator at Christchurch and in 1900 the New Zealand Free Lance at Wellington. In 1900 they divided the title between the Observer (in Auckland) and the Free Lance (Wellington). In 1910 the Geddis brothers retired from the Observer, which became the property of Blomfield and Dixon. J. M. Geddis became sole proprietor of the Free Lance.

In 1931 a new company was formed (Geddis and Blomfield), with T. M. Geddis as managing director. On Blomfield’s death in 1938 Robert B. Bell (a well known Canterbury journalist) acquired a controlling interest as managing director and in 1941 he became editor, T. M. Geddis being chairman of the company and Eric A. Blomfield secretary. The Observer ceased publication on 10 November 1954.

Successive editors of the Observer were C. A. Wilkins (formerly editor of the Lyttelton Times), J. L. Kelly, W. J. Geddis, James Kemp, Claude L. Jewell, Frank H. Burbush, F. H. Bodle and J. G. McLean.

Disappointed Optimists

At the moment when the Thames goldfield was opened up, Auckland welcomed, not too warmly, the Evening News, a daily which first appeared on 9 July 1867. Conceived by James Allen, junior, an employee of the Southern Cross, it had made some headway when he lost his life by drowning. The News was carried on by T. S. Coppock until the promoter’s father, James Allen, came from Melbourne to take charge. Vigorously opposing the politics of Vogel and the Southern Cross, he established in 1868 a Weekly Express, and a monthly summary called the News Letter. In 1871 a new management brought out a morning daily, the Morning News, but it failed to see the year out. The proprietors of the Auckland Star bought both papers at auction for £430 and

11 W. Blomfield (1866-1938) began life as an artist on the New Zealand Herald.

12 G. H. Dixon (1860-1940) was born in Yorkshire, came to Auckland in 1879 and qualified as an accountant. He was manager of the N.Z. Free Lance and the N.Z. Times (1913) before rejoining the Observer. He managed the New Zealand Rugby team in England in 1905.

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absorbed them. The Express and the News Letter had probably disappeared earlier.

The Auckland Free Press, established on 11 May 1868 by R. J. Creighton as a penny daily newspaper, was the enterprise of employees of the Southern Cross, which had been taken over by a company. William Berry was helping. The Free Press, doomed by the slump, lasted only five weeks.

Ten years later, on 11 January 1879, another Free Press, a weekly, was published by John Brame. For nine or ten years it dealt out chastisement with a liberal hand. Yet another Auckland Free Press was registered in 1903 by William Richardson 13 , who was its editor.

During an election in 1869 for the Superintendency of Auckland, John Williamson had good newspaper support, but his opponent, Thomas Bannatyne Gillies, had none. His supporters therefore established the Auckland Daily News which appeared from 4 November 1869 to 9 December. It was successful enough, one supposes, since Gillies won this hottest of all provincial contests by a bare 50 votes.

About the same time, encouraged by the prospect on the goldfields, a string of papers was promoted by William Shaw, who had had some experience in the South Island. In December 1868 he started at Thames the Times and Thames Miners Advocate and on 4 December 1869 he published in Auckland the Auckland and Thames Leader, which was doomed to a short life. In January 1870 Shaw published a daily, the Morning Advertiser, edited by John Moore Perrier. Embarrassed by so many wide ventures, he came to grief in a few months. The Auckland and Thames Leader closed down, and the Morning Advertiser was continued into the middle of 1870 by T. S. Coppock, who was also publishing News of the Day. He was later drowned in Australia.

Sun Enterprise in Auckland: Modern Type Paper Fails The last noteworthy venture in Auckland daily journalism was the establishment in 1927 of the Sun, which was a counterpart of the daily founded in Christchurch in 1914 and then flourishing.

Having decided to found a similar paper in Auckland, the

13 W. Richardson (1844-1918) was born in New South Wales and came to New Zealand in 1864 as a prohibition lecturer. He contested at least one seat at every general election but without success.

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proprietors of the Christchurch Sun in 1926 floated a new company, Sun Newspapers Ltd., with a capital of £300,000, to acquire the property of the Canterbury Publishing Company (for £lOO,OOO in shares) and to publish the Sun in Auckland. The promoter, E. C. Huie, took up residence in Auckland and on 23 March 1927 published the first number of the new paper. Like its predecessor in Christchurch, it represented an advanced type of journalism for New Zealand, though still conservative compared with the Daily Mail and the Daily Express in London. The Sun was efficiently conducted but with the onset of the great depression felt the want of advertising support. Towards the end of 1930 the business and assets were acquired by New Zealand Newspapers Ltd., and the Sun was on 20 September 1930 incorporated in the Star.

Percy Crisp, who was editor throughout, was afterwards on the Daily Express in London, where he died in 1953.

Auckland Miscellany

Minor publications in the city of Auckland display a unique disposition for crusading. Quite early there were rationalist publications, including Charles Southwell’s Auckland Examiner (1856-60), Ivo Evison’s Rationalist (1866-67) and E. Withy’s Justice (1890).

The cause of temperance had many advocates, including notably the Temperance Telegraph (1854-55), the Templars’ Standard (1874), the Weekly Templar (1876), the Temperance Reformer (1882), A Bit o’ Blue (1885), the Prohibitionist and Temperance Advocate (1891) and the Leader, a weekly with influential support which lasted from 1885 to 1892.

The first registered organs of the working class were J. N. Young’s New Zealand Labour (1879) and G. Frost’s Labour Advocate (1880). Richard A. A. Sherrin in 1884 edited a weekly called Labour, which was succeeded in the same year by the Watchman. This was edited by Harry W. Farnall, and W. H. Metcalfe and W. H. Romayne were also interested. In 1885 F. Mackenzie acquired a share, thus linking the Watchman with the Waitemata Messenger. The New Zealand Worker was started in 1905 by W. E. Smithyman, J. T. Maingay and R. F. Way and taken over in 1907 by the New Zealand Worker Newspaper Company. It was succeeded in 1911 by a morning weekly, the Voice of Labour, which seems to have survived for two years.

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In 1915 the Auckland labour unions brought out the Auckland Labour News, a monthly which was edited by (the Rt. Hon.) M. J. Savage (1918-20) and (the Hon.) David Wilson (1920-23). It was owned by the Labour Representation Committee.

Auckland had more foreign language publications than any other city. As early as 1865 there was the German Neu Seelandische Zeitung. In 1880 there was a French democratic paper, the Patriot, printed by Albin Villeval. Two years later he started the Neo Zelandais, which lasted till 1886.

The Dalmatians settled in North Auckland had their Bratska Sloga in 1899, followed in later years by Glas Ishne and Novatska Trublja (1908), Doga (1912), Zora (Croatian) (1914), Novi Suijet (1919), etc.

Auckland Suburbs and Southward

The earliest publication on the outskirts of Auckland city was the Pensioners’ Settlements Gazette, founded in 1851 by Dr. John T. W. Bacot, a military surgeon, to serve the townships occupied by the New Zealand Fencibles (Howick, Panmure, Otahuhu, etc.).

John Williamson, in a quiet period of his busy life, published in Onehunga in 1864 the Onehunga Warden and Manukau Telegraph, which lived only a year. In 1866 W. I. Donchaise started at Onehunga the bi-weekly Manukau Advocate, which did duty also in Otahuhu as the Otahuhu Dispatch.

Two decades then elapsed before F. W. Green established (in 1885) the Manukau Gazette and Onehunga District Weekly Courier. J. H. Claridge recalls its “queer-looking, intricate and noisy cylinder press” which was offered to him for £2O, and later for nothing. In 1909 the Gazette passed to W. Morton, who in 1900 had established the Manukau Examiner. W. F. Wilson in 1900 brought out the Manukau and Franklin Mail and Auckland Courier which lasted till 1905.

At the turn of the century there was a boom in Auckland’s southern suburbs. C. F. Spooner and J. E. Taylor in 1899 started the Manukau County Chronicle, which in 1908 came into possession of W. E. and F. C. Smithyman. In 1910 W. Morton, junior, and F. C. Smithyman acquired the Chronicle and merged in the Manukau Gazette three papers which had been publishing simultaneously in the district. The Manukau Times was founded by H. Leeming in 1910, the Manukau Advertiser by C. A. Senior in 1912, and the Manukau News by F. H. Bodle in 1912

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The News and Morton’s paper (the Chronicle) which ceased in 1919, were the last survivors of a sturdy band. The Manukau Gazette, a sporting weekly, and its duplicate, the New Zealand Sun (which ceased in 1955) together claimed to incorporate the Manukau Chronicle, Otahuhu Advocate, Manukau News, the Sentinel, the Sportsman, the County Standard and the Waitemata News.

The Avondale News, a suburban weekly, was conducted by Arthur John Morrish for 20 years (1914-34).

Another batch of small papers was established by an Australian journalist named Isaac Dunshea, who founded the Ballarat Evening Post and was a correspondent during the Maori war. In 1898 he started the fortnightly Newton Sun, the Auckland City and Suburban Advertiser, and the weekly Onehunga Independent and Districts Advertiser. The last seems to have lived longest, actually until Dunshea’s return to Australia in 1903.

Otahuhu was not very early in the field. In 1910 Theophilus Wake, who in the South Island had collaborated with T. E. Taylor and H. G. Ell, established at Devonport his Waitemata Post, Devonport, Northcote and Birkenhead Advertiser, a title to which he added Local Bodies and Cook Islands News. In 1912 he started the Otahuhu Post, and a year later both papers passed into other hands and then ceased.

The weekly North Shore Times and Devonport News (published at Milford) is now in its ninth year.

In 1927 H. B. Moverley founded the weekly Otahuhu Recorder, which two years later was acquired by George W. Venables and son. It ceased publication in 1936. The local paper now is the weekly South Auckland Courier.

The Howick Post (established in 1952 by George P. Cobbett as the Howick District News) changed its title in 1953. It is run by I. S. Coulter.

Papakura’s own paper the Ribbon (M. C. G. Utting) is a weekly which recently absorbed the Tuakau Argus (established in 1954).

At Pukekohe, about 30 miles south of Auckland, a rich agricultural district is served by the tri-weekly Franklin Times, which was founded in 1912 by Richard Joseph Eames and William Clement Cargill. The promoters had contented themselves with a hand press but they were soon selling 1,500 copies and had to send the paper to Auckland to be printed. The Pukekohe

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and Waiuku Times, as it was at first called, within six months became bi-weekly. Owing to war difficulties the Franklin Printing and Publishing Company was formed in 1914 to acquire the property. J. P. Asher became editor and managing director. In 1921 the title was changed to Franklin Times. In 1925 the managing editor, James Edward Hamill, acquired an interest. A later managing director was H. Dell and the paper is now controlled by Francis Henry Hewitt, who was appointed editor in 1928. The Times celebrated its silver jubilee in 1937.

In 1916 J. H. Claridge established the Tuakau Press, which in 1920 he sold to the Franklin Printing Company. Owing to lack of newsprint the Times did not complete the transaction and the paper ceased. Twelve years later the Times established a weekly, the Tuakau and District News, but it also ceased in 1939 for the same reason.

Waiuku is scarcely outside the Auckland suburban radius, yet it has had a paper since 1915, when it was a town district with 642 inhabitants. The bi-weekly Waiuku Advocate and Franklin County Chronicle was established by Walter Hardie Hutchinson, a Scottish journalist who changed its name a year later to Waiuku News and Franklin County Gazette. In 1917 it was acquired by the Waiuku Printing and Publishing Company, of which Francis William Lipsey was manager. In 1924 the paper was sold to James Coldham Fussell, who appointed Raymond Selwyn Fussell editor. William Rack was editor in 1930 and managing editor in 1939. He was followed by C. R. B. Tamplin (1952-57).

Sixty-five miles south of Auckland is the coal-mining centre of Huntly. When James H. Claridge arrived there in 1910 it had a town board and a population of 1,319. His Huntly Press for two years was printed on an Albion hand press. In 1912 Claridge sold the paper to Walter Hardie Hutchinson, who in turn disposed of it to the Huntly Press Company. The managers from 1912 were Robert Laurence Halpin, Henry Hall Sissons and E. H. Fuller, and the editors F. Harris, E. A. Jones and A. Warburton. The Press is a weekly.

CHAPTER 7

AUCKLAND PROVINCIAL PRESS

Early Days in Northland

Settlement in the far northern peninsula was perhaps more sporadic and patchwork than anywhere else in New Zealand. When the capital was shifted from Bay of Islands to Auckland all of the small settlements were severely isolated from the city and from each other. There was practically no overland communication: all had to make use of coastal shipping or boats. Settlement advanced so slowly that a whole generation passed from the cessation of the papers at Bay of Islands in the forties before anybody thought it worth while trying again.

The pioneer of a more permanent journalism in the north was Samuel Johnson, a sturdy Lancashire nonconformist who in 1862 joined the Albertland Christian Colonisation Movement as printer and editor of the paper which it was proposed to establish in the promised land in New Zealand. Like the New Zealand Gazette at Port Nicholson, the Albertland Gazette and Ocean Chronicle began its life long before the colonists arrived. Johnson set up his press on board the Matilda Wattenbach and in June 1862 published the first of two issues during the voyage. The colonists were so discouraged by what they found on landing that some of them, including Johnson, Henry Brett and Theophilus Cooper, separated from the main body to make their homes elsewhere. Johnson did some printing in Dunedin, but early in 1863 came back to Port Albert and, in between other occupations, brought out the Gazette at wide intervals till June 1864. Realising then that he had arrived at Port Albert “at least a century too soon”, he went south to establish the Marlborough Express.

The Northern Advocate

The north of Auckland then lay fallow for a decade. The first settlement that held out a faint promise was Whangarei.

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George Edwin Alderton (1855-1942) in 1875 believed that Marsden county had a population of 4,030, of whom the great majority lived within twenty miles of Whangarei, and that farther north were another 6,000. On 1 June 1875 he published the first issue of a weekly, the Whangarei Comet and Northern Advertiser. He was willing, he said, to wait hopefully to allow the facts to speak for themselves: “Of our future success we have no censor but the public, and can receive no injury but from our own hand, and, so to speak, we will let arms give place to eloquence”. After the Comet had been in existence for over two years, Alderton and W. Bartleet Langbridge launched the more pretentious Northern Advocate and General Advertiser, which dedicated itself to redressing “the real criminal injustice the northern settlements laboured under from the legislature of the Colony”. A healthy looking weekly of 12 pages, it had many local correspondents, and a small section of the paper was printed in Maori. Alderton had several partners before 1897, when he sold out. In 1885 he had established the Waitemata County Messenger and in the early nineties the short-lived Gumdiggers’ Weekly.

There was a challenge to the Advocate in 1891 when Francis Mackenzie started a 2d. weekly, the Kamo and Hikurangi Gazette. It brought forth its own opponent (J. P. Ward’s Kamo Echo) and both were short lived. Next year Mackenzie started the Marsden Times which closed down in 1894.

In 1899 a group started, without success, the Marsden Free Press. A substantial challenge came, however, in 1902 when Francis Mander 1 , a prominent sawmiller and politician, promoted the Northern Chronicle. Three months later with F. Foote (another sawmiller), he acquired the Advocate, and the Chronicle closed down. Within two years of Mander’s appearance (in 1904) Charles Gibbs Beckett started the tri-weekly Whangarei County Press (a title which was soon changed to North Auckland Press) and in 1906 the Press Weekly Budget (which soon ceased). In 1907 he sold to H. C. Griffin and Company, who again changed the title to Whangarei Morning Press.

When John Bryce Berry established a weekly, the Northern Mail (12 September 1908) there were for a short time three

1 F. Mander (1849-1942), the father of Jane Mander, was born at Onehunga and had a number of sawmills in the north. He was M.P. for Marsden (1903-22) and M.L.C. (1923-30).

W. H. J. Seffern (1829-1900)

B. Wells (1824-81 )

Jas. Wood (1822-75)

W. J. Penn (1863-1936)

T. C. List (1879-1934)

E. W. Knowles (1833-1915)

J, W. McDougall (1849-1933)

W. J. Geddis ( lxwi-1926)

). H. Claridge (1862-1946

A. R. Muir ( 1845-1914)

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newspapers in the town. The Morning Press fell out and Berry, making his paper a tri-weekly, closely competed with the Advocate, which was now run by Frank Hyde (sometime private secretary to Sir Joseph Ward). Each of the papers established a weekly.

In 1910 the Advocate business was formed into a company and three years later two Wellington journalists, Fred J. Kirby and H. Oakley Browne, took the paper in hand. The Northern Mail had actually announced its abdication and Berry had arranged to take over the Northern Luminary at Kawakawa, when J. L. A. Hutt and Hugh Wentworth Crawford 2 stepped in and acquired the prospective corpse. After a lively set-to in news and advertising rates, the new group acquired the Advocate business. The Northern Advocate Company was formed in 1914 (Crawford holding a substantial interest) and the Mail was closed down, the Northern Mail Weekly only being continued. Crawford was managing director till his death (1939). Control is still in the family, W. E. Crawford being now managing editor and B. W. Crawford managing director.

Editors included Richard Joseph Eames, Cuthbert East (1920-25,), J. A. Inkster and R. J. Dunn. A new building was erected in Water Street in 1915.

From the time of Crawford’s advent the Advocate defeated all attempts to establish competition. The Whangarei Advertiser, started in 1919 by G. Wallbank and R. M. McKay, lasted till 1929. Meanwhile in 1927 the Dargaville veteran Robert E. Hornblow started the Whangarei Daily News, edited by H. Lawson Smith (from the Manawatu Times). It had cables and live news on pages 1 and 4 but it lasted only a few months. A weekly, the Northland Tribune, started in 1932 by Francis James Howie and Bowyer, continued till 1947.

The Bay of Islands regained the dignity of a newspaper on 2 April 1879. This time the site was Kawakawa, on the most southerly branch of the Bay. The founder of the Luminary (as it was first called) was Francis Mackenzie, who had been trained in London and served on the New Zealander in Auckland. Through fair weather and foul Mackenzie held on to the lean fortunes of his craft, changing the name first to Northern Luminary and in 1910 to Bay of Islands Luminary. Most of the time it was a

2 H. W. Crawford (1882-1939) was born at Maungakaramea, educated at Whangarei High School and spent 20 years teaching under the Auckland Education Board, from which he resigned in 1918.

N 8

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weekly. Opposition appeared in 1905, when C. A. and Theophilus Wake, who had started a paper at Mangonui, issued a separate edition for Bay of Islands. This paper lasted for about a year, but Mackenzie carried on till 1913 when he sold out to a company of which John Bryce Berry was manager. Berry was six years in Kawakawa. From 1922-44 Thomas James Victor Dunlop was proprietor, succeeded by R. D. Johnston and R. J. Miller, who changed the name to Northland Gazette. After a cessation in 1944 the Luminary expired in 1951.

At the turn of the century, with inland communications so primitive, the stance at Kawakawa still appeared to be a tentative hopping-olf place for the wide district comprising the counties of Whangarei, Hobson, Bay of Islands, and Mangonui. The six northern counties as yet contained only 20,000 inhabitants. Isolated from each other, all the settlements looked seaward, their lifelines committed to a fleet of scows, schooners, and small coasting steamers. In these circumstances the press of the winterless north, to use the felicitous term promulgated by Colonel Allan Bell, tended to be somewhat peripatetic. As sawmills pushed afield from the rivers and harbours it was difficult to judge which localities showed the best promise of permanence.

The field was opened in 1904 at Mangonui, in the extreme north, by Charles August Wake, a Canterbury man who had spent some years at sea. His main object in starting the Mangonui County Times and Northern Representative was to promote the candidature of his brother Theophilus Wake, against the sitting member for the district, Robert M. Houston. In 1905-06 an edition was printed for circulation at Bay of Islands under the title Bay of Islands Times, Mangonui and Whangaroa Counties Gazette. In 1906 the paper was transferred to the Mangonui Newspaper Company and renamed the North Auckland Age (though Wake had registered it as the Northern Times).

During World War I the Age had to face much competition owing to the demand for an anti-Liberal paper in the north. In 1916 Colonel Bell and Vernon Reed proposed starting at Kaitaia, and eventually the Age was moved to that town and renamed the Northern Age. In 1921 Bell withdrew and founded at Kaitaia a weekly called the Northlander which lasted only till 1924.

Adnah Wilton (1880-1945), after conducting the Mangonui paper for some years, declined to move with it to Kaitaia. Instead, in 1916 he established a fortnightly quarto sheet which he called

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Anzac. As the use of that name was forbidden by war regulations, he substituted On Guard and continued publishing till 1922.

In 1928 the Northern Age was renamed the Guardian; in 1931 it was taken over by Northland Newspapers Ltd., and again called the Northland Age, John Bryce Berry 3 coming in as manager. In 1919 Kaikohe was little more than a Maori Village, but it was on the railway line and Berry was convinced that it would become the main centre of the middle-north area. He accordingly left Kawakawa and formed a company, The News Ltd. In July 1919 the weekly Northern News was established. In 1937 it became bi-weekly. From 1931, when Northland Newspapers was formed in Kaitaia to acquire the Northland Age, Berry was managing director of both companies till his death in 1953. The Kaitaia company was then acquired by his son Bruce and the Kaikohe company by another son, Eric Bryce Berry (who is at present its managing director).

Northern River Ports

The spacious harbour of Kaipara, with its spreading arms and rich forests, first attracted pioneer journalists in the early eighties. We can hardly class as a newspaper the Northern Wairoa Gazette, which is recorded as having been published at Dargaville in 1883. It was a single sheet printed on one side in Australia, the other side being filled with news largely clipped from exchanges. F. H. Whitcombe and W. A. Ellis are both recorded as the publisher.

In 1884 John Stallworthy 4 , who was headmaster of the Aratapu school, established the Aratapu Gazette, of which he produced 80 copies by cyclostyle.

Later in the eighties A. C. Nicholls set up a plant at Te Kopuru, a little nearer the mouth of the northern Wairoa River, where he printed a quarto weekly called the Kopuru Bell. The issue of this quaint journal for 24 August 1889 is described as a 4-page paper 8 in. by 6 in. overall, with two columns to the

3 J. B. Berry (1868-1953) was a son of William Berry of the New Zealand Herald. Educated at Auckland Grammar School, he was apprenticed to printing and in 1887 managed the Standard at Gisborne. He gained wide experience in Australia (1888-94) and ran a jobbing press in Auckland (1894-1909).

4 J. Stallworthy (1854-1923) was born in Samoa, educated in England, and came to New Zealand in 1872. He served on many local bodies, formed a branch of the Knights of Labour at Aratapu, and was M.H.R. for Kaipara (1905-11).

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page. In 1890 Stallworthy bought out the Bell. He placed his son Arthur John in charge of the printing, but soon shifted the publishing office to Aratapu, changed the title to Wairoa Bell and enlarged the paper. At this juncture the Auckland Education Board took notice of his journalistic activities and called him to account. He accepted the challenge, resigned from the service of the Board and entered into journalism in earnest. Several of his family of nine learned typesetting and so helped to build up the paper, which gradually established itself in this rough pioneering district.

Meanwhile in 1888 P. Ward, Frank J. Dargaville (the putative owner) and E. H. Fail (registered owner) established at Dargaville the Northern Advertiser, which soon absorbed the Northern Wairoa Gazette. Fail, who was the printer, had to run off the paper on a mangle turned by two men. When the Wairoa Bell appeared in the field he was still carrying on the Advertiser but he sold shortly afterwards to Nicholas Moros. In 1896 Stallworthy leased the Advertiser for two years. At the end of that term he amalgamated the two papers as the Wairoa Bell and Northern Advertiser, purchased the freehold of the premises and the plant and made the paper bi-weekly.

In 1904 Charles Gibbs Beckett launched in Dargaville a triweekly called the North Auckland Times, in which his son Edgar Waine Beckett, was associated with him. Three years later it was bought by F. A. Jones, and in 1909 converted into a daily. Meanwhile Arthur John Stallworthy 5 bought the Wairoa Bell from his father. He developed it vigorously but, still doubting whether Dargaville could support even one paper, he refused to publish daily. The Times in 1916 came into the possession of Robert Edward Hornblow 6 who five years later sold to Charles Spurgeon Rush (sometime manager of the Manawatu Daily Times). Rush

5 A. J. Stallworthy (1877-1954) was M.P. for Eden (1928-35) and Minister of Health (1928-31). With his father he published Early Northern Wairoa.

8 Robert Edward Hornblow (1861-1937) was born in Wellington and apprenticed to the Greytown Standard. He owned in turn the Mangaweka Settler, North Auckland Times, Whangarei Daily News, Hokianga Star, Hokianga Times, and Dargaville News. He contested nine parliamentary elections (in five constituencies) and was mayor of Dargaville (1919-25).

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in 1923 took in as partner Charles Louis Bagnall 7 and they acquired the Wairoa Bell from Stallworthy (who retired to live in Auckland). The Bell was amalgamated with the North Auckland Times and thus, after long years of lean competition, Dargaville had only one paper for the district. Rush edited the Times till 1935 when he sold his share to Bagnall. The Northland Times is now an evening daily. F. C. Bagnall and S. A. Bagnall (sons of C. L. Bagnall) are now respectively general manager and secretary.

The field was not left quite uncontested. In 1936 R. E. Hornblow, who since leaving Dargaville had been associated with several Hokianga papers, brought out a weekly, the Dargaville News, in which he incorporated his own Hokianga Times. After his death it was carried on for the estate by John Hood Attwood Skipper till publication ceased in 1938.

The title Kaipara was first used in 1889 when the Kaipara Times was established by Frederick C. Smithyman. It lasted less than a year. In 1905 A. W. C. La Roche started at Helensville the Kaipara Advertiser and Waitemata Chronicle. It passed through several hands until 1914 when Francis Mackenzie acquired the goodwill and brought out a new paper, the Kaipara and Waitemata Echo. After Mackenzie’s death, his son Frank (1869-1930) carried on till he retired. C. J. Claridge, junior, had the paper till 1927 when it was bought by Hilton Venables (formerly of Napier) who in 1928 bought the Helensville Times. The Echo is now incorporated in the Rodney and Otamatea Courier.

The old settlement of Wade, now known as Warkworth, was late in tempting newspaper men. In 1901 Alfred Walter Charles La Roche established the weekly Rodney and Otamatea Times, which he disposed of two years later. Other proprietors were Alfred H. Mason (one-time editor of the Northern Star), Thomas W. Roydhouse (from the Sunday Times in Sydney), William Thompson Cook (1917-40), and thereafter his son E. A. Cook. The Times now appears weekly side by side with the Rodney and Otamatea Courier (printed in Auckland).

A year after starting the pioneer paper at Mangonui, Charles August and Theophilus Wake picked upon Kohukohu as a busy centre of the sawmilling trade, and there in August 1905 appeared

' C. L. Bagnall (1883-1949), born at Turua and educated at Prince Albert College.

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the first issue of the Hokianga County Times and North-Western Representative. In 1906 it was formed into the Hokianga Newspaper Company. In 1923 J. Grainger established a weekly evening paper, the Hokianga Star, which in 1927 was momentarily in the hands of R. E. Hornblow. In 1935 the Times was run by J. H. A. Skipper for R. E. Hornblow who was preparing to publish the Dargaville News. In 1936 the Times ceased publication, the intention being to incorporate it in the new Dargaville paper. A few weeks’ delay occurred, however, and the News only made its appearance on 3 April. Meanwhile the Hokianga Star of which Arthur James Burrows was now proprietor, announced that it had incorporated the Times. The Star was itself in difficulties. When it ceased publication (25 February 1937) it merely intimated that “there was a likelihood of another change in the control of the Star”. For some months both the Dargaville News and the Hokianga Star claimed to have incorporated the Hokianga Times.

The field at Kohukohu was again occupied, in 1938, by the Hokianga Herald, a weekly run by John Hood Attwood Skipper and David Percival Jones. The present Herald, which is run by Thomas W. Halverson, claims priority to 1905 and to have incorporated the Times and the Star.

The Bay of Plenty

The first outbreak of local journalism to the southward of Auckland city was naturally enough in Tauranga. While the war was still unfinished sporadic efforts were made to settle the shores of Bay of Plenty and its fertile back country. The pattern of newspaper planting in this region is rather confused.

The first paper would seem to have been started, in 1866, by a printer named Walter Isaac Donchaise, who came from New South Wales in 1863. Though the Bay of Plenty district had been severely devastated in two campaigns and Tauranga was still on the alert, Donchaise rented an office from Captain William Fraser and in November 1866 gaily issued a small 4-page weekly which he called the Tauranga Argus and Opotiki Reporter. Fortune never even glanced towards Donchaise. In the early months of 1867 Fraser pressed him for arrears of rent and he had to answer a charge of stealing type. Of this he was acquitted, but his paper went to the wall. The last known copy, No. 27, is dated 25 May 1867.

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The Southern Cross announced that the Argus had changed hands and that a new paper, the Tauranga Record, was to be published. In point of fact Captain Fraser had foreclosed on the building and plant and Abraham Warbrick, employing Donchaise as a compositor, brought out the Tauranga Record and Bay of Plenty Examiner, a 6d. weekly very like the Argus. Its career was no brighter than that of the Argus. Military settlers could not get possession of their lands and many left for the Thames goldfields. The Record barely achieved an anniversary. The last known issue was on 30 June 1868.

At last the wars ended, after disturbing the North Island for a quarter of a century. By 1872 the armed forces were being disbanded, settlers were coming into the coastlands of the Bay and disappointed goldminers returning to their homes. In these brighter circumstances H. W. Penny and William Bartleet Langbridge set up a new plant in Beach Street and brought out on 4 September 1872 the Bay of Plenty Times, a 3d. bi-weekly which was more attractive than either of its predecessors. Though Katikati and Te Puke were some distance off, Tauranga was cheered by the arrival there of some thousands of Northern Irish colonists for George Vesey Stewart’s settlements. With G. Edgecumbe as editor and part owner (1875-78) the Times graduated towards daily publication. G. V. Stewart and A. S. Rathbone were partners in 1879 and a few months later Stewart was in sole control. Edward Mortimer Edgcumbe (1882) and Robert Henry were publishers for the proprietors, who in 1885 were apparently Stewart and the Rev. David Bruce. A Tauranga business man, Harold Henry de Bourbel, who was publisher in 1883-84, had been associated with the Sun in Christchurch in 1877. The editor from 1885-88 was Edward Ker Mulgan and the legend “and Thames Valley Warden” was added to the title.

James Galbraith 8 , a brother of R. S. Galbraith, made his debut in Tauranga in 1885 as part owner of the bi-weekly Tauranga Evening News and East Coast Business Advertiser, in which R. Henry and T. W. Rhodes were interested. It lived only till 1887, but in 1888 the Galbraiths and Henry acquired the Times, which had been run for a year or two by Richard Rhodes and E. A. Haggen.

8 J. Galbraith (1821-1904) M.A., LL.B., practised as a lawyer in Glasgow before coming to New Zealand. He devised an improved shorthand based on Pitman's symbols.

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Meanwhile there is trace of a Tauranga Guardian, which ceased publication in April 1883, and at the end of that year E. M. Edgcumbe founded the short-lived Tauranga Telegraph, in which James Galbraith disputed heartily with the Times until he took over that paper and amalgamated the two.

Two other foundations came on the scene at this period. The Little ’Un, a quarto sheet selling at id., was vigorously conducted by Richard and T. W. Rhodes for five months in 1884-85, closing down to make way for the Advertiser. The other was the Tauranga Mail, a tri-weekly produced by R. Henry late in 1887 on the Advertiser press as the outcome of a quarrel between him and Haggen. Within a year Galbraith acquired the Times and Henry was glad to close down the Mail and return to the older paper.

The intensity of these little rivalries in Tauranga is evidenced by an incident in 1887 when James Bodell established his Tauranga Evening Star. It appears that he omitted the formality of registering his paper under the Printers and Newspapers Act of 1868. One of the Galbraiths promptly informed against him and the police seized his plant. In September 1889 P. A. Crawford and Bodell appear as the owners. The paper apparently closed down within a year.

James Galbraith’s newspaper interests were widespread. Within a year or two he planted the Opotiki Weekly Mail and Hot Lakes Weekly Chronicle, the Te Aroha Weekly, the Ohinemuri Mail and the Waihi Miner.

The Bay of Plenty Times came at last, in 1893, into possession of Gerard Arnold Ward (editor), William Elliot and Richard Rhodes, and Ward was soon sole proprietor. In 1906 James H. Clayton was lessee and in 1913 the Times was acquired by William Henry Gifford (1877-1944) who had been secretarymanager of the New Zealand Times (1907-12). During the war (1914-16) the Times was a daily, and in 1919 it permanently adopted that status. The progress of the paper thereafter was smooth and profitable. The Bay of Plenty Times Company was formed in 1929.

On Gifford’s death W. F. W. Cross, who had joined the company as accountant in 1919 and become secretary in 1929, was appointed managing director, a position he still holds. The other director is B. K. W. Gifford (a son of W. H. Gifford), while two daughters (Mrs Cross and Mrs T. F. Connor) are among the family shareholders.

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W. S. Moorhouse (from Wairoa) who succeeded Gifford as editor, was followed (on his death) by C. W. Vennell, who had been part owner of the Waikato Independent. During his term the paper became a full subscriber to the N.Z.P.A. (1951) and changed to front-page news. G. R. Curtis was editor in 1953, followed by J. L. Scoullar (who died in 1956). The present editor is Lachie McDonald, who returned to New Zealand after 23 years overseas (the last 12 as a foreign correspondent for the London Daily Mail).

Recent development of the whole Bay of Plenty is reflected in the Times’ circulation which doubled in the five years 1951-56 and trebled in the decade ending 1956.

In November 1955 the paper was published for the first time from its new premises, a well designed office built in Durham Street at a cost of about £40,000.

The only opposition the Times encountered was that of the short-lived Tauranga Herald, which was launched as a bi-weekly in 1899 by Alfred Walter Charles La Roche 9 and lasted less than a year.

The Mount News, published by the Mount Maunganui Publishing Co., is in its eleventh year.

Opotiki and Whakatane

Opotiki had its first paper in 1883 when E. Stewart Bates (who came from Northern Ireland in 1868) established the Opotiki Herald, an 8 page tri-weekly. Bates’s successor (from 1903 to 1931) was Peter Alexander Crawford. The Herald ceased in 1937.

Small as it was, Opotiki had newspaper competition. In 1889 J. Galbraith and R. Henry started the Opotiki Mail, which lasted in various hands till 1891. The Rev. A. B. Chappell was publisher for a while. In 1900, when the town district had only 627 inhabitants, a newcomer arrived with a daily paper to share the field with the Herald. The East Coast Guardian was founded by Arthur Kenrick Hayward, who four years later sold to William Bramwell Scott, a good practical journalist and printer who had been for 25 years on the Lyttelton Times. For most of its life the Guardian was a tri-weeldy but from 1925-30 it was daily.

9 A. W. C. La Roche (1864-1938) was born at Singleton, New South Wales, and educated at the Sydney Grammar School. He came to New Zealand in 1891.

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Scott’s family carried on from 1917 to 1936 when the Guardian was amalgamated with the Bay of Plenty Press. (It had reached vol. 37, no. 7147). In 1938 a new tri-weekly, the Opotiki News, appeared with William Reynolds Payne as manager. It is now bi-weekly.

The township of Whakatane had a population of only 239 when it first aspired to a newspaper. The Whakatane Times and Opouriao Advocate was started in 1899 by H. G. Walmsley, who was backed by Daniel McGarvey. After a few months, in which he was proprietor and editor, Walmsley threw in his hand and the plant and stock were taken over by the guarantors. McGarvey had once been a compositor on the Southern Cross.

The next to try out the Whakatane proposition was Charles Gibbs Beckett, who had had fair experience in planting papers. Taking over the existing plant, in 1907 he brought out the Whakatane County Press. The first managing editor was Frank Hickey, but a few months later Beckett’s son, Edgar Waine Beckett, took over. He was succeeded in 1915 by Frank Bodle and retired in 1919 when the paper was acquired by the Bay of Plenty Printing Company, with a capital of £11,600. A. G. Sainsbury, from the Dominion, was the first managing editor. In 1923 the Press reverted to evening publication, and in the following year E. W. Beckett returned to the business as editor. Reginald Alexander 10 was appointed editor in 1935. The title was changed to Bay of Plenty Press and an Opotiki paper, the East Coast Guardian was absorbed. When Alexander died (1938) a local company was formed. It failed to make headway against competition, the shareholders decided to wind up, and E. W. Beckett retired. Early in 1939 the Bay of Plenty Press ceased. Frank Louis Joseph Nathan was the last manager.

After a lapse of two months F. J, Reynolds formed the Beacon Printing and Publishing Company and took over the premises and plant (which included a linotype and two linographs) with the object of bringing out a tri-weekly. The Bay of Plenty Beacon made its appearance on 21 April 1939 with Clive Kingsley Smith, of the Te Aroha News, as editor-manager. It is tri-weekly.

10 R. Alexander (1870-1938) was born in Hawke’s Bay. After working on the West coast goldfields he established the Buller Post at Murchison, sold out in 1900 and had experience on provincial papers in Hawke’s Bay and Auckland.

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The Te Puke Times was founded in 1912 as a bi-weekly. Thomas Herbert Wilsone was proprietor and editor till his death in 1936. P. A. Basham was publisher for some years, and the paper is now a bi-weekly managed by Frederick E. Gemming.

The Hot Lakes

The special character of the Hot Lakes district produced comparatively early at Rotorua a stable white community. Physically the isolation of Rotorua was complete, so little was to be feared from neighbourly competition.

The first paper in Rotorua, the Hot Lakes Chronicle, was founded in 1885 by one Lechmer and printed at Tauranga. Others interested in this paper later were David Griffiths, Peter Alexander Crawford, James Galbraith, Robert Henry, C. M. Wilson, Richard Rhodes and Gerard Arnold Ward (from Tauranga). Crawford in 1894 moved the printing office from Ohinemutu into Rotorua. About 1902 David Gardner 11 bought the property and he carried on as managing editor till his death (1918). His son, R. A. Gardner became manager.

The Wonderland Gazette and Rotorua Times, a bi-weekly, was established in 1906 by Frank Hyde and printed at first in Whangarei where he was running the Advocate. The title was changed two years later to Rotorua Times. In 1910 it was printed in Rotorua daily and six years later Gardner absorbed it into the Hot Lakes Chronicle which became the Rotorua Chronicle. In 1931 the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty Publishing Company took over, altered the title to Rotorua Morning Post and changed from an evening to a morning daily. Edward Grace Guy was general manager and later managing editor and is now managing director. Oswald Walter Exall was editor (1918-25) and C. H. Worthington (1926-31). On the cessation of the Rotorua Chronicle Lyonel George Ashton was the first editor of the Rotorua Morning Post. He was followed in 1932 by Edmund Godfrey Webber, who went on war service (1941-45) and H. Lawson Smith became editor in 1946. In the following year the paper reverted to evening publication as the Rotorua Post. In 1953 it adopted front-page news and in 1954 was officially classified as a major provincial daily.

11 D. Gardner (1858-1918) was born in Scotland, served his articles on the Burnett Argus in Queensland and established the Maryborough Mail.

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Thames and the Goldfields

Before the goldfield at Thames was many months old this district was regarded as a likely field for newspaper enterprise. The first of a flight of pioneers was William Wilkinson (1838-1921), a native of Derbyshire who came to New Zealand in 1863 and acted as war correspondent for the Southern Cross. On 11 April 1868 with Claude F. Corlett as partner, he launched the triweekly Thames Advertiser and Miners’ News. It promptly boomed with the diggings and almost immediately became a daily.

Corlett withdrew early and in 1872 Wilkinson was joined by Alfred G. Horton who had established the Timaru Herald. He was an expert newspaper man whose collaboration was fully appreciated. In those days political feeling ran high and opinion was strongly divided, if not on Maori administration then on Vogel’s new order in politics. Wilkinson and Horton did not see eye to eye and their harmonious collaboration was often disturbed. Charles Williamson says that their differences culminated, rather amusingly, on an occasion in 1876 when each of the partners had a leader set supporting his view. When the paper appeared in the morning there was an open breach between them and they agreed to dissolve the partnership—by tender. Wilkinson offered £4OO more than Horton and became sole proprietor. Horton turned his steps to Auckland and to greater things.

In 1882 a group led by William James Speight 12 acquired control of the Advertiser and a few years later Wilkinson sold out to the Thames Newspaper and Printing Company. He moved to Auckland in 1890. Colonel William Fraser 13 had possession of the property from 1892 to 1912 when it came under the control of William McCullough. William Henry Nosworthy, who was editor (1895-98), was later interested in papers at Waitara.

Another figure, picturesque and fugitive, who was tempted by the Thames goldfields was William Shaw. Before leaving Hokitika he had advertised the prospectus of the Shortland Times, a daily, and other papers which he projected. Late in 1868 he reached Thames and in company with Jeremiah Harnett started the Times and Thames Miners’ Advocate, which gave 7 columns

12 W. J. Speight (1843-1919) was M.H.R. for Auckland East (1879-81) He stood against Colonel Fraser for Thames in 1884.

13 W. Fraser (1827-1901) represented Thames and Te Aroha in Parliament (1884-93) and became Sergeant-at-Arms in the House of Representatives. He was for five years mayor of Thames.

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of reading matter and 21 of advertising. The editor was John Moore Perrier and the policy was strongly anti-provincialist. Shaw’s commitments in Thames and Auckland—where he had started the Auckland and Thames Leader and the Morning Advertiser—soon landed him in difficulty. In April 1870 the plant and goodwill of the Times and Thames Miners’ Advocate were put up at auction as bankrupt assets. Shaw went to Auckland to nurse his other foundlings, and when they failed he left for the United States, where he died in 1876.

One of Shaw’s creations was the Thames Evening Star, which he appears to have called at first (in 1869) the Evening Mail. When he failed there was a considerable amount due for wages to James Hopcraft 14 , William McCullough and others, who took over the Evening Star in satisfaction. McCullough and Hopcraft carried it on for ten years, McCullough taking a leading part in public life. In 1875 they published for a while the Despatch and Ohinemuri Observer. The Star in the late seventies adopted quaint expedients to increase its news content. In 1879 it printed news budgets headed “Pigeongrams”, and for a long time it carried a special service of cables and telegrams under the heading “Calograms”. Hopcraft was editor until his death in 1879 and later McCullough became sole proprietor. In 1894, with H. J. Greenslade, he founded a weekly, the Dispatch, which closed down in 1897. Thereafter Greenslade was lessee of the Star till 1903.

In 1912 McCullough acquired the Thames Advertiser (which he incorporated in the Star), and in 1920 the Thames Star Printing and Publishing Company acquired his interest. In 1933 his eldest son, Frank Errington McCullough, took over the paper which he sold ten years later to the Thames Star Co. Ltd. In 1953 Leo E. White acquired a controlling interest and in 1956 he sold to William Allison Kelly, who is now managing director and editor. The Star is a daily (except Saturday).

Earlier editors of the Star were A. Vialoux, James A. Shand,

14 J. Hopcraft (1840-79) was born in England and came to Otago in the fifties. After serving his apprenticeship on the Otago Colonist he helped to found the Evening News (1862). He held a commission in the militia during the Waikato war and was mining with McCullough before joining The Star as editor.

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T. B. Handley, Frank H. Bodle, Harry William Nixon, L. Crawford Watson, 8.A., and W. P. Guiney.

When Corlett left the Advertiser in 1870 he established a daily, the Thames Guardian, which ceased in 1872.

Rivalry at Te Aroha

The extension and subsequent exhaustion of the diggings at Thames, Te Aroha, Paeroa and Waihi produced a baffling pattern of newspaper development. Because it was so well served by the Thames papers, Te Aroha came rather late into the sphere of newspaper enterprise. In 1880 William McCullough (of the Thames Evening Star) founded the Te Aroha Miner and Thames Valley Agriculturist, which brought an immediate response from his competitor, William Wilkinson, in the shape of the Te Aroha Mail.

It was on 9 June 1883 that the first local paper was established —the Te Aroha News and Upper Thames Advocate, a weekly promoted by H. E. Whitaker. John Ilott took charge in 1884, and the title was changed to Te Aroha and Ohinemuri News. A little later an interest was acquired by Henry Brett and William Wilkinson, for whom Ilott ran the paper for several years as editor-manager.

Frederick Charles Smithyman came along in 1888 with an opposition weekly, the Te Aroha Gazette, and Ilott met the competition by making the News bi-weekly. The Gazette had to close down but its place was taken at once (1889) by the Te Aroha Weekly Mail, one of a string of papers launched by James Galbraith, R. Henry and Sir William Wasteneys. It lasted only a few months and the same fortune attended Geoffrey Millward, who in 1890 brought out the Te Aroha and Waiorongomai Times. In 1890 Ilott left Te Aroha to join the New Zealand Times at Wellington. There he established the advertising agency which is now controlled by his son, Sir John M. A. Ilott. By 1891 the Te Aroha News again had the field to itself, but not for long. In 1896 Edwin Edwards and J. W. Parry launched the Te Aroha Times and Waiorongomai Advocate, a weekly which lasted about two years.

In the next few years a procession of pressmen, small and considerable, passed through the office of the Te Aroha News. These included J. S. Ingram, C. F. Spooner, William Shepherd

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Allen, John C. Allen, J. T. Maingay, F. W. Gray Johnson, J. Liddell Kelly, J. R. Nicol and Arthur A. Reese.

In 1913 the News was acquired by the Te Aroha News Publishing Company and edited by J. R. Nicol. In 1918 it incorporated its competitor the Te Aroha Mail which was founded in 1907 by Charles Frederick Spooner and taken over in 1909 by the Thames Valley Printing Co. S. E. Greville Smith (1909) and H. J. Greenslade (1913) were associated with it in turn. This was the third paper to bear the title Te Aroha Mail. It was resumed in 1925 by the Te Aroha News Co. which has carried it on successfully (as a bi-weekly since 1939).

Paeroa was cared for as early as 1875 by papers printed elsewhere—the Despatch and Ohinemuri Observer (from Thames) and the Ohinemuri Times (from one of Wilkinson and Brett’s offices on the goldfields), but the first paper produced in Paeroa was the Hauraki Tribune, a 2d. bi-weekly founded by Charles F. Mitchell in 1881. When Joseph Ivess leased the paper in 1898 the Taranaki Herald twitted him on his declaration of faith. “We are firm believers” (he wrote) “in the efficacy of a central press, and we have no hesitation in saying that the multiplicity of small rags of newspapers in a district is an expensive scourge on the trades people.” Yet Ivess at the moment would seem to have been committing the offence he condemned, for he added: “We are arranging to publish a paper at Karangahake, Waihi and Waitekauri in conjunction with the Tribune”. Within a few months he and his collaborator, H. Stewart, left to start a chain of small papers in Canterbury. Some of his visions were held by others. Waitekauri, for instance, supported from 1897 to 1903 Henry Longueville Snow’s creation, the Golden Age. And Karangahake in 1897 welcomed its Goldfields Advocate and Ohinemuri County Chronicle, which was founded by Alfred William Ellis and ended its career in 1911 in the hands of William Alexander Clavis.

The next paper in Paeroa, the Ohinemuri Gazette, was established in 1891 by J. H. Moore, H. C. Wick and Edwin Edwards. J. H. Claridge, who leased the Gazette, says that its rotary machine was driven by both petrol and electricity. To provide against the emergency which arose when the one man in Paeroa who could start the electric plant was not available, a handle could be screwed on for the application of man power.

Anticipating the birth of the Gazette, John Ilott arranged to forestall it by publishing the Te Aroha and Ohinemuri Mail,

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but this did not appear till four days later and as Ilott was on the point of leaving for Wellington, the Mail soon ceased. In 1900 the Ohinemuri Gazette and the Hauraki Tribune passed into the hands of William Dennis Nicholas and Henry Howard Lyes. Lyes retired in 1901 and Nicholas, having absorbed the Hauraki Tribune, passed the remainder of his life developing the paper modestly in pace with the growth of the settlement. In 1921 he changed the title to Hauraki Plains Gazette.

Coromandel and Waihi

In 1930 when the Coromandel County News ceased publication he used much of the Gazette matter for the Coromandel and Mercury Bay Gazette which he printed at Paeroa and published from depots at Coromandel and Mercury Bay. The Hauraki Plains Gazette (tri-weekly) and the Coromandel publication in 1939 came into possession of Rei Lancelot Darley, who developed them and in 1952 issued a third paper from Paeroa, the Waihi Gazette, in opposition to the Waihi Telegraph (which lasted only a few months longer). The three papers, the Hauraki Plains Gazette, the Coromandel and Mercury Bay Gazette and the Waihi Gazette are all printed by Thames Valley Newspapers Ltd. at Paeroa and published in the towns in which they circulate.

In early days Coromandel for a few years was served by papers at Thames whose interest was always excited by mining development. The first paper in the town itself was the Coromandel Argus, which was established early in 1870 by T. S. Coppock and seems to have had a very short life.

A year later C. W. Hall started the Coromandel Mail, which he sold almost at once to J. C. Stott. Frederick J. von Sturmer, after resigning the editorship of the New Zealand Herald, ran the Mail for a few months. In 1874 he returned with J. King to start the Coromandel News in opposition. An influential group soon amalgamated the two papers, the News closed down and von Sturmer joined the Mail. The new proprietors were (nominally) A. G. Horton, H. Brett, William Wilkinson, G. M. Reed, G. McLeod, W. Horne, Charles Ring and F. Wollams. In 1874 Dr Kidd, LL.D., was editor and in the following year James S. Browne. The Mail went into recess in 1876 but in 1881 was back in the hands of Brett.

The Coromandel News and Peninsula Gazette was started in 1887 by Thomas William Rhodes and his brother Richard Rhodes

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(later factory manager of the Poverty Bay Herald). In 1893 it was renamed Coromandel County News and in 1921 J. W. Barker became sole proprietor. It ceased publication in 1930.

In 1896 Francis Mackenzie established the weekly Coromandel Sun, Kuaotunu and Mercury Bay Gazette, which ceased publication in 1899.

Waihi’s gold boom was signalised in the usual manner. In 1895 J. S. Galbraith and Co. founded the Waihi Miner and Hauraki Goldfields Gazette. A bi-weekly at first, it was forced to become daily by the appearance of the Waihi Chronicle, which was founded in 1900 by T. Collins and William Wallnutt. The rivalry was settled by the arrival on the scene of W. J. Geddis, one of the owners of the Auckland Observer. With some backing from Henry Brett, Geddis and Blomfield bought the Miner from J. M. Wrigley and early in 1901 made it into a daily (Waihi Daily Telegraph). The Chronicle could not stand the pace and closed down in 1902. Geddis spent seven years at Waihi, placing the Telegraph on a sound basis before he purchased the Daily Telegraph at Napier. His successor at Waihi, Nisbet Mcßobie 15 , also encountered slight competition for a year or two from the Waihi Times, started in 1906 by Leonard Robertshawe and Charles Gibbs Beckett. Beckett soon became sole proprietor but, finding the position hopeless, he closed down in 1909.

With the field to itself the Telegraph did fairly well, and in 1911 Mcßobie contested the Ohinemuri seat. Next year occurred the miners’ strike at Waihi, from which the trade of the town suffered severely. The Telegraph did not recover easily and Mcßobie withdrew in 1916 to go into business in Auckland. The paper reverted to Geddis and Blomfield. W. H. Toy was proprietor and editor from 1919 till his death in 1936 after which his estate carried on for some years. The Waihi Gazette now serves the town from P aero a.

15 N. Mcßobie (1872-1930) was born in Invercargill and was associated with the Morning Post (Timaru) and with the New Zealand Times as general manager before going to Waihi. He was president of the Auckland Master Printers Association (1916-24) and of the New Zealand Federation (1922-24).

N 9

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Contest at Hamilton: Waikato Times and Argus

Until the Maori wars ceased at the end of the sixties, there was not enough white settlement south of the Aukati to support a local newspaper. The pioneer promoter was George Jones, who had been in a printing business in Christchurch and later was printer to the Auckland Star. He had intended to start a paper on the Ohinemuri goldfield, but that prospect failed, leaving him with “an antiquated printing press, a dozen cases of type and a few reams of paper”. A diarist mentions that he also had his violin. L. B. Harris, senior, invited him to attend a meeting at Ngaruawahia at which Major Thomas Wilson presided and there were also present the two Edgecumbes (Henry and George) and J. H. M. Carpenter.

The upshot of a canvass of the district made by Jones was the publication, on 2 May 1872, of the first issue of the triweekly Waikato Times and Thames Valley Gazette edited by Henry Holloway. The Times had a strenuous fight for survival. In 1875 the office was removed to Hamilton and the paper was published first in the old Hamilton Hall and later in a disused Anglican church building which was moved forward to the street line. Jones went to Auckland late in 1874 to found the Echo and in 1875 he sold out of the Waikato Times, of which C. O. Montrose became editor. By 1877 the property was in the hands of the Bank of New Zealand, from which two years later control passed to Frederick Alexander Whitaker (a son of Sir Frederick Whitaker). With the help of Edward Mortimer Edgcumbe the Times was revived and no doubt it proved very useful to Whitaker during his five years as M.H.R. for Waipa. On Whitaker’s death in 1887 George Edgecumbe 16 took over in association with Geoffrey L. Millward.

In 1896 the bank refused to extend Edgecumbe’s tenure and the property was sold to James Shiner Bond 17 . Called upon to give up possession in a fortnight, Edgecumbe secured another building. Bond incorporated his Cambridge paper, the Waikato

16 G. Edgecumbe (1845-1930) was born in Wiltshire and came to New Zealand with the Albertland settlers in the early sixties. He lived at Ngaruawahia till 1877. He rendered considerable service to Hamilton and was mayor in 1899.

17 J. S. Bond (1858-1922) was born in Dorsetshire, had newspaper experience in Wanganui and reached Hamilton in 1880, He was three years mayor of Cambridge and a like period mayor of Hamilton.

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Advocate, and made the Times a tri-weekly and later a daily morning paper. His first editor was Sydney Greville Smith (who had been on the Toowoomba Chronicle, the North Otago Times, the Auckland Bell and the New Zealand Times).

The schedule of Edgecumbe’s assets did not include the goodwill, newspaper files, or advertising contracts and subscriptions. With these and the plant of the Cambridge News (which had just ceased publication), he had a tangible basis for establishing a new paper, the Waikato Argus. Public sympathy was strongly in his favour. His new premises were not ready for occupation but he was still in possession of the Times property and there his first issue was printed (11 July 1896). The public demand for news of the Spanish-American war in 1898 compelled Edgecumbe to join the Press Association and before long he changed over from morning to evening publication.

In 1902 Robert John Pauli and George W. Venables (who had returned to newspaper life after a few years in the Post Office) leased the Times. Pauli died in 1908 and the next owners were Mrs Louisa G. C. Greenslade and her husband (H. J. Greenslade), who managed until war conditions in 1914-18 forced an amalgamation with the opposition. The merger was effected in 1915 through the Waikato times Printing and Publishing Co., which had a capital of £20,000. The managing director was Arthur Edwards Manning. As a compromise the policy of the joint concern was declared to be independent and for a considerable time the Times kept to the middle of the road in politics. Robert J. Gwynne, who had edited the Argus for some years, was the obvious successor of Henry Holloway 18 and he edited till his death in 1921. His successors were Edwin E. Hooper (1921), H. W. Nixon and finally (in 1938) F. E. Fisher (from the Taranaki Daily News). The Times was for some years set by girl compositors who in 1900 were replaced by three second-hand monolines. It was one of the first papers in New Zealand to publish two editions. The company in 1918 entered into a shortlived agreement with the Taumarunui Press and King Country Chronicle, to run the three papers together. In 1927 the directors established a profit-sharing scheme,

18 H. Holloway (1837-1919) was born in Essex and came to New Zealand in 1863. He had experience on newspapers in Dunedin, as editor of the Wanganui Herald and on the Daily Telegraph (Napier).

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which was approved by the Arbitration Court as being favourable to the general body of employees.

There is one interesting feature in the newspaper history of Hamilton. The town never had more than two papers and their merger was not followed by the birth of a new rival. The whole history of newspaper competition was compressed within twenty years.

The Hamilton News (1952) is printed in Matamata for Hamilton Developments Ltd.

Hamilton’s railway suburb of Frankton Junction for some years (1923-25) supported a little weekly, the Frankton Record, which was founded by Clarence Evans James and later acquired by the Frankton Record Co.

For 40 years after giving birth to Waikato’s first venture, the Times, Ngaruawahia was without a paper. In 1912 William A. Clavis established the Ngaruawahia Advocate and Counties Gazette. He was joined later by F. H. Bodle (1922) and in 1924 by Abel Warburton (1862-1944). Warburton in 1927 formed a private company, all the shares being held by members of the family. With a population of 1,500 Ngaruawahia gave good support to its weekly, until it ceased in 1942.

Competitors in Cambridge

Very different was the history of Cambridge. Ever since 1880 when Joseph Ivess pioneered the field, there was incessant competition between two papers and occasionally amongst three. Yet the population of Cambridge did not exceed 1,400 until 1910.

In September 1880 Ivess launched the Waikato Mail as a 2d. tri-weekly. It was acquired a few months later by George Edgecumbe. Charles O. Montrose early in 1881 left the Auckland Star to become editor. Dwan Brothers, of Wellington backed him financially but the case was hopeless; the Mail closed down early in 1883 and Ivess eventually got possession of the plant.

Almost immediately Thomas Elliott Wilson and W. Wilson established the bi-weekly Waikato Gazette and Thames Valley Recorder. Two years later, in 1885, they sold the Gazette at auction to George Warren Russell, who at once issued from the same office not only the Gazette but also an evening paper, the Cambridge News. The Gazette lasted only till 1889. Its final proprietor was the interesting Sir William Wasteneys, a graduate of Cambridge University and barrister of the Middle Temple,

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who shortly returned to England. Another title, the Standard, has been quoted occasionally as associated with Russell’s regime.

The Cambridge News, after staggering on till 1893, had scarcely been put to sleep when a weekly, the Waikato Advocate, was started by James Shiner Bond (1895). Within the year Bond saw his opportunity in Hamilton. He took his plant there and incorporated the paper in the Waikato Times.

Thereafter, for eight years or so, Cambridge had a unique experience: it was without the eye or the voice of a local paper. The want was corrected in 1904 when the tri-weekly Waikato Independent was started by David Pirani, who had partnered his brother, F. Pirani, M.H.R., in the Manawatu Standard. In 1906 Reginald Augustus Pyke bought the Independent, which he transferred four years later to Thomas Herbert Wilsone (as editor) and A. E. Havelock Green. In 1911 the Waikato Publishing Co. purchased the paper and thereafter it had a succession of editors and managers including George Renner, James P. Asher, Arthur Alexander Reese, L. Mackenzie, W. A. Nicholl and J. Grainger (1916). In 1920 it passed into the hands of Frank Penn, owner of the Otaki Mail, and he remained in active control till 1930 when he sold to C. W. Vennell Ltd., in which E. C. Huie had a major interest. Vennell was manager and editor. In 1942 Huie was joined by Vincent Godfrey Boulton, who in 1920 had started the Cambridge Gazette (under the title Movie Gazette) in opposition to the Independent. The company’s name was changed to Waikato Independent Ltd., of which the active shareholders today are V. G. Boulton, his son G. M. Boulton, G. A. James and H. Petersen. The paper is tri-weekly.

Couriers (N.Z.) Limited

The historic old town of Te Awamutu, 18 miles south of Hamilton, has a venerable newspaper history. Close at hand in the early part of 1863 Sir John Gorst established his Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke to counter the influence of the King Party’s paper Hokioi. The sacking of Gorst’s office led inevitably to the outbreak of the Waikato war.

For more than fifty years no printing press clanked in this beautiful neighbourhood. Then on 18 April 1911 Arthur George

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Warburton 19 founded the Waipa Post. The owners were the Waipa Post Company and Warburton was editor throughout. Beginning as a bi-weekly, the Post in 1919 became tri-weekly.

An interesting development from the Waipa Post is the series of Couriers printed in Te Awamutu for circulation in other towns. In 1932 appeared the Hamilton Courier and Waikato District Weekly, and in 1935 the Gisborne Courier. In 1936 the Waipa Post changed its title to Te Awamutu Courier. In 1939 Couriers Ltd. bought out the Taranaki Publishing Co. at Stratford and commenced printing there the Stratford Courier. These Couriers, which were at first circulated gratis, partook rather of the character of magazine supplements, with just sufficient local news to command public interest. The Hamilton, Gisborne and Stratford issues have all now ceased publication. The Te Awamutu Courier is a vigorous tri-weekly sold at 3d. and the South Auckland Courier, established at Otahuhu in 1939, is now a weekly selling at 2d.

East and South Waikato

The first newspaper was published in Morrinsville in 1908 when it was a town district with a population of 375. The Morrinsville Herald and Matamata Chronicle, as it was called, was printed by Charles Frederick Spooner of the Te Aroha Mail. In 1911 James H. Claridge, having taken over a printing business in Morrinsville, published the Morrinsville Star and Matamata Gazette, the first paper to be printed in the town. A year later he sold to George Philip Armstrong and in 1915 the paper passed into the ownership of William Clement Cargill. 20 .

In 1916 the Cargill Publishing Company, with its head office at Morrinsville, was formed with a capital of £7,500. Cargill was managing director and editor of the Morrinsville Star. In 1917 the company launched at Matamata the Matamata Record, of which Albert George Yardley was the first editor, and in 1923

19 A. G. Warburton (1888-1956) born at Timaru and educated at Foxton and Auckland, had experience on the New Zealand Herald before settling at Te Awamutu (1908). In 1910 he merged his printing business in a publishing company. He was not related to Abel Warburton.

20 W. C. Cargill (1870-1933) was born in Kent and educated at Dulwich and Heidelberg. He owned in turn the Wairarapa Star, Patea Press, Franklin Times and Morrinsville Star. He was a member of the Taranaki and Wanganui education boards and president of the New Zealand Master Printers Federation.

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it started the Putaruru Press, of which G. E. Martin and G. G. Griffiths were the first two editors.

When Cargill died (in 1933) Yardley succeeded him as manager. The company then printed in Morrinsville five papers in the week: bi-weeklies for Morrinsville and Matamata and a weekly for Putaruru. The Matamata Record ceased in 1954, but the town has still, bi-weekly, the Matamata County Mail, the successor of the Matamata Review (founded by Jens E. Sorensen in 1934). Its managing editor is Graham Evanson Beamish and it is published by the Matamata Printing and Publishing Co.

Early in 1954 control of the Cargill Publishing Company changed hands and the name was changed to East Waikato Publishers Ltd., with Francis George Snedden as managing director and editor. Yardley then retired from the Cargill company. In 1956 the company opened new works in Putaruru and the Putaruru Press has since been printed there. Today the Morrinsville Star and the Putaruru Press are each published bi-weekly, at Morrinsville and Putaruru respectively. Norman William Cowley is editor of the Morrinsville Star and Snedden of the Putaruru Press.

Tokoroa, 14 miles south of Putaruru, has a weekly paper, the South Waikato News (1951), printed by East Waikato Publishers at Putaruru for the Tokoroa Publishing Company. In 1957 the two companies became associated in a subsidiary printing company at Tokoroa.

At Mangakino a weekly, the Mangakino Chronicle is published by the Waikato Hydro Welfare Association. It is printed at Cambridge by the Waikato Independent. At Taupo, the weekly Taupo Times was established six years ago by the Taupo Times Ltd. Roy Sinclair is now its managing editor, and it is printed by East Waikato Publishers at Morrinsville. This paper was edited for a year by Charles J. McKinnon (1876-1957) who had been associated for many years with the Dominion.

King Country Papers

Until recently there were few more remote spots in New Zealand than the West Coast harbours of Raglan and Kawhia. It was natural that such isolated communities should have their own newspapers.

The Kawhia Settler and Raglan Advertiser can claim to have been the first newspaper in the King Country. Founded in 1901

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by Thomas Elliott Wilson, it was run for a while by William Murray Thomson, who had been an estate agent in Hawera. In 1909 it was taken over by Edward Henry Schnackenberg, who conducted it almost till it ceased publication in 1936. A descendant of one of the older missionaries on the West Coast, Schnackenberg began the Settler with a column in Maori but had to discontinue it because (a) the compositors did not understand Maori, and (b) the Maori would not subscribe for more than one copy to each pa. No doubt the paper would be read in the marae as a community activity rather than as an individual interest.

F. W. Green and W. M. Bankart floated the Raglan County Chronicle in 1903 and it was run by the Raglan Printing and Publishing Co. till 1915, when the veteran James H. Clayton took it over. Another company tried its luck 1916-22 and then Dr Walter Monckton Sanders (1923-37) and from 1937 Charles Howard Marcroft. In 1927 the office was burned down. The Waikato Times printed a single sheet until new plant and premises were available. The Chronicle is now a weekly in its 53rd year.

The privilege of pioneering the King Country inland, i.e., the region south of the Waikato and extending to the National Park and the hinterland of Taranaki, fell aptly to such a valiant adventurer as James H. Claridge. When he arrived at Taumarunui in 1906 it had a population of only 307. Under an Act of 1905 a native township council had been set up which had a membership half Maori and half pakeha but apparently no rating powers. This did not deter Claridge, who had just relinquished the Waipukurau Press. He possessed an Albion press made in Leeds in 1841 and weighing about a ton. With this he brought out in September 1906 the bi-weekly Taumarunui County Press and Upper King Country Gazette. Nathaniel Alfred Winter took it over in 1909 and in 1912 was joined by Herbert W. Atkinson. They sold in 1915 to William Thomas, of Geraldine, who began in 1890 as a cadet reporter on Bracken's Evening Herald (Dunedin) and at the age of 87 is still capable of doing a full day's work as a journalist. He introduced the Mergenthaler linotype and improved the paper considerably.

In 1918 Thomas entered into a war arrangement with the Waikato Times to bring the Taumarunui Press and the King Country Chronicle under the same general management. When his sons returned from the war, however, he repurchased the

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paper which has since remained in control of the family. The managers of the Taumarunui Press after Claridge were N. A. Winter (1910), H. W. Atkinson (1912), N. Thomas (1915), W. Thomas, managing editor (1916), B. Thomas (1918), and since 1919 Robert William Thomas. It is still a daily, N. Thomas being manager.

To cover the outdistricts Thomas established in 1917 the Matiere Gazette and the Ohura Mail. Ohura had had a paper since 1911, when the Ohura Advocate was established by Thompson and Wanklyn. Thomas acquired this in 1917 and in 1936 amalgamated the Matiere Gazette and the Ohura Mail as the Ohura Valley Gazette which was published weekly by the Taumarunui Press till it ceased in 1942.

Claridge tells an interesting story of the Pio Pio Post, of which only one issue was published (16 December 1920). Owing to the failure of the Franklin Printing Co. (to which he had sold the Tuakau Press) he had the plant back on his hands and it was stored in Otorohanga awaiting a purchaser. As no sale occurred he decided to make use of the plant by publishing a local paper in Piopio, which was 27 miles distant. Everything was ready for the press when the agent telegraphed that he had sold the machinery. Claridge’s offer to call off the deal was declined but he was reluctant to diss the matter already set for his paper so he went ahead, published the single issue of 230 copies, then packed up the plant and consigned it to Auckland.

In the Official List of Newspapers for 1908 the name of the Taumarunui Press does not appear, but the Taumarunui Echo takes its place; the name of the proprietor being Laurence Fryer. C. J. Claridge, a son of the pioneer, recalls a transaction which may explain this mystery. In 1908 a local sawmiller proposed to contest the Taumarunui seat against W. T. Jennings. To assist his candidature he paid a deposit for the purchase of the Taumarunui Press from J. H. Claridge. One issue was actually published under the title Taumarunui Echo, but the candidate could not complete his undertaking, so Claridge carried on with the Taumarunui Press.

Almost simultaneously with the appearance of the Taumarunui Press, Norman Corry Matthew and Arthur Kenrick Hayward launched at Te Kuiti the weekly King Country Chronicle. Hayward retired in the following year. In 1919 the paper was sold to John Edward Hamill and in 1922 it was bought by Samuel

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Richard Craig (1875-1937) who had been engaged with his father, William Craig, in a printing business in Invercargill. The Chronicle printed news on the front page in 1955. It is now bi-weekly, run in conjunction with the weekly Otorohanga Times which was purchased by the Craig estate. Richard Sidney Craig is managing editor of the Te Kuiti paper and his brother J. A. Craig of the Otorohanga Times.

When the Otorohanga paper was established, as a bi-weekly in 1912, the population of the whole riding of the county was only 822. Claridge’s son, C. J. Claridge ran it from 1913 to 1916 when H. W. Atkinson (from the Taumarunui Press) and Edwin T. Gorton took it in hand for more than 20 years. Atkinson was editor till he left in 1939 for Tokomaru Bay.

CHAPTER 8

THE PRESS IN TARANAKI

New Zealand’s Oldest Paper

Taranaki was rather slow in providing itself with a newspaper, yet the need was early enough recognised. A settler writing from New Plymouth in 1842, when there were not one thousand people in the settlement, commented: “It is high time that we should have a newspaper. Nothing would benefit us more, and it ought to be strongly represented to the directors [of the New Zealand Company]. We are still compelled to write out our advertisements. We cannot but feel that we have been hardly dealt with.”

It was always believed that the want was about to be supplied. Actually in 1844 the promoters of the New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian (at Wellington) announced their intention of publishing at New Plymouth an 8-page foolscap paper to be called the New Plymouth Guardian and Cook’s Strait Review. Since money was notoriously scarce in Taranaki, they were prepared to accept payment in produce, which they believed the farmers would feel less severely.

This project did not eventuate and in 1849 we find C. F. Hursthouse still complaining (in “An Account of New Zealand”) that “nothing has tended to retard the progress of the settlement more than the absence of a newspaper”. Auckland then had three papers, Wellington two and Nelson one. He believed that a small weekly would pay, if combined with a printing plant, and suggested that one page should be devoted to practical articles in the Maori language.

Yet the blank remained. In this Cinderella province settlers had to write out their notices on scraps of paper and post them up on the Devon Street bridge. There were displayed a queer assortment of advertisements, lost and found, wanted and for sale, calling meetings, occasionally an anonymous squib or libel

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The first issue of New Zealand's oldest existing newspaper.

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to cause mirth or heartburning. Looking back to that time now, it is interesting to reflect that two of the three oldest papers in New Zealand today are those which the colonists of Taranaki eventually did establish.

When a merchant named John James Weston (1806-57) thought of emigrating to New Zealand he proposed to bring a printing plant and start a newspaper in New Plymouth. He discussed the matter with William Collins, who was in the typographical department of the Morning Post, and then hesitated, because Charles Hursthouse told him that arrangements were already made to establish a newspaper in the settlement. Weston abandoned his plan, but Collins had decided to emigrate. They arrived together in 1850 in the ship Mariner to find that no paper existed or was planned. A number of settlers discussed the prospect and it was decided that Collins should go to Auckland to find a printing plant. He spent some time in the capital and was advised by Robert Parris (formerly of New Plymouth). After several interviews with John Williamson (of the New Zealander) Collins secured some cases of secondhand type, including wellworn brevier and long primer and two-line and fancy founts, and a second-hand demy Albion press capable of printing 200 copies an hour. This treasure was carried in a bullock dray from Auckland to Manukau over a road so bad that the type was hopelessly pied in the boxes. Garland William Woon (1831-95), son of the Rev. William Woon, joined Collins in the venture. He had served his apprenticeship in the New Zealander office.

At New Plymouth the plant was taken to a shed behind Okey, Son & Arnold’s shop at the corner of Devon and Currie Streets. When the machine was put together certain parts were missing and had to be replaced by a blacksmith. There was not enough type for the whole paper, so the outer forme had to be printed off and the type dissed before the others could be set up. All obstacles having been surmounted, the Taranaki Herald made its first appearance on 4 August 1852. In the whole of New Zealand at that time there were only seven other newspapers, two each at Auckland and Wellington, one each at Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Woon (who married the week before the paper appeared) was nominally editor, William Morgan Crompton subeditor, and Collins the printer. After a few weeks the views expressed by Crompton in the leading columns caused hostile criticism. One

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of his worst offences was to denounce mixed marriages between Maori and European and his views on the land question also gave offence. He resigned his chair to Richard Pheney, who had come out in the Eden and bought land at Omata. In 1853 Woon withdrew to settle in Wanganui, leaving Collins as the sole proprietor. Early in 1854, however, Woon was back and it was announced that he had become the sole proprietor. He was to be editor also for most of the time from 1854 to 1867.

The Herald published serially the full text of the New Zealand Constitution Act, which had just reached the Colony. By the time of the first provincial elections (1853) the Herald was strongly influencing public opinion. In 1855 native troubles became acute and the paper found it difficult to steer a smooth course. Political partisanship ran high and there was a demand for a second journal as the mouthpiece of the minority. Approaching the provincial dissolution in 1856, the proprietary decided to oppose the outgoing Superintendent (Charles Brown). Pheney differed and resigned, an event on which the Herald commented:

Circumstances have arisen necessitating a change in the editorial department. ... It has always been our desire that our paper should be the organ of public opinion: that it has not been so has been to us a matter of unfeigned regret. Finding that the Herald would soon degenerate into literally an official paper, we have resolved to seek other literary assistance to ensure an impartial and honest discussion of public affairs.

Woon replaced Pheney, with literary assistance from leading settlers like William Halse and Richard Brown. An open breach occurred between the Herald and Charles Brown. He was defeated and became the principal proprietor of an opposition paper, the Taranaki News, of which Pheney was editor. The Herald meanwhile was edited by Richard Brown.

When the Waitara War commenced in 1860 Woon published a regular Journal of Events, which is a valuable source for the history of that period, since he was a member of the Rifle Volunteers and knew what was passing. The paper was got out under exceptional difficulties. Compositors had to take their turns of militia duty and the press had often to work all day on Saturday and Monday to print enough copies to satisfy the demand. On one day only (12 May 1860) did the Herald fail to appear. The staff was diligently turning the machine when a military guard appeared with orders from the Colonel Commanding the Forces

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that no further copies should be printed. Woon had been judged guilty of giving information to the enemy through a paragraph describing the inadequacy of the precautions against night attack on the town. A fortnight later the editor (Brown) was shot by hostile natives at the Waiongona ford 1 .

After the Waitara war Woon obtained a larger press and increased the size of the paper. The circulation was about 1,000 copies, for there were then over 3,000 troops in the town. From 1863 to 1866 the editor was Arthur Samuel Atkinson who was for a while a partner in the business. He was succeeded in 1867 by Robert Henry Eyton.

At the moment when British troops were withdrawn from the province, foreshadowing depression, Henry Weston, son of J. J. Weston, acquired the paper and William Henry John Seffern (1829-1900) came from Auckland as manager and editor. A studious writer, Seffern delved deeply in the history of Taranaki on which he published many articles and books. Weston showed great courage in the depression of 1869 in publishing the Herald twice a week and reducing the price from 6 d. to 3d. In 1874 he imported a Main machine which could print 1,200 copies an hour. It had to be turned by hand till 1883, when a water-driven Pelton wheel was installed.

In 1875 when the Taranaki News appeared daily, Weston declined to follow its lead. Instead he assisted James Kenworthy to publish the Budget as a daily evening paper and provided for the backblocks a weekly entitled Saturday Night. In 1877 the Herald appeared as a daily evening paper at Id. The Budget having ceased, the title was transferred to the weekly, which became the Budget and Taranaki Weekly Herald 2 . Beginning with 64 columns of reading matter, it speedily increased to 120 columns and survived until 1932.

On the retirement of Seffern, Walter James Penn 3 became editor, a position he held till his retirement in 1932. He exercised great influence on the paper and the province. His successor,

1 Richard Brown (1804-60) wrote under the name of Veritas. W. C. Weston has in his possession a silver mug presented to Brown by the citizens of New Plymouth in recognition of his services.

2 J. Kenworthy had conducted the Budget as an evening paper since 1875. He afterwards edited the Patea Mail.

3 W. J. Penn (1863-1936) was born at Kidderminster, England, educated for commerce and came to New Zealand in 1881. He was 10 years accountant of the Herald before becoming editor.

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George Herbert Dolby, M.A., died in 1937. Since that date Arthur Brian Scanlan has been editor and since 1941 managing editor. On the death of Henry Weston (in 1920) his nephew, Walter Crowley Weston, became proprietor. Before joining the Herald as business manager in 1901 he had received a commercial training in the Bank of New South Wales. The Herald became a front-page paper in 1946.

After the cessation of the Lyttelton Times in 1935 the Taranaki Herald was the oldest paper in New Zealand. In a period of fifty years it had only one proprietor and two editors. Its centenary was celebrated in 1952 by the publication of a very fine historical number.

Taranaki Daily News

In such a small community as Taranaki was in the fifties, it would have been surprising if one paper could satisfy the warring passions of pakeha and Maori. There were innumerable shoals and eddies of dissension through which the Herald sought in vain to steer a course.

In the first flush of responsible government, political partisanship was rife and personal animosities constantly flared up. During the provincial elections of 1856 the Herald suddenly withdrew its support from the retiring Superintendent (C. Brown) and assisted his opponent (G. Cutfield). Richard Pheney, the editor, resigned in protest and canvassed Brown’s supporters for assistance in establishing a rival newspaper. Amongst these were several of the Richmond family, who had apparently been assisting Woon financially.

Shortly after the election, plant was obtained from Auckland and on 14 May 1857 the first issue appeared of the Taranaki News, a weekly edited by Pheney. It was managed by Charles Brown until he went on active service in 1860, when Pheney appeared as sole proprietor. Though the News was a good enough paper it had to suffer many lean years and the usual misfortunes of the day and generation. In 1873 it became momentarily a bi-weekly but had to revert to weekly. In 1874 plans were made to capitalise the brighter prospects of the province following the end of the war by publishing four times in the week. Tri-weekly issues were to appear under the title Taranaki Advertiser, and a weekly issue on Saturdays (under the existing title) containing a recapitulation of all the week’s news. Five of these tri-weeklies

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were published under the title Advertiser before the Post Office pointed out that the paper had not been registered under this name, under the Act of 1868. The publishers had therefore to revert to the tide Taranaki News for all issues, tri-weekly and weekly.

In January 1875 the News announced that it was about to publish a new evening daily to be called the Budget. On the next day there appeared a daily so entided but it was edited by James Kenworthy and printed in the Herald office. Thus sharply forestalled, Brown was so astonished that the announcement of his own Budget continued to appear in the News for some days. He retaliated by making the News forthwith a daily morning paper. This position lasted till June, when he reverted to evening publication. Thus matters remained for a month or two more. In August the Taranaki General Printing Co. published “for the proprietors” and on the 31st the News ceased to be an evening paper.

Meanwhile changes were imminent. On 4 September the Taranaki News appeared as a new weekly morning paper. Making a clean break with the past, it began with a new serial number—Vol. 1, No. 1. The announcement said that the paper “had been in dock for renovation” and was being “launched afresh by young and hopeful new proprietors, who have only arrived in the settlement”. The young men who acquired most of Brown’s interest were Thomas Avery (1851-1926), an English printer whose name was to figure honourably in the craft in Taranaki, and William Edmondson. Pheney’s engagement as editor terminated and he was succeeded by Benjamin Wells 4 who imparted to the paper the slightly calvinistic character which it evinced until the end of the century. Times were far from prosperous and two papers in a small town found it hard to make ends meet. In 1877 the News claimed a circulation of only 800, but this, it said, was more than its rival had ever reached. In 1881 a gas engine was obtained to drive the machine. In that year Wells died and until 1884 Edmondson was editor, assisted by John Whiteley King (a grandson of the martyr of White Cliffs). Avery withdrew in 1883 to develop his printing business. C. Brown

4 8. Wells (1824-81), a classical scholar and a botanist, came to Taranaki in 1849 and was on the roll as a cordwainer. In 1854 he became a lay preacher in the Primitive Methodist Church. He was a schoolmaster in Nelson and was chairman of the first education board in Taranaki.

N to

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still held an interest in 1884, when the News was taken over by a group of its employees, led by John McKenzie and William Adam King. Ludovic Lafage Norris, who had been editing the Waitara Press, sold it to the News, in which he took a share and acted as editor of both papers. He withdrew in 1885, when the News became a daily. McKenzie gradually increased his interest until he was practically sole proprietor and editor. Others interested were William Edward Simpson (1886) and J. Guerin (1888). The News weekly edition (established in 1885) ceased in 1907.

In 1893 a local company acquired control, the directors including J. B. Connett, James Bellringer, E. Dockrill and S. B. White, McKenzie retaining a considerable holding. J. Guerin was in control in 1898 but the new regime having decided to support prohibition, he resigned and Arthur Hopper was appointed editor (1899). The News rendered the cause considerable service, but financially the result was not encouraging. Hopper resigned in 1900 and Edwin Gill Allsworth, who had newspaper interests in Stratford, became editor and manager. He revived the sporting columns and gave whole-hearted support to education and to the needs of the backblocks. He did not succeed, however, in making the paper pay and in 1903 the directors were glad to dispose of it. They found a purchaser in James Henry Clayton, who had been Allsworth’s rival in Stratford.

In 1905 when the News was in a very low state, if not moribund, and Clayton had been having trouble with his monolines, he announced the sale of the paper to a younger man, Thomas Currie List 5 . The new owner, who took over on 1 February 1906, brought with him from Manaia his brother George List, and his brother-in-law, Cecil Milton Hill, who was to spend more than 30 years with the News. List threw himself into the task with vigour and vision. Discarding the unsatisfactory setting machines, he employed a handsetting staff of four girls in the daytime and eight men at night until linotypes were installed (1908). He gave full support to the development of the backblocks by advocating hydro-electric

5 T. C. List (1879-1934), born in England, was apprenticed to the Hutt and Petone Chronicle. When just out of his articles he and a fellow apprentice (Berntsen) leased the paper. Later he collaborated with George Thomas London in establishing the Sun in Wellington, and for some years was proprietor of the Waimate Witness. As a Rotarian he was governor of the Wellington district.

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power and tar-sealed roads. In 1915 he installed a single-reel Foster rotary press driven by electricity. Today’s machine is a 4-reel Goss. The first photograph appeared in the News in 1910 and by 1929 photographs were a regular feature. The photoengraving plant is a Klischograph. The fine modern newspaper office into which the News moved in 1938 embodies the plans drawn up by List himself.

The sound and progressive property which List left at his death (in 1934) testified to thirty years of planning, energy and integrity. In accordance with his will the trustees took control of the business, and in 1936 registered the Taranaki Daily News Co. Ltd., the directors being John Connal Nicholson, Gordon Fraser and Leslie Adams Nolan. Clavering Wales Hodge (1902-46), the first manager, was appointed in 1940 manager of the Star-Sun, Christchurch. He was succeeded as managing editor by Donald F. C. Saxton 6 , who had been editor since the resignation of Cuthbert East in 1932.

The Taranaki Herald (1852) is the oldest paper in New Zealand and the Taranaki Daily News (1857) is the third oldest.

Taranaki Country Press

North of New Plymouth Taranaki has had only one newspaper centre, the river port of Waitara. In 1873 Joseph Ivess registered the Waitara Press, which in 1884 was incorporated in the Taranaki Daily News.

In 1895 Thomas Elliott Wilson came to Waitara and started a tri-weekly, the Waitara Times and Clifton County Gazette, which he sold in 1898 to H. H. Lyes and W. H. Nosworthy. In 1901 it was incorporated in James H. Clayton’s Waitara Evening Mail and Clifton County Chronicle, which was founded in 1898 and a year or two later was taken over by Lyes and Nosworthy. William Henry Nosworthy (who had been on the Thames Advertiser) was editor from 1900-22 and George Ernest Nosworthy was printer till 1920. In 1922 Neil Madsen acquired the Mail. The office was burnt out in 1929 and in 1938 Madsen retired in ill health and the Mail ceased.

Stratford never did itself credit in journalism. When John Ballance promoted the first newspaper in 1890 there was not

6 D. F. C. Saxton (1900- ), born and educated in New Plymouth, joined the News staff in 1924. He attended the Empire Press Union conference in 1946 and later conferences of the Commonwealth Press Union.

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even a borough council, but in 1900 the town had just over 2,000 inhabitants and the distance from New Plymouth, 30 miles, was sufficient at that time to justify having a local paper. The Egmont Settler, a bi-weekly inspired by John Ballance, appeared in 1890, managed and edited by W. H. G. Spurdle. A year or two later, when E. G. Allsworth was editor, to meet competition the paper became tri-weekly and a few months later, daily. Three months’ experience clearly demonstrated the folly of this luxury. Frederick William Brooking in 1899 sold to William Charles Whidock and Reginald Alexander who, after carrying on for four years, effected an amalgamation with their competitor. This was the Egmont Post, a tri-weekly which Joseph Ivess started in 1894 and sold in 1896. The new owner, James H. Clayton, though he conducted his Taranaki papers with great energy, had to admit that they were premature for the needs of the province and eventually disposed of them all.

Whitlock amalgamated the Post with the Settler as the daily Stratford Evening Post. In 1906 the Stratford Printing and Publishing Company was formed, with Whitlock as manager and Arthur Edward Copping (from the Press, Christchurch) as editor. When Whitlock sold out in 1906, Copping continued as managing editor. On his retirement in 1925 he was succeeded by J. T. Petrie. Thenceforward the Post experienced various changes in ownership. In 1936 it was sold to the Egmont Newspaper Co., which included C. W. Hodge (of the Taranaki Daily News), and J. McCormick (who had edited the Post since 1929). It ceased publication on 20 November 1936. The Taranaki Central Press Co. acquired the property and started on the following day the Taranaki Central Press, but it expired within a year. A weekly established at the same time under the title Taranaki Weekly survived for a year. It was “issued with the compliments of the advertisers”.

Two years later the Stratford Post plant was sold to Couriers (N.Z.) Ltd. of Te Awamutu, which used it to print the weekly Stratford Courier (1939-40).

In view of its considerable borough population and its prosperous back country, Stratford’s inability to support a local newspaper is rather surprising. The explanation is doubtless to be found in indifferent management at a time when journals in neighbouring centres were in particularly capable hands.

The Inglewood Record and Waitara News, a weekly, was

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established in 1891 by Charles Gibbs Beckett. It was published on Wednesdays while another paper, the Weekly Record, was brought out on Saturdays. In 1896 George Charles Bateman bought the Record and in 1901 Thomas Edward Hamerton and Charles Egerton Holden Hamerton made it a tri-weekly. T. E. Hamerton was managing editor till his death in 1919, when the paper passed to a company with J. Andrews as manager and publisher. In 1930 the Inglewood Times appeared, incorporating the Record. It went through several changes before closing down in 1937.

The first paper at Kaponga, the Kaponga Mail, was established by John James Staples in 1904 and lasted only a few months. In 1925 this modest field was again occupied by a paper of its own. The Kaponga Courier announced itself as the twelfth paper in the province. It was printed on what was believed to be the oldest Wharfedale machine still running in New Zealand, an Ingle dated 1839 which had previously served the Sydney Morning Herald and the Wanganui Chronicle. The proprietor of the Courier, L. Crawford Watson, also owned the Waimate Witness, which was sold to T. S. Hickey in 1928 and in 1937 to C. S. Rush.

The first paper published at Opunake was the Egmont Courier and Waimate Plains Advocate (of which a copy, 6 October 1883 has been seen). P. Galvin is said to have published in 1896 (when he was leasing the Hawera Post) a paper called the Opunake Courier.

The Opunake Times was established in 1894 by Michael Joseph Brennan, who was manager and editor. George Philip Armstrong came in later as a partner. In 1919 the Times was sold by Arthur J. Brennan to T. S. Hickey. It was acquired in 1930 by W. H. Marcroft and in 1937 by Charles S. Rush (of the Eltham Argus). It was sold in 1946 to G. Jackson, and it ceased in 1949.

After establishing the Egmont Post at Stratford in 1894, Joseph Ivess began to publish from that office a small journal called the Eltham Guardian which he sold within a year to S. J. Binning. In 1896 F. C. Mackenzie took it over, and then James H. Clayton. After facing the opposition of the Eltham Argus till 1902, he closed down.

Meanwhile in 1897 James H. Claridge, who had been employed on the Hawera Star, came to Eltham with his brother-in-law, T. D. Taylor, and brought out the Eltham Argus and Kaponga

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District Advertiser. In 1900 Taylor made it a daily and it was sold to Walter Charles Frederick Carncross 7 . In 1924 the Argus tried the experiment of reducing its price to a penny, but had to return to 1 id. Carncross sold the paper in 1936 to Charles S. Rush 8 , who formed a private company (with his sons) to acquire a string of papers in Taranaki. Rush was managing director (till his death in 1952) and Grenville Herbert Rush was managing editor of the associated papers. Denis Rush, a son of C. S. Rush, is now managing director of the Argus, which is tri-weekly.

The Haw era Star

The Hawera and Normanby Star, for many years the leading paper in southern Taranaki, was founded in 1880 by Patrick Galvin 9 , Joseph Braden Innes and J. C. Yorke. Innes came to Nelson from New South Wales as an apprentice with W. Nation when he established the Colonist (1857). Yorke (1848-1932), who was editor, came from England to take up sheep farming. Galvin’s health soon compelled him to retire. J. H. Claridge, who spent 17 years on the Hawera Star (1880-97), says that the Wharfedale was driven by a capstan worked by an intelligent grey horse named Major, walking round a sunk pit in the yard. He adds:

Between the horse and the machine was a window in the wall. To feed the papers into the machine Mr Ekdahl used a piece of bone. When he wanted Major to start he would tap the window three times; when he wished him to stop he would tap twice. . . . Major knew the time better than anyone else. He would leave his stable at 12.15 precisely to print the Opunake edition for the coach leaving at one.

In the early years William Alfred Parkinson, a member of the Hansard staff, was editor. In 1883 the paper changed from

7 Sir W. C. F. Carncross (1855-1940) was born in Victoria. He began newspaper life on the Waitangi Tribune and in 1880 founded the Taieri Advocate. He was M.H.R. for Taieri (1890-1902), M.L.C. (1903-40) and Speaker of the Council (1918-39).

8 C. S. Rush joined the commercial staff of the Manawatu Standard in 1900 and was manager of the Manawatu Daily Times (1916-21).

9 P. Galvin (1847-1937) was born in Ireland and apprenticed there. He was on the Bendigo Independent and the Ballarat Star and after the Hawera episode edited the Poverty Bay Herald and the Marlborough Express. While running the Yea Chronicle (Victoria) he printed Thomas Bracken’s poem God’s Own Country.

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tri-weekly to daily with the title Hawera and Normanby Star, Patea County Chronicle and Waimate Plains Gazette. About 1890 Innes sold his interest and Yorke became sole proprietor, but in 1892 he returned to England. Parkinson bought his interest and for 27 years he was managing director. In 1912 he formed a private company (W. A. Parkinson & Co.) The Star suffered a disastrous fire in 1895 but duly appeared on the following day. After Parkinson’s death (in 1920) the paper was carried on by Robert F. Page and Charles Herbert Walker until 1922, when a new company was formed, with Robert Percy Bagot Bond as general manager. In 1934 the Hawera Star Publishing Company bought the business, Bond retired and Leonard Arnold Ablett (who had been editor since 1927) became managing editor. Other editors were: Richard J. Fames, John Christie, Ernest Atkin and J. H. Hall (1925).

The Star in 1885 established the Egmont Star, a weekly edition for the backblocks. It ceased publication in 1915.

Inevitably in those brisk days the Star had competition, prompt and vigorous. As soon as he heard of Galvin’s plan to start a paper at Hawera, Joseph Ivess let the Ashburton Mail and hurried back to Taranaki to look after the Patea Mail, which he had leased to Alexander Black. He approached Galvin with an offer, which was not accepted. He then took an office in Hawera and published there the Hawera Times, which was printed at Patea. After two issues he accepted the position and did not persevere. This seems to have been part of an Ivess plan for a chain of papers in Taranaki.

H. M. Stowell appears in the 1894 official list as proprietor of the Hawera Morning Post, a tri-weekly with a sub-title claiming all the lands and towns to the confines of Wanganui and New Plymouth. P. Galvin had this paper for 18 months from 1896. It expired before 1900.

The Waimate Witness was established at Manaia in 1888 by the proprietors of the Wanganui Chronicle, who printed it in Wanganui and sent it to Manaia by horse or coach. Some time before 1897 a printing office was established in Manaia. In 1899 H. H. Lyes and W. D. Nicholas took over the paper (now a tri-weekly) and in 1902 Thomas C. List (with his brothers George and Charles). List sold in 1905 to Abel Warburton, who changed the title to Waimate Witness and Kaponga Advocate. Later owners were Robert Watson Carpenter (1907), F. M.

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Byrne (1910), Cuthbert J. Powell (1918, after 12 years on the Patea Press), T. F. Redman (1921), L. Crawford Watson (1925) and T. S. Hickey. It ceased in 1928.

The Patea Mail was established by Joseph Ivess in 1875 and shortly afterwards transferred to James H. Clayton. Alexander Black then took it over. In 1880 it was called the Patea County Mail, and in 1882 the Patea Daily Mail. In 1881 John Black established the Patea Evening News, of which W. F. Howlett was editor. It expired late in 1882. The Mail was taken over in 1884 by Thomas E. Hamerton, who changed the title in 1888 to Patea County Press. Subsequent owners included W. C. Cargill (1904) and in 1911 Edward Frederic Henry Hemingway, who had been town clerk of Stratford.

In 1912 George Renner established a tri-weekly, the Waverley Tribune, which continued till 1914. The plant was sold to E. F. Hemingway for £275, but in 1916 it was destroyed by fire. Following the absorption of the Tribune the title was expanded in 1914 to Patea and Waverley Press, and the paper carried on by Hemingway till 1941, when it closed down owing to war stringency. In 1946 E. W. Beckett bought the plant and revived the Patea and Waverley Press which, however, died only three months later.

CHAPTER 9

THE HAWKE’S BAY PRESS

A Veteran Pioneer

The district of ahuriri, or Hawke’s Bay, received its first newspaper in 1857, a year before it acquired separate entity as a province. The paper was actually instigated by Sir Donald McLean as a step towards separation from the province of Wellington. At that time there were in the whole district of Ahuriri only 982 European inhabitants.

In August McLean arrived at Port Ahuriri in the steamer Wonga Wonga in company with the Premier (Sir Edward Stafford), Alfred Domett (Commissioner of Crown Lands for Hawke’s Bay), and George Sisson Cooper (Native Land Purchase Commissioner). Domett, himself a reluctant journalist in the province of Nelson and a poet of eminence, gave to the town of Napier and its streets names commemorating British authors and soldiers.

Also on board was James Wood 1 , who had been connected with papers in Auckland, and brought with him the requisite printing plant. On 21 August as “the proprietor” of the newspaper, Wood appealed in the Southern Cross for the support of Auckland mercantile interests. Whether he got it we do not know, but on 24 September 1857 he published at the bonded store of T. H. Fitzgerald, Port Ahuriri, the first issue of the Hawke’s Bay Herald and Ahuriri Advocate. Edited very capably, the Herald took the lead in the agitation for separation which the landowners soon achieved. On 1 November 1858 an Order-in-Council was gazetted setting up the province of Hawke’s Bay. Eleven days later the news reached Napier, and the second part of the title, “Ahuriri Advocate”, was dropped. Wood was appointed printer for the provincial administration and the Herald its official organ.

1 J. Wood (1822-75) was a member of the Provincial Council (1867-71). After retiring to live in England he published pamphlets on monetary topics.

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In 1861 the Herald became bi-weekly and early in 1871 daily. From 1870-78 William Warrand Carlile, a graduate of Oxford, was editor. In 1863 Peter Dinwiddie 2 entered the employ as accountant and in 1864 Thomas Morrison, a native of Ireland, began working at case, soon to adventure in casual reporting and to have charge of the printing department.

In 1871, in order to go on the land, Wood sold the paper to a group of four employees—W. W. Carlile, Thomas Morrison, P. Dinwiddie and Edward Henderson Grigg. The last withdrew and the firm carried on as Dinwiddie, Morrison and Co., with Dinwiddie as managing partner. Morrison devoted himself to journalism pure and simple till he sold his interest in 1878 to Richard Thomas Walker 3 . The firm was now Dinwiddie, Walker and Co. Carlile also took to sheep farming and Walker was editor till his death (1901). Another editor was H. C. Pirani (father of Frederick Pirani).

The progress of the Herald, if not sensational, was solid. It followed a conservative policy, adhering to four pages with an excessively long column for years after most of its contemporaries had changed over to eight pages and a shorter column. In 1886 the firm became a limited liability company.

In 1879 the Herald established a weekly, the Hawke’s Bay Weekly Courier, which lasted till 1897.

As large holdings were subdivided the population of Hawke’s Bay increased. In 1926 new machinery was installed which made it possible to produce a 16-page 7-column paper, which was necessary to combat the competition of two vigorous evening papers—one at Hastings and the other at Napier—and the growing pressure of the morning paper at Wellington. It was the earthquake of 3 February 1931, however, which brought disaster to the Herald and terminated its career as the Napier morning paper. In the quake and subsequent fires the plant and buildings were completely destroyed. The directors accepted the offer of the Hawke’s Bay Tribune to print the paper and in a few weeks the Herald was being printed in Hastings for publication in Napier.

2 P. Dinwiddie was born at Manchester in 1838 and served his commercial apprenticeship there. He came to New Zealand for his health.

3 R. T. Walker (1854-1901), a native of Manchester, gained experience on the Harwich Newsman, the Surrey Advertiser and the Richmond and Twickenham Times. He came to New Zealand in 1876 and was subeditor of the Evening Post before settling in Napier.

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Several months later both papers were acquired by a new company in which the Herald proprietors had a considerable interest. The Herald continued as a separate publication until 16 January 1937, when it was incorporated in the Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune. William Dinwiddie (1863-1937), a nephew of Peter Dinwiddie, was editor from 1901. He died a few months after the merger.

The Hawke’s Bay Times, the second paper in Napier, was established in 1861 by Yates brothers, printers. In 1863 it became bi-weekly and two years later was bought by Thomas Bennick Harding, who during the ensuing depression (1867-68) had to revert to weekly publication. In 1872 publication was suspended for a while. Harding’s son, Robert Coupland Harding 4 , bought the paper in 1873 and inaugurated a column in Maori. He had to close down late in 1874. From early in 1867 Harding published also the Hawke’s Bay Weekly Times.

In August 1879 a mushroom evening paper was started in Napier to support the Grey party in politics. The Star was, in fact, a comet, which ceased to shine six weeks after its first appearance.

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph, now the only daily surviving in Napier, was established on 1 February 1871, owing its origin to four prominent business men, Edward William Knowles (1833-1915) of Maidstone, Kent, merchant; George Edmund Lee, barrister; Alexander Kennedy and Thomas Kennedy Newton. To combat the dominance of the landed interest, they raised capital for a public company. In its early years the Telegraph met with stubborn resistance and unexpected combinations.

In 1875 the Telegraph commenced publishing the Weekly Mercury, but it failed to pay and was dropped in the early eighties. In the middle eighties the Telegraph was one of the largest sheets in the Colony, with a column of 29 inches. In 1886 fire destroyed both buildings and plant.

Three of the partners retired in 1891, leaving Knowles as sole proprietor. He directed his whole energies to the prosperity of the Telegraph and when in 1908 age compelled him to retire, he

* R. C. Harding (1849-1917) was an advocate of land reform and temperance, but was best known as an authority on typography. He contributed to the Transactions of the Institute a paper on the early New Zealand press.

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disposed of a sound and expanding business to an Auckland group consisting of Henry Brett and Thomson W. Leys (of the Auckland Star) and William J. Geddis 5 and William Blomfield (of the New Zealand Observer). The Daily Telegraph Co. was formed, with Geddis as managing director and editor. A few years later Blomfield sold his interest, and his place on the directorate was taken by Trevor M. Geddis, who in 1921 became managing director and in 1929 managing director and editor. Plant was thoroughly modernised under the new regime and new premises were erected in Tennyson Street.

The Daily Telegraph had been making sound progress and had just celebrated its diamond jubilee when building and plant were completely destroyed in the earthquake and fires of 1931. Energetic steps were taken to repair the devastation and on the day following the disaster, in the midst of the ruined city, the Telegraph re-appeared, albeit only in small quarto size. New premises were designed and machines ordered, and in April 1933 the paper was again housed and equipped in up-to-date conditions to afford strong leadership in the task of rehabilitation.

The first editor of the Telegraph was a London journalist, Richard Halkett Lord, whose witty and facile pen in 1871 brought him under punishment characteristic of the day, a horse-whipping. The bench considered 10s. an adequate fine for the perpetrator to pay. Lord afterwards worked for London Punch. Robert Price, who was editor till 1893, was succeeded by a Scottish journalist, Robert Martin, who had edited the Southland Times. Martin was followed by John William McDougall 6 , who was in charge of the Telegraph for 36 years, to its great advantage. A logical and fearless writer, he gave steady support to the Liberal party and played no small part in the progress of the province. After his retirement (in 1930) the managing director, T. M. Geddis controlled the editorial side until 1951, when he was succeeded by A. F. B. McCredie. In 1956 T. M. Geddis was succeeded as managing director by his only son (Brian S. Geddis), and he is

S W. J. Geddis (1860-1926) was born at Belfast, Ireland, and educated in Auckland. He joined the Star in 1874. He was managing director and editor of the New Zealand Times (1912-24). M.L.C. (1918-26).

B J. W. McDougall (1849-1933), born in Peterborough, England, arrived in New Zealand in 1874 and worked as a builder. He came to Hawke's Bay in 1877 and in 1880 edited the Waipawa Mail. Two years later he was chief reporter of the Hawke's Bay Herald.

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now chairman of the company and managing editor of the paper. From its establishment in 1871 the Daily Telegraph has been

vigorously identified with major phases of the development of Hawke’s Bay, notably the deep-sea port at Napier, the East Coast railway, reclamation, river control and the development of hydro resources at Waikaremoana.

The Napier Evening News and Hawkes Bay Advertiser, an evening daily, was started in 1885 by Thomas Martin Murphy. In 1888 it was run by John Thomas Marryat Hornsby and in 1894-96 by J. H. Kirby. It cost its Liberal proprietors a good deal until closing down in 1897. Charles Wilson, later editor of the New Zealand Mail, was editor about 1887-90.

The Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune

Considering its importance today Hastings was a late-comer in the newspaper world. In 1890 it had 2,000 residents yet four years earlier it defied the bold spirit of James H. Clayton to establish the Hastings Star and District Advertiser, a 3d. bi-weekly. His partner, Alfred Amory George 7 , was soon discouraged, but Clayton persevered till a brighter prospect appeared in 1888 in the Bush district.

The next attempt in Hasting was the Standard, promoted in 1896 by William Dawson Arnott (son of John Arnott, of the Grey River Argus) and Anthony Cashion, both of Greymouth. The foreman of the composing room was George W. Venables, who had a reputation as a quick compositor in New Zealand and Australia. The Standard was a daily produced on a Dawson double-royal hand press. The proprietors could not afford the fee of £5OO for admission to the United Press Association and after some dispute a payment of £3OO already made was accepted in full settlement and the Standard breathed more freely.

Owing to illness, Arnott sold out in 1898 to Job Vile, of Pahiatua, and before long the Standard was owned by William Hart. By 1905 his partners, Walter J. Jones (son of the Hon. G. Jones) and Charles Hiorns, withdrew. This was only a prelude, however, to a more significant change in 1907. The new proprietors were William Charles Whitlock (1865-1946), who had been running the Egmont Settler at Stratford since 1899, and Alfred Carncross (brother of Sir Walter Carncross) who came

7 A. A. George (1854-1930) spent most of his life printing in Hastings. From 1904-22 he ran a weekly, the New Zealand Bulletin.

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from Eltham. During the winter of 1907, with the help of a traction engine, the old building in Queen and Russell Streets was hauled round to a new site in Karamu Road and three months later the proprietors commenced to erect new premises in Queen Street.

The next milestone in the life of the Standard was in 1910. The paper had strongly advocated the claims of Ahuriri and the Inner Harbour as against the Outer Harbour, or Bluff Hill, proposal. The interest aroused by this controversy made the proprietors aware of the inadequacy of their equipment if they were to move with the times. At this juncture William Nelson, a pioneer of the frozen meat industry in Hawke’s Bay, volunteered to find the financial backing required. He suggested the name “Tribune” and interested several farmers in the paper. On 12 December 1910, the Tribune Ltd. having been registered, the Hawke’s Bay Tribune was first published, incorporating the Hastings Standard. In 1911 the Tribune moved to new premises at the intersection of Queen Street and Karamu Road, where its progress thereafter was continuous and steady.

In the earthquake of 3 February 1931 four printing offices in Hastings were laid in ruins, including that of the Tribune. Temporary shelter was erected and small daily bulletins were issued while the rubble was being cleared from the machines. On 16 February the paper re-appeared with normal issues and a week later the Hawke’s Bay Herald, Napier’s morning paper, which had lost everything in the fire and earthquake, was being produced by the Tribune plant. Some six months later a merger of interests was effected between Dinwiddle, Walker and Co., and the Tribune Ltd., the two firms agreeing to operate as one though each should retain its individuality and policy. William Dinwiddie controlled the morning paper (the Herald) and W. C. Whitlock the Tribune. In 1932 the company was reconstructed as Hawkes Bay Newspapers Ltd. At the end of 1933 W. C. Whitlock retired, transferring the office of managing editor to his son, William Arthur Whitlock, who had been for 10 years a subeditor with the Sun newspapers in Christchurch and Auckland and the Dominion (Wellington).

On 16 January 1937 the Tribune absorbed the old established Herald and adopted the title Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune. It carried on the serial number of the Herald, dating from 24 September 1857. Though it was impossible to re-establish the Herald as

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a morning paper, its title, the Hawke’s Bay Herald was not to disappear. Not only the names but the staffs of the two papers were merged, and the historical succession from the first paper in the province is thus maintained.

A month after the cessation of the Hawke’s Bay Herald as a morning paper, the prospectus appeared of a new morning daily to serve the whole of the province. This company, which had a nominal capital of £65,000, produced on 26 February 1938 the Hawke’s Bay Daily Mail, a 16-page paper of independent politics designed on the pattern of the London Daily Mail and profusely illustrated. The plant, obtained from the Brisbane Courier-Mail, included six intertype setting machines and a Duplex tubular 32-page straightline press. The promoter, A. E. Davy, was succeeded as manager in 1939 by J. W. V. Powell. The first editor was C. H. Williams (from the Press, Christchuch).

After suffering considerable losses, the Mail in 1940 came into the hands of a receiver. It was acquired for £6,500 by E. C. Huie on behalf of a private company with a subscribed capital of £7,500. Huie was manager and editor till 28 June 1941 when the Mail ceased publication. The press was sold to the Gisborne Herald Co. and the intertypes and process and engraving plant to New Zealand Labour Newspapers Ltd.

Wairoa Papers

The first newspaper established in northern Hawke’s Bay was the Wairoa Free Press, in the late seventies. Having come under the displeasure of the authorities for commenting on the intentions of the military regarding Te Kooti, it soon closed down. Discreetly or by compulsion?

A hardier creation appeared in 1881—Major John Thompson Large’s Wairoa Guardian and County Advocate. The promoter, who was a sheep farmer, owned and edited the paper till 1891. After that Henry Ellison, William Timperley, James Attridge Connell and Edward Arthur Slack were associated with it. In 1907 a local company published a tri-weekly, the East Coast Mail, which lasted two years.

The Guardian changed hands several times before 1918 when the Wairoa Publishing Co. took charge, with J. C. E. Turner as manager. During the war of 1914-18 the whole task of producing the paper fell upon the manager and a girl employee. A stock-and-station agency lent the services of an ex-compositor

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the vicar rendered literary assistance, and the constable and another official helped to bring the paper out. In September 1921 the office was burned down, the company went into liquidation and the paper ceased.

A local group, including A. E. Currie, Bernard Halpin and Arthur H. Deighton, thereupon started the tri-weekly Wairoa Star which was later transferred to a company. Deighton was manager and H. E. Stanton was editor till 1932, followed by William S. Moorhouse (1936) and Eric Baker (1941). Dr John Somerville was for some years a financial supporter and director. In the earthquake of 1931 the Star suffered in common with other newspapers in Hawke’s Bay, but it was alone in being able, on the day following the calamity (4 February) to issue a small sheet. On the following Friday the paper regained its full size of 8 pages— the only normal publication between Gisborne and Waipukurau. The Star was less fortunate in the quake of September 1932, which badly damaged the office and linotype. It is now a tri-weekly, managed since Deighton’s death by Vincent D. Fraser.

Thomas Lambert, who was born in Ireland in 1854, settled in Wairoa in the seventies, and over a period of 50 years was associated with all of the papers there (part of the time as editor).

The Seventy Mile Bush

Southward from Napier newspaper pioneers followed close behind the surveyors opening up the bush for small farmers. In 1878 Hugh Charles Thomson 8 established the Waipawa Mail, of which in 1880 J. W. McDougall was editor. It was bought by Samuel Johnson in 1883 but he soon found that his opinions were not acceptable to the farming community in which it circulated, so he sold to a local company. Later the Mail was controlled by J. T. M. Hornsby (1887), Henry Ellison (1889), C. M. Whittington (1892) and Charles Henry Critchley (1915). It was a consistent tri-weekly until the impact of the second world war led to its cessation on 24 January 1941 (vol. 68, no. 50).

8 H. C. Thomson (1845-1919) born in County Down, Ireland, reached Hokitika from Victoria in 1867 and collaborated with J. Ivess in founding the Inangahua Herald. He edited three Wellington papers before settling in Waipawa. He was afterwards engaged in journalism in the South Island and Poverty Bay before founding the Paraekaretu Express.

A. Domett. C.M.G. ( 181 1-87)

S. J. Furness (1852-1921 )

S. Johnson (1827-1905)

C. Elliott (1811-76)

R. Lucas (1817-76)

John Tyrrell (1830-92)

W. H. Cutten (1822-83)

Sir G. Fenwick (1847-1929)

G. Bell (1809-99)

Wm. Fenwick ( 1851-1906)

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Revived in 1946 by Howard Francis Franks, it is still being published weekly as the Mail by James Williamson Strang.

The Waipukurau Press, another of the creations of James H. Claridge, was started in 1905 with plant (including a hand press) which he bought from the Government Printing Office. Though four papers were already circulating in the town Claridge claimed within a year that he had established the Press soundly and was getting 90 per cent, of the local advertising. Before long, however, he was seeking fresh pastures in the King Country. George W. Venables had the paper (1906-09) and later owners included William Phipps (of the New Zealand Times). In 1917 the Waipukurau Publishing Co. was formed with Frank Eyre, and later Robert Watson Carpenter as managing editor. In 1922 the ownership passed to the Waipukurau Press Co. Ltd., with Frank Vaughan Ward as managing director and publisher and the paper became tri-weekly. Archibald C. Holms 9 was editor (with some intermission) from 1925 to 1936. Following the earthquake (1931) the Press became daily. Five years later it changed its title to Central Hawke’s Bay Press and it is still published as such with F. V. Ward in control.

The Stand at Dannevirke

We have seen that James H. Clayton 10 , having tested the prospect at Hastings, abandoned it very soon to move southward into the Seventy Mile Bush. The earliest settlers found their way in 1872 to Dannevirke, which in 1891, with a population of 838, was cut out of Waipawa County. In 1888 Clayton arrived on this unattractive pitch to establish Dannevirke’s first newspaper, the tri-weekly Bush Advocate, not six weeks after closing down at Hastings. He ran it for six years and then sold to David Curie, who had it for eight years. In 1898 a competitor, the Dannevirke Press, came on the scene, and in 1901 Curie sold the Advocate to Norman Henry Nash and John Coombe,

9 A. C. Holms, in 1936, established a monthly, the Central Hawke’s Bay Review, which lasted for three years.

i°J. H. Clayton (1850-1929) was born at Bristol, educated at Bristol College, and came to Otago in 1869. He joined the Evening Star (Dunedin) and in the seventies was subeditor of the Press (Christchurch). In 1877, with William Fenwick, he acquired the Evening News (Dunedin), carried it on for two years as the Age, and then bought the Patea Mail. In 1896 he was at Stratford, in 1898 at Waitara, in 1903 at New Plymouth, and in 1906 at Tauranga.

N it

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who forthwith changed the title to Dannevirke Advocate. The Advocate was again sold in 1903, the purchasers being Thomas Lindsay Buick 11 and John Ruffell Russell 12 . They converted it into a daily, acquired the first linotype in the town and developed a service of district news. Overtures begun in 1909 for amalgamation with a new company which had taken over the Press, were resumed in 1912 when the Advocate was sold to the Dannevirke Publishing Co. and incorporated in the Dannevirke Evening News.

The founder of the Morning Press at Dannevirke in 1898 was Charles Gibbs Beckett, who claimed that it was then the only morning paper between Masterton and Napier. To fight the Advocate it changed from a tri-weekly to daily in 1901 and was thus the first daily paper in southern Hawke’s Bay. In 1904 it was taken over by Reginald Alexander and Beckett’s eldest son Gilbert. The two papers maintained brisk competition until 1909 when the business community formed the Dannevirke Publishing Co. with the avowed object of starting a third paper if the other two did not come to terms. The company declined to buy the Press, but a month or two later decided to start a new paper, which was to be called the Dannevirke Evening News. As an earnest of their intentions the promoters bought a site for an office. The Press now agreed to sell and that paper appeared for the last time on 15 October 1909.

The new paper then established is the only one that now survives, the Dannevirke Evening News, which appeared as an 8-page paper on 16 October 1909. The first directors of the Dannevirke Publishing Co. were Sir George Hunter, C. C. Nielsen, L. C. Rathbone and H. Chadwick. The News began with three English Duplex typesetting machines, of which at that time there were only eight in the Dominion, and the press was capable of turning out 3,000 copies per hour. The first managing editor was Harold Francis Sherwood King. For two and a half years the two evening dailies vied with each other in the fight for circulation.

nT. L. Buick, C.M.G. (1866-1938), born at Oamaru, was M.H.R for Wairau (1890-96). He was a leading historian and on his death bequeathed £13,000 to the Hocken Library and the National Art Gallery. Buick was for many years connected with the Press Association.

12 J. R. Russell (1856-1917) served his apprenticeship with the Evening Post and, with his brother, founded the Manawatu Herald (1878). In 1893 he joined the Manawatu Times.

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Then Buick and Russell’s offer to sell was accepted. The News then entered on a period of steady development. In 1910 Archibald McNicol 13 was appointed managing editor, a position he held till his death. He was succeeded as managing director by William J. Woods and as editor (1933-1950) by William S. W. Tonkin and J. J. L. Sulzberger (1951-57). Lloyd James Appleton is now manager.

Though geographically Woodville is in Hawke’s Bay it comes within the newspaper history of Palmerston North. The Woodville Examiner was launched in 1883 by Alexander McMinn of the Manawatu Standard. It had a second title jealously guarding its ambitions east of the mountains—“Waipawa Advertiser and East Coast Gazette”. McMinn was a journalist of expansive imagination, and the Woodville Examiner is of special interest as one of the earliest attempts in New Zealand to found a chain of newspapers. McMinn had no sooner started the Manawatu Standard than he projected other papers in various towns in the North Island. Twice a week, after bringing out his own journal in Palmerston North, he rode through the Gorge to Woodville with several columns of type which had done duty in the Standard. The labour involved in bringing out the Examiner in such conditions was too great a strain; McMinn thought no more of his next project, which was at Opunake. In 1884 he sold the Examiner, which was acquired in 1887 by Edward Alexander Haggen, a member of John Ballance’s staff on the Wanganui Herald. While in Woodville he was mayor of the town and a member of the Land and Education Boards 14 . In 1896 John Grant, who had been manager of the Bruce Herald, became sole proprietor. After his death in 1916 his daughter, Miss Mabel Grant, managed and edited the paper for some years. Others who were associated with it were Henderson Carrick (editor 1918), Thomas B. Handley (1919), and A. H. Vile. It ceased publication in 1938.

East Coast Journalism

Owing to its geographical isolation the district so long known by Cook’s name as Poverty Bay was regarded as a promising newspaper territory, unlikely to be invaded by predatory competitors. The only daily paper now surviving is one that was

13 A. McNicol (1878-1933) had been associated with the Otago Daily Times and the Daily Telegraph (Napier). He was M.P. for Pahiatua (1922-25).

14 Haggen established the People in Wellington. He died in Canada.

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founded practically at the outset of settlement, but its career was by no means free from competition.

The founders of the Poverty Bay Standard in 1872 were Henry Edwin Webb (who had been in the lands office at Napier) and S. A. Parker. In 1878 they were prosecuted for using cable messages belonging to the press agency of Holt and McCarthy. They won their case, but the judgment of the appeal court induced Parliament to extend copyright protection to cablegrams. In 1879 the Standard plant was sold to J. S. McFarlane and shipped to Auckland, where it remained until citizens of Gisborne helped Webb to bring it back. Thus in April 1880 the Standard reappeared, and soon afterwards Webb’s son, Charles Henry Collins Webb (of the Waka Maori), became the owner, with Alfred A. George as manager. The paper was quite unable to make headway against the competition of the Poverty Bay Herald and in 1883 closed down “owing to financial stringency”.

Webb had a printing business in the town and shortly after the demise of the Standard, in collaboration with an ex-member of that paper’s staff, J. Mogridge, he started another Standard, a tri-weekly. This, too, had a short life. The facts regarding the Standards in Gisborne are still a little hazy.

The Poverty Bay Herald: now the Gisborne Herald The most substantial opposition to the Poverty Bay Standard came from the neighbouring province of Hawke’s Bay, from which a steady stream of settlers had been trekking northward as the country was freed of the scourge of war. In 1873 the Napier firm of Dinwiddle, Morrison and Co., which owned the Hawke’s Bay Herald, assisted to establish a Herald in Gisborne. William W. Carlile and Grigg were also interested, and the company was called Carlile and Co. In December 1873 the Poverty Bay Herald was registered. A. C. Pratt and Carlile took the machinery to Gisborne and set it up in Gladstone Road. There the Poverty Bay Herald, a bi-weekly morning paper, appeared on 5 January 1874. Frederick Dufaur was the registered owner in 1875, and in 1877 the property was taken over by the Poverty Bay Printing Company, of which Andrew Graham (afterwards M.H.R.) and William Fitzgerald Crawford (later mayor of Gisborne) were directors. It was then declared:

“It is hardly necessary to inform the public that the Herald belongs to no clique, is bound to the interests of no land ring.”

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It was published by forty or fifty prominent settlers and business men purely as a commercial venture; it would keep pace with the requirements of the district and express liberal, just and unbiased views.

In 1878, through the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, the company narrowly escaped liquidation. Dufaur and Captain Thomas Chrisp took over the paper, which was now a daily. Frederick Humphries, from Dunedin, was editor. With rare frankness the Herald confessed on more than one occasion that the holiday conviviality of the printing fraternity prevented the paper appearing in its accustomed dignity and proportions. On the occasion of the wedding of the Prince of Wales, it was almost entirely filled with standing advertisements, and after Christmas Day a like plea was made for forgiveness.

Early in 1880 Allan Ramsay Muir 15 , overseer of the New Zealand Mail at Wellington (in whose office he had been apprenticed 21 years earlier), accepted a position on the Herald, and three years later the paper came into the hands of the family with which its fortunes have been associated ever since. In February 1884 Muir bought Dufaur’s interest and became a partner, and in 1887 he bought out Captain Chrisp and became sole proprietor. The family thereafter devoted themselves to developing the Herald, which became one of the soundest papers in New Zealand. In 1896 the proprietor’s son, Allan Leonard Muir (1871-1935) became editor. In 1908 the business was formed into a private limited liability company. The head of the firm, who was chairman until his death, was succeeded in turn as chairman and managing director by his sons A. L. Muir, F. P. Muir, and Stanley Muir (1881-1952) and his grandson Allan Stanley Muir, 0.8. E. (1894- ) who now holds the position.

The first editor after Humphries was James Snyder Browne (1821-85) who had been editor of the Standard. Others were Henry McKay, George Adams, Walter Leslie, Patrick Galvin, L. W. Parson, Morgan Morris, Hugh Thomson, Harry Heaton

16 A. R. Muir (1845-1914) was a son of James Muir (1807-65), a native of Edinburgh, who started as an apprentice with the publishing firm of John Ballantyne in Edinburgh and remembered taking proofs of the Waverley Novels to Sir Walter Scott. He came to Wellington in 1840 and was printer of the New Zealand Gazette and Britannia Spectator. He was one of the group who founded the Independent, and he sold his share in 1864.

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Barker (1936-43), J. Bell Thomson (1943-49) and since 1949 G. G. Muir, B.A. (a grandson of A. R. Muir).

In 1938 the Herald absorbed the Gisborne Times, and in 1939 the proprietors put into effect a change they had long considered desirable, both for the paper and for the prestige of the district. They dropped Captain Cook’s misnomer “Poverty Bay” and called the paper the “Gisborne Herald”.

Fallen By The Way

We can now leave this story of success to record as briefly as possible the failures which marked Gisborne’s newspaper history;

In 1879 the Evening News was born and ran its course (absorbed by the Herald).

In 1883, while the Standard was still persevering, Captain Kenneth Kerr established a weekly called Facts, printed by Charles Henry Webb. Criticism of the East Coast Native Land Company and other institutions induced a crop of libel actions, and after four months Facts ceased publication (shortly before the death of its founder).

The Telephone, a morning daily published by Captain Thomas William Porter and Croft after the demise of the Standard, ceased on 30 December 1884.

From 1885 to 1888, John Baldwin published the Poverty Bay Independent, a tri-weekly. In 1886 the plant was purchased on behalf of George Adams (editor of the Herald) who brought out the tri-weekly Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette. When Adams met with a fatal accident, the property was sold to a company which included John Townley, Captain W. H. Tucker and Hamilton T. Jones (who became editor and manager and under other management continued as editor till 1892). Charles Wilson edited the Standard about 1887-90 and John Bryce Berry was manager for a space. When the paper ceased (1894) the plant was leased by J. Walter Bull for the publication of the weekly Gisborne Star, which had a short life. W. D. Lusty states that Edwin P. Smyrk started a New Zealand Standard in Gisborne about 1892.

The second Telephone in Gisborne is said to have been started by Edward John Wilkinson (1871-1933) on 6 July 1895. Hamilton T. Jones, E. A. Slack and Gaudin, who were running it in 1899 as a bi-weekly, decided to venture upon a daily paper. They accordingly dropped the Telephone and on 1 January 1900

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published the first issue of the Gisborne Times, a Liberal organ. Jones was the first editor. In 1903 Gaudin withdrew, the Gisborne Times Company was formed, and James A. Connell became editor and manager. The Gisborne Publishing Co., which acquired the property in 1910, could not make headway against the Herald. Joseph Angus Mackay was editor and manager (1912-37), succeeded by Richard James Eastwood. The property was then purchased by Robert James Kerridge, who changed the title to the Times and appointed a London journalist, T. H. Carmichael, to take control. On 16 April 1938 the Times ceased publication. The goodwill was purchased by the Poverty Bay Herald Company, which took most of the staff and incorporated the paper.

In 1921 John Mahoney started the Gisborne Weekly Tribune, which lasted less than a year.

While all the settlements north of Gisborne were on the sea coast, journalism found its voice at several of those small centres. In 1919 Robert Crebbin started at Tokomaru Bay a gratis royal folio news sheet, the East Coast Watch. The circulation jumped quickly from 220 copies to 670 and before the end of the year the paper was weekly. In 1924 Crebbin conceived the idea of a chain of similar papers and formed the East Coast Printing and Publishing Co. The Watch was renamed the East Coast News and Waiapu County Gazette and the company produced two other weeklies, the Matakaoa Messenger and County Advocate at Te Araroa, and the Tolaga Bay Times and Uawa County Chronicle at Tolaga Bay. Both ceased in 1927, leaving the East Coast News again the sole publication north of Gisborne.

After the death of William Pollock (in 1931) the paper was sold to John W. Young (of Gisborne) and Harold Wilson (who had been manager). Arthur C. Swan soon bought Young’s share and on Wilson’s death the property was sold to Frank Louis Joseph Nathan. He changed the title to East Coast Press and carried on till 1939, when the paper was taken over by his father-in-law, Herbert William Atkinson (from Otorohanga). He had had it for only a few weeks when it ceased publication (March 1939, vol. 7, no. 17). The plant was transferred to the Te Rau Press in Gisborne which has published a weekly since 1924. It is now owned by J. W. Walker.

CHAPTER 10

NELSON AND MARLBOROUGH

South Island Pioneers

I ike Wellington, says C. B. Brereton, Nelson had its first paper published in London, where the Nelson Advertiser on 6 September 1841. In the Colony itself, Nelson was the second settlement of the New Zealand Company and it had the honour of founding the first newspaper in the South Island. The Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle appeared within a few weeks of the arrival of the first emigrant ships. Charles Elliott (1811-76), the ostensible proprietor, arrived with his plant in the Mary Anne early in February 1842. According to Saxton's diary, Elliott had a good printing business in London when he was persuaded by a literary friend named Cooper to come to Nelson and start a paper. Cooper did not fulfil his part of the undertaking and eventually the directors of the New Zealand Company assisted Elliott financially. On the voyage out he made the acquaintance of an amiable and talented young man, George Rycroft Richardson, whose father was a major in the army. Six weeks after their arrival (actually on 12 March) appeared the first issue of a journal which was to be the only organ of public opinion in the South Island for the best part of a decade. The first leading article, which filled about five columns, bore at its head a quotation from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, printed in both English and French.

Elliott and his brother James were energetic individuals who thoroughly understood the publishing business. Like the Gazette in Port Nicholson, the Examiner championed the New Zealand Company and its settlers against the supposed maladministration of the Governor of New Zealand. That the plant and paper were the property of the New Zealand Company was a common belief; at any rate the Examiner did not give much space to ventilating the grievances of the settlers against the company. The first editor,

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George Rycroft Richardson, was killed at the Wairau (1843). His successor, Francis Jollie, held office only for a year. An article which he wrote on the debentures got him the sack and he was succeeded by Alfred Domett 1 , who had already been writing for the paper. It was he who compiled the Wairau supplement in December 1843 and published in the Examiner a closely reasoned vindication of the settlers and the Company. He carried the attack vigorously against the administrations of Lieutenant Shortland and Captain Fitzßoy. (Sir) David Monro (afterwards Speaker of the House of Representatives) also took a hand. According to Saxton's diary, Domett was to have received a guinea a week, but he left in April 1845 having received only £5. In 1857 he was again editor at a salary of £250 a year. Other editors and contributors included Francis Dillon Bell, Edward Stafford, J. C. Richmond, William Fox, Dr J. D. Greenwood, Dr Joseph Giles and the Rev. Frank Simmons. Towards the end of its career the paper was directed by an editorial board including Simmons, Richmond, J. Mackay, Dr Irving and William Charles Hodgson. W. M. Stanton floated a company of which he was managing director until the paper ceased publication.

Mechanical troubles confronted even such competent publishers as the Elliotts. On one occasion the paper opened its heart to its subscribers:

We beg to inform our readers that there is a great probability of our press being rendered utterly useless for want of rollers for inking the formes. An essential ingredient is treacle, and treacle we have been unable to procure for money. If any of our readers have any of this important article and will spare us some of it, for love and money united, we shall be infinitely obliged. We are not very particular as to the price, but treacle we must have, or not only the "Examiner" but bills, cheques and the laws of the benefit societies must remain for ever unbedevilled.

The decline of the Examiner was due mainly to its too close loyalty to the interests of the larger landed proprietors, who were

1 A. Domett (1811-87) was bom in Surrey, left St. John’s College, Cambridge without his degree and after a year or two of travel, read for the bar. He came to New Zealand in the Sir Charles Stuart Forbes (1842) to take up land in Nelson, Called to the Legislative Council in 1846, he was Civil Secretary for New Zealand, M.H.R. and a member of the Nelson Provincial Council. He was Premier in 1862-63. Ranolf and Amohia is his best known poetical work.

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strongly established in the Wairau portion of the province and were concerned to preserve regulations favourable to the runholders. In the Nelson district itself land suitable for settlement was limited, and there small agriculturists, artisans and townspeople sought a different type of legislation. When the people of the Wairau achieved separation by the creation of the province of Marlborough (November 1859) the Examiner lost some of its influence to its rival, the Colonist. The property was for sale in 1866. In 1869 the paper was occasionally illustrated with engravings.

Having commenced life as a weekly, the Examiner became bi-weekly and eventually daily to meet the opposition of the Colonist and the Evening Mail. Eventually on 15 January 1874 it closed down. The type and machinery were employed in 187577 by Lansley and Co. to produce for Hawkins and Hill the Nelson Daily Times, a morning paper.

The Nelson Colonist

It was fifteen years after the advent of the Examiner before Nelson had a second newspaper. The Colonist arose to oppose the dominance of the runholders. At a meeting convened apparently by a Scot named William Wilkie (1814-91) a provisional committee was set up including Isaac Mason Hill, William Akersten, John Luck, George Wales Lightband and Nathaniel Edwards. Lightband, being about to visit New South Wales, was asked to inquire about a printing plant and a printer. In Sydney he met William Nation 2 , who was producing a semi-religious journal, A Voice in the Wilderness, and persuaded him to come with his own plant and his family of printers to Nelson. With the addition of a double-demy machine obtained from the Sydney Morning Herald, the plant was set up in Akersten’s premises at the Port, the publishing office being at Wilkie’s store in Bridge Street. Thus the Colonist made its appearance on 23 October 1857, a 6 d. bi-weekly with Emanuel Eban as editor.

In pursuance of the Colonist’s opposition to land aggregation, Wilkie had persuaded John Perry Robinson, the Cincinnatus of Nelson, to leave his sawmill and stand for the Superintendency

2 W. Nation (1818-1903), born in Somerset, left England in 1838 as apprentice to a printer named Trood, who set up in Sydney and printed for Dr J. Dunmore Lang and published several religious papers. On leaving Nelson he engaged in printing in Christchurch, where he died.

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of the Province. It had been hoped that the Colonist would appear in time to influence the pending election, but that was not achieved. However, Alfred Saunders, who wrote some of the first leaders, was returned, and Robinson was re-elected.

In 1863 David Martin Luckie joined Nation in the ownership of the Colonist, Wilkie being a sleeping partner for many years. Another competitor, the Nelson Evening Mail, appeared in 1866 and for a few years Nelson had two bi-weekly papers and one daily. Wilkie sold out in 1868 to Edwin George Collins and two years later Nation sold out. Then Luckie left for Auckland (1873) and Collins was the sole proprietor. The Examiner now ceased publication, but ill health compelled Collins to seek retirement and the Colonist was sold to William Thorndon Bond (formerly of the Lancaster Guardian), Edward Finney, Thomas H. Bannehr and George Haslem. In 1882 it became a daily and so continued until 1920 when it was incorporated in the Evening Mail.

The editors of the Colonist included William Crompton, Elijah Tucker, E. G. Collins, R. H. Eyton, C. L. McLean, F. C. Simmons, William Hutchison, Alexander Reid, Joseph Shephard and Hastings Braddell.

The Nelson Evening Mail

The third important paper to be established in Nelson, and the only one now surviving, is the Nelson Evening Mail, which began as a daily on 5 March 1866. The promoter was Robert Lucas 3 , a native of Somerset, who had been trained as a printer. In 1860 he published for a few months the Nelson Advertiser and Family Newspaper, and he is said to have published in 1860 the Nelson Intelligence and Day of the Golden Isle. In starting the Mail, Lucas declared that he was not out to oppose any of the existing papers, but merely to support “the evident requirements of the community as a whole”. Sects and parties did not interest him. After his death in 1876 his son, Robert Stepney Lucas, took control. He was afterwards joined by two other sons, Arthur Pritchard and Albert Augustus. In 1920 they bought out the Colonist.

Editors of the Evening Mail have included: George Pile, a Londoner (1866); Merryweather (1866-69); Francis Blundell

3 R. Lucas (1817-76) in 1843 joined the Wesleyan Mission at Sierra Leone, where he managed the press. Returning to England in ill-health, he was a printer in Bristol till 1859.

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(1869-91), son of an early Waimea settler; J. F. Dundas, a cultured Scot with a penchant for Johnson and Pepys; Oswald Wellesley Hanby, who had studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and had been editor of the Bathurst Times; and Kenneth Gordon Lucas (1912). On the formation of a limited liability company in 1926 K. G. Lucas became a director. He was succeeded as editor by Frederick James Earle, who had had a wide experience in metropolitan journalism and later became managing editor of the Mail. Financially the Evening Mail is still controlled by the Lucas family. Rex Dugard and Albert Harland Lucas are directors, and R. D. Lucas managing director.

For some time (1886-88) the Mail published the Nelson Weekly News, and between 1897 and 1902 the firm published the weekly Brightwater Independent Chronicle.

There are references in the seventies to a gratis advertising sheet, the Morning Advertiser, which appeared for a few weeks.

The Nelson Evening Star, a daily evening paper, was published by John Kerr, M.H.R., and W. F. Hall from 1894 to 1897. E. O’Hara Canavan was the first editor, followed in 1895-96 by James Attridge Connell.

David McKee Wright in 1905-06 published a weekly called the Nelson Times.

In 1932 A. H. Vile published eight issues of a weekly, the Nelson Spectator (printed in Christchurch).

The Waimea Times (partly typewritten) was published at Richmond in 1940 by Maurice Gomez.

The isolation and comparative remoteness in horse-and-boat days of the small towns dotted round the shores of Tasman and Golden Bays naturally called into existence a number of local papers which on the whole showed unusual tenacity of life.

The first to appear outside Nelson city was R. G. Peacock’s Golden Bay News, a weekly published at Collingwood in 1883. In 1885 W. R. Peacock called it the Golden Bay Argus. It was acquired in 1891 by George Henry Allan (1864-1929), who carried it on till its amalgamation with the Golden Bay Times. About 1885 there appeared at Motueka the bi-weekly Motueka Herald and Waimea Advertiser. It ceased in 1889, just about the time when G. Girling Butcher (1861-1933) brought out at Takaka the weekly Takaka News, Collingwood and Motueka Advertiser. Butcher sold in 1894 to Samuel Gaskell Robinson and in 1902 Samuel Fittall bought the paper and changed the

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title to Golden Bay News. Edward Cann came in 1909 and called it the Golden Bay Times. Four years later it passed to G. H. Allan and in 1915 he amalgamated with it the Golden Bay Argus. After being run by O. and W. D. Allan (1923-31) the Golden Bay Times was acquired by Alistair Lumsden Taylor (of the Timaru Post). In 1938 it was absorbed by the Star-Times.

Meanwhile Motueka, being so much closer to Nelson, was without a newspaper from 1889 to 1901, when James Henry Boundy started the bi-weekly Motueka Star. Elizabeth Ann Boundy ran it (1904-12) and then Gordon J. W. Boundy. In 1933 it was acquired by the Motueka Star Co. and in 1938 it merged with the Golden Bay Times in the Motueka Star-Times.

In 1936 A. L. Taylor tried to raise £50,000 to establish the Morning Post as a daily for Nelson and Marlborough. This failing to materialise, he proposed to merge the Golden Bay Times and the Motueka Star into a morning daily for the district. Actually the Motueka Star-Times appeared on 1 July 1938 but a few months later Taylor was succeeded as managing editor by Edward Lenihan and in 1939 the paper was taken over by Provincial Newspapers Ltd., with Ernest Clifford Wearne as manager. Under a new title, the Province, it survived only a month or two and its demise left the Murchison-Nelson-Golden Bay district once more with a single paper, the Nelson Evening Mail.

Newspapers in Marlborough

Marlborough, which was the second province to be formed by separation from one of the original provinces of 1853, lost no time in equipping itself with a newspaper press. The separation took place on 1 November 1859, and there were only about 500 or 600 people living in the township of Beaver on 5 January 1860, when the first newspaper in Marlborough was established. The Marlborough Press and County of Sounds Gazette was founded by George Coward and Timothy William Millington.

Two months later the name of the town was changed to the more dignified “Blenheim”. Politics in the Province for some years centred upon the rivalry of Blenheim and Picton. Hence when the newspaper plant was removed to Picton in 1861 the proprietors salved party jealousies by declaring that the paper was published in both towns. In 1864 the Press became bi-weekly. It now began to dawn on the proprietors that unless there was a separate paper for each town, competition was inevitable.

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Accordingly, in 1864, Coward issued from the old Press office in Blenheim the first number of the Wairau Record, the partners carrying on business in Picton as “Millington and Co.” and in Blenheim as “Coward and Co.” When the Provincial Council, on a temporary majority, fixed the seat of government at Picton, it seemed that the dilemma could be solved only by a dissolution of partnership. They cut the Gordian knot in 1865, when the Press was definitely established at Picton while the Record carried on in Blenheim.

Competition had materialised nevertheless, for the Press of 5 August 1865 refers to the decease of the Marlborough Times, with which Walter Taylor, George Donne, Jeremiah Harnett and William Shaw were associated. It lasted only six months.

In July 1865 a company was formed in Picton to carry on the Marlborough Press, the directors including John Godfrey, Alexander Allen and the picturesque Arthur Beauchamp, who was managing director 4 . Millington, the printer, was replaced by Alfred Thomas Card, who conducted the paper with consistent success for 40 years. The company was wound up in a few years and eventually Card became sole proprietor. On his retirement in 1903 George William Nicol and Hans Christian Madsen (both of Wairarapa) took over. Madsen died in 1937 and Nicol in 1943, the paper ceasing later that year. Sydney Davey revived it from 1944 to 1948, when the Marlborough Express bought the plant.

Meanwhile the Wairau Record had run its stormy course, vigorously championing Blenheim against Picton under the editorship of Elijah Tucker. About the middle of 1865 it changed its title to Marlborough News and General Advertiser. Its politics were Liberal and the editor, William Collie, has some claim on the gratitude of Marlborough for his part in petitioning Governor Gore Browne to relieve the rising central township of the name of “Beaver”. To this His Excellency graciously acceded, presenting the people with the name of one of the Duke of Marlborough’s victories. The Wairau Record had found it hard enough to make a crust with two other papers in so small a community.

The Marlborough Express Nevertheless an experienced journalist from elsewhere thought well of the district. It was during this ruinous triangular com-

♦ The father of Sir Harold Beauchamp.

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petition that Samuel Johnson 5 detached himself from Albertland, where his ocean-born Gazette was obviously premature, and wandered through the southern settlements with his plant, of which the piece de resistance was an Albion press. In spite of the number of papers that had scratched for a living in Blenheim, he considered the site a good one, and on 21 April 1866 he and his brother Thomas brought out, from a small office in Grove Road, a pledge of their confidence. The Marlborough Express they distributed at first gratis, with the promise that they would give Blenheim a paper that would look after the province as a whole—-a sly hit at the factionists of Picton and Blenheim. With liberal assistance from exchanges Johnson did give the public better than they had been accustomed to. Nevertheless at times Blenheim was fourteen days without news from its nearest neighbour, Nelson. In June 1867 he claimed that the Express in three weeks had given 5,718 inches of news, as against 5,086 in the Press and 4,478 in the News.

When the provinces were abolished the paper broadened its horizon and in the late seventies it espoused with vigour the Liberal cause. Johnson’s two years in the Provincial Council (1872-74) sickened him of the turmoil and bitterness of public life. After every election there was a shoal of libel actions. The task of guiding public opinion was on the whole a thankless one, and in 1879 he sold his paper to Smith James Furness 8 and James Henry Boundy. In 1880 they made the Express a daily and started the Weekly Marlborough Express. In 1883 came the Marlborough Weekly News, which later took on more of a magazine character and ceased in 1895. Boundy sold out in 1893 and Furness carried on the Express for some years as sole proprietor, editor and manager. He retired in 1910, handing over to his sons (Roy Patterson and Geoffrey) a sound business which had beaten off competitors and secured the field. In 1917 Roy Furness acquired his brother’s share. In 1935 a private company was registered, a family concern in which R. P. Furness (18831952) held a controlling interest. He was governing director till

B S. Johnson (1827-1905) had been on the Manchester Daily Telegraph and had edited the Castleford Guardian before joining the Albertland Association. After leaving Blenheim in 1880 he purchased the Waipawa Mail.

6 S. J. Furness (1852-1921) was born in Wellington and trained on the Independent. He had a printing office in Nelson and assisted to found the Ashburton Guardian (1878).

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1950 when he was succeeded by his son Donald Milsham Furness, who had been manager. Occupants of the editorial chair have included S. E. Greville Smith (1907-08), R. P. Furness (1909-19), William Redmond Allen (1919-45) and Selwyn Isaac Vercoe. The Marlborough Press was absorbed in 1948.

Though the Wairau Record was a frail foundling, under its new title, the Marlborough News, it was destined to have a fairly healthy career. T. W. Millington carried it on as a weekly till May 1874, when it was absorbed by a newcomer promoted by John Tail and bearing the title of the Marlborough Times. Amongst the promoters of the Times were Henry Dodson, Joseph Ward and Thomas Carter. Henry Cohen Pirani (from the West Coast Times) was manager. Starting as a bi-weekly, it graduated to a daily in 1882. In 1887 it was acquired in partnership by Samuel Rabone (a printer) and Andrew Burns (who initiated into journalism his son Alexander M. Burns). In 1894, when the enterprising James H. Clayton acquired it, the title was Marlborough Times and Town and Country Advertiser. A year later he sold it to S. J. Furness, who would probably have closed it down at once but for the risk of tempting a new adventurer into the field. To prevent that he carried it on as a morning edition till 1905. Though it was not paying its way the Times failed to deter others, for on 23 September 1905 the Marlborough Herald made its appearance. It was promoted by a local company of Liberals and edited in turn by James A. Connell, W. R. Allen and George Renner. It became a morning paper in 1910 and last appeared in January 1911.

Meanwhile in 1893 Samuel Rabone founded a weekly, the Evening Star, which lasted about four years.

Outposts in Marlborough

The little seaport of Havelock gave shortlived promise of prosperity in 1864 when a lusty host of diggers from Otago and Canterbury poured into the Wakamarina goldfield. On the crest of that rush, which swelled the population of Picton to 3,000 souls, came Henry Blundell, his sons John and Henry, and David Curie, with a newspaper plant, of which Blundell had brought a portion from Dublin. In the Marlborough Press of 25 May 1864 we read: “Four gentlemen who arrived (at Picton) from Dunedin yesterday with press, type and necessary plant are about establishing a newspaper in Havelock to be called the

T. Bracken (1843-98)

Mark Cohen (1849-1928)

Sir J. Vogel (1835-99)

C. S. Smith (1869-1943)

Sir J. Hutchison (1867-1946)

George Jones (1844-1920)

W. F. Alexander (1882-1957

J. A. Matthews (1842-1911)

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Argus.” Within a week (actually on 1 June 1864) they brought out the first issue of a bi-weekly, the Havelock Mail. But before the end of the year the Wakamarina miners were already moving off the field. The Blundells and Curie accordingly cut their loss and closed down the Mail. They thought of settling in Wanganui but in the event they found gold more plentiful on Lambton Quay, within a mile of John Martin’s fountain.

Strange as it may seem, the Havelock Mail apparently had a competitor for a short time—a weekly sheet, the Wakamarina Intelligence, which was printed in Nelson and sent to Canvastown about May 1864.

Thereafter there was no paper in Havelock until 1889 when G. K. Wakelin established the bi-weekly Pelorus Guardian and Miners’ Advocate. This was being run in 1894 by Charles Edward Dee for Charles Houghton Mills 7 , who was the principal owner until the Pelorus Guardian Company purchased it in 1907. For ten years Thomas D. Taylor was editor. The Guardian ceased in 1920.

The Pelorus News Bulletin, a weekly mimeographed journal, was published from 1934-36 by Forest A. Marriott.

The Kaikoura Herald and East Coast Advertiser was started in 1868 in an isolated and self-contained district in the far south of Marlborough. The promoter was a schoolmaster named J. B. Williams, who ran it from 1868-72, Charles J. Rae being editor for most of the time. (In the fifties he edited the Christchurch Guardian.)

In 1880 George Renner (1852-1938) established the Kaikoura Star and North Canterbury and South Marlborough News, an evening weekly which he carried on as a sturdy champion of Liberal principles. Renner sold in 1905 to Wilfred Beach Ingram, who changed the second title to Kaikoura County Gazette and Recorder. A year later he reverted to evening publication to meet the competition of the Kaikoura Sun, Farmers’ Advocate and County Gazette. This paper, established by Alfred William Ottery Renner, was absorbed by the Star in 1910. The Star was acquired in 1918 by Albert Burton Clark, who during the war had managed the divisional press for Ist New Zealand Expedi-

7 Hon. C. H. Mills (1844-1923) was born in Nelson and was a teacher before starting business in Havelock. He was M.H.R. for Wairau (1890-1908), M.L.C. (1909-16), and a member of the Seddon ministry (1900-08).

N 12

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tionary Force. He was editor, manager and proprietor till 1947, selling out a few months before his death to Frank Bernard Sabiston. The Star, now a bi-weekly, is in its 76th year.

CHAPTER 11

OTAGO JOURNALISM

Origins in Scotland

The pioneers of otago, like those of Wellington, had a newspaper published in the Old Country which was intended to keep them and their friends acquainted with news and developments of interest. In January 1848 the Otago Association in Edinburgh published for their benefit the Otago Journal, of which there were eight numbers at irregular intervals over four years. John McGlashan, the editor, was an Edinburgh solicitor who, after acting as secretary to the Association, came to Otago in 1853. Useful though it was, the Journal did not meet the needs of the colonists in their new home, nor did the Association follow the example of the Wellington colonists who published one issue in London, then packed up their plant and published the second at Petone.

The colonists who arrived in Otago in March 1848 were for nine months without a newspaper. Their first effort in journalism native to New Zealand was the Otago News, a 6 d. fortnightly which appeared on 13 December 1848. Its readers were no doubt heartened by the motto “There’s pippins and cheese to come”, but the News was conducted with unwise energy. The proprietor, Henry Graham, was a native of Carlisle who came out in the Blundell. It did not help him that, being an Anglican and rather resenting the dominance of the Presbyterians, he allied himself with what were termed the “Little Enemy” in opposition to the policy of the veteran Captain William Cargill and of the New Zealand Company, of which the Otago Association was a sort of offshoot. Retaliating against Graham’s destructive criticism, Cargill withdrew all official advertising, an infallible specific for opposition, which led to the demise of the first Otago paper on 21 December 1850. Though a new journal was incubating, the disgruntled colonists were for two months without the light of a free press.

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The Otago Witness

A week or two before Graham’s death (actually on 8 February 1851) the first issue appeared of a paper which was destined to embody the spirit of the province and influence its development for eighty years to come. The Otago Witness was a 4-page paper of four columns, published fortnightly at 6 d. On 30 August it became weekly. William Henry Cutten 1 was the editor. He was an Englishman, able, genial and witty, and he happened to be the son-in-law of Captain Cargill. In its first issue the Witness declared:

The objects of the proprietors are in the first place to supply the settlement with the means of advertising and with the news from Home and other quarters carefully selected and adapted to the demand of an intelligent public, and to circulate such accurate statistics and solid information ... as shall be useful to the settlers themselves and of abounding interest to their friends and well-wishers in the Old Country.

The paper took its title from the Edinburgh Witness, which was then in high favour amongst Scots (and English) readers. Its principles were to be in harmony with the original scheme of the Otago settlement, “in religion evangelical, and in politics adhering to the principles of the British Constitution, maintaining the rights and privileges of local self-government and of civil and religious liberty in the widest sense”.

The editor paid a neat compliment to his dying colleague when he confessed that the Witness suffered by comparison with the Otago News “which we have no hesitation in complimenting as the finest specimen of printing we have seen in the Colony”.

Daniel Campbell, who was trained at Constable’s in Edinburgh, came out under engagement to the Witness and was printer and publisher for many years. He distinguished himself by initiating the cheap land movement at a public meeting in Otago. Since the Witness did not pay its way, the proprietors in 1852 presented the property to the editor, who carried it on for 10 years. Making an appeal in 1855 for more generous support, he pointed out that though the district had a population of over 3,000 the Witness had only 210 subscribers. In 1862, to cater for the mining

1 W. H. Cutten (1822-83) was born in London, studied law and entered the bankruptcy office. He came to Otago in 1848 and began business as a merchant and auctioneer. He was a member of the Otago Provincial Council (1853-63, 1871-73) and of Parliament (1853-55, 1878-79).

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population, two editions were published—for the goldfields on Friday and for the town on Saturday. Julius Vogel was editor for a short time in 1861 before starting the Otago Daily Times. He was succeeded by Henry Wirgman Robinson (1861-63), George Bell (1863-69) and William D. Murison, who from 1869-75 was supervising editor of both papers. He was followed by Robert Wilson 2 , who officiated till his death. In 1864, when the goldfields were at their height, the Witness published 4,500 copies. About this time the column was reduced to 14i inches (approximately the standard for New Zealand weeklies thereafter), and the paper contained “a first class illustration each week of some subject of local interest”. The first of these were portraits in line blocks of the All England XI then visiting Otago.

In 1877 the property was purchased by G. Fenwick and G. M. Reed and the Witness absorbed the Southern Mercury. William Fenwick 3 , became printer in 1878 and succeeeded Wilson as editor next year. The paper experienced a steady increase in popularity and at the end of the century was the soundest weekly in the Colony. William Fenwick’s “Chats for the Farmers” and “Little Folks’ Page” were great attractions. The Witness, moreover, offered hospitality to many New Zealand poets and short story writers. Later editors were Charles Fraser (1906), who had been subeditor of the Otago Daily Times, and John Thomas Paul 4 (1924-32).

J. V. Lonsdale was printer to 1887 and Josiah Lye 1887-1921. The Witness began to use halftone blocks in 1900 and was later profusely illustrated. In common with other weeklies of this type it was adversely affected by the steady retreat of the backblocks and the acceleration of communications after the beginning of the century. On 28 June 1932 it appeared for the last time.

2 R. Wilson (1819-79) was born in Ireland. After storekeeping in California he came to Australia in 1854 and started at Castlemaine a paper called the Miners' Right. When Vogel came to Otago, Wilson took over his Inglewood Advertiser. He was publisher of the Otago Daily Times before becoming editor of the Witness.

3 W. Fenwick (1851-1906) came to New Zealand in 1856 and was apprenticed to the Otago Daily Times. He took over his brother's share in the Cromwell Argus and with J. H. Clayton conducted the Age in Dunedin (1876-78).

4 Hon. J. T. Paul, to whom the author is indebted for information contained in articles in the Otago Daily Times and a booklet.

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The Otago Colonist

A difference of opinion in 1856 between James Macandrew 6 and the editor of the Witness was primarily responsible for the establishment of the Otago Colonist and Dunedin and Invercargill Advertiser, a 6 d. weekly which first appeared on 26 December 1856. The new paper found itself hampered by unexpected difficulties. One day when it had only two pages instead of the usual eight, it explained:

We deeply regret that we are under the necessity of appearing before our subscribers in so reduced a shape. . . . This occurred in consequence of a compositor on whose services we had relied having unexpectedly left us. We are, however, bringing two hands from Melbourne by the return of the Gil Bias, when our readers may depend upon our amply refunding them for any deficiency in the amount of matter contained in our weekly sheet.

William Lambert (1811-61), who was printer and publisher of the Colonist, was a strong English nonconformist. He came to New Zealand from New South Wales in 1856 because he objected to work on the Sabbath for the Sydney Morning Herald. At his printing house in Field’s Lane, Auckland, several of his daughters worked as compositors. Thomas Spencer Forsaith, leader of the Clean Shirt Executive of 1854, recommended Lambert to Macandrew, and the whole family moved to Otago to assist in the new undertaking.

When the Otago Daily Times appeared in 1861, the situation of the Colonist was gravely menaced. Already failing in health, Lambert reacted with characteristic firmness. He had entered the Provincial Council in 1857 purely to oppose Cutten, who was seeking re-election upon taking office as Provincial Secretary. Lambert stood as a protest against what he called “nepotism in its worst form—-nepotism headed by senility with all its prospective bad effects”. His outspoken views on state aid to education led to his defeat in 1859. When the Otago Daily appeared the fight was on in earnest, but Lambert would not relax the stern

6 J. Macandrew (1820-87), born at Aberdeen, was engaged in business in London before coming to Otago in his own schooner, the Titan, in 1851. He took part at once in the agitation for self-government and was elected to the Provincial Council and to Parliament in 1853. Elected Superintendent of Otago in 1859, he was compelled to retire owing to criticism of his handling of immigration funds. He was M.H.R. again (1859-87), Superintendent of Otago (1867-76) and twice a member of Cabinet.

THE OTAGO COLONIST

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principles upon which the Colonist was founded. He resorted to daily publication but reaffirmed his religious scruples:

The public are generally aware that daily papers often, under the plea of compulsion, make little or no distinction between the Day of Rest and the ordinary days of toil. This we are determined to avoid. We hold the Sabbath to be a sacred institution, not only because of its Divine appointment but because the due observance of it as a day of rest is essential to the comfort and well-being of man. Our office will be closed on Sabbath Days. This may necessarily cause our Monday's issue to be less comprehensive in its contents than on other days, but we feel persuaded that this will not deprive us of the approbation or support of all right-minded men.

But such high sentiments did not avail. As the year moved along the situation of the paper deteriorated. The new diggings at Manuherikia compelled the Colonist to pay compositors an increase of 50 per cent. The subscription was advanced to 6 d. a copy. Yet hope steadily dwindled. On 1 January 1863 the paper appeared for the last time. Admitting frankly that perhaps it might lack the spirit and enterprise of Vogel’s Otago Daily Times, the Colonist announced that “in company with a young and sprightly candidate for public patronage we . . . hope that the Colonist, in harness with the Daily Telegraph, will run a long and well sustained race and carry off the prize”.

The Daily Telegraph, which incorporated the Colonist, explained on 3 January 1863 that its mission was chiefly to contest the field with the Otago Daily Times: “It is absolutely imperative to the progress of society that there should be a second daily paper whose aim and object shall be not only to encourage and circulate truth but to dispel error—not only to counsel wisely, but to keep in check and destroy the evil tendency of the Daily Times”. Lambert and Co. were the publishers, with Jabez Ham as manager and John Dick as printer. The Telegraph was sold at lid. (increased to 2d. and 3 d. later in the year). In April 1864 the Weekly Colonist was purchased by the Otago Daily Times and closed down. In effect the Daily Telegraph and the Leader went the same way, for the Telegraph did not appear after 9 April.

The Otago Daily Times: New Zealand's First Daily

The first daily newspaper in New Zealand, the Otago Daily Times, was a direct outcome of the discovery of gold at Gabriel’s Gully in 1861. In the stream of humanity which set in from Australia

The first issue, November 15, 1861

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to New Zealand was Julius Vogel (1835-99), an enterprising young Jewish assayer who had entered whole-heartedly into Victorian journalism. He had written for the Maryborough Advertiser and the Inglewood Advertiser and edited the Talbot Leader. Rejected by the electors, he came to Otago in October 1861 and found employment at once on the staff of the Colonist.

Within a few weeks Vogel acquired a share in the Otago Witness, became its editor, and persuaded Cutten that a weekly was inadequate to the increasing activity of the province. And thus promptly on 15 November 1861 appeared the first issue of the Otago Daily Times, a 4-page paper, price 3d., jointly owned by Cutten and Vogel. Vogel edited both weekly and daily, and B. L. Farjeon, a co-religionist, was business manager. E. T. Gillon and W. H. Harrison were on the staff, and Daniel Campbell was mechanical manager. A few weeks after its establishment the Times was visited by a fire in its offices in Princes Street. The following issue was printed with the help of the Colonist. Then new machinery was got from Melbourne which enabled the proprietors to double the size of the paper. At the end of 1861 the population of Otago had jumped to over 29,000 (as against 12,691 in 1860). The price of the paper was raised to 6 d. A steam engine was installed to drive the 2-cylinder printing machine. The Times had now a circulation of 7,000: the Witness was the junior partner.

In 1864 the Times was sued for libel by the New Zealand Banking Corporation Ltd., and mulct in the sum of £5OO. Cutten now withdrew from the firm to make way for B. L. Farjeon (afterwards a novelist). Early in 1866 the partners in J. Vogel and Co. disposed of the property to the Otago Daily Times and Witness Co., which consisted of John Bathgate (secretary and manager), Frank Churchill Simmons (rector of the Otago Boys’ High School) and James Rattray.

Meanwhile, in 1863, after a few unsuccessful attempts, Vogel gained a footing in provincial politics and was also elected to Parliament. On Farjeon’s departure for London in 1867 Vogel concentrated on editing the Times. His determined advocacy of the separation of the North and Middle Islands as a means of escaping responsibility for the cost of the Maori wars made the paper very unpopular. Its finances suffered, too, by the depression of 1868. The directorate had been reduced to three (W. D. Murison, Rattray and Vogel), and in April the first two invited

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Vogel to retire. When he declined they gave him notice of dismissal. This he countered by proposing—on behalf of himself, Ebenezer Fox and Daniel Campbell—to rent the paper for £l,OOO a year. This the shareholders rejected. So Vogel at last withdrew and George Burnett Barton 6 was appointed editor. In retaliation Vogel founded the New Zealand Sun. It lasted only a few months and Vogel then left for the North Island.

In 1871 the Times became involved in what is known as the Telegraph libel case, which arose out of the slim action of the Government in helping its supporters to copies of telegrams belonging to the Times. During these proceedings Barton retired and was succeeded as editor by William Dick Murison 7 who acted till 1877.

The departure of Vogel from the Otago scene synchronised with the advent of another great personality. The association of George Fenwick with the Otago Daily Times is another striking instance of the effect of personal management on the welfare of a newspaper. Fenwick was born in Northumberland in 1847 and was educated in Dunedin where, at the age of 12, he was apprenticed to the Otago Witness (1859 to 1864). After a year or two in Australia he took a hand in two papers on the Otago goldfields and then, having made over his share in the Cromwell Argus to his brother William, he entered into a Dunedin printing business with John Mackay.

Shortly afterwards he and George M. Reed bought at auction the property of the Otago Guardian, which they ran for some months against the Otago Daily Times. Then they made the bold resolve of buying out their competitor. Before long they had acquired both the Times and the Witness and amalgamated the Guardian with the Times (of which Reed became editor). R. N. Adams was publisher and Josiah Lye printer.

A number of hands who had been put out of employment by this merger started a new paper, the Morning Herald (3 December

8 G. B. Barton (1836-1901) was born in Sydney, a brother of Sir Edmund Barton, Prime Minister of Australia. Called to the bar at the Inner Temple, he practised in Dunedin and later edited the New Zealand Jurist. He was lecturer in English at Sydney University and published Poets and Prose Writers (1886).

7 W. D. Murison (1837-77) was born in Forfarshire and educated at Edinburgh High School. He came to Otago in 1856 and was on the land for some years. He was a member of the Provincial Council (1863-65) and of Parliament (1866-68).

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1877). Published at Id., it received considerable support. With their own resources strained to finance their merger, Fenwick and Reed were so apprehensive that they took a step which might otherwise not have come for years. They decided to float a public company.

The prospectus of the Otago Daily Times and Witness Company (1878) provided for a capital of £40,000 in £lO shares, to acquire the four “influential and old established newspaper properties”—the Southern Mercury was included —together with land, buildings and book debts. The first permanent board of directors included W. H. Reynolds, R. H. Leary, Walter Guthrie, James Smith, George Fenwick and T. M. Hocken. When Daniel Campbell retired, Fenwick became managing director. Reed as editor brought to the Times considerable inspiration, but he had a nomadic nature and late in 1878 he left for England as an immigration agent. He was succeeded as editor by James Ashcroft. Since the depression continued more capital had to be found, and a call of £2 per share was made, interest being charged on arrears at the rate of 12k per cent. Finally, in 1881, the directors accepted a suggestion often made by Fenwick and reduced the price of the paper from 3d. to Id.

Richard E. N. Twopeny, who in 1882 had promoted the Christchurch Exhibition, was editor from 1883-90. On his retirement Fenwick became editor and managing director, a dual position which he held till 1909, when James Hutchison became editor; then Fenwick continued as managing director till his death. He had taken a leading part in the Press Association, the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association and the Empire Press Union, and was knighted in 1920. From 1919 he had the assistance as manager of William Easton, who succeeded him as general manager. Subsequently in that office were William R. Sinclair, William Dow, and now E. N. Wilkinson. Sir James Hutchison (who was knighted in 1936) died in 1946. He was succeeded as editor by John Moffett.

The Times has always been moderately conservative in politics, advocating free trade in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It took the popular side in the eighties by exposing the sweating conditions in Dunedin factories and home industries, and always maintained an interest in social movements. The paper set a high standard in reporting, notably in the law courts. There its reputation was largely due to Silas Spragg (1853-1935) who was

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on the staff from 1877-1900 and was afterwards chief of the Parliamentary Hansard staff.

English linotypes were first introduced in 1898. The present fine building of the Company, in Lower High Street, was opened in 1927.

Fenwick's Coup with the Guardian

When the Otago Guardian was launched as an independent morning daily in 1873, Robert James Creighton, the editor and manager, said in his introductory article: "The proprietary (the Guardian Printing Co.) is larger than that of any other newspaper in New Zealand, and includes men of all ranks and of every shade of opinion in this community". The paper avowed the usual non-party and non-sectarian principles.

But let us rather follow the fortunes of the Guardian’s weekly associate, the Southern Mercury, which appeared six months later. It was described as “a weekly chronicle of news, politics and literature . . . without the advantage of a telegraph or cable service.” Vincent Pyke was the legal proprietor and the first issue starred his serial story, The Adventures of George Washington Pratt. It also published a serial, Jessie Trim, by B. L. Farjeon, and it rounded off its year by presenting its readers with an index and title page to the volume. Before the end of 1874 the Mercury was avowedy owned by the Guardian Co. and William Fenwick was the printer. When Creighton left the Guardian to become manager of the New Zealand Times, R. H. Leary was general manager and Pyke editor.

During 1875 there were vital changes. Captain William Baldwin, who was editing the Mercury when it was acquired by the Guardian, now edited both papers. George Fenwick left John Mackay in the printing business to join the Guardian as manager. He found the paper making heavy weather against the competition of the Otago Daily Times. Realising the improbability of succeeding against such an opponent he advised the directors, if they could not sell the papers, to close them down. In January 1876, while capital was still being called up, the shareholders were told that they had lost £2,000 in six months owing to the shrinkage of advertising. Baldwin bade the papers farewell, and in February the whole of the property, plant and goodwill of the two journals was advertised for sale at public auction. No deal resulted, but on 25 April 1876 it was announced that the company had transferred the property to George McCullagh Reed. He

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paid £3,000 for the two papers, upon which various owners had lost £lO,OOO since the beginning of 1873. Reed kept Fenwick on as manager and the imprint soon records them as joint proprietors.

Twelve months’ further experience vindicated the earlier judgment of Fenwick that Dunedin could not maintain two daily morning papers. He then made the bold suggestion that they should purchase the Otago Daily Times. W. H. Reynolds was invoked as mediator and after patient negotiations he clinched the purchase of the more important property for something like £30,000. The deal is recorded in the Guardian of 6 October 1877, which announced the absorption of the Guardian and Mercury in the Times and Witness. Both papers ceased on that date. In its valedictory article the Guardian declared that for more than four years trial had been made as to whether it was possible to support two morning papers of the quality of the Times and Guardian, and £15,000 had been sunk in the demonstration.

The Evening Star

The first evening daily in Otago was the Evening News which appeared on 20 November 1862. The editor, James Mulholland (who died in 1864), proposed to do without leading articles and the News began as an 8-page paper, increased shortly to 16 pages. It was described in 1864 as the first penny paper published in New Zealand and (according to the Wellington Independent) it was the only surviving rival to the Otago Daily Times. There was another Evening News in 1867-68 of which William Besemeres was proprietor and editor.

There is some mystery about the first appearance of the Evening Star in Dunedin. Hocken and other authorities say that it was started in May 1863, but the Hon. Mark Cohen records that the first paper of this name, “a diminutive sheet of nondescript size”, made its appearance in the summer of 1862. The founder is said to have been one Hanson, who afterwards migrated to the West Coast goldfields. A liberal reward offered for a copy of this paper produced no result.

The Evening Star which appeared on 1 May 1863 under new management was numbered 69. The owners were George A. and William John Henningham. George acted as editor, and William did general reporting. As they could not agree William bought his brother’s share and became sole proprietor. He suffered from

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lack of capital and the business was taken over by liquidators. They sold it in May 1869 for £675 to George Bell 8 who, on 22 January 1869, had established the Evening Independent. This paper he incorporated in the Evening Star, which he carried on for some years at the corner of Princes and Stafford Streets.

In 1870 Thomas Henry Snowdon registered the title Day Star but there is no evidence of the existence of such a paper. Two years later, to prevent another morning paper being established, Bell published a morning edition called the Morning Star. This did not achieve its purpose, however, for the Guardian was started a few months later and its promoters bought out the Morning Star.

On the Star’s commercial staff during the seventies were William Tyrone Ferrar, James Henry Clayton (1873), and John George Moody (1877). In 1881 new premises were erected on reclaimed ground in Bond Street. The printing machine installed there could turn out 6,000 copies an hour. It was said to have come from the London Times via the Newcastle Chronicle (Australia) and the Melbourne Age, from which Bell purchased it. Linotypes replaced handsetting in 1898. The present premises at the corner of Stuart and Cumberland Streets were occupied in 1928.

George Bell was sole proprietor and editor till 1895 when the Evening Star Co. Ltd. was incorporated. All the shares were allotted to members of the Bell family, and the first directors were George Bell, jnr., Joseph Clapperton, C. W. Kerr, Miss Eleanor Bell and George Bell himself. John Wesley Jago 9 was manager from 1872 till his death in 1904 when three of the directors, F. E. Clapperton, C. Stanley Smith and R. Percy Bell, were appointed a committee of management. This arrangement con-

8 G. Bell (1809-99) was born in Hull and had considerable experience as accountant and salesman to sugar refiners and manufacturers. A Liberal in politics, he took part in the anti-corn law agitation, wrote brochures on the currency, and established friendship with the free trade leaders Richard Cobden and John Bright. In 1852 he emigrated to Victoria, became a law reporter and helped to organise the Hansard staff for the South Australian Advertiser. Coming to New Zealand in 1863, he was reporting for the Otago Daily Times and edited the Witness.

9 J. W. Jago (1830-1904) was born in Gloucestershire and apprenticed to brassfounding. He came to New Zealand in 1861 as agent for the Dunedin Total Abstinence Society. He was later president of the New Zealand Alliance.

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tinued till 1923, when C. Stanley Smith 10 was appointed chairman and managing director. On his death, (1943) his son Stanley David Smith was appointed managing director and C. G. Smith chairman. On the latter’s death in 1953, S. D. Smith assumed the dual position.

The literary side of the Evening star was controlled from 1893 to 1920 by Mark Cohen 11 , a native of London, who had joined the Otago Daily Times staff in 1865 and the Star in the following year. His successors were William Frederick Alexander (1920-46) who had been for 10 years editor of the Timaru Herald, Leslie W. Jillett (1947-50) and now William J. Noble (1950- ). The change to front page news was made in 1951.

The Evening Star Company is one of the oldest family businesses in Dunedin. For eighty-eight years it has been controlled by George Bell and his descendants.

Minor Dunedin Foundations

The Dunedin Leader, established in 1863 as an independent weekly to support “principles not party; measures not men”, pledged itself to publish for a year whatever happened. J. S. Webb soon became sole proprietor by buying out the printer, George Donne. Thereafter till it ceased in 1867 the paper was printed by the Otago Daily Times Co. If the Leader did nothing else it provided a sanctuary for the moribund remains of the Daily Telegraph and its predecessor the Colonist. The copyright and goodwill of all three were acquired in April 1864 by the Otago Daily Times Co. and quietly interred.

The Otago Daily Mail, a 3d. morning paper, was promoted in 1864 by Frederick J. Moss to assert the principle that “it is neither wise nor right that one journal should be in sole possession of the public ear”. Such a monopoly, it declared, was odious, and tended to deprive the public of free and healthy discussion. Moss was in the Otago Provincial Council (1863-67) and in Parliament (1878-90). His name on the Otago Mail gave place

10 C. S. Smith (1879-1943), a grandson of George Bell, was trained as an engineer and joined the Star as chief engineer in 1895. The erection of new premises in 1927 and equipping them with complete new plant was due mostly to his planning. He was a director of the Press Association for over 30 years and served two terms as chairman.

11 Hon. M. Cohen (1848-1928) was a member of the Legislative Council (1920-28) and the Dunedin City Council, chairman of the Otago Education Board and a founder of the New Zealand Library Association.

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in 1865 to that of James Ainslie Torrance. The paper lived for four years.

W. J. Henningham appears in 1868 as proprietor of the New Zealand Sun, the paper founded by Vogel to retaliate on the proprietors of the Otago Daily Times. It was a good daily but lasted only 100 days. Late in 1869 Henningham founded an evening daily, the Echo, with Henry Matthews as printer and Jabez Beck publisher. It was very early in difficulties. Henningham became bankrupt in 1870 and after a suspension in 1873 the title was purchased by William Absolon Smith, who employed it seven years later in the interests of the Dunedin Free Thought Association (including Smith himself and William Mouat 80lt 12 ). In 1880 the ownership passed to the publisher, Joseph Braithwaite, an enterprising bookseller who was once mayor of Dunedin. In the last recorded issue of this Echo (10 November 1883), the valedictory intimation signed by “R.S.” and “J. 8.” suggests that Sir Robert Stout, who had edited the Echo as a labour of love, now found inadequate time on his hands to continue the work. Altogether since 1869 there were 431 issues of the Echo.

To promote a policy of Radical Liberalism, John Dick in 1871 started a daily paper called the Southern League and Daily Advertiser. Four months later the proprietors, Mills, Dick and Co., announced that the paper was not being used by advertisers on account of its politics. Under a new name, Daily Advertiser and Southern League, it continued a few weeks longer, to cease with no. 111.

Thomas Bracken’s Papers: A Literary Journalist

One of the most noteworthy newspapers published in Dunedin, or in New Zealand, was the Saturday Advertiser, which was founded by Thomas Bracken in 1875. It survived for nearly 20 years in various forms and left a mark upon New Zealand literary journalism for which Bracken has received too little recognition.

The Advertiser first appeared on 17 July 1875, an 8-page weekly bearing the title the Saturday Advertiser, Time Table and New Zealand Literary Miscellany. The proprietors were Thomas Bracken and Alexander Bathgate (trading as Thomas Bracken and Co.) and the printer William Coull. In the Dickensian fashion of the time Bracken introduced each member of his staff to

12 Hon. W. M. Bolt (1838-1907) was an early social reformer in Dunedin. He was a Labour member of the Legislative Council (1892-1907).

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the public by such descriptive soubriquets as Mr Clipshears, Mr Sharpman, Mr Shorthand and Mr Farseer. The last was obviously Farjeon, whose serial At the Sign of the Flagon, began in the first issue. “No square pins in round holes,” said the satisfied promoter, “In every respect the right man in the right place.” The principal editor, disguised as Mr Wellbred, was born in Melbourne of a Scots father and an English mother.

Beginning a few weeks after the first issue and signing himself Frank Fudge, Bracken contributed a column, Time o’ Day, in more serious vein. The literary standard set by the Advertiser and the fact that it did survive the depression of the seventies and eighties together justify Bracken’s florid introduction. He changed the title in 1877 to Saturday Advertiser and New Zealand Public Opinion, explaining that this was an indication of the intention “to foster a national spirit in New Zealand and to encourage colonial literature”. That resolve Bracken fully honoured. Apart from his own contributions (mainly under the name of Paddy Murphy), he published first in the Advertiser the best of his own work and masses of prose and verse by other New Zealand writers of the day. In 1882 the paper carried a regular column in the Gaelic tongue. For illustrations line blocks were used, somewhat sparingly, from the outset.

John Mackay joined the firm in 1879 as managing director of Mackay, Bracken and Co., another partner being Alexander Bathgate. In 1880 the title became New Zealand Public Opinion, Sportsman and Saturday Advertiser. Hitherto the paper was at a disadvantage in having no associated daily from which it could feed its news columns. To remedy this and compete more favourably with other weeklies, an amalgamation was effected in 1881 with the Morning Herald Co. In 1884 Harry Arthur Reynolds was printer and publisher of both the Herald and its weekly, now called New Zealand Public Opinion and Saturday Advertiser.

Meanwhile, in 1881, Bracken was elected M.H.R. for Dunedin Central. He resigned the editorship of the Herald in 1884, when it attacked Sir Robert Stout, but returned after he was defeated at the general election. The revival of Thomas Bracken and Co. in 1885 as owners of both papers was hailed as the welcome end of management by a board of directors. Henceforth John Bathgate (lately a county court judge) and Bracken would be in control. However, the papers were obviously going down hill and in 1888 they passed moribund into the kindly hands of

N 13

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a Liberal group, including Stephen Noble Brown and Robert Loftus Stanford.

Then in 1890 the Globe was established, absorbing the Herald and continuing the Saturday Advertiser as its weekly. The Advertiser had long since shed the glory of Bracken and Bathgate, and it was finally laid to rest, with the Globe, on 9 September 1893.

The title Evening News was again used in Dunedin in 1876 for a paper founded by George Jones which, in the words of its editor (George McCullagh Reed), declared: “We fearlessly unfurl the banner of provincialism”. Parliament had already abolished the provinces, but it appears to have been part of the arrangement for winding up Jones’s Echo in Auckland that Henry Brett should assist the political cause they both favoured by financing a paper in Dunedin which might help to snatch the provincial corpse from the grave. Jones celebrated his advent—rather unhappily, it would seem—by a dispute with the Typographical Association, whose demands he answered with a shriek of defiance:

We want no setdement. We repudiate your patronage. The paper will be a success in spite of you, and all the better with your enmity than with your friendship. ... Go on and do your worst, and we hurl at you utter and contemptuous defiance.

A change of proprietors was soon foreshadowed, and at the end of 1876 George Fenwick appears as co-partner with Reed. The Evening News lasted just two years. William Fenwick and James Henry Clayton were left as partners when George Fenwick joined the Otago Daily Times and Clayton carried on till the paper ceased in January 1878.

That the defiant spirit was not dead appeared a few months later when an evening daily blossomed forth calling itself the Age, and claiming to be in its third year of publication. William T. Jennings was printer in 1878 and next year Alexander Wilson Hogg was manager and publisher. Thereafter in procession came John Moore Perrier, Joseph Drumm and George Atkinson. Atkinson registered the Age as the Evening Tribune, offered it for sale—to be passed in at £4oo—and finally put it to bed (December 1879).

The Herald and the Globe

The Morning Herald, which we have heard of as an associate of Bracken’s Saturday Advertiser, was established in 1877 by members of the staff of the Otago Daily Times who had been displaced by the merger with the Guardian. It lamented that “such a great

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and rising city should possess but one morning paper, especially when it is remembered that the people of the Colony are probably the greatest newspaper readers in the world”. It claimed to be a “thoroughly independent journal, bound to support no party nor to advocate any set of political ideas, but supporting every measure that tended to promote the prosperity and happiness of the majority of the population”. The promoters, including Robert Wilson (manager), laughed to scorn the warning that by selling at a penny they were foredoomed to failure.

The Herald received support not only from friends of the promoters but actually from previous directors of the Otago Daily Times. At the first annual meeting a profit was shown amounting to 21 per cent, on the capital. It took more than two years for the Times, which sold at 3d., to come down to a competitive figure. When that occurred, it doubled its circulation within a few weeks. Then the Herald felt the pinch. In 1884 it changed to evening publication, the publishers being Mackay, Bracken and Co. In 1887 T. Bracken and Co. were the registered owners, the other partners being Stephen Noble Brown, Robert Loftus Stanford, John Bathgate and Edward Melland. Though the Morning and the Evening Herald both in turned claimed to have the largest circulation in New Zealand, yet the business was never within sight of prosperity. The Herald died, faltering and reluctant, awaiting the appearance of the Globe to carry on the torch of Liberalism. In the middle of the maritime strike the paper was in extremis and on 30 August 1890, to preserve its rights in the Press Association, it bore the title “Evening Herald, shortly to be known as the Globe”. On 2 September the Herald appeared for the last time.

Not long after the Herald gave up the struggle in the morning paper field a strike occurred which resolved itself into a struggle between the Otago Daily Times Co. and the Otago Typographical Association. Free labour having been engaged by the Times, the men started a paper of their own, the Daily News (on 1 July 1886). It was a general newspaper and it printed many articles written by William Hutchison, M.H.R. (sometime mayor of both Wanganui and Wellington). Owing partly to the misapplication of its funds it lasted only two months.

The advent of the Globe (on 3 September 1890) was hastened by the maritime strike and the moribund condition of the Herald, which alone in Dunedin advocated the cause of the workers. The

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founders were workers and newspaper men, including Andrew Smart (who was printer), Henry Arthur Reynolds (publisher), Charles James Watson (manager), William Freeman Kitchen (editor) and W. Keay. The paper was launched as a Id. evening daily. At the general election in December 1890, Liberalism had a political triumph from which the Globe might have expected to profit, but political favours are a frail prop for newspaper prosperity. In May 1892 the Dunedin Publishing Co. took over the paper; John Duncan Moore being manager, Cunliffe printer and Reynolds publisher. Publication ceased in 1893, the last editor being Henry Edward Muir. 13 .

Late in 1893 the Weekly Budget was established by three of the Globe’s late employees, including H. A. Reynolds, who was mayor of Mornington. He had served his articles on the Cambridge Chronicle in England. A 12-page Liberal paper, the Budget ceased in 1909. Another offshoot of the Globe was the People’s Journal of New Zealand, an 8-page penny weekly which lasted less than a year.

In the Otago Workman, Dunedin and Suburban Advertiser, Dunedin made a fairly early effort at labour journalism. It was published in 1887 by Samuel Lister, absorbing an unpretentious little paper, the Forbury News, which had been established by Henry James Johnson in 1884. Johnson came to New Zealand for his health and attracted attention by his “Pulpit Pictures” in the Saturday Advertiser. The Workman came forward as the representative of the “real conquerors and eternal proprietors of the world”.

In 1889 the Otago Trades and Labour Council acquired the Workman, which became the Otago Liberal and in 1906 the Beacon. The paper expired in 1907, having lost, Mr Paul says, about £7OO. Joseph Gordon Scoullar was its last manager.

Dunedin has had practically no suburban press. Even Port Chalmers which, geographically, was beyond the suburban radius, has not been able to support a press of its own for any length of time. In 1864 the plant on which the Riverton Times had

13 H. E. Muir (1852-1911) was born in Victoria, came to Otago as a child and began newspaper work on the Palmerston and Waikouaiti Herald. After helping to found the Clutha Leader and the Morning Herald (Dunedin), he edited the Timaru Evening Mail and both Ashburton papers. Later he was chairman of the Equitable Stock Exchange and a member of the Dunedin City Council. He was father of E. E, Muir (of the Evening Post).

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been attempted was landed there, but the owner moved on to Waikouaiti. There is no trace of a bi-weekly paper, the Port Chalmers Independent, which was to have been published early in 1871.

The Port Chalmers Watch and Shipping Gazette, first published in 1882, was a 4-page weekly in which James Morkane, John Dick and William Reid were interested. In 1887 Nicholas Moloney, James Horsburgh and James Morkane were connected with the publication of the Australasian Union Shipping Gazette, which a few months later was taken over by (the Hon.) John Andrew Millar, the Rev. Robert Loftus Stanford and James Morkane on behalf of the trades unions. David Smith Jolly was the printer of this and of the Federated Union Shipping Gazette. Both were succeeded by a fortnightly Land and Sea.

CHAPTER 12

THE OTAGO PROVINCIAL PRESS

Sporadic and Vigorous

The early sixties were marked by a spurt of newspaper foundations in the country districts of Otago. Invercargill had its first paper early in 1861 and another in 1862. In 1863 came the Dunstan Times at Clyde, and in 1864 the Riverton Times, the Lake Wakatipu Mail, Mt. Ida Advertiser, Oamaru Times, Bruce Herald and Waikouaiti Herald. It is remarkable how long-lived were many papers established in the 1860’s.

Since chronology and geography do not coincide in newspaper history the latter arrangement will be observed in this commentary. Beginning with North Otago, we find that the first paper in Oamaru was the Oamaru Times and Waitaki Reporter, a biweekly founded in 1864 by Frank Pinkerton and Co. Pinkerton left for Australia in 1868 and the paper was purchased by the Oamaru Times Co. William Jukes Steward, who was the registered owner in 1870, changed the title to North Otago Times in 1872, published tri-weekly in 1874 and daily in 1876 to anticipate his first serious rival, the Oamaru Mail. In 1876 he started the Weekly Standard which lasted till 1878 when Steward took over a paper at Waimate. Archibald Frew and George Glen, who had been apprenticed to the Otago Daily Times, became partners with Steward in 1884 and in 1897 were proprietors. In 1914 George Glen and Co. sold the property to the North Otago Times Publishing Co., which had a capital of £20,000. Albert Edward Lawrence was managing editor from 1914-23. After several changes the Timaru Herald carried on the business (1918-30), the managers being Thomas Doyle and C. H. Andrew. Then a local company acquired possession and the paper ceased in 1932.

Editors of the North Otago Times included John Christie, A. H. Vile, P. C. Freeth, Winton Keay and H. E. Wedde.

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On 28 April 1870 the first issue appeared of the Oamaru Herald, a weekly edited by Jabez Ham which was absorbed by the Oamaru Times in 1871.

The Oamaru Mail: A Journalist on Trial

The Oamaru Mail seems to have originated out of the action of the parliamentary member for the district, William Jukes Steward (one of the proprietors of the North Otago Times) in throwing in his lot in favour of the abolition of the provinces. Following the election of 1875-76 a company was formed with A. J. S. Headland, Joseph Booth, Neil Fleming, Thomas Proctor, and George Sumpter as directors. A worn out steam cylinder engine formerly used by the Melbourne Argus was acquired from the Otago Daily Times. Fred Humphries (then on the staff of the Otago Daily Times) was appointed manager and editor. The company registered also a Weekly Mail.

There is a pleasant note in the first issue of the Evening Mail which appeared on 22 April 1876. When both engine and machine came to grief the proprietors of the North Otago Times “very obligingly, and at a moment’s notice, placed their machine at our disposal and printed the issue for us”. The Mail did not come up to expectations and before long the printer, John B. Dungan, was given control of both sides. There was no increase of either subscribers or advertisers and early in 1877 the shareholders decided to wind up the company. William Fenwick took temporary charge, followed for a short space by James Mitchell.

At this juncture George Jones 1 (who had tried to establish the Evening News in Dunedin) came to Oamaru and acquired the Mail. He declared a non-party policy, favouring land settlement and railway construction. “We have no quarrel with squatters,” he said, “We believe they have done well for the country and themselves. They have increased the revenue of their own flocks, given employment to labour, and made money. But should they manifest any symptoms of a belief that the country is made for

1 G. Jones (1844-1920) was born at the Hutt, educated at Geelong Grammar School and served his apprenticeship in Australia, He became printer of the Auckland Star and in 1872 he founded the Waikato Times, in 1874 the Echo, and in 1876 the Evening News, Dunedin. About 1909 he acquired the Southland News. He was M.H.R. for Waitaki (1880-81) and M.L.C. (1895-1916 and 1918-1920). A memorial arch to Jones was unveiled at Oamaru in 1923.

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them then we esteem it the duty of the journalist to teach them better.”

The Evening Mail had an uphill struggle. Prosperity by hard plodding was slow, but an important fillip came from an unexpected direction. During a Parliamentary debate on native lands in 1877 the Mail stated that the ulterior purpose of the measure was to enable speculators to acquire a large block of land, and that Sir Frederick Whitaker, the Attorney-General, was himself interested. Summoned to the bar of an indignant House of Representatives, Jones stood to his guns. He was declared a prisoner under the care of the sergeant-at-arms. Then the House ordered him to be prosecuted for criminal libel. He was tried by a special jury and acquitted. The obnoxious bill meanwhile was dropped from the order paper, and in the ensuing session the Ministry was defeated. This was the first State trial in New Zealand by order of Parliament, and it vindicated a vital right of the newspaper press to comment freely in the public interest. The trial brought to the Mail something better than mere notoriety. It had been defending a democratic principle, which was at a high premium in the late seventies. Subscribers and advertisers came forward and the paper had to be enlarged. It arranged to receive the special telegraph service of the Dunedin Evening Star and entered a syndicate of eight evening papers aimed at acquiring a better cable service. This assisted later towards the foundation of the Press Association of New Zealand.

The Oamaru Mail (as it was now called) went into new offices in 1884 and in 1899 it followed the example of the metropolitan papers in installing linotypes. In 1909 the business was floated into a private company with Ernest Joseph Abbey Jones as manager, succeeded by William E. Robertson (1909), and John Duncan Christie (1947). The editors included John Dungan, William Fenwick, James Mitchell and Walter Joseph Jones, who in 1909 became editor and governing director of the Southland News. He was succeeded by the present editor, Frederick Jones. Both were sons of the Hon. George Jones. E. J. A. Jones was no relation.

The Oamaru Mail has been daily from the outset

Waikouaiti and Palmerston

Early in 1864 the correspondent of the Otago Witness reported that a weekly paper, the Waikouaiti Advertiser and Moeraki and

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Oamaru Recorder, was about to be started on a prospective list of 400 subscribers. No more was heard of this, but in August a new venturer happened along. The Riverton Times, for which type and machinery had come from Melbourne, lasted only a few months and the owners, J. A. Matthews and Robert Garrick, were looking for employment for the plant. Accordingly, the Waikouaiti Herald appeared on 27 October 1864, a weekly about the same size as the North Otago Times. The ambitious sub-title “Hawkesbury, Palmerston, Hampden and General Goldfields Advocate” was prompted by the lively traffic for the goldfields which was then passing through Palmerston and Waikouaiti. After being run by Thomas Slater Pratt (some time mayor of West Hawkesbury) and Alfred Hogarth Gill, the Herald carried on until 1875, when it was removed to Palmerston and absorbed by the Palmerston and Waikouaiti Times. In effect Gill and Frederick John Davies obtained control of the Herald and shifted it to Palmerston under the comprehensive title of the Palmerston and Waikouaiti Times, Waihemo, Otepopo, Hampden, Moeraki, Blueskin and Goldfields Advertiser. For a short period they published also the Palmerston Weekly Times. After the death of Davies (1880), Gill was sole proprietor until his death in 1902. Donald Macleod was then owner and editor for ten years. In 1912 William Beckett Galloway took over the paper, but it reverted to the Gill family in 1916 and ceased publication in 1917.

For geographical consistency one might refer here to the tiny village of Nenthorn, the scene of one of the later and milder gold rushes. It was here, in 1889, that the gallant Frederick Charles Rowton Smithyman started his Nenthorn Recorder. He sold it in 1890 to Thomas Elliott Wilson and Joseph Richard Clement and it ceased within a few months.

Taieri Advocate

Sir Walter Carncross was born in 1853, educated in Dunedin, wrote first for the Saturday Advertiser and was for some time on the Waitangi Tribune at Waimate. In 1879 he established in Dunedin the weekly Penny Post and General Advertiser. When this had been running for a year he decided to embark on orthodox journalism. In 1881, with the help of John Charles O’Bierne and Arthur Merrick, he established the Taieri Advocate at Mosgiel. There Carncross was a member of the Mosgiel Borough Council and twice contested the parliamentary seat before being elected

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in 1890. He was M.H.R. continuously until 1901, when he sold the paper to Henry Thomas Lowes Griffen. In 1905 it passed to a company, in which William S. Pennycook had an interest. For many years it was edited and managed by John P. Walls until it closed down in 1917, another casualty of the First World War, in which Pennycook lost his life.

Early Efforts in South Otago: The Oldest Country Paper The oldest provincial paper in Otago, and today the oldest country paper in the Dominion, is the Bruce Herald at Milton. It was established by Joseph Mackay on 14 April 1864 and was said at the time to be the fourteenth paper in Otago. For the first few months the Herald was printed in Dunedin and its field of operations was defined as “the county so-called” extending from Kaikorai southwards to the Mataura, including the Tuapeka district. During most of Mackay’s regime the Herald was associated with some other papers which he owned. Actually he was the pioneer, though without much success, of various projects of chain newspapers.

Before the end of the sixties two other papers started in Milton, but failed to establish themselves. In the late seventies Mackay was constantly in financial difficulties. The collapse came in 1879 when the Clutha Times, an associate of the Herald, ceased publication, while the third of the group, the Mataura Ensign, passed into other hands. A rival (the Standard) was still in existence in 1879, when a local company, Francis Grant & Co., bought the Herald. With John Grant as manager they carried on till 1892. The veteran John Chantrey Harris then ran the Herald till his death in 1895. Thereafter its owners included Thomas Elliott Wilson, Reginald Augustus Pyke (a son of Vincent Pyke) and Lewis R. Tosswill. In 1922 the present company was formed, with Morton E. Paul as manager. He has now completed 50 years of service, having commenced at the Herald in 1908 as an apprentice and graduated through all branches of the industry. A bi-weekly since 1873, the Herald changed over from handsetting in 1922 with the installation of a model C Intertype. The office building, which is of sun-dried bricks, dates back to the seventies.

Earlier editors included J. L. Gillies (1871), F. S. Nicholls, J. M. Perrier, A. W. Grant, James Christie and H. Wilkinson (1922-37). G. H. Scholefield was on the Herald staff (1896-8).

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Competitors in Bruce

The Bruce Herald was little more than two years old when Edward T. Gillon (then clerk of the court at Milton) persuaded some leading residents to establish another paper. The directors of the company were James Smith, William Black, Alfred Jones, Edward Marryatt, William Poppelwell and Major (afterwards Sir John) Richardson. With a plant from Melbourne the Bruce Independent started on 21 September 1866. Vigorously run by Gillon and freely quoted, its competition compelled the Herald to publish eight pages, thus becoming the largest provincial paper in Otago. But Gillon’s anti-provincial editorship was too slashing for the directors, who resigned in a body. The company was wound up in May 1867 and the plant was acquired by Ferguson and Burns for the Tuapeka Times.

Two years later (in 1869) David Stark and John Church started the Bruce Standard and Southern District Advertiser as a rival to the Herald. Church (1841-1924) was bom in Roxburghshire and educated at Edinburgh University. Though he edited the Standard capably it could not gain a footing and it was absorbed by the Herald early in 1872. Stark is referred to in 1870 as the printer of the Clutha Telegraph, which may have been a companion publication of the Bruce Standard.

In 1877, if not earlier, the title Bruce Standard again appears, this time in an attempt by William Webber Wilson and his brother Thomas Elliott Wilson (who was printer at first and a partner from 1883). The second tide of the Standard, which lasted to the mid-eighties, was “Farmers’ Advocate”.

A generation later the venerable old Herald again had competition. In 1905 Charles Lewis Grant, who rose from apprentice to foreman in the Herald office, founded the bi-weekly Milton Mirror and ran it with some success until 1910 when, following a fatal fire, the Mirror was incorporated in the Herald.

Even Kaitangata, then a small isolated town off the main railway line, had for a few months in 1891 its bi-weekly, the Kaitangata News. The founder was Frederick Charles Rowton Smithyman, afterwards prominent in frontier journalism in the North Island.

The Clutha Leader

The first paper in Balclutha to achieve stability was the Clutha Leader, which still publishes tri-weekly. It first appeared on 9 July 1874. The promoters were Robert Wilson (printer),

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William Peter McGirr (publisher), Henry Edward Muir and John Smyth Fleming (who had been some years on the staff of the Bruce Herald). Later in the year Fleming retired to become town clerk of Balclutha and in 1875 the property was transferred to the Clutha Leader Co. (actually Dr J. G. Smith, W. Maitland, John McNeil, M.P.C., and John Dunne). F. S. Canning became manager and R. Carrick editor.

Early in 1876 Sydney Hartley Jenkinson 2 was publisher. Fleming resigned the town clerkship to assume control as editor and manager and in 1878 bought out his partners. His nephew, David Thomas Fleming, joined the staff in 1882. The publisher was William Scott Pennycook (1872-1918), a native of Scotland who came to New Zealand at the age of 14. While Pennycook was at the Boer War John Patrick Walls filled his position, and after his return D. T. Fleming and Pennycook leased the paper, the former being editor and manager and the latter printer and publisher. In 1912 Pennycook bought out his partner. Three years later he again went on active service, to be killed in action in 1918. His trustees sold the business to Albert Eden Russell, James R. McNaughton and Robert J. Millis. Russell (a nephew of D. T. Fleming) became editor and manager.

In 1927 the Leader absorbed the Free Press and changed to a tri-weekly evening paper. In 1929 a local company acquired the property, which was then run by South Otago Newspapers Ltd., A. E. Russell being editor and managing director (1920-40). He was succeeded as editor by D. G. Algie and as manager by J. R. McNaughton, on whose retirement in 1947 Arthur T. Strang became managing editor.

In 1876 the Press Agency at Dunedin reported that the Clutha Times Co. was being promoted by Robert Stout to defend the provincial cause. There is no evidence that it materialised, but in 1878 a paper bearing the title Clutha Times was established at Milton by Joseph Mackay, owner of the Bruce Herald, of which, in fact, it was a reprint. It closed down early in 1879. J. M. Perrier tried without success to find the capital to take over Mackay’s whole chain; the Bruce Herald, the Clutha Times, and the Mataura Ensign.

The Clutha Free Press was established in 1890 by a local company which first acquired the printing business of Algie

2 Afterwards of the Melbourne Argus and some time manager of the New Zealand Times.

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Brothers. James Stewart Algie (1863-1931) who had been printer and publisher of the Leader, became printer and F. A. Joseph, of the Otago Daily Times, was editor. Another director was (Sir) Thomas Mackenzie, M.H.R. The Free Press had advanced Liberal views. After eight years the company went into liquidation and Algie Brothers took over the paper, D. G. Algie being editor and J. S. Algie manager. In 1926 the property was sold to the Clutha Leader Co. for £7,000. The paper was incorporated in the Leader.

The Popotunoa Chronicle and Clutha County Gazette was established by John Mahoney in 1881 at the little village of Clinton. He was joined by David Collard Stock and in 1887 they changed the title to Clutha County Gazette, Popotunoa Chronicle and Clinton Advertiser. Others who had an interest at various times were Henderson Carrick, Augustus W. Maurais and Walter Keay. In 1893 Keay sold the paper to J. S. Fleming of the Clutha Leader, but he carried it on till its absorption in the Mataura Ensign in 1897 and then took the plant to start the Winton Record.

A little paper which claimed to be the most southerly in the world was published for a short time (1932-36) at Owaka. The Owaka News was established by Clarence James, who came from Victoria in 1918 and engaged in printing and publishing in various towns.

The Tapanui Courier, an offshoot of the Tuapeka Times, was established by Andrew Ferguson and Andrew Burns in 1876. It was at first printed in Lawrence and carried on horseback to the place of publication 38 miles distant. James Mooney and William Quin, who gathered the news for and distributed this sheet, were able in 1878 to purchase surplus plant from Ferguson and Burns and print the paper in Tapanui. The first printer was Alfred Amory George (afterwards of the Hastings Star and Poverty Bay Standard), and he was followed by William Joseph Marsh. After Mooney’s death in 1882, Quin carried on and Marsh left for Arrowtown. In 1882 Robert Alexander Rodger became a partner, and in 1912 he bought out the Quin interest and appointed as manager Peter Hay, who in 1914 became owner. After his death (1926) his son Herbert J. Hay was editor and proprietor till his retirement in 1956, when the business was taken over by Mrs Alison van der Oest. Quin was editor till his death (1925).

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Papers at Gore: The Mat aura Ensign

The first newspaper at Gore was the Mataura Ensign and it is now the only survivor of all that contested that town and district. The Ensign was first published on 10 May 1878. Its full title, as a far-flung warning to competitors, was the “Mataura Ensign, Southlander and Southern Free Press; Mataura Valley, Gore, Mataura Bridge, Edendale, Woodlands, Wyndham, Toi Tois, Waimea, Waipahi, Otaraia, Clinton, Tapanui, Popotunoa, Waiwera, Waikaka, Waikaia, Otamete, Switzers, Five Rivers, Nokomai, Kingston, Winton, Invercargill, Bluff and Riverton Reporter and Advertiser”.

The Ensign was established by Joseph Mackay as part of his ambitious planning to advocate the needs of the Mataura Valley. He had been promised support to the extent of £5OO, chiefly from G. M. Bell, W. A. Donald, T. Green and P. K. McCaughan. His headquarters were now in Milton, where he was running the Bruce Herald and printed the first issues of the Clutha Times and the Ensign. Moreover, having consulted with J. M. Perrier, then editor of the Herald, and John Grant, the printer, he decided to establish a paper at Mataura Bridge, to call it the Southern Standard or Mataura Standard, and to appoint George Renner editor and manager. Renner preferred Gore and he suggested that the paper should be called the Ensign, after the Northern Ensign in Scotland. For the moment he got his way on both points, but Mackay stuck to his fancy for Mataura, where in 1882 he started the Southern Free Press and Mataura Mercury. Within a year he sold the plant to the Mataura Ensign and the Southland Times.

Ten pages of the Ensign were filled with matter lifted from the Bruce Herald and machined in Milton; the balance was set and worked off in Gore. In 1879 Mackay sold the business to Frank Stephen Canning 3 and Thomas Green. In 1882 it was bought by Alfred Dolamore, subeditor of the Southland Times, who had a good practical knowledge of both sides of newspaper work. John Nome was the printer. In 1886, to enable him to devote his whole attention to the business side, Dolamore took in Alfred Godby as editor (1886-91). He was succeeded by John Howard Dolamore (1867-1947), and the firm of Dolamore

3 F. S. Canning (1841-1921) was once interested in the Bruce Herald and in later years was a director of the Taranaki News Co. In 1879 he was a hotelkeeper in Balclutha.

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Brothers ran the Ensign until the death of the senior partner in 1895. Premises and plant having been destroyed by fire, a move was made to Mersey Street and the paper became tri-weekly.

In 1900 J. Howard Dolamore took into partnership George James Anderson 4 . Duncan McAra, D. Cairns and H. L. Dolamore joined the firm. The Gore Publishing Co. was formed (1920) with a capital of £20,000 in which several employees had shares, notably Duncan McAra (managing director) and H. A. Hull (now managing editor). The Ensign having become a daily in 1906 was followed a few months later by the Gore Standard, which maintained the competition as a morning paper for another four years.

The editors of the Ensign after George Renner were Henderson Carrick, J. Whiteley King (afterwards editor of the Australian Pastoralists’ Review), George Smales Searle (father of Mrs Edith Searle Grossman), Joseph Gordon Scoullar, Alfred Godby, A. Dolamore, J. H. Dolamore, F. H. Hart, G. J. Anderson, J. D. Cairns and H. A. Hull.

The Southern Standard

Considering individually the local papers which were absorbed by the Mataura Ensign, there was primarily Mackay’s own fancy at Mataura, the Southern Free Press and Mataura Mercury, with which David Dewar was associated.

The Southern Standard was founded at Gore on 14 June 1887 as a Liberal organ by a company of which James Beattie was chairman and John Gideon Fraser manager. The company bought the plant of Fraser Brothers in Dunedin and moved it to Gore. When Fraser retired (1892), Ewen Greville Macpherson became editor and Andrew Martin (1854-1941) manager. In 1896 the company went into liquidation and the property was bought by James Drummond, Martin and George Matheson. Drummond (1869-1940) sold out a year later to join the Lyttelton Times, where he established a reputation as a writer on natural history and published several works on animal life in New Zealand and a life of R. J. Seddon.

Martin and his brother, Hans A. Martin, carried on till 1906.

4 Hon. G. J. Anderson (1860-1935) was born at Bendigo, Victoria, and worked as a printer on the Lyttelton Times and the Otago Daily Times. He was M.H.R. for Mataura (1908-28), held office in the Massey and Coates Governments (1920-28) and was M.L.C. (1929-35).

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They made the paper a daily with the title Gore Standard, and two years later the property was acquired by the Gore Publishing Co. The Standard, then tri-weekly, was absorbed by the Mataura Ensign in 1910.

The real founder of the Waimea Plains Review and Market Report was Hugh S. Valentine 5 , at that time (1892) manager in Southland for the New Zealand Land Company. Essentially an adjunct to a stock and station agency, it was edited by A. J. Pease, a merchant at Riversdale, and printed in Gore. For a while it was distributed gratis. Pease afterwards employed P. J. Dunne and Robert Carrick as editors and John Nome as manager. In 1896 he sold the business to Valentine and shortly afterwards the Review was incorporated with the Mataura Ensign.

The Waikaia Herald was established in 1882 by William Kelly to voice the needs of men on the Switzers goldfield. Archibald Kennedy was chairman of the company and Kelly editor. After a little more than a year it was absorbed by the Mataura Ensign.

A unique newspaper, a volume of which was on view at the Exhibition at Dunedin in 1925, was the Nokomai Herald, which was published weekly during the years 1871-72. It was a 4-page folio sheet produced in manuscript and sold at Is. At that time the town of Nokomai, with the suburbs of Paddy’s Alley, Bullock Head and Victoria Gully, had a total population of 120 Europeans and 250 Chinese. Henry Thurston Evans was the proprietor and a schoolmaster named Lapham a contributor. This paper was still quoted in November 1872.

Journalism on Otago Goldfields: Beginnings at Tuapeka The throwing open of agricultural land outside the original Otago block and the settlement of Southland as a separate region had scarcely begun to influence the development of the province when Gabriel Read’s discovery of gold at Waitahuna and the subsequent discoveries up the whole extent of the Clutha Valley, distracted both farmers and townsmen and induced a rapid advance of the frontier in the interior. From a journalistic point of view this was a separate region, with a shifting population which did not quickly settle down and only became stationary at the end of the century. The needs of the mining population were

S H. S. Valentine (1848-1932) was M.H.R. (1887-93) for Waikaia and Tuapeka. He successfully advocated relief for the district from the Waimea Plains railway rate.

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different from those of small farmers or townspeople, and their resources lacked the stability which is necessary to support newspapers. Conditions in the goldfields region from the newspaper standpoint are distinct from the rest of Otago.

It is stated that within a few months of the rush to Gabriel’s Gully (in 1861) Thomas Birch (afterwards mayor of Dunedin) ran a news sheet on the field. No copy appears to have been preserved, but it is said to have lasted for three issues, the last containing a long article by Gabriel Read.

Lawrence, the first considerable town owing its origin to the discovery of gold, had its first paper in 1865, nearly a year after the advent of the first country paper south of Dunedin, the Bruce Herald. The promoter was Joseph Mackay, whose pioneer instinct persisted against every discouragement. The Tuapeka Recorder was established on 24 February 1865 and it was still being quoted till March 1867, when it was absorbed by the Bruce Herald. Successive editors were M. W. Stack, Robert Garrick and Joseph Cuttle and in the last year Andrew Burns was on the staff.

Another Tuapeka Recorder was registered in 1896 by John Weatherall, who carried it on till 1900.

It was in May 1866 that the Tuapeka Press and Goldfields Gazette was established. There is no recorded owner prior to George Bailey, an educated Englishman who had run a paper at Taradale, in Victoria and settled in Lawrence in 1864 as a newsagent. Following the death of his wife he sold the Press to James Alexander Matthews 6 , who had been a compositor on the Otago Witness with George Fenwick. In 1867, when Fenwick returned from a tour of experience in Australia, Matthews offered him a share in the Press. The opening seemed a good one, except that another paper, the Times, had started with a better plant. It was not long before the partners realised that Lawrence was too small a town to support two papers. Accordingly in October 1869 they proposed that Ferguson and Burns should pay them £l5O to close down. Meanwhile, on the lookout for a new site,

B J. A. Matthews (1842-1911) who was the grandfather of Denis Glover, was born in Dublin and came to Otago with his family in 1853. After his newspaper ventures in Southland and Otago he was for 49 years printer of the Otago Daily Times. Something of a poet and mystic, he treasured beautiful and simple things, and was immaculate in his dress. He might have stepped out of a Dickens novel. His partner Fenwick also contributed to cultural amenities. He assisted both as a singer and acting in amateur theatricals at Weatherston’s.

N 14

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they followed the flush of the goldfields to Cromwell. But that is another story.

Andrew Ferguson, who with Andrew Bums 7 and John Ludford founded the Tuapeka Times on 15 February 1868, was a cousin of Joseph Mackay, and worked with him on the Bruce Herald. When they acquired and incorporated the Tuapeka Press, they increased their paper to 5 and 6 pages. In 1870 James Clark Brown, who was soon to be M.H.R. for Bruce and Tuapeka, bought a share. Ferguson and Thomas Barton wrote most of the articles. In 1876 Burns and Ferguson started the Tapanui Courier. Burns disposed of his share in the Times, and later John Thompson acquired an interest and ran the paper in conjunction with an auctioneering business. In 1881 Ferguson sold out to live in England. The new owners, Thomas and Richard Pilling, sold in 1896 to the Tuapeka Times Co. This was promoted by John Nome (1861-1938), who served his apprenticeship to the Bruce Herald, managed the Waimea Plains Review, and joined the Times as editor in 1893 (succeeding F. M. Byrne). He was in turn manager and managing director as well as editor, and controlled the paper till his death. The Times ceased on 19 November 1941.

The title Tuapeka Press was again brought into use in 1883 by John Weatherall and James Rowe for a bi-weekly which apparently had a very short life.

Otago Central

The little town of Naseby had one of the earliest goldfields papers, but its first issue (5 February 1864) was printed at Hamilton. It was the Mount Ida and Hamilton Advertiser, published by John Rossiter. J. T. Paul says that it was not incorporated in the Mount Ida Chronicle, so apparently it did not last long enough to be saved from extinction in this manner.

The Mount Ida Chronicle and St. Bathans Weekly News was started in 1869 by Henry Charles Hertslet and Hugh Wilson. Hertslet, a large landowner, retired in 1870 and in 1872 Wilson admitted as partner and editor Cecil A. de Lautour, who was M.H.R. for Mout Ida. De Lautour left the district in 1879 and in 1883 a share in the paper was acquired by yet another aspirant for Parliament, Mackay John Scobie Mackenzie, long known as

7 A. Burns (1847-1943) was associated also with the Cromwell Argus, the Western Star, the Marlborough Times and the Hutt and Petone Chronicle. His son, A. M, Burns, was manager of the Press (Christchurch).

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“the member for Mount Ida”. He was a skilled writer who had contributed to Australian papers; and his hand was obvious in the columns of the Chronicle for some years. His share in the paper was taken over (in 1896) by another runholder, Alfred Dillon Bell (brother of Sir Francis Bell). He sold out in 1907, and Wilson carried on with John Wesley Reed as partner until his retirement in 1919. In 1926 James W. Keogh (of Milton) bought the business with a view to transferring it to Ranfurly but publication very soon ceased.

One of the doughtiest pioneers of goldfields journalism was John Weatherall, whose first plantation seems to have been the Mount Benger Mail at Roxburgh in 1880. It passed through the hands of J. H. Gray (1883), William Pannell Matthews (1896) and Patrick Joseph Dunne, and finally in 1911 was bought by the Tuapeka Times Co. and printed at Lawrence. In 1919 W. A. Laloli acquired the paper and once more had it printed in the town. A last effort was made in 1941 by a local company, but the Mail, like the Tuapeka Times, owing to war stringency had to close down. Weatherall had scarcely got his Roxburgh paper started in 1880 when he sold out and hastened to Alexandra, where in 1881 he started the Otago Central Leader. This lived for almost two years.

A more permanent effort was made at Alexandra in 1896 when Ernest Richard Solomon and Walter Burnside, having established at Roxburgh the Teviot Herald and Roxburgh District Gazette, moved their plant to Alexandra and there, with Henry Symes, published the Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, a weekly. In 1900 they sold to John Duncan Buchanan (proprietor of the Dunstan Times). In 1905 the paper passed to T. H. Cahill, and in 1912 to John Johnson Ramsay, once chairman of the Education Board. A local company was formed in 1917 with a capital of £1,250, and David Kirby, of the Clutha Leader, became managing editor and William Pierce printer. From 1919 to 1926 W. Duncan was editor and manager and after that L. Ryan and J. C. V. Watson until 1939, when the Herald came into the hands of Stevens Brothers. They ran it as a weekly in conjunction with the Dunstan Times till 19 May 1948 when both were incorporated with the Lake County Mail in the bi-weekly Central Otago News, which is published at Alexandra.

Apparently the Dunstan News (or Times) was the first paper

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to be firmly established on the goldfields. The Dunstan News and Wakatipu Advertiser first appeared at the Dunstan (now Clyde) on 30 December 1862. After languishing in 1863 it is quoted again in January 1864, when it mentions the forthcoming appearance of a contemporary in the town. The Otago Witness in February 1864 announced the appearance of the Dunstan Times “or Dunstan News redivivus”. It was edited by George Brodie (1833-72) who in 1863 represented the district in the Otago Provincial Council. The Times was printed at first on grocer’s yellow paper. George Fache and W. R. George took it over, and later Fache ran it for over a quarter of a century.

The Dunstan News is frequently quoted in 1864 subsequent to the appearance of the Times. Moreover quotations in the Dunedin papers from July 1864 to June 1865 disclose the existence of another paper at Clyde called the Molyneux Mail, run by the same Rossiter who had a paper at Naseby earlier in the year.

From 1892 Reginald Augustus Pyke had control of the Times for three or four years in association with Richard Sidney Gilkison. After other changes Harold Edgar Stevens came in 1900 and Sydney Arthur Stevens in 1902, to carry on as Stevens Brothers. They also acquired the Alexandra Herald which, with the Lake County Press and the Times, was incorporated in the Central Otago News in 1948.

The first paper known to have been established at Cromwell, the Cromwell Argus and Northern Goldfields Gazette, recalls early rivalries at Lawrence as a result of which James Alexander Matthews and George Fenwick fixed on Cromwell as the most likely scene for a new endeavour. They needed to publish two more issues of the Tuapeka Press to keep faith with their quarterly subscribers. In the interim Fenwick bought a section at Cromwell and gathered a budget of local news for the first issue. When the day arrived the Tuapeka Times, to assist their competitors to set up elsewhere, printed a paper for them, using their own formes for the back pages and setting the Cromwell news for the inside. Thus, by 6 p.m. the first issue of the Cromwell Argus was printed in Lawrence and Fenwick set of! on horseback with 500 copies. That Saturday night he spent at Miller’s Flat, and by riding all day on Sunday he was able to distribute the Cromwell Argus in the town on Monday morning (8 November

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1869). The building was ready for occupation when the plant reached Cromwell by wagon.

In Cromwell too, Fenwick and his partner were immediately faced with competition. The Cromwell Guardian started about three weeks after the Argus. The promoters were Robert Osborne Carrick and the picturesque Captain William Jackson Barry, who had left the sea and the gold diggings and was now local butcher and mayor of Cromwell, as well as an amateur jockey. A few weeks sufficed to settle with this rival. George Fenwick was reminded of the lesson he had learned at Lawrence that it is unwise to attempt to give a community more newspapers than it can support. Conditions in Cromwell were certainly too circumscribed. Accordingly after a year or two he transferred his share in the Argus to his brother William and returned to Dunedin to become a partner with John Mackay in the printing firm of Mackay and Fenwick. The Argus was for many years a healthy country paper. Matthews and Fenwick in 1875 sold to Stephen Noble Brown, who ran the paper successfully for twelve years and then took an interest in the Evening Herald in Dunedin. Later it passed through the hands of Thomas McCracken (1887), Abel Warburton (1898), James Goodger (1906), Richard Grose Varcoe (1920) and James Robert Munro (1927). It ceased on 26 October 1948 (vol. 77, no. 3020).

An opposition paper, the Cromwell Times, started in 1899 by Patrick Joseph Dunne 8 , lasted for only a few months.

And so to the Lakes: Queenstown in 1863

About the time when Bully Hayes and the Buckinghams were entertaining the miners at the Arrow, and the Shotover rush was at its height, the Lake Wakatip Mail was established at Queenstown (May 1863) by Joseph Pearce and George Taylor, who had been compositors on town papers. It was edited by James Benn Bradshaigh Bradshaw 9 . A year later William Warren and T. Hartwell took over. In the severe slump following the new rush to the West Coast the Mail actually suspended publication.

8 P. J. Dunne (1867-1920) had been associated with the Mt. Benger Mail (1896) and later edited the Hokitika Guardian and the Ohakune Times.

9 J. B. B. Bradshaw (1831-86) was a member of the Otago Provincial Council (1871-73) and of Parliament (1866-75, 1884-86). He was an early social reformer and promoted measures to alleviate conditions of child and female labour.

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Hartwell withdrew and Warren was sole proprietor from 1867 until his death in 1899. William David Warren, who succeeded as manager, was relieved for war service in 1917-20 by the other owner, Miss M. S. Warren. The same family managed and edited the Mail for nearly eighty years. To the end it loyally maintained the clipped spelling of its title, Wakatip.

In 1875, owing to the loss of population in Queenstown, the Mail became a weekly and remained so. In 1926 it absorbed its Arrow contemporary, the Lake County Press, and in 1946 it was sold to G. D. Cochrane and T. H. Tallentire. It ceased publication in 1947, but a few weeks later the title Lake County Mail was revived as a weekly which was shortly afterwards amalgamated with two contemporaries in the bi-weekly Central Otago News.

The first paper at Arrowtown was the Arrow Observer, founded in 1871 by William Warren of the Lake Wakatip Mail. When Garrick’s venture at Cromwell failed, Warren purchased the plant and, with the help of Stephen Noble Brown and Henry John Cope, moved it to Arrowtown, where they brought out the first issue of the Arrow Observer and Lakes District Chronicle. For a while Warren ran it with the help of Ebenezer Sandford 10 , who in 1882 became sole owner. In its last issue under the title of Arrow Observer, Sandford apologised for the poor figure the paper had cut and promised that this reproach to the district would be put right in the new paper, the Lake County Press, which made its appearance a week or two later. With his partner John Thomas Marryat Hornsby, he put out a well-got-up weekly. In 1886 the Press was taken over by William Joseph Marsh, who sold in 1895 to Philip de la Perrelle (then only 21 years of age). In 1914, on acquiring a paper in Winton, de la Perrelle sold the Press to D. Macleod. It ceased publication in 1926, being absorbed by the Lake Wakatip Mail.

The Arrow Advocate and Wakatip Reporter is quoted for a few months in 1871, but nothing further is known of it.

10 M.H.R. for city of Christchurch (1891-93).

CHAPTER 13

THE PRESS IN SOUTHLAND

The Southland Daily News

The press of Southland originated at the moment when the district was proclaimed a province separate from Otago. On 16 February 1861, six weeks before the province became a separate entity, the first issue appeared of the Southern News and Foveaux Straits Herald. Invercargill had then only 210 houses and 1,000 inhabitants, roads were few, and railways not even projected.

George Smallfield was the first printer, but the name of James Walker Bain 1 was added to the imprint of the second issue. In December 1863 the title was the Southland News. Starting as a weekly, the News became bi-weekly in 1862, tri-weekly in 1863 and daily for a few months in 1864, but not permanently so till 1875.

There were various changes in ownership. In 1863 Jeremiah Harnett, of Invercargill, and William Shaw of Dunedin (Harnett and Co.), became the owners. In 1867 Harnett went to the West Indies and his partner to the West Coast, where they were soon reunited. The News was taken over by William Craig and Bain. In 1870 Bain retired and Robert Gilmour joined Craig, the firm being Bain and Gilmour till 1874 when Craig appears as the sole proprietor. In 1876 Henry Feldwick joined Craig, and next year his brother John bought Craig’s interest. For the next generation the News was owned by H. & J. Feldwick 2 . They

1 J. W. Bain (1841-99), born in Edinburgh and trained at Constable’s and Oliver and Boyd’s, was mayor of Invercargill (1884) and M.H.R. (1879-81).

2 H. Feldwick (1844-1908) was born in Surrey and came to New Zealand in 1858. He was on the editorial staff of the Star and Canterbury Times from 1871 and later on the Timaru Herald. He was M.H.R. (1878-79, 1881-90) and M.L.C. (1902-08). John Feldwick (1846-1913) bequeathed £20,000 to Invercargill for the recreation ground.

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formed a private company in 1907 and two years later, following the death of Henry Feldwick, the property was purchased by the Southland News Co. The Hon. George Jones was governing director, his son Walter Joseph Jones came in as editor and Ernest Joseph Abbey Jones 3 (1870-1938) as general manager. Born in Christchurch and educated in Timaru, Ernest Abbey Jones had been engaged in stock and station business in New Zealand and Australia before being appointed in 1906 manager of the Oamaru Mail. George Jones was succeeded on his death (1920) by his son, as governing director of both the News and the Oamaru Mail. E. J. Abbey Jones, as general manager of the News, was succeeded (in 1938) by John Stanley Ferguson.

The politics of the News have always been Liberal, and there have been few changes in the literary control of the paper. In 1864 Thomas Lockyer Bright, later Thomas Perkins, edited for Harnett and Co. James Parker Joyce, who was editor 1865-95, was succeeded by Fred Joyce who, when the paper changed hands in 1909, remained on as associate to Walter Jones. R. M. Hutton-Potts, who was appointed editor in 1945, is now managing director.

After the railway strike which interrupted deliveries in 1924, the Southland News Co. established the first motor omnibus passenger service to country districts from Invercargill. This has grown into a substantial transport business operating a fleet of heavy buses, and has been supplemented by other privately owned services which cover an even wider area.

On the mechanical side the News was printed on a flatbed machine till 1910, when this was replaced by a Foster rotary press capable of printing 12,000 copies per hour. The present Hoe rotary can print 36,000 copies an hour of a 24-page paper. In 1911 the News Co. erected a three-storeyed building in Dee Street.

As early as 1864 the News established the Weekly Despatch for the benefit of back settlers. Afterwards called the Southlander, it survived till 1930.

The Southland Times

The only other paper to compete in the daily field in Invercargill was the present Southland Times. Published first on 12 November 1862 as the Invercargill (Southland) Times, it was the creation

3 No relation of George Jones.

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of Gerard George FitzGerald (brother of James Edward FitzGerald), a printer named Downs and Charles H. Reynolds. After moving to better quarters frondng Tay Street, the Times suffered, almost fatally, the misfortune of many early newspapers: a fire on 1 March 1864 demolished the offices. On the following day the Times appeared with a full account of the fire. This and also the issues of March 4 and 7 were published by the News. Then there was a break until 2 June, when the paper appeared under the name of the Southland Times. By then the Times Company had secured new offices in Esk Street, between Dee Street and the railway station.

In 1864 Jabez Job Ham became editor, to be succeeded before long by James Parker Joyce. About 1869 James Walker Bain acquired the paper in partnership with Robert Gilmour 4 . The latter soon left to join William Craig in the ownership of the News and Bain through the seventies was proprietor and editor. In 1875 the paper became daily. Three years later (1878) fire destroyed the property, including all the early files. The Times was able to continue publication, again with the help of the Southland News, being issued from temporary premises in Esk Street until new premises, also in that street, were acquired. A local company was organised to purchase the business. Robert Gilmour, who had sold out of the News and visited the Old Country, reappeared on the scene, bought the interest of J. Chantrey Harris (1879) and assumed virtual control as manager, editor and managing director. From 1896 he was sole proprietor until his death six years later.

Under the Southland Times Company the paper had a succession of editors. Following Chantrey Harris in 1890 was Thomas Denniston 5 , whose regular association with journalism dated from his return after a visit to Scotland in 1867. His successor (in 1885) was Robert Martin (1844-94), a student of Glasgow university who was later editor of the Napier Telegraph. Robert

4 R. Gilmour (1832-1902) was born in Glasgow, and was on the staff of the Hawke’s Bay Herald before settling in Southland. He fanned at Hokonui and then joined the Southland Times. He was for some years president of the Hospital Board and served on the Chamber of Commerce, the Railway League and as president of the Caledonian Society.

S T. Denniston (1821-97), born at Greenock and educated at Glasgow University, settled in Southland in 1863. He left on the Times the influence of a fine writer and a scholarly gentleman. His son was the Hon. Sir John Denniston, judge of the Supreme Court.

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Gilmour was editor from 1889 until some years after he had acquired sole control. On his death (1902) he was succeeded as editor and managing director by his son Robert Joyce Gilmour. He and two other sons were partners in 1910 when Robert Gilmour and Sons was converted into a private limited liability company, the Southland Times Co. R. J. Gilmour was managing editor (1902-10) and managing director and editor (1910-22). He then carried on as managing director (1922), chairman and managing director (1937) till his death in 1954. He was succeeded as managing director by Frederick Neil Anderson (who had been general manager since 1945).

The following have also been editors: Charles Rous Marten, John R. Cuthbertson, John J. W. Pollard (1922-35), Reginald Lund (1936-46), M. H. Holcroft (1946-48) and J. Grimaldi (1948- ). Not the least interesting was George Smales Searle 6 , who afterwards edited the New Zealand Times and the Mataura Ensign.

The Southland Times between 1902 and 1906 replaced handsetting by linotypes. In 1908 the important step was taken of ordering a complete new plant, including a two-reel rotary newspaper press of the latest design, in order to convert the Southland Times into an 8-page daily. On 9 January 1909 it was printed in its new form, the first paper outside the four main centres printed from stereotyped plates on a rotary press.

The Weekly Times, first published in 1866, ceased in 1933.

After the demise of the Riverton Times (in 1864) its printer, Downs, proposed to use the plant to establish an evening daily in Invercargill. Compositors in Invercargill, including Andrew Burns, contributed their labour gratis to help the venture. The Bulletin, which appeared on 25 July 1864, is probably the publication referred to. It was a weekly and lasted only a short time.

The Southern Cross, a weekly, was established in 1883 by John Ward, a native of Bellshill, Scotland, who in 1863 was employed on the Southland Times and was later sub-editor of the

6 G. S. Searle (1823-85), born in Essex, had experience in English journalism before emigrating to Victoria (1852) where he was a schoolmaster and journalist (Ovens and Murray Gazette). After two years as editor of the Times he was secretary of the Bluff Harbour Board. He then moved to Christchurch for the education of his daughter (Edith Searle Grossman), one of New Zealand’s most brilliant scholars and writers.

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Daily News. In 1898 his partner (Joseph Wilson) withdrew, and the paper was carried on for forty years by Ward and his brothers William and James (as John Ward and Co.). John Ward had a passionate regard for good English and paid great attention to Southland history. He died in 1937 and the paper ceased in 1946.

The Bluff Press and Stewart Island Gazette was established in 1908 by William James Lyon, who five years later formed the Bluff Publishing Co. James William Hugh Bannerman, the managing director, was killed in France (1917) and the paper was taken over by Charles Edward Robertson, who in 1919 became livestock editor of the New Zealand Farmer. He served his time with the Western Star and had managed its office at Otautau before taking over the Bluff Press. Lyon ran the Press in conjunction with the Orepuki Advocate and Tuatapere Guardian till 1928. A fire destroyed the Bluff Press office in 1931, the paper closed down, and thereafter the claim to be the most southerly newspaper in New Zealand was asserted on behalf of the Owaka News.

Ventures in Riverton

The first paper in the Riverton district was plainly premature. In December 1863 Robert Osborne Garrick 7 left the Southland News to try his fortune in the western district. In association with Downs (from the Southland Times) and J. A. Matthews, he acquired a printing machine which had come from Melbourne and a quantity of type, and they hung out their shingle in Palmerston Street, Riverton. There, late in January 1864, they brought out the first issue of the Riverton Times. It was a creditable enough production, published weekly till March and thereafter bi-weekly. The only copies known to exist are in the British Museum, the latest (no. 16) being dated 16 April.

In a few weeks from that date this gallant plant is reported at the first point of an adventurous pilgrimage towards a permanent home. First Carrick and Matthews looked in at Port Chalmers. The prospect was not enticing and they passed on up the coast to Waikouaiti, where a small paper appeared in October.

7 R. O. Carrick, (1832-1914) was a Scottish law clerk before coming to New Zealand in 1860. He walked from Dunedin to Invercargill to find employment on the News and was afterwards connected with papers on the West Coast, Otago Central and Wairarapa. He is best known for his rather haphazard research in New Zealand history.

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The machinery spent a year or so in that historic township and then was whisked off to the wilds of south Westland.

Thus tested and discarded, Riverton lay fallow for nine years. Then Erskine and Simon founded the Western Star (1873) which in 1874 they sold to John Campbell Kerr. Kerr transferred it to William Galloway and Son. In 1879 Andrew Burns bought a share and he partnered Alexander Galloway till 1887, when he sold out to purchase the Marlborough Times. After Galloway’s death (in 1891) John Charles Thomson 8 joined with Mrs Galloway in the firm of J. Galloway-Thomson. The Star passed in 1902 to John Geary and George Robert Berndtson, and in 1939 to Sidney Arthur Odell, who was compelled by war conditions to suspend publication in 1942.

In 1899 this quiet western field was invaded by the ever hopeful Joseph Ivess, who had lately been interested in a number of South Canterbury papers. Opening a printing office in Riverton he registered three tri-weeklies: (1) the Riverton Times and Wallace County Advertiser, (2) the Otautau Mail and Wallace County Advertiser, and (3) the Orepuki Miner. They were all issued from the same office, using practically the same metal. None of the trio lasted a year, the Western Star having too strong a hold on a naturally conservative district. The incident is of interest, however, as another attempt to establish multiple papers in adjacent districts.

An even more westerly banner of New Zealand journalism was hoisted in the first years of this century. On 14 December 1901 James Mills and Harry Livingstone Goldthorp established in Orepuki a weekly, the Orepuki Advocate and Western District Advertiser. In 1903 it was acquired by William James Lyon, who ran it for some years side by side with a printing business in Bluff. In 1912 it was run for him by Thomas Brownell Handley, who two years later commenced publishing at Tuatapere the Tuatapere Guardian and Waiau District Gazette. Both papers were printed at Orepuki, practically the same matter being used. In 1916 Lyon resumed control and carried them on for some years along with the Bluff Press. The two western papers closed down together in 1928.

Otautau meanwhile was without a paper until 1905, when Frank Hyde, who had been running the Winton Record, established the weekly Otautau Standard. A year later he sold it to

8 J. C. Thomson (1866-1934) was M.P. for Wallace (1902-19, 1922-25)

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John Fisher, who formed a company with William Saunders as manager. When Saunders retired the shares in the Wallace Newspaper Co. fell into the hands of John Fisher. For a year or two, from 1913, Charles E. M. Robertson was manager and later the business was taken over by Fisher’s son, Allan Aorangi Fisher, who continued to run it for the family as the Wallace Newspaper Co. till it ceased in 1946.

According to the custom of the time one hopeful foundation was quickly followed by another. No sooner had the Otautau Standard started than the owners of the Western Star at Riverton (J. Geary and G. R. Berndston) countered with the Otautau Farmer and Wallace County Gazette. C. E. M. Robertson ran the office (1909-13), before going over to the Standard. Ewan Matheson afterwards managed the Otautau office. The Farmer ceased in 1939.

Long Lives at Wyndham

The town of Wyndham is a remarkable example of the tenacity and the ability of small newspaper undertakings to maintain themselves on very modest profits. For nearly fifty years Wyndham had two papers publishing twice or thrice in the week. An experienced proprietor, commenting on this phenomenon, writes: “While the bigger papers have to keep on moving and piling up the outgoings, the little ones, as one-man shows, employing possibly a man and a boy both able individually to do anything about the place, missed most of the expenses their big brothers had to incur”. In Wyndham, each of the papers was in the hands of a man who was able himself to carry out most of the processes and duties.

Wyndham is an interesting example of newspaper pioneering. William Joseph Marsh 9 , having disposed of the Lake County Press and decided to establish a paper in Wyndham, registered the Wyndham Herald on 31 May 1895. Information of his intention came to the proprietors of the Mataura Ensign, who resented this invasion of a profitable portion of their territory. Accordingly, on 20 June they registered another paper, the Wyndham Farmer. A representative of the Ensign canvassed for subscribers and advertisements and took down some spare type

9 W. J. Marsh (1861-1940), born at Bendigo and apprenticed to the Cromwell Argus, worked for some years on the Tapanui Courier before buying the Lake County Press.

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and machinery. Thus the tri-weekly Wyndham Farmer appeared on 1 July 1895, a day or two before the Wyndham Herald.

Nothing daunted, Marsh carried on with his plans and thus the Wyndham Herald was the Farmer’s junior by a few days though its senior in conception. For 45 years, until the death of Marsh in 1940, these two papers ran side by side, keeping step in their development and serving the town and its country district as faithfully as they were served. The last issue of the Herald (no. 8947) appeared on 1 November 1940.

The journalist whom the Ensign sent to Wyndham to establish the Farmer was Ewen Greville Macpherson 10 . He bought the paper in 1898 and ran it till his death in 1934. His son, Douglas Norman Alister Macpherson, then had control till the Farmer ceased on 18 February 1955. The paper was tri-weekly for the first ten years, which accounts for its serial number being over 10,000. From 1906 both papers came out on the same two days of the week.

The Winton Record, a weekly, was founded in 1897 by Walter V. Keay (1864-1945) who had been running the Clutha County Gazette at Clinton. In 1901 it came into the hands of Frank Hyde, who sold it in 1905. In 1913 it was bought by Philip Aldborough de la Perrelle 11 and converted it into a bi-weekly. He also started the Lumsden Chronicle (1920), a weekly which he printed at Winton till 1930. The Record was afterwards run by de la Perrelle’s son until it ceased in 1951.

10 E. G. Macpherson (1863-1934), born at Lyttelton, had gained experience on the Clutha Leader and in Australia and came back to take an interest in the Gore Standard.

11 P. A. de la Perrelle (1873-1935) was owner of the Lake County Press at the age of 21. He was M.P. for Awarua (1922-25, 1928-31) and Minister of Internal Affairs (1928-31).

CHAPTER 14

NEWSPAPERS IN CANTERBURY

The Lyttelton Times

When preparations were being made for the sailing of the first four ships for Canterbury, the Canterbury Association in London issued a prospectus for the establishment of a newspaper in the Colony. The Society of Intending Colonists had resolved on 1 August 1850 to have a paper and its objects were set out (as follows) by Edward Robert Ward and the Hon James Stuart Wortley;

It is proposed to establish a newspaper immediately after the arrival of the first body of colonists, to be called the Lyttelton Times. ... Its objects will be twofold—in the first place to supply the inhabitants of the Colony with the advantages of a local organ of public opinion, local information and general New Zealand news . . . together with . . . English and European intelligence, and in the second place to supply to parties in this country who may be interested in the progress of the Colony and the welfare of the first settlers the most complete and authentic information respecting all proceedings in the Canterbury Settlement.

Ingram Shrimpton 1 , of the Crown Yard printing office, Oxford, who was printer to several learned societies, was a member of the Canterbury Association and he suggested that there should be some guarantee against loss. To meet this it was resolved to ask members to subscribe a guinea a year for the first year of publication (members in England to have a year’s issues of the Lyttelton Times sent to them as published). Shrimpton himself then entered into the undertaking, risking something like £2,000

1 Ingram Shrimpton (1812-78) came to New Zealand in the John Taylor in 1853. After the death of his son John Ingram Shrimpton in 1856 he managed the Lyttelton Times till it was sold in 1860, He afterwards farmed in North Canterbury and retired to live in Timaru where he was associated with A. G. Horton in 1864 in the Timaru Herald.

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capital in machinery, type, paper and ink sufficient for twelve months. The plant, which was shipped in the Charlotte Jane, included an Atlas press for fancy printing, a Columbia press for engravings and a Stanhope press to print the paper. Shrimpton engaged a foreman (G. Varyer) and a compositor (H. Winchester) and persuaded his son, John Ingram Shrimpton (aged 17) and his nephew, George Tayler (18) to come out as cadets. For their benefit he selected land in the settlement. He could not afford to pay an editor, but James Edward FitzGerald, the leader of the colonists, offered to act without salary until Shrimpton should be able to come out.

The Charlotte Jane arrived in Lyttelton harbour on 16 December 1850. The printing plant was unloaded and set up in a shed on section no. 2, Norwich Quay, which was ready for occupation by the time the first issue appeared (11 January 1851). There was a composing room 14 feet by 28, a press room 14 feet by 18, and the editorial office, 14 feet by 10.

The Lyttelton Times in its first months was printed mainly in brevier type on blue wove double foolscap paper. The first issue contained 31 columns of advertising and 20i columns of news. One of the early copies which reached London fell into the hands of Felix Wakefield, who had reprints made with similar type and paper and sold them at 6d. each.

FitzGerald’s time was soon too much occupied to devote full attention to the paper. He acted as secretary to John Robert Godley. In 1853 he was elected superintendent of the Province and a member of Parliament and in 1854 he was leader of the first Executive Council. His editorial duty was made possible only by the appointment as subeditor of Francis Knowles 2 , who had edited the Travancore Times on the voyage from England. During the elections in 1853 the Times was controlled by John Birch, who was salaried editor from 1852 to 1856.

Ingram Shrimpton arrived in Canterbury in 1854 to manage the business—a post of some responsibility now, since the appearance of two new papers in the settlement had induced the Lyttelton Times to become bi-weekly. In 1856 John Ingram Shrimpton was accidentally killed, and in that year his father sold the copyright

2 F. Knowles (1830-1916), a native of London and a qualified teacher (1848) came to Lyttelton in 1851 and for some years kept a school at Pigeon Bay. He took Holy Orders in 1857 and was diocesan registrar and honorary canon.

J. W. Bain ( 1841-99)

T. Denniston (1821-97)

J. P. Joyce (1835-1903)

R. Gilmour (1831-1902)

H. Feldwick (1844-1908)

E. G. Kerr (1845-1906)

I. Shrimpion (1812-78)

J. E. FitzGerald ( 1818-96)

G. S. Sale (1831-1922)

W. P. Reeves ( 1857-1932)

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and the lease of property and plant for twenty years to Crosbie Ward 3 and Charles C. Bowen for £5,000. The paper had now 12 pages and in 1857 the column was lengthened from 11 to 14 inches. Ward, a born journalist, brought to the paper vigour and literary charm, but neither he nor Bowen understood the practical side of the work. The partnership was not a success. In 1859 William Reeves (1825-91) joined the staff and a year later, when Bowen wished to go abroad, Reeves bought his interest. The new partnership was now Crosbie Ward seven-sixteenths, Reeves six-sixteenths, W. J. W. Hamilton two-sixteenths and T. W. Maude one-sixteenth. The advent of Reeves had an important influence upon the paper. He had been a bank clerk in London and had some success on the stock exchange before coming to New Zealand in 1857. He was thoroughly competent to control the business side. Ward, who was now deep in politics, continued to contribute articles, topical sketches and satirical verse.

In 1859 plans had been made for moving the business from Lyttelton to Gloucester Street in Christchurch, and in 1863 the move was made into a two-storey building on the Cathedral Square frontage. The paper became tri-weekly, supplements were a feature, in 1865 the weekly Canterbury Times was started, and in 1868 an evening paper, the Star.

Meanwhile in 1861 a new competitor, the Press, was established largely to oppose Moorhouse’s tunnel scheme, which the Times supported. Ward also favoured separating the government of the two Islands so that the South might escape liability for the heavy cost of the Maori wars. He advocated colonial responsibility for colonial affairs and fostering the self-governing spirit. Though at first non-party, the Times was now Liberal and remained so throughout its history. When the Canterbury Standard ceased publication in 1866 its editor, James Morice Smith, joined the Times, which he edited till his death in 1874. His successor, Robert Andrew Loughnan, was a vigorous champion of Liberalism.

The seventies were a lean decade for newspapers. When the Press reduced its price to Id. (1879) the Lyttelton Times replied

3 Crosbie Ward (1832-67) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and came to Canterbury in 1852, after his brothers Edward and Henry had lost their lives by drowning. He was a member of the Provincial Council (1855-57) and of Parliament (1858-67) and was Postmaster-General and Secretary for Crown Lands in the Fox and Domett ministries (1861-63).

N 15

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by doubling the size of the paper. In 1881 the Times proprietary became a joint stock company with a capital of £45,000 (in which Reeves had a major interest). With two morning papers, two evening and two weeklies, competition in Christchurch was fierce. The Times had to reduce its price to Id. (1886) but business was stagnant, and strong supporters of the paper were financially involved and unable to help. Eventually Reeves’s shares were bought by James Clunie Wilkin (who had been with the company for many years and was manager under Reeves) and Henry Francis Wigram 4 . Frederic de Carteret Malet (later chairman of the Bank of New Zealand) had been managing director pending the sale of Reeves’s holding. Wigram became chairman and Wilkin continued as manager.

Loughnan resigned the editorship in 1889 and he was succeeded by William Pember Reeves 5 , who had been in charge of the weekly. Though the younger Reeves was a brilliant journalist he did not reign long: in 1891 he became a member of the BallanceSeddon ministry. His successor was Samuel Saunders, during whose editorship (1891-1914) the Times strongly supported the Liberal Government. Saunders did not hesitate to attack even governors who seemed disposed to hinder the march of Liberalism. He was a devotee of horses and racing and made early use of homing pigeons for the news service. The Times established a loft in 1885 and Saunders on one occasion entrusted a box of pigeons to the Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon) who liberated them on the West Coast.

After the death of Wilkin, Frank Eugene Hyman was manager (1907-17), followed by Robert Bell as managing director (1917-26). Saunders was succeeded as editor (1914-19) by Martin Luther Reading, from the New Zealand Times. Alexander

4 Sir H. F. Wigram (1857-1934) settled in Christchurch in 1883 and engaged in business. He was mayor (1902-04), a member of the Legislative Council (1903-20) and was knighted in 1926. He organised a company to train flying men for war service and later presented to the Dominion the aerodrome at Sockburn which bears his name.

6 W. P. Reeves (1857-1932) was bom in Lyttelton and educated at Christ’s College. He was admitted a barrister but never practised. Elected M.H.R, for St. Albans (1887-96) he was appointed Agent-General for New Zealand in London. In 1908-17 he was director of the London School of Economics and from 1917 chairman of the National Bank of New Zealand. Reeves’s books on New Zealand and state socialism, and his verse, are amongst our classics.

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Gunn Henderson, M.A., who had been assistant editor during the war, was appointed manager and in 1919 coadjutor to R. Bell. He became editor in 1924 and combined the two offices for five years.

In 1929 a merger was effected between the Lyttelton Times Co. and the Brett Printing and Publishing Co. of Auckland, which was engaged in keen competition with the Sun. The new company, New Zealand Newspapers Ltd., had a nominal capital of £1,000,000 and issued capital of £582,500. Under this regime Henderson became supervising editor of the Times and the Star. One of the results of the merger was an alteration in the title of the papers. When the province was established the name “Lyttelton” was chosen for the capital, but the city on the Plains grew up under the name of “Christchurch”. When the paper moved into Christchurch, Ward and Bowen decided to adhere to the name Lyttelton Times, which was to achieve enduring mana in the newspaper world. The change made in 1929 was, strangely enough, not to a wider or more comprehensive connotation. On 1 August the paper became simply the Christchurch Times. Later managers of the Christchurch Times were Ernest Aldridge (1930), F. A. Clarke (1931) and H. E. Bell (1935).

The competition of two morning and two evening papers in the city was soon fatal. Early in 1935 it culminated in the most notable struggle in recent newspaper history. Eventually in June an agreement was reached whereby New Zealand Newspapers Ltd., in purchasing the goodwill of the Sun, agreed to cease publication of the Christchurch Times and “to concentrate their energies on the production of an evening newspaper worthy in every respect of Canterbury”. The final issue of the Times (on 29 June 1935) contained an excellent history of this famous newspaper, whose cessation left the Taranaki Herald as the oldest paper in New Zealand.

The Christchurch Times inaugurated in 1934 an 8-page juvenile section under the title New Zealand Junior. It was issued once a week.

Star and Star-Sun

The Star, an evening paper, was started by the Lyttelton Times on 14 May 1868, the registered proprietor being James Morice Smith. It was a 4-page paper designed to catch the penny public and it had a sharp conflict for a while with the Evening Mail. When the Star reduced its price to id. the Mail succumbed.

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In 1874 the Press sponsored an evening paper, the Globe. This caused the Star to be enlarged, but after the decease of the Mail no serious effort was made to develop the Star. It simply marked time like a sentry watching the field. An early editor was William Harrington Atack (1857-1945) who was later manager of the United Press Association. He was followed by Robert Henry Eyton, James Izett (1880), Charles Hull (1891), H. M. Reeves (1900), Hubert Mitchell (1905), Alexander G. Henderson (1909), Pierce C. Freeth (1913), Harry W. Nixon (1916), Alexander Buchan Lane (1918-30) and Andrew Burns from 1931 to its cessation in 1935.

A noteworthy attempt to develop the Star was made under H. M. Reeves. He brought out a Saturday night sports edition which jumped to immediate popularity; the addition of sixpenny wanted advertisements strengthened its position. The attention devoted to the Star after 1914 was due mainly to the competition of the Sun. When this came to a head in 1935 the two evening papers ceased publication and the Christchurch Star-Sun was started as a new paper. It adopted the horizontal style of make-up as opposed to the traditional perpendicular style of the New Zealand Press, illustrated the news pages freely and introduced a new style of headline.

The Star-Sun was edited by A. G. Henderson, who had been editor of the Christchurch Times. Harold Edward Bell (also of the Times) was manager until 1939. He was followed by C. W. Hodge, who was succeeded in 1941 by Alexander William Scott, the present manager.

An innovation in 1938 was the introduction of a separate sports edition on Saturdays. This got away to a slow start, for feeling among the public resulting from the newspaper war of 1925-35 was still apparent. After a few years the sports edition gained popularity and in 1957 it had an audited circulation of more than 45,000.

Henderson retired in 1945 and was succeeded as editor by George Burns, who had been chief subeditor of the Star-Sun since 1935. He restored news to the front page—a feature of the original Star —and later set a new style for the Dominion by removing all advertisements from the back page and filling the space with sporting news. In 1948 the Star-Sun originated in New Zealand the transmission of pictures by telegraph.

The Canterbury Times, started in 1865, was a weekly designed

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to meet the needs of settlers remote from the capital. In 1878 Reeves appointed a committee, consisting of John Hebden, R. H. Eyton and Robert A. Loughnan, to decide on its policy, and it was remodelled on the pattern of the Australasian. The editors were Hebden (1878), Pember Reeves (1885-89), S. Saunders, and Walter Garwood Atack from 1897 till the paper ceased twenty years later. A process engraving plant was acquired in 1894 and half-tone illustrations were a regular feature by 1895.

Punch in Canterbury, commonly referred to as the Canterbury Punch, was issued weekly in 1865 and ran for 20 numbers. The editor, Crosbie Ward, wrote most of the verse and prose squibs. Punch ceased when the Lyttelton Times established the weekly Canterbury Times.

For some years at the turn of the century Christchurch had a weekly of the society, or magazine type. In 1895 William John Geddis and William Blomfield (owners of the Observer in Auckland) co-operated with Charles Arma Wilkins in establishing the Spectator, which George Warren Russell and Wilkins carried on for many years. At first it had the form of a daily but later it changed to the usual form of that type of weekly. It ceased in 1928. David Low, the cartoonist, commenced on the Spectator in 1902.

The Guardian and the Standard

The second newspaper enterprise in Canterbury was the Christchurch Guardian and Canterbury Advertiser. Launched on 3 June 1852, it was the first paper to be both printed and published in Christchurch. Its promoter, Charles J. Rae (a prominent free thinker in Dunedin in the eighties), claimed that the plant stood “at a greater distance from the seashore than any which has hitherto been worked in New Zealand”. After being landed at Lyttelton, it was shipped by way of Sumner to “The Bricks” on the Avon river, where it lay exposed to the weather for some months. Strange as it may seem, the advent of the Guardian was welcomed by the Lyttelton Times with singular warmth. The existence of competition, James Edward FitzGerald declared, would allow him to abandon the middle course which the Lyttelton Times had hitherto followed and openly to express his own convictions.

The Guardian was printed by John E. Thacker. After staggering along for only three months the proprietors explained that

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only 20 of the 200 colonists who had promised to subscribe had paid in advance. The Guardian offices were later to serve a more dignified function as the place of meeting of the first Provincial Council of the Province.

A year after the Guardian another bidder for popular favour was foreshadowed by a prospectus. Once again the Lyttelton Times extended a welcome to a field which offered ample room for two. The Canterbury Standard (1 June 1854) was ably edited, and for some years managed, by Joseph Brittan. Actually it presented no competition: the best of feeling subsisted between it and the Times. Before the Standard ceased the Press had gained a footing as a more substantial rival of the Times. In May 1866 the Standard property was sold to the Times for £1,155 and its capable editor, James Morice Smith, joined the Times staff. The last known issue of the Standard is dated 23 April 1866.

The Press, Christchurch: A Solid Competitor

After the Lyttelton Times (founded in 1851), the first newspaper foundation of real importance, and the only one surviving from that early period, was the Press. Its establishment as a rival to the Times was the outcome of something more than a suggestion by James Edward FitzGerald. He had been Superintendent of the Province, the first editor of the Lyttelton Times, and for some years a member of Parliament.

After an illness in 1857 FitzGerald resigned his public offices to visit England, and William Sefton Moorhouse became Superintendent. Here was a very different type of man-—bold, imaginative and enterprising. And as FizGerald, from the remote calm of England, followed events in Canterbury, he conceived the urgent need of a second organ of public opinion to curb the lavish expenditure of the Moorhouse administration and in particular to resist the Lyttelton tunnel projects, which cut against FitzGerald’s own scheme of leading all the traffic of the district through Sumner.

On returning to the Colony he advanced the suggestion, found people who were willing to put up £5OO of capital, discovered a small press and type and an editor. FitzGerald’s collaborators in the Press Company were J. C. Watts Russell, A. R. Creyke, Isaac Cookson, Henry Lance, Richard Harman and the Rev. G. Raven. FitzGerald himself within three weeks “wrote nearly the whole of the first and second numbers”. And so the Press

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appeared on 25 May 1861, a 6-page paper of small size with fourteen columns of reading matter and six of advertisements. The titular editor was George Samuel Sale (afterwards professor of classics at Otago University). Amongst the early contributors were Samuel Butler (who wrote for the Press some of the early chapters of “Erewhon”) C. C. Bowen, Canon H. Jacobs and Joseph Brittan. Sale declared in his recollections that his appointment as editor was due solely to his being a fellow of Trinity. He knew nothing whatever about the Colony and its affairs, When, in 1865, the goldfields in Westland were opened he was chosen by the Canterbury Provincial Government to establish its administration west of the Alps. Actually Sale was on the Press staff for only a few months. In the course of a few years FitzGerald became the sole proprietor of the paper, which he controlled until his removal to Wellington as Auditor-General in 1867. After his departure a company acquired the whole of his interest.

FitzGerald’s successor as editor (1867-78) was Joseph Veel Colborne Veel 6 , who had spent four years farming on 10 acres at Linwood. He brought to the task of editor a rare combination of qualities, keen literary judgment and some humour. The next editor, John Steele Guthrie, had studied at Edinburgh and was farming and flaxmilling at Orari before becoming accountant to the Press. Failing health compelled his retirement in 1899 and he was succeeded by William Henry Triggs (1855-1934), who came to New Zealand in 1878 with some experience of English provincial journalism. Under him (1899-1919) the Press maintained its high literary standard. His successor, Michael Cormac Keane, M.A. (1880-1929), one of the most brilliant journalists of his generation, was followed (1929-32) by Oliver Duff 7 , 8.A., who had been sub-editor of the Sun for several years. He was succeeded by Pierce Hugo Napier Freeth (1895-1957), a son of Pierce C. Freeth, on whose death Arthur Rolleston Cant, previously assistant editor, was appointed.

The technical history of the Press was comparatively uneventful.

6 J. V. C. Veel (1831-95) was born in Gloucester and graduated M.A. at Magdalen College, Oxford. He first contributed to the Press in 1861. On retiring from the editorship he became secretary to the Canterbury Education Board, and he was principal of the normal school in Christchurch (1893-95).

7 Later (1939-50) editor of the N.Z. Listener.

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The original press and type were purchased from George Watson, a Lyttelton printer who was engaged as printer and business manager. In printing the second issue the machine broke down, but the Lyttelton Times came handsomely to the rescue, sending Thomas Berry 8 to remedy the defect. In January 1862 the business was removed to a single-storey building in Cashel Street. In that year the Press became an 8-page bi-weekly, and in 1863 a daily, the first in the province. In 1865 it began to publish its weekly. The depression of the late sixties forced the Press to revert to tri-weekly, but in a few months it again became daily, though now priced at Id. In 1909 a new building was completed in Cathedral Square. The first Press Company was liquidated in 1890 when the Christchurch Press Co. was formed. The capital was increased in 1920 to £lOO,OOO by the issue of 8,000 ordinary shares of £5 each.

Managers of the Press included Charles A. Pritchard, Charles E. Briggs, C. F. Corlett, John Steele Guthrie (1894), Phineas Selig 9 (1901-23), A. M. Hester, Alexander Melvin Burns (1925-37), Robert Victor White (1937-55), and Alfred James Sandom (1955- ). A. M. Burns, a son of Andrew Burns, after many years’ experience in the Press Assocation, joined the Press as subeditor in 1906.

The Press in 1934 started the Press Junior, a juvenile section, as an 8-page quarto supplement with the Thursday issue. On the demise of the Sun it was amalgamated with the Gay Gazette under Esther Glen, and on her death (1940) the children’s supplement was absorbed in the Press daily.

The Weekly Press

The Press Co in 1865 commenced publishing the Weekly Press, thus preceding by five months the rival weekly of the Lyttelton Times. It played a pioneer role amongst New Zealand weeklies in the development of illustrating processes.

The Weekly Press had been running for several years when the first attempt was made in Christchurch (in 1868) to produce

8 Father of L. J. Berry, secretary and manager of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of New Zealand (1921-49).

9 P. Selig (1856-1941) was born in Victoria and began life in the Government Printing Office in Wellington. He was 13 years president of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, was chairman of the N.Z. Press Association, first president of the N.Z. Federation of Master Printers, and chairman of the N.Z. Trotting Association.

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an illustrated paper. The Illustrated Press, published by the Press every four weeks till 1883, contained a summary of news for despatch to England by the regular monthly mail service. Blocks for the illustrations came mainly from Melbourne and appeared also in the Illustrated New Zealand Herald (published at Dunedin). During the life of the Illustrated Press, the Press (daily) suspended its monthly mail summary of news for Europe.

Thereafter the Weekly Press occasionally contained a page of lithographed illustrations. Actually it took the initiative in the South Island in illustrating by half-tone engravings. Line blocks and collotype had been tried for a year or two when George G. Stead (chairman of directors) realised that these processes were too slow for newspaper work. He accordingly placed John Nelson Taylor in charge of a small engraving plant, and illustrating by etched half-tone blocks was soon in full swing. The Weekly Press was the first paper in New Zealand to adopt this process.

Arthur Henry Bristed (born in England in 1860) who joined the daily Press in 1884, was editor of the Weekly in a period (1886-1925) that embraced the full prosperity of the paper and the decline of that type of publication in New Zealand. Later editors until publication ceased in 1928 were John R. Olliver (1925) and Cuthbert East (1927).

The New Zealand Referee, acquired by the Press Co. in 1891, was founded by Phineas Selig and Arthur Edward Bird in 1884. Bird was widely known as a sporting writer under the nom de plume “Sir Launcelot”. The Referee was incorporated with the Weekly, but for many years was printed separately as a supplement or independent section.

In 1927 it was taken over by the N.Z. Referee Newspaper Co., which had a capital of £24,000, held equally by the Press Co. and the Wellington Publishing Co. The directors were George Gould (chairman), A. M. Bums, Dr G. E. Anson and C. W. Earle (managing director). The place of publication was removed to Wellington. Charles A. Marris was editor from 1927 and S. V. McEwen from 1930 until publication ceased. In 1936 the Referee was incorporated in N.Z. Sporting Life, as the New Zealand Sporting Life and Referee, the first issue of which carried the serial number of the Sporting Review, but when that paper itself ceased publication (20 September 1939) it bore the serial number of the Referee (vol. 55, no. 22).

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Evening Papers in Christchurch

Competition in the evening paper field in Christchurch has been curiously sporadic throughout. When the Lyttelton Times established its evening edition, the Star (1868), there was only one other evening daily, the Evening Mail (founded in 1864). It succumbed after a short, fierce struggle. The Mail was run at first by W. H. Tribe and is probably identical with the Evening Post, which was heralded in 1864 but did not materialise.

The Press was aware of the vacuum in the evening field but, like the Times, it neglected to take the obvious precaution of running an evening paper of its own. On the contrary, for political reasons probably, it gave friendly countenance to several ventures for which it acted as printer and eventually as receiver.

Before 1869 George Jones, junior, and George H. Tombs, who were partners in a printing business in Christchurch, endeavoured to establish an evening paper, the Independent, of which George Hart was editor.

Charles Alexander Pritchard in 1874 published an evening daily called the Globe, which was designed to cater for people living outside Christchurch whose occupation prevented them from reading a newspaper until the evening. Besides giving news he proposed to develop the magazine side of the paper and to run a serial story either by an English author or “by some well known Colonial author”. William Henry Smith was the first printer and publisher, but before long Henry Ashmead Kent (later printer of Truth, the Evening News and the Weekly Press) became printer of the Globe. After a life of nine years the Globe was absorbed by the Telegraph, which had come forward in 1880 as a new constellation in the evening sky.

Richard E. N. Twopeny 10 , who came to New Zealand to promote exhibitions, interested himself in a movement to establish an “independent” evening paper, meaning probably one which was not associated with the Press or the Lyttelton Times. The Telegraph Newspaper Co. was formed in 1880 with W. W. Charters as chairman, Twopeny as managing director, John Calver

10 R. E. N. Twopeny (1857-1915) was educated in France, at Marlborough College and Heidelberg University. From the South Australian Register he became secretary of the South Australian Commissioners at the Paris, Sydney and Melbourne exhibitions. He edited the Otago Daily Times (1883-90), was commissioner for the Dunedin Exhibition (1889-90) and in 1891 was a founder of the Australian Pastoralists’ Review.

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Reycraft as publisher and William White Fraser as printer. In 1881 the paper was printed at the Telegraph and Standard Printing Works for James Caygill, “sole proprietor”. Next year James Henry Clayton was the registered owner, Caygill and Reycraft printer and publisher. In 1883 Twopeny became editor of the Otago Daily Times and the Telegraph was acquired for the Press Co. by George Gatonby Stead, the registered proprietor being Charles Edwin Briggs 11 . Later editors were William Freeman Kitchen (who started the monthly, Zealandia), and Hugh C. Thomson. Claude F. Corlett (publisher of the Press) appears as publisher of the last issue (13 May 1893). The fate of the Telegraph was like that of its predecessor. The absorbing rival in this case was Truth, an evening paper founded by Cecil Gurney in 1887. The Telegraph was in very low water and the proprietors of the Press forestalled the threatening vacuum by acquiring the more healthy-looking rival, Truth, and allowing it to swallow the weaker.

Truth soon assumed the format of its morning principal, the Press, and carried on year after year much as its predecessors had done, its only purpose to occupy the field. It was not till the advent of (Sir) William J. Poison as editor, in the early years of this century, that Truth became really vocal. In 1909, owing to the advent of a weekly with the title “N.Z. Truth”, the Press proprietors changed the title of their evening paper to Evening News. The News never appealed to the public and could not make headway against the enterprising Sun. Any appeal it might have had to the sporting world was siphoned off by its associate, the Referee. When war stringency increased the difficulties of production the two Christchurch proprietaries were compelled to consult together and they had little difficulty in agreeing that the weaker vessel in each case should go to the wall. In May 1917 the Evening News and the Canterbury Times ceased publication simultaneously.

Amongst journalists who controlled at one time or another the chain of evening papers commencing with the Globe in 1874 and ending with the Evening News in 1917 were Hugh Thomson, James Steel Guthrie, William Freeman Kitchen, Joseph Spence

11 C. E. Briggs was formerly accountant in the Lyttelton Times under William Reeves, and manager of the Press (1882-87). He was the father of A. E. Briggs, chief of the Hansard staff.

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Evison (afterwards of the Critic, Wellington), and Edward C. Huie (1907-12).

While Twopeny was planning the Telegraph some compositors on the Press, including James and George Caygill and William White Fraser, tried to found a halfpenny evening paper which was to be called the Echo. It duly appeared in March 1880. James Caygill, who had been publisher of the Evening Mail, soon retired and Fraser carried on as publisher, with S. P. Andrews as manager. After a few months the Echo was acquired by the Telegraph Co.

Another Echo appeared in 1893, promoted by Eden George and printed by Thomas Edward Fraser.

The Sun Enterprises

One of the most interesting developments in New Zealand journalism was the foundation of the Sun in Christchurch in 1914. Edward C. Huie, an Australian by birth, received his newspaper training and experience on the Evening Star (Dunedin), the Otago Daily Times and the Evening News (Christchurch).

To finance his venture he promoted the Canterbury Publishing Co. and canvassed for capital with the assistance of David Jones, M.P. for Kaiapoi. The first directors were Henry D. Acland, D. D. Macfarlane, A. H. Turnbull, J. J. Dougall, J. I. Royds, W. G. Jamieson and John Howard Dolamore. Huie was appointed editor and Dolamore managing director 12 . The first issue of the Sun on 6 February 1914 foreshadowed what was for New Zealand a new type of newspaper. Modelled on the London Daily Mail, it gave a bright display of news, free use of illustrations and steady encouragement to young New Zealand writers. The novelty of its make-up appealed to readers who had become accustomed to a stereotyped monotony of appearance. The Sun’s independent attitude in politics was also refreshing.

In effect, the new paper on its limited capital soon achieved a circulation that surprised the promoters and considerably disturbed the established papers. The overburden of newspapers on such a limited community was palpable. Three evening papers, two morning, and two weeklies cast upon public and advertisers a burden which was soon recognised as intolerable. War exigencies, intensifying the difficulty of the situation, forced the older proprietaries to come together, with the result already noted, that

12 In 1915 Dolamore resigned and Huie became managing director.

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in 1917 the Canterbury Times and the Evening News ceased publication. With this the competition of the Sun and the Star became intense.

In 1925 Huie believed the time was ripe to establish another Sun in Auckland. With this object he promoted Sun Newspapers Ltd., with a nominal capital of £300,000, of which £lOO,OOO fully paid up was allotted to the Canterbury Publishing Co. for the goodwill and assets of the Sun (Christchurch). Huie took up his residence in Auckland and on 23 March 1927 the Sun appeared there. We have seen how, after a hard struggle for three years, the Auckland Sun ceased publication, the goodwill and assets being acquired by the Brett Publishing Co. and Wilson and Horton Ltd.

Crisis in Christchurch

Huie then devoted his attention again to the Sun in Christchurch. Reinforced in 1929 by the merger of the Brett Publishing Co., of Auckland, with the Lyttelton Times Co., the Star was now putting up a more vigorous fight. The Weekly Press had ceased in 1928 and Christchurch now had only two morning and two evening papers. Nevertheless the depression, while severely restricting advertising, did not reduce costs to a commensurate degree. It was a matter of urgency to limit the number of papers, and the struggle moved to its inevitable climax.

On 19 November 1934, without previous notice, the Star reduced its price to Id. The first edition of the Sun was priced at 2d. as heretofore, but a stop-press announcement notified that the Sun would follow the lead of its competitor. The morning papers remained at 2d. until 1 January 1935 when they simultaneously reduced to Id. This led to an unexpected development. Within a few weeks newspapers in Otago, which had so far been quite outside the conflict, complained of the appearance of Christchurch dailies in their field, a competition now the more effective by reason of improved means of transport. The rot spread apace. By April most of the papers in the South Island were forced to reduce to the uneconomic price of Id. Then at length, on 3 June, the two morning papers in Christchurch agreed to revert to 2d. a copy (or 9 d. a week). The announcement simply said: “It is generally conceded that the sale of the newspapers at Id. was an uneconomic proposition having regard to the size of the papers published here and the cost of maintaining them at the high standard expected by the public.”

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The struggle continued throughout the month of June, until (mainly through the mediation of C. W. Earle, president of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association) a settlement was reached which radically revised conditions in Christchurch. New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. agreed to purchase the goodwill, copyright and business of the Sun; and the Press Co. agreed to purchase the goodwill of the Times. The Sun thereupon ceased publication (29 June 1935) and was incorporated in the Christchurch StarSun. The Times ceased on the same day. Thus New Zealand’s oldest paper and a pioneer specimen of the modern type of journalism came to an end together. Christchurch city henceforth was catered for by one morning and one evening paper.

Like C. Earle, of the Dominion, Huie was his own editor throughout. His associates at different times included Charles A. Marris, Percy Seton Crisp (to 1927), J. H. Hall (to 1933) and finally Henry McD. Vincent. O. Duff was leader writer for a time (1916-19).

Christchurch had two earlier Suns. The first was established in 1877 by Harold Henry de Bourbel, chairman of the Sun Newspaper Co. In 1880, if not before, Walter Hippolyte Pilliet was editor, and he was the controlling head in 1884.

The other Sun, in 1895, was promoted by John T. M. Hornsby and owned by the Sun Newspaper Printing Co. Five months later the Rev. William Lincoln Birch registered the New Sun at an adjacent address in Colombo Street.

Round About Christchurch

Mainly for geographical reasons Christchurch never produced suburban papers. The city and suburbs were always easily within the delivery radius of the city papers. A few titles, however, have a suburban tang, e.g., Gordon H. Grimsdale’s Sumner-Redcliffs Herald (1939) and Colin Ernest Ford’s Brighton Standard (1936-39).

Lyttelton, now only the port of Christchurch, had the honour of giving hospitality and its name to the first paper in Canterbury, but when the seat of government became fairly established the port town could no longer maintain a newspaper. It did, however, make one or two efforts. In 1865 Symms, Hankins and Pearson started a bi-weekly, the Lyttelton Chronicle and Peninsula News, and in 1867 the prospectus was published of the Canterbury

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Shipping Gazette and Lyttelton Herald, which was to appear after 9 July.

In 1879 William Riley, who had been trained with Blackwoods in Edinburgh, established the Port Lyttelton Herald and New Zealand Shipping Gazette, a Id. tri-weekly which apparently lasted only a few months. Riley is said to have run a small paper on the West Coast and to have done the Government printing there.

The first paper for Ellesmere, the Ellesmere Advertiser, is said to have been established at Southbridge by Joseph Ivess in 1880. He apparently leased the prospect at once to George Renner, who was immediately confronted with the competition of a 2d. bi-weekly entitled the Ellesmere Guardian and Selwyn County Gazette. This was established in July 1880 by Charles Edmund Sherlock (who was soon joined by William Mahoney) and was printed by George Tombs (of Whitcombe and Tombs). Ivess hurried to Southbridge to take over the Advertiser, but it must have had a short life, for a few months later he was active at Patea in the North Island. In 1883 Robert George Park, C.E., joined Sherlock in the Guardian, which they carried on together for some years, part of the time at Leeston. After an apparent suspension for a year or two, the Guardian was revived at Southbridge in 1890 by William Hall Zouch (formerly of the Ashburton Guardian) who had it till 1896. It passed through many hands (including C. R. Thornton in 1897) and was finally returned in 1917 to Leeston where it is still published bi-weekly by A. B. Gladwin & Co.

In 1889 Henry Willis founded at Leeston the Ellesmere Chronicle, which lasted about two years.

A local paper was published in 1879 by Charles Redfern called the Malvern Independent.

CHAPTER 15

CANTERBURY PROVINCIAL PRESS

Kaiapoi and Rangiora

In the days of slow transport Kaiapoi was much less suburban to Christchurch than it is today. It was, in fact, a separate community which had of necessity to maintain a newspaper of its own.

The North Canterbury Independent and Farmers’ Chronicle was founded in 1876 by Joseph Beswick and others. The publisher was William Johnson Mahoney and the paper was edited for a while by Horatio James Wood. It would appear to have passed away before its successor, the North Canterbury News, appeared on the scene. There is a suggestion that the Independent was taken over and renamed by Thomas Elliott Wilson, who in 1877 brought out from an office in Charles Street the North Canterbury News and Farmers’ Chronicle, a 2d. bi-weekly. In this William Webber Wilson appears to have been the senior partner, but his brother cuts a larger figure in newspaper history. The North Canterbury News went to the wall in May 1879 with a frank admission that it was a premature venture.

After the death of the News, Kaiapoi remained voiceless for thirty years. At length in 1909 in an old wooden building in Raven Street, Henry Arnold Cooper began to publish a weekly, the Kaiapoi Record. In 1922 it came into the hands of Robert Joseph Logan, who made it a bi-weekly. Two years later he acquired a Rangiora paper, the North Canterbury News, which he renamed the Rangiora Record and ran on alternate days. The office at Kaiapoi being burned down in 1929, the Kaiapoi Record ceased publication. In 1937 R. G. A. Logan revived it and established a branch printing office in Kaiapoi, but it ceased finally in 1939.

The first paper to bear the title North Canterbury News was founded in Rangiora in 1875 as the Canterbury News by James

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W. H. Atack (1857-1945)

E. C. Huie (1876- )

M. C. Keane (1880-1929)

R. A. Loughnan (1841-1934)

J. Ivess (1844-1919)

A. M. Burns (1870-1937)

A. H. BrMeJ I 1X6(1-194

Sir W. J. Steward (1841-191

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Graham Niven. On the staff was George W. Venables, who was the first compositor in Australia to set 3,000 ems an hour in public. He won the second type-setting contest in Victoria by 10J lines in two hours, when he set 6,083 ems minion. In 1876 the News ceased and Niven left for England where he and a brother established the Hampshire Courier.

After only a few weeks Thomas Motion Holland and Marshall Hume Browne established the bi-weekly North Canterbury Standard, the title of which was shortly changed to Standard and North Canterbury Guardian. A year later Henry Turner acquired Holland’s interest and from 1882 Turner owned and ran the paper for fifty years as a bi-weekly. Its motto throughout was Nec temere, nec timide, sed recte (Not rashly, not timidly, but righteously). Turner was not left entirely alone in this flourishing town. In 1897 John Jepson Wilson and William Thomas Wilson started the shortlived Recorder and North Canterbury Observer and in 1902 Alexander Donell had printed in Christchurch for distribution in Rangiora a paper called the Sentinel. Turner had to compete from 1924 with a new North Canterbury News. In 1933 he made the Standard a weekly and at length, in 1936, it made its final bow.

The North Canterbury News of 1924 was fathered by A. J. Woodward and soon acquired by Robert Joseph Logan, who called it the Rangiora Record and ran it in conjunction with the Kaiapoi Record until 1929. In 1931 it became a tri-weekly and in the following year it was acquired by Oliver Duff (late editor of the Press) and Ernest A. Adams. They renamed it North Canterbury Gazette and ran it as an 8-page bi-weekly for four years. It was then taken over by two of its employees, Robert George Asquith Logan and S. Brookes. The former carried on till 1939 and now publishes the Gisborne Photo News (monthly). Brookes was later the Tokyo correspondent for Reuters.

Logan’s comments on his Rangiora experience are of considerable interest: “We found that out of 840 homes in Rangiora and the immediate neigbourhood, less than 300 could be persuaded to take a local paper at a subscription of 12r. 6 d. per annum. My theory was that with the tremendous rise in the volume of entertainment—motor cars, illustrated magazines, etc. ■—the majority of houses no longer considered a local paper of sufficient interest or value to warrant the cost. Through lack of circulation our advertising revenue was falling. To boost this we

N 16

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decided to throw subscription revenue to the winds and distribute a weekly paper to every home in the district (1,900 circulation) on the assumption that advertising revenue would rise sufficiently to cover the cost. To maintain prestige we kept our news service going at full strength and put a price on the paper which people could pay, if they wished, as a voluntary subscription. We used the words “Community Newspaper” with our title on all occasions. Unfortunately the war interrupted the scheme. On the first full year, however, we did not lose money, and in normal circumstances I think we would have been considerably better off as full realisation of the service we were giving came home to the business community”. After the war the Gazette was revived (1945) and it now appears bi-weekly.

At the end of the nineteenth century valiant efforts were made to establish a local paper in the Oxford and Cust district. In 1889 Fred Davies started at Oxford the weekly North Canterbury Times (printed in Christchurch). A few months later Richard Holman Parish, a leading local business man, established the weekly Oxford and Cust Observer, which in 1902 he sold to A. Eklund. Two years later it ceased. In 1893 the Liberal sentiment was expressed in the title Oxford Observer and Canterbury Democrat, which Parish carried on till 1894. In 1896 it came into the hands of A. Eklund and in 1902 it ceased. The North Canterbury Times and Border Express meanwhile amalgamated with the Trades and Labour Chronicle in 1890.

The only paper ever established in the far north of Canterbury province was the Cheviot News (1898). The founder, Fred Wansborough, came to New Zealand in 1867 and worked on Oamaru and Christchurch papers. After he had run his little biweekly competently for 25 years, ill health compelled his retirement and in 1924 the News was incorporated in the Kaikoura Star.

Banks Peninsula has maintained for 80 years one of the type of family papers which occur rarely in several of the provinces. The Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, established on 21 July 1876 as a bi-weekly (which it still is), was an early creation of Joseph Ivess. His connection with it was short-lived and it passed through several hands before 1881, when it was taken over by Howard Charles Ferdinand Jacobson. Jacobson was born in Devonshire, educated at Kings College, London, and served in the navy before coming to New Zealand. While employed as a school teacher he had an interest with

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Joseph Ivess in the Ashburton Mail. This he sold to acquire the Akaroa Mail, which he ran till his death in 1910. He was the author of Tales of Banks Peninsula. The Jacobson family owned the Mail, now a bi-weekly until 1952, when it was purchased by Ernest George Raymond Dobbie, formerly of the Star-Sun, who is still editor and manager.

Journalism in Ashburton

Ashburton is yet another of the newspaper sites which were pioneered by Joseph Ivess, and here again he fled early, to beget another fledgeling. The Ashburton Mail, a bi-weekly, appeared first on 12 June 1877. In 1880 Ivess leased it to Robert Henry Eyton and H. C. Jacobson. It became tri-weekly in 1883 to meet the competition of the Guardian and continued in that category. In 1884 James H. Clayton leased it and a year later Ivess 1 , who was M.H.R. for Wakanui and was interested in papers in the North Island, sold the Ashburton Mail to William Jukes Steward. Steward soon acquired the Guardian and the Herald but he carried on the Mail as a tri-weekly morning paper simply to prevent the vacant field tempting a competitor. In 1900 it was acquired by Robert Bell and it was eventually closed down in 1932 and was incorporated in the Guardian.

Close in the wake of the Ashburton Mail came a competitor, the Evening Echo. A daily founded in 1878 by Smith James Furness and Charles Dixon, it enunciated worthy ideals of service under the motto “The greatest good for the greatest number”. A year later it was enlarged and changed its title to Ashburton Herald. Furness sold his share to Horace J. Weeks, who then joined Dixon. They carried on in an optimistic mood. The Mail established the Evening News (1879) to assist Ivess’s candidature for the mayoralty. Dixon and Weeks responded spiritedly by starting a morning tri-weekly, the Ashburton Guardian and Agricultural and Sporting Record. Ivess was defeated by 11 votes. The Guardian’s first official editor (1880-81) was Alexander Wilson Hogg (afterwards M.H.R.). There were thus for a short time four papers publishing in Ashburton: from one office the Guardian (morning) and the Herald (evening); and from the other the Mail (morning) and the Evening News. Obviously such luxury could not survive. The Evening News appears to

iJ. Ivess was elected to the Ashburton Borough Council in 1878 and was defeated for the mayoralty in 1879 by Hugo Friedlander.

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have ceased very soon, and presently political influences were to clear the decks still further.

In 1880 Edward George Wright 2 and Hugo Friedlander, for political reasons, bought both the Guardian and the Herald and on 12 October 1880 amalgamated them under the old title of the Ashburton Guardian. Morning papers at that time were severely handicapped by the early closing of the telegraph offices, and the promoters believed that by concentrating on one paper they could give readers and advertisers better value. William Hall Zouch was manager, J. Maclean Dunn printer and publisher, and A. W. Hogg editor for the year 1880-81. The path of the Guardian was not easy, and it changed hands several times. In 1883 S. Saunders assumed editorial control, and saw to it that the paper lived up to its motto Magna est veritas, et prevalebit. (Truth is great and will prevail). In 1885 William Jukes Steward, who owned the Mail, bought the Guardian from the Ashburton Printing and Publishing Company, and thereafter the paper was published from the Mail office. Steward became editor and Saunders transferred to the Mail. As Steward was now in Parliament, he acted as gallery reporter for his papers, which were under Saunders’s charge till he joined the Canterbury Times. When Steward became Speaker of the House of Representatives an issue of the Guardian was dropped to tender a complimentary picnic to the chief.

In the nineties the paper had a desperate struggle. Steward was less able to give it his attention and he leased it to Henry Willis, who was editor and manager (1897-99). In 1900 the property was bought outright by Robert Bell, then manager of the Timaru Herald. During seventeen years in Ashburton he acquired complete control of both papers, and he was also interested in the Timaru Post and the Lyttelton Times.

The Guardian in 1902 introduced girl compositors, who were employed satisfactorily until 1908 when they were superseded by linotypes. The Mail was incorporated with the Guardian in 1932. In 1911 the business was formed into a limited liability company, the Ashburton Mail and Guardian Company, Bell holding a controlling interest. At his death he was succeeded by his son, W. B. Bell, who is still managing director.

2 E. G. Wright (1831-1902), a Kentish man and an engineer, settled in Canterbury in 1862 and engaged in industrial enterprises. He was M.H.R. for the Coleridge and Ashburton electorates (1879-99).

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Other editors were: A. Christie (1887), G. Bissett (1889), Ernest A. James (1902), T. Dunn (1904), John Christie (1907), J. Liddell Kelly, T. D. Taylor (1913-17), H. J. Constable (1920), Charles M. Innes (1924-45), and R. N. Downes (1945- ).

In 1896 we find Joseph Ivess again in Ashburton after a series of lightning plantations in the North Island. This time, undaunted by the phenomenon of two papers already established in a town of 2,000 inhabitants, he started a morning tri-weekly, the Ashburton Standard and Farmers’ Advocate, but that was all. He had no sooner got the paper under way than he dreamed again of the goldfields and hurried off to the Thames to become interested in papers at Paeroa and Karangahake. He was back in 1898, but only to lease the Standard to John McKeague (author of a book on irrigation) while he busied himself with a chain of papers in the Temuka and Geraldine districts. A similar short-lived experiment in the western district of Southland failed and he came back to Ashburton (1900) to resume control of the Standard. This he sold in 1902 to a company of which Henry Willis seems to have been the promoter. They made it an evening daily with a new title, Ashburton Daily News, but it ceased within the year (1903) and Ivess in 1905 failed to revive it.

The Timam Herald

The Timaru Herald was described at the time of its birth, in 1864, as “the first paper published in Canterbury inland of Christchurch”. It was established as a weekly by Alfred George Horton, in association with F. Younghusband and F. Osborn (printer). At the end of 1864 Horton was absent from Timaru for a few months, and Ingram Shrimpton, the pioneer of the Lyttelton Times, came in as a partner. It is said in Shrimpton’s obituaries that on first settling in Timaru (about 1857) he published there “a written edition of the Lyttelton Times”.

The main motive in establishing a newspaper in Timaru at that time was to get self-government for the Timaru and Gladstone district apart from Canterbury province. It was the usual complaint of the outdistricts; the revenues raised locally were spent elsewhere. Horton helped to promote the bill in Parliament which established the Timaru and Gladstone Board of Works, an acceptable halfmeasure which empowered the people of the district to carry out the more urgent works. In 1865 the telegraph line was completed to Timaru and in 1866 the Herald became bi-weekly. Herbert

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Belfield became a partner in 1867 and early in 1871 Horton sold his share to Belfield and left for Auckland.

In 1874, in consultation with Sir Edward Stafford (M.H.R. for Timaru), Belfield appointed Edward Wakefield editor. Under his able and aggressive control (1875-84) the Herald became a daily, with a weekly edition of the orthodox type. As M.H.R. for adjacent electorates (1875-87) he warmly advocated the needs of the district. In 1878 the paper was enlarged to meet the competition of the South Canterbury Times. The Timaru Herald Co., with Belfield as manager, was registered in 1882 as the Herald (daily) and the Geraldine County Chronicle (weekly).

Wakefield was succeeded in 1885 by William Henry Triggs, and next year the company leased the Herald (1886-87) to Joseph Ivess. Tom L. Mills, who was then at case in the Herald office, persuaded the chapel to reject a cut in wages which Ivess considered necessary.

On 1 May 1887 the paper was bought by Edward George Kerr 3 who kept on (till 1900) Ivess’s manager, Robert Bell. For about twelve years Kerr carried on both the Herald and the South Canterbury Times. In 1901 he persuaded the other morning paper, the Post, to publish in the evening. Two years later the Times was closed down and Kerr devoted his whole attention to the Herald, which in 1923 had a certified circulation of 7,400 copies. In 1905 a limited liability company was formed, and in the following year Kerr was succeeded as managing director by his eldest son, Edward George Kerr (1876-1942). E. G. Kerr iii is now in control. In 1918 the Herald company acquired the business of the North Otago Times, which it managed till 1930. The ascendancy of the Herald was complete: it assisted the Post with an annual subsidy for some years until it ceased publication. M. J. Doyle was manager of the Herald (1916-29) and A. J. Allport (1929-49).

The editors of the Herald were: A. G. Horton (1864), H. Belfield (1871), E. Wakefield (1874), W. H. Triggs (1885), G. G. FitzGerald (1887), W. D. Campbell (1904), J. Hardcastle (1908), W. F. Alexander (1910), Oliver Duff (1921), F. E.

3 E. G. Kerr (1845-1906), born in Motherwell, Glasgow, came to Canterbury in 1861. He was a storekeeper in Kaiapoi, and was mayor of the borough for five years to 1877 when he moved to Timaru as correspondent for the Lyttelton Times. In 1881 he acquired the South Canterbury Times which he carried on for six years before he bought the Herald.

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Baume (1923), A. E. Lawrence (1924), lan Donnelly (1939-56) and now W. V. J. Smith. It was on the Herald that George H. Loney (Government Printer 1933-37) served his articles.

Under the title of the Tomahawk, the Herald from 1876 published a weekly containing telegrams, local and general news. In 1878 it was enlarged as the Geraldine County Chronicle, a 20-page weekly which ceased in the early eighties.

In 1867 a meeting of business and shipping interests was held in Timaru to consider establishing a new paper to be called the Timaru and Temuka Chronicle. The title indicates the strong district feeling which was behind the movement. A later meeting decided that the paper could only succeed if it was published at Temuka, and no more was heard of the scheme.

Three years later (January 1870) we find the Timaru and Gladstone Gazette actually in existence. It was published by Edward Ball and his wife in a cob house at the corner of Beswick Street and the Main South Road. The office was burned in 1872 and the paper regained its feet as the South Canterbury Times. Ball persevered and enjoyed a share of the prosperity of the district, but the paper laboured during the depression. In 1879 its more affluent rival, the Timaru Herald, referred to it as being “printed on rough paper with rougher type”. It changed hands a few times before being bought in 1881 by Edward George Kerr. As an evening paper of the Timaru Herald it lasted till 1901.

Chronologically we may now record several other ventures in Timaru journalism. In 1878 appeared the Evening Telegraph promoted by Alfred Fisher and William Alfred Collins. John Bambridge (1858-1937) took an interest in it but he disposed of it when he settled in Temuka. H. E. Muir was also lessee and editor for a very short time before it ceased in 1880. The company was wound up in 1881, the goodwill and plant being sold to the South Canterbury Times.

Another of the lightning creations of Joseph Ivess was the Evening Mail, which he established in 1887 after his short lease of the Timaru Herald. At the time he was fighting a political election at Wakanui. Having lost the seat, he disposed of the Mail to Henry Edward Muir and Thomas Lawson. It ceased in 1889.

In 1898 Joseph Wilson (for Wilson Brothers) published for

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less than a year a weekly entitled the South Canterbury Farmers’ Weekly Gazette. Nisbet Mcßobie was the printer.

The Timaru Post

In 1899 a meeting of Liberal supporters in the Timaru district decided to establish a daily paper. The Timaru Post Newspaper Co. was formed, the goodwill and plant of the Weekly Gazette were acquired, and Joseph Wilson was appointed manager. On 18 November 1899 appeared the first issue of the Timaru Morning Post, with James Attridge Connell as editor. Two years later it changed to evening publication as part of an agreement with the Timaru Herald Co. to close down its evening paper. Early in 1914 the shareholders failed to respond to an appeal for more capital and the company went into liquidation. The assets were eventually taken over by Robert Bell and James Craigie, M.P., who conducted the business in partnership. In 1917 they formed a private company, in which they held equal shares. In 1912 Cuthbert East 4 became editor and from 1914-20 he was managing editor. In 1922 Craigie sold out to his partner, who appointed his son, Robert B. Bell, managing director. The Post in 1922 led the papers of New Zealand in reverting to the pre-war price of Id., but three years later both the Timaru papers increased the price again to 1 id. In 1923 Robert Bell and R. B. Bell disposed of their shares, and the Post was carried on for a few years by the Timaru Herald, with Eneas Darroch as manager. It ceased in 1939.

Managers of the Post included William Harold Munro and R. W. Robson (1912). The editors after Connell were W. D. Campbell (1900), C. L. Newnham (1901), Cuthbert East (1912-21) and D. McLennan (to 1939).

The Pioneer was a journal of some literary pretensions established in Timaru in 1905. The advertisements paid for the publication, and the promoters guaranteed a certain circulation. They distributed 7,000 copies of the first edition, putting one in almost every household in the four counties surrounding Timaru. In 1906 a charge of 3d. a copy was made. The Journal closed down in March 1907.

4 C. East (1889-1940) was educated at Christ's College and Canterbury University College (8.A.) and trained on the Lyttelton Times. He edited in turn the Northern Advocate (1920) Wanganui Chronicle (1925), Weekly Press (1927) and Taranaki News (1929-32).

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When Joseph Ivess was running the Ashburton Mail in 1877 he found time to prospect surrounding centres and establish the Temuka Leader, which he sold a few months later to J. J. Utting, a reporter on the Lyttelton Times. In 1881 it was purchased by Jeremiah Matthew Twomey 5 . Twomey refused to remove his plant to Geraldine, but in 1883 started the tri-weekly Geraldine Guardian, which was printed in Temuka and managed at first by J. Bambridge. Twomey carried on both papers for many years, enjoying some measure of prestige in Liberal politics.

In a lightning incursion into the district in 1898 Joseph Ivess started the Geraldine Advocate and issued from the Geraldine office a chain of local tri-weeklies, the Fairlie Star (or Standard), the Temuka Times and the Pleasant Point Mail. After a few weeks he moved off southward to make a like effort in the western district of Southland. The Fairlie Standard ceased forthwith, but Henry Blair Stewart and Henry Thomas Rix (to whom all the papers were transferred) published it in 1899 under the title Mackenzie County Chronicle. By 1900 there were no vestiges of the whole chain. One effect of this expansive act of aggression on the part of the redoubtable rag-planter was the establishment by Twomey and Bambridge of a third tri-weekly, the Gladstone Guardian (1899). The cloud of invasion passed, however, almost at quickly as it came and in 1901 they dropped the Guardian.

Geraldine had lain fallow for seven years when a fresh nucleus of opposition appeared. Joseph Albert Rawlinson published in 1908 the Geraldine Mail (printed by the Timaru Herald). In 1910 Thomas Henry Bannehr, a veteran journalist from Nelson, took a hand and in 1911 the Mail was bought by Carlyle Ferguson, who transferred the office to Temuka and established the Temuka News in opposition to the Leader. For two years (until he closed down in 1913) Temuka was producing four tri-weekly papers.

The Temuka Leader and the Geraldine Guardian were sold by Twomey in 1912 to R. R. Martin, who founded a company. The Guardian, after withstanding the assaults of so many competitors, ceased publication in 1931 owing to the withering effect of motor services on country newspapers. The Temuka Leader was about to close down in 1932 when a new owner, E. J. Nation appeared, but only to prolong its life for a year or so.

S J. M. Twomey (1847-1921) was born in Ireland and came to New Zealand in 1874. He worked on many newspapers until 1880. M.L.C. (1898-1905).

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In 1933 the gap was filled by the South Canterbury Weekly Review, but the district was now adequately served by neighbouring papers (notably the Timaru Herald). The Review did not see the year out, but it was replaced immediately by a too impetuous successor, a daily to boot. The Temuka Evening Standard started on 1 November 1933 and expired on 30 December. With its demise the town was without a newspaper of its own for the first time in 56 years. Two further modest efforts only are on record —Mackellar Giles’s Advocate in 1934 and David TumbulDs Record in 1938.

Waimate’s Lusty Sheets

Confirmation is required of the legend that Joseph Ivess founded the Waimate Star as early as 1873. In 1872 he started a paper at Reefton. He was still engaged on it at the end of 1874, and had an interest in a Greymouth paper. Thence to Patea, in 1876 to Akaroa, and a year later to Ashburton. S. H. Wilson, of Oamaru, suggested that Ivess intended to start at Waimate but finding the Tribune about to come out he moved on elsewhere.

The first registration of the Waitangi Tribune (by Richard Charles White Cuming) is dated 17 August 1876, but a letter from the proprietors to a local body in Waimate suggests that the paper was in existence in April 1875. In October Thomas Syrett Hardy withdrew from the partnership and by January 1876 the venture was offered for sale. Late in 1877 a company tried to raise £1,200 with a view to making the Tribune tri-weekly. The property was offered for sale again and again in 1879.

Thomas D. Williams in July 1877 registered the Waimate Star, which was taken over by Matthew Smith and John Scott in 1878. Smith’s biography says that the Star lasted about six months. In June 1879 the Tribune was taken over by a local group including James Paterson (of Oamaru) and Naylor Hillary, C.E. A few months later (Sir) William Jukes Steward acquired it for the Waimate Times Co. Apparently the Star was bought at the same time and the two papers merged under a new title, the Waimate Times. (Sir) Walter Carncross was controlling the Tribune before it finally changed hands. There was another movement afoot to promote a new paper to represent “the farmers and the labouring classes”, but apparently these aspirations were satisfied with Steward’s assurance that the politics of the Times would be “free as air”.

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Steward was manager and editor and later sole proprietor. He let the paper for a year to Thomas Elliott Wilson and William Webber Wilson, and then Matthew Smith, as editor and proprietor, carried it on as a tri-weekly for 25 years. On his death in 1915 his daughter registered a private company with a capital of £2,000 and soon after the war of 1914-18 she sold the Times to Florin V. Ward and John Low Eaglesome, who made it a daily. Two evening daily papers were obviously too heavy a burden for a population of only 2,100. The position was resolved in 1922 when the Advertiser Co. incorporated the Times.

To revert now to the origin of the Waimate Advertiser, S. Harold Wilson states that in 1898, when he and his brother (Charles Augustus Wilson) were almost ready to bring out the first issue, Joseph Ivess arrived on the same mission. That was the time when he started papers in four neighbouring centres. He left Waimate out on discovering that it already had two papers. The Wilsons delivered the Advertiser free for three months. At six months they doubled its size and at twelve months it became tri-weekly to match the Times. In 1908 it was taken over by S. H. Wilson (as manager) and Robert Joseph Logan (editor), in 1914 it became daily and in 1916 it was transferred to Logan and Mrs A. K. Sargent. The latter as principal proprietor sold in 1921 to the Waimate Advertiser Co., in which she held a controlling interest. Austin Frederick Sargent became editor and Leslie Edward Sargent was manager till his death in 1929. Robert Pendock Harris, leased the property in 1935 and became editor-manager. In 1939 the Waimate Publishing Co. took over the business, Robert P. Harris being manager and A. F. Sargent editor. The Advertiser is still a daily, with W. C. A. Parker as manager.

It is interesting to note that three pairs of Wilson brothers, quite unrelated, were at different times interested in Waimate newspapers.

CHAPTER 16

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Journalism on the Goldfields

There is no surer impetus for the planting of newspapers than a gold rush. When gold was discovered at Gabriel’s Gully in 1861, Dunedin at once became possessed of a daily newspaper, and within a few years a crop of smaller journals studded the various fields. Miners are a sturdy, intelligent body of men, vocal in their demands and jealous of their rights, so that wherever diggers congregate a newspaper is a practical necessity.

The discovery of gold on the western side of the Southern Alps heralded a new surge of journalism, with all the characteristics so recently observed in Otago. Here again we notice the sporadic occurrence of small papers and the inevitably short life to which most of them could look forward. Westland had no agricultural or urban settlement prior to the gold discoveries. The Canterbury and Nelson governments had both encouraged settlers to take up land there, but the time was unpropitious. Many young men, moreover, were being drawn away to the goldfields or the Maori wars.

On 2 March 1865, when the Superintendent of Canterbury proclaimed the West Canterbury goldfield, the white population beyond the Southern Alps was negligible. Yet within two months, actually on 3 May, John Tyrrell 1 founded at Hokitika the West Coast Times, and within six months Greymouth also had its organ of opinion. From these precocious nuclei the pattern of newspaper development is not easy to follow. It is confused at all points by new rushes, high hopes and haphazard starts.

The West Coast Times began as a weekly. It was produced from the outset with a good plant and from first to last it had

1 J. Tyrrell (1830-92), born in Dublin, came to New Zealand in 1860. His journalistic career was confined to Westland.

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a creditable appearance. Actually Tyrrell did not remain long with it. Sensing better prospects elsewhere, he moved on with the irresistible tide, leaving William Shaw 2 as a partner with a controlling interest. Hokitika being then in direct communication with Melbourne, ships were arriving in the river every week filled with hopeful prospectors. Within a short time the population of the town was 10,000. The Times prospered on the needs and the substantial profits of these stout-hearted men. In January 1866 it became a daily and its commercial, shipping and mining intelligence was a model of what a newspaper should give. Late in 1865 the proprietors established a weekly, the Leader, for the benefit of readers who were not within a delivery radius. Increased in 1866 to 16 pages, it claimed then to be the largest and best weekly in New Zealand. Advertising cost 4s. 6d. per inch and the paper was supplied gratis to town subscribers of the West Coast Times.

Another publication of the Times (in 1866) was a daily evening paper called the Despatch, whose main object was to hold the field against intrusion. It also was free to town subscribers of the Times. Instead of canvassing for advertisements, the promoters adopted the unique expedient of offering at auction, “the right of occupation for three months from the Ist instant of the various spaces on the fourth page”. Payment was to be made as to one-third in cash at time of purchase, one-third at the end of the first month, and the balance at the end of the second. We are not told how the experiment worked. In 1867 the Despatch was temporarily suspended on the ground that the Star had at last agreed to publish telegraphic news, which hitherto it had refused.

In May 1868 Shaw started the Despatch again as a new evening paper in retaliation against the Star’s acceptance of the contract to print Sale’s morning paper, the Observer. This Despatch was quite separate from the morning paper, it was intended to be self-supporting, and “come what may, it will be continued for a year”. Subscribers to the Times received the Despatch without

2 W. Shaw had been in journalism in California and Victoria, and was for some time owner of the Southland News. In Hokitika the printing firm of Harnett and Co. were the nominal owners of the West Coast Times. Shaw was elected mayor in 1867 and a member of the Westland County Council.

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charge. It ceased on 30 August 1868 in circumstances described later.

Robust Struggles in Hokitika

The West Coast Times was not long without morning competition. Its most important rival, the Evening Star, appeared before November 1867. The founders were Joseph Phillip Klein, a German merchant in Hokitika, and James Snyder Browne 3 , widely known in New Zealand journalism as “Snyder”. The prime purpose of their adventure into journalism seems to have been to oppose the ambitions of the aggressive William Shaw, who after a few months’ residence in the town had been elected mayor. The Star pursued Shaw with unrelenting truculence through every field of his many-sided activity, and the public took a sadistic delight in the hunt. The competition between the two papers was at its height in the depression of 1868 when the county secretary (George Samuel Sale, M.A. 4 ), who had been for three years the presiding genius in the administration of Westland, issued the prospectus of a daily morning paper to be called the Westland Observer. Not only was Sale’s reputation very high as the senior official on the West Coast, but he had some experience of journalism. Much to his own confusion he had been appointed in 1861 titular editor of the Press. The prospectus foreshadowed the Observer as a “double-size” newspaper of 28 columns, with the orthodox monthly summary for transmission to England.

This second Westland Observer was printed by the Evening Star and there was evidence that it was financed, if not controlled, by Klein and his partner, Browne. Joseph Colborne Veel left the Press to be its subeditor. Sale’s association with the paper—which seems to have been of doubtful propriety—lasted only till July, when Klein became the avowed owner and Veel returned

3 J. S. Browne lived for some years in Brazil, arrived in Hobart in 1843 and was first in a newspaper office at Launceston. He contributed to the Port Philip Patriot an account of a voyage in the ship Mary Ann. About 1858 he was reporting on a paper at Corio (Geelong). He also had experience as an auctioneer and as a steamboat proprietor. Coming to New Zealand in the early sixties, he was active in several provinces till his death in 1884.

*G. S. Sale (1831-1922). a fellow of Trinity College. Cambridge (1856). came to New Zealand for his health in 1860. In 1865 he was appointed Commissioner for the Canterbury Provincial Government to inaugurate the machinery of government in Westland. He was afterwards professor of English and classics at Otago University.

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to Canterbury. The success of the Observer was largely due to the political activities of the proprietor of the Times, which encouraged Klein and Browne to pursue their rancorous assault through the Star and the Observer. They even haled Shaw to the court to expose a misdemeanour in tendering for public printing (in which it would seem that they were equally implicated). Meanwhile the editor of the Times, Thomas Lockyer Bright®, maintained a praiseworthy decency in the controversy. His salary, it is interesting to know, was £620 per annum.

A little over three months after Sale floated his papers, Klein and Browne bought out their competitors lock, stock and barrel. Shaw left for the North Island and there was a complete rearrangement of newspaper holdings in Hokitika. For the sake of prestige, Klein kept the name of the West Coast Times for the morning daily. The evening paper, the Despatch, was stopped, and the Evening Star held the field, becoming the special concern of Browne. The Weekly Observer was incorporated in the Leader (as being the more widely known title). Klein remarked on taking over the West Coast Times: “In no part of New Zealand was the struggle more manful for a strong and independent life than in Hokitika”. In 1868 the town had two morning dailies, two evening dailies and three weeklies (including the Celt). A heavy burden, surely, for such a small community. In Greymouth there was a tri-weekly and in Ross a weekly.

Nor was this the whole sum of journalistic enterprise beyond the Alps. Only a few months after the first paper was established, appeared the Hokitika Advertiser, a weekly which changed into evening publication as the Westland Evening Mail. It must have had a very short life. A few months later Tyrrell founded his Waimea Chronicle a few miles away, only to bring it into Hokitika when the local field waned in importance. Tyrrell was never quite sure of himself. He had a nomadic disposition, and often thought the grass looked greener over the fence.

There was yet another paper in Hokitika in the late sixties. In 1868 David Curie and Co. produced the Hokitika Daily News on the fugitive plant which had come from Melbourne and which had been used at Riverton and sundry way ports. By 1870

S T. L. Bright (who died in 1874) had owned the Examiner in Victoria and edited the Hobart Courier. He was on the Otago Daily Times under Vogel and edited the Southland News in 1864.

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the Hokitika Daily News became silent and the plant was being put to a new use at Ahaura.

In 1870 Cobb and Harris started a new daily, the Westland Independent, to contest the supremacy of the West Coast Times. It languished till the end of 1871 when the plant was taken by Ivess and Mirfin to print the Herald at Reefton.

In 1872 another penny daily, the Westland Register, was launched by William Horder Sheppard, a newcomer to journalism. It was taken over in 1873 by a joint stock company of which the superintendent (lames A. Bonar) was chairman. Designed “as a mere protest against ignorance and presumption”, it proved nothing on that point, but did demonstrate that Hokitika could not support two morning dailies. The assets were bought by the West Coast Times.

The West Coast Times in 1874 came into the competent hands of Robert Caldwell Reid 6 , and it was run on occasion by his brother Alexander Reid.

The Evening Star, under James Browne, seems not to have been very prosperous, for he sold the plant in 1869 and left for the Thames. The new owners called the paper Star of the Evening, and bye-and-bye W. R. Jones and his son (Edmund Jones, later of the Evening Post) had a controlling interest. Jones soon left for Wellington, and Klein regained possession. In 1880 David Curie took over the Star. He started next year the Hokitika Guardian, and following the death of Klein (1884) bought the Star and amalgamated the two as the Hokitika Guardian and Star. It became daily in 1888, and in 1893 Curie sold his share to John Samuel Dawes, who was both editor and proprietor. Competition continued in Hokitika long after the population had shrunk too low to maintain more than one paper comfortably. In the eighties the Times came into the hands of Leonard Northcroft and Harry Longueville Snow and the former carried on both the Guardian and the Leader (weekly) till 1901. In 1903 Curie’s interest was acquired by a company (with H. L. Michel as chairman) in the Liberal interest. Patrick Joseph Dunne was

•R. C. Reid (1832-97) born in the north of Scotland, began life on the John o’ Groats Journal. He came to Victoria in the fifties and then to the Otago and West Coast goldfields. He was M.P.C. for Buller, M.H.R. for Hokitika (1879-81) and a member of the Young New Zealand Party. His brother, Alexander Reid (1836-78) was also M.P.C. for Buller. He afterward edited the Grey River Argus.

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editor and manager for a few years and Albert Edward Lawrence was editor (1911-14). In 1908 the Leader ceased.

At length, under pressure of war conditions, the proprietors of the Times sold out in 1917 to Dawes, Nightingale and Co., who incorporated the veteran in the Hokitika Guardian and Star, which still, as the Hokitika Guardian, enjoys the field alone as an evening daily. It calculates its seniority (91 years in 1956) from Tyrrell’s pioneer the West Coast Times. The Guardian, which has used the front page for news since 1950, is the sole survivor of the foregoing medley of contestants.

In 1918 William Ernest Richards, who had published the Kumara Times, started in Hokitika a short-lived weekly, the Westland Chronicle.

A Fenian Outburst

Hokitika supported at times numerous publications outside the definition of ordinary newspapers. Foremost amongst these, because it figures in one of the exciting episodes of West Coast history, was the New Zealand Celt, founded in 1867 as the organ of the Irish Catholic Party. In the stream of miners who converged on the West Coast from Otago, Victoria, and California, there was a strong Irish element, amongst whom, during the Fenian agitation, feeling ran high. In his journalistic reminiscences James Browne tells how the Celt was founded by John Manning, an educated Irishman who had contributed to Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal stories of life in Australia. Browne met him in Geelong, but lost sight of him until he called in Hokitika to seek employment. Browne suggested an Irish paper of light reading, but Manning was deeply moved by events in Ireland and decided to publish a paper through which Irishmen might further the cause of their country. He chose the title New Zealand Celt and found sufficient capital to acquire an independent printing plant so as to relieve Browne of the responsibility of printing a paper which would require careful watching. Manning instigated the erection in the cemetery at Hokitika of a cross in memory of the Fenian martyrs of Manchester. The plan was carried through in defiance of the authorities and in an atmosphere of intense excitement Manning was charged with seditious libel and sentenced to imprisonment.

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The first manager of the Celt was Joseph Ivess 7 . Two years later the name of Ivess appears on the imprint of the Tomahawk, a 12-page weekly journal of criticism, comment and satire. Edward Harris was the proprietor, followed by Henry Cohen Pirani. The last issue of the Tomahawk was in June 1870, and in the following month George Tilbrook and Ivess brought out the Lantern, which differed only in its motto —Lux in tenebris. It ceased with no. 12. Cobb and Harris then established a daily, the Westland Independent, to combat the West Coast Times. In 1871 it became a penny morning paper, but soon languished, and closed down on Harris’s death in November 1871.

South of Hokitika

Today one would regard Hokitika as the most southerly site for economic newspaper production. But it looked very different in the sixties. A year after the opening of the West Coast goldfield there was a flush on the Totara, of which Ross was the centre. The claim of M. A. Cassius alone produced 22,000 ounces of gold in two years. No wonder Ross had its daily newspaper. We have references in 1866 to the Ross Guardian, which was then printed in Hokitika. Later David Curie took it over. It was a weekly with its own printing plant and survived till 1879.

The Totara Chronicle, established at the end of 1869, lasted only three weeks. In 1871 appeared the Ross News, which was soon a daily. The promoters were apparently Richard Charles White Cuming and George Henry Tribe (afterwards M.H.R. for Totara). In 1872 Tribe withdrew and in 1873 the News closed down. In 1878 there are references to William Riley’s Westland Advertiser at Ross, and in 1880 the town undoubtedly again had its own paper, the Ross and Okarito Advocate and Westland Advertiser, which seems to have been an amalgamation of the Advertiser with the Ross Guardian. John Thompson Petrie ran it for many years. It ceased in 1908. In 1884 came the inevitable rival, the Ross Mercury, which does not appear to have survived long.

At the little bar harbour of Okarito, 83 miles south of Hokitika, Alexander Reid is said to have founded in 1864 the Okarito Times.

7 J. Ivess (1844-1919) was born at Ashkeaton, County Limerick, came to Australia as a child and to New Zealand in 1868 with a good education picked up at an Australian grammar school and some knowledge of printing.

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The town had then some thousands of people, 25 hotels and three theatres, so no doubt there was a crust for the newspapers. Soon after the Times started a vagrant plant arrived and was landed perilously on the beach. It was the hardy pilgrim which came first from Melbourne to Riverton at the end of 1863 and had done duty in several other towns. At Okarito it was set up in a canvas tent and there produced in good style the first paper bearing the title Westland Observer. The population was soon inadequate to support two papers and the proprietor had to do everything himself. Sometimes he was assisted by the leisured population, which as soon as the paper was out sat on the doorstep of the office and read it for nothing. It must have had a short life, for the plant is said to have been used for establishing the Westport Star (in October 1867).

Jackson’s Bay, south again of Okarito, has seen modest newspaper activity in recent years. In 1938 Mrs Beatrice McEachen published nine issues of a news sheet called the Jackson Bay Chronicle. It was printed at the Guardian office in Hokitika.

The Waimea Field

A few miles north of Hokitika, halfway between the straggling old village of Stafford and Kumara, was the famous Waimea goldfield of 1865. Waimea has disappeared almost completely, but records show that in 1870 Stafford had 37 hotels, seventeen stores and a population of 5,000. Kumara also had a few decades of uproarious prosperity. It was to Waimea that John Tyrrell, always rather eager, if vacillating in his judgment, hastened after establishing his pioneer at Hokitika (the West Coast Times). Early in 1866 he started the daily Waimea Chronicle. But within a few weeks the field showed signs of waning. Tyrrell accordingly pulled up his pegs again and moved his paper into Hokitika. As the Hokitika Chronicle it is quoted in April-August 1866.

The Press of Greymouth: New Zealand’s Labour Daily As many of the goldseekers coming through the Otira in 1865 spread northwards, there was soon a busy population in the valley of the Grey. A year earlier Reuben Waite planted the nucleus of Greymouth when he opened a store with merchandise shipped from Nelson. There was not quite the same spontaneity about this rush as on the Hokitika field, but it was promising enough by the end of 1865 to encourage a hard-headed Scot,

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James Kerr 8 , to make a venture here. With John Arnott and a young Irishman named J. Keogh, he put up a calico tent on what is now Gresson Street, Greymouth, and in a single room, lit by tallow candles, four men carried out all the processes of producing a paper—writing, editing, setting and machining. Thus, on 14 November 1865, was produced the first issue of the triweekly Grey River Argus. From 1871 the Argus was daily and there was also a weekly Argus. Kerr recognised the risk of floods in the river and from the outset he kept a boat tied up close at hand. Consequently when the great flood occurred in 1872 the Argus was able to carry on as usual. Twice in those early years the office in Boundary Road was gutted by fire, once when a new plant had just come to hand. The first steam engine employed on the Coast to drive a printing machine was a 3-horsepower engine of the pendulum type installed by the Argus in 1874.

William Henry Harrison was editor (1868-79) 9 , and Florence Romuald McCarthy 10 edited the Argus from 1880 to 1914, when its future novel course was already under discussion. When Kerr died his son, James Kerr, managed the paper and in 1906 formed the Grey River Argus Co.

It was in 1913 that the Federation of Labour initiated negotiations which resulted six years later in the Argus becoming the first daily paper in New Zealand controlled by the Labour movement. Frank E. O’Flynn (later M.L.C.) first discussed the matter with the manager, H. D. James, who held a controlling interest in the paper. It appeared that £5,000 would be required to buy James out, pay off pressing liabilities and acquire new plant.

'* J. Kerr, M.L.C. (1834-1901) had experience on the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald, the Dundee Courier and the Melbourne Age before coming to Otago in 1861. He was on the Otago Daily Times before settling at Grey.

9 W. H. Harrison (1831-79) was a Yorkshireman. He joined the Otago Daily Times in 1861 and after leaving the Argus was editor of the Wellington Independent. He was M.H.R. for Westland Boroughs and Grey (1868-75). Returning to the Argus he remained in charge till his death.

10 F. R. McCarthy (1834-1914) was born at Frampton, Lower Canada, and in New York he sold newspapers and became a compositor. By way of South Africa and Australia he came to Otago in 1861 and worked in the bush and at printing. He was associated with the Wellington Independent before taking over the news agency known as Holt and McCarthy.

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The Grey Labour Representation Committee meanwhile came to an understanding that the Argus should make its columns available for the expression of Labour views. In the election campaign of 1918, when the Grey seat became vacant by the disqualification of P. C. Webb, the management allowed Labour space in each issue to conduct its campaign in support of Henry E. Holland. The publicity was in the hands of (the Rt. Hon.) Peter Fraser, M.P., and the result was the return of the future leader of the party. Thus even before it came into Labour hands, the Argus was a factor in winning and holding the Grey and Buller seats.

In 1919 the plant was taken over by the unions on the West Coast, and a company was formed to acquire the property. The directors included James O’Brien (later M.P.) chairman, Michael Connelly (later M.L.C.), and George R. Hunter, the first secretary (later M.L.C.). The time was not favourable to enter upon newspaper management. On the one hand war had inflated the price of newsprint. On the other, as the promoters well knew, a Labour paper could not hope for much favour from advertisers. They managed, nevertheless, to get together the requisite capital.

Then a disaster occurred which might well have been fatal to less enthusiasm: a fire destroyed building and plant. This challenge to the movement was at once taken up. Working bees were formed to rebuild the offices, miners, artisans and labourers giving their services without stint. Meanwhile the paper, printed by the Hokitika Guardian, suffered no suspension of publication.

The managers of the Argus after Labour took it over were: James O’Brien (1920-23), F. D. Whibley, Norman V. Lovell (1929-53) and Rupert A. Kay (1954- ). Notable on the literary side may be mentioned Ernest Atkins, J. A. Connell, M. L. Daly, W. J. Green and L. J. Cronin. Henry E. Holland edited on several occasions, and for years Edwin J. Howard, M.P., wrote without payment his “Vag” and “Sunbeam” columns.

In 1924 the directors reported a loss of £9Bl for the year, bringing the total loss to date up to £l,BlB. There was a profit of £56 in 1935, when the capital was increased by £2,000. The completion of 21 years as a Labour daily was celebrated on 20 December 1940.

The Weekly Argus ran from 1870 to 1907, its title being changed in 1906 to West Coast Standard.

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Greymouth Evening Star

Less than six months after the birth of the Grey River Argus James Snyder Browne brought out the first issue (18 March 1866) of the Greymouth Evening Star, a 4-page daily. He soon sold it to John Tyrrell, who had associated with him Joseph Petrie 11 . It passed in 1872-73 to R. C. Reid and Co. and then to Joseph Ivess, who started a weekly, the Press. In 1875 Ivess sold to Petrie, who was to edit the paper till his death in 1908. In 1876 Petrie countered the enterprise of his rival (who had started the Kumara Times) by floating the Kumara Mail, which under Walter Bishop appears to have had a short existence. In 1891 the Greymouth Evening Star Co. bought the Star and from 1892-1927 it was managed by Frederick Hamilton Kilgour 12 . Successive editors thereafter were Joseph T. Petrie, J. R. Wallace, A. Kibble and (now) George Joseph Gaffaney. Andrew Joseph Wilson has been manager since 1928.

The first home of the Star was in Waite Street. From there the business moved to Tainui Street and Mackay Street, and finally returned to its original locality with frontages to Werita and Waite Streets. The buildings, with recent additions, house a double-unit Cossar reel-fed flatbed machine of which one unit was installed in 1927 and the other in 1940. It can print a 16-page paper.

Greymouth is the smallest town in New Zealand now maintaining two daily papers.

Early in 1871 Greymouth had a weekly paper whose title, the Freeman, indicated its appeal to the Irish population of the goldfields. It was purely a political organ to assist the candidature of Patrick Buckley against W. H. Harrison for the Grey Valley seat. Needless to say, it did not survive the failure of such a limited purpose.

Brunner was one of many smaller towns which strove unsuccessfully to support a paper. In 1889 R. W. Parkinson started a daily, the Brunner News and Grey Valley Advertiser, which soon came into the hands of a company and launched a weekly, the Standard. Within a year the property was resumed by William Urquhart,

11 J. Petrie (1848-1908) was born in Aberdeenshire and came to New Zealand in 1861. He was mayor of Greymouth 1887-88 and M.H.R. 1882-84.

12 f. H. Kilgour (1864-1929) was born at Dunstan. An accountant by profession, he served on many local bodies and in public companies.

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the weekly was stopped and the title of the daily was enlarged to include “Blackball Courier”. It ceased in 1901.

At the small township of Ahaura in 1870 Walter Atkin and three others established the Grey Valley Times, of which James Wilkie, M.P.C., was editor in 1871 and William Joseph Potts in 1873. It lasted till 1877.

Not the least interesting paper on the West Coast was the Kumara Times and Pounamu and Golfisborough Advertiser, which was founded in 1876 by the proprietors of the Grey River Argus. Kumara was then flourishing and for some years to come it profited by being the home town of the Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon. The impetus it thus acquired is evidenced by the appearance of the Times in the official list of approved media in the Colonial Office, London, for decades after it had ceased to rank as even a good provincial paper. When Charles Janion acquired the paper in 1883 it was a daily and in 1891 it was actually published twice daily, no doubt to suit the trains. The name Pounamu in the title had now been changed to Dillmanstown. In 1896 the Times was acquired by Stephen M. Benyon, mayor of Kumara, (1889-94) and William Ernest Richards, who ran it together till 1907. Then Richards carried on alone until the paper ceased (30 June 1917).

The Times had a short-lived rival in 1876 when Walter Bishop left the Grey Star to establish the Kumara Mail. There is no trace today of the existence of this paper.

Westport and the Buller

Westport, at the northern end of the Westland goldfields, also had newspapers within a year of the opening of the diggings. On 16 December 1866 the stalwart John Tyrrell and Job Lushanus Munson started the bi-weekly Westport Times and Buller Express. In 1867 diggings erupted at Charleston, about 18 miles to the southward, and Tyrrell at once moved the plant thither and called the paper the Westport Times and Charleston Argus.

In 1868 the editor, William Francis Apted, was thrashed—quite out of order, one would think—by the Commissioner for the Goldfields, Thomas Sneyd Kynnersley, a retired naval officer, who complained that allusive and insinuating letters in the paper reflected on his conduct. In that year Munson sold his share to A. B. Bain, and the weekly of the Westport Times made its debut. The New Zealand Ledger, we are told, was thereupon suspended,

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but we know little about it except that it contained a New Zealand story, Lady Baltimore. Reid and Co. acquired the Times in 1868.

The Westport News

In 1871 Eugene Joseph O’Conor 13 burst upon the newspaper world with a violent impact. The Buller Lion, as he was called, entertained strong political ambitions which he felt could be promoted through control of a newspaper. To begin with he acquired the Westport Times from Tyrrell, who again moved to Charleston. This arrangement falling through, Tyrrell resumed the Westport Times and at once made it daily to oppose O’Conor’s new creation, the Westport News. In 1885 Tyrrell bought the Westport Evening Star, which had been established in 1867 with plant from the Observer at Okarito.

On Tyrrell’s death (21 March 1892) the two papers were amalgamated as the Westport Times and Star and became a daily evening paper. From 1893 it was managed by Thomas Patrick Williams, who had joined the staff as printer’s devil in 1872. The firm was now called Tyrrell and Williams. William Gothard (1860-1918) who resigned from the Post Office in 1874, became editor in the eighties and later was part proprietor for a long period. He was followed by F. Munson, J. Stirton, C. E. Craig and C. E. Owen. The Times once prided itself on being the largest 4-page paper in New Zealand, though one might doubt whether readers appreciate the pleasure of perusing a sheet with eight columns of 30 inches. After the earthquake of 1929 publication was suspended for a week, and in 1930 a fire caused a fortnight’s lapse. In 1937 the property of Tyrrell and Co. was acquired by a private company and the paper was incorporated in a new journal, the Buller Times, which ceased in 1941.

The paper which E. J. O’Conor established (on 23 November 1873) was the tri-weekly Westport News. His backers were Thomas B. Shapter, James B. Fisher, and Job L. Munson, but O’Conor was soon both owner and editor. The News came into a hard world, and when once its political mission was accomplished it had difficulty in finding sponsors to pay for its survival. In 1880 it was called the Buller News and Captain Charles

13 E, J. O’Conor (1835-1912) was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, educated in France and came to Victoria in 1854 and Otago in 1861. He was M.P.C. (1869 and 1874) and M.H.R. (1871-75, 1884-93). He was also Provincial Secretary for Nelson.

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Wright appears as its owner. He seems to have started in 1881 the weekly Westport Advertiser, which was known in 1883 as the Bullet Advertiser and ceased in 1888. Robert Caldwell Reid came in 1889, enlarged the News as a morning daily and carried it on till his death in 1897. The next owner was Walter Atkin, who left it (in 1911) to his sons (C. J. and Walter Atkin) and Sherman Strachan (editor 1899-1945). They carried on as Atkin and Co. till 1945 when Frank Hinton (editor) and Alan Leslie Wood (manager) acquired the paper and formed a private company. The News is now an evening daily.

The Buller Miner was founded at Westport in 1881 by Job L. Munson 14 with plant imported from America. It soon became a weekly and was owned, edited and printed by Munson until his death in 1917. In 1920 it suspended publication for 18 months. It was revived by Frank Munson (a son of the promoter) and ceased publication in 1921.

Rivalries at Charleston

Obviously following the stream of goldseekers, the earliest outliers of Westport journalism were at Charleston and Brighton, which lie on the coast respectively 16 and 29 miles south of Westport. In the upheaval caused by discoveries in that district, John Tyrrell could not make up his mind whether Westport would be more important than the new centres to the south. Having just floated his Westport Times (1866) he decided that he might meet the position by adding “Charleston Argus” to his title. He then moved his plant to Charleston, and back again via Addison’s Flat to Westport. The Charleston Argus began in March 1867 as a well-printed bi-weekly. Charles Mirfin renamed it the Charleston Herald and Mining Reporter, and a later owner substituted Brighton Times for Mining Reporter. Tyrrell and J. L. Munson combined this paper with the Westport Times when a new Charleston Herald was about to appear. This paper, which is freely quoted (1869-75) was a lively bi-weekly. Even so it was not the only Richmond in the field, for at the end of 1874 E. J. O’Conor came in with a rival which was printed in his

14 J. L. Munson (1832-1917) was born at Newhaven, Connecticut, U.S.A., visited the Australian diggings and began newspaper work on the Havelock Mail (with H. Blundell). During his years at Westport he was a printer, auctioneer and bookseller. He was for a time a member of the Westport Borough Council and the Nelson Education Board.

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Westport News office and titled the News (Charleston). Its proprietor a year later (E. Tucker) complained that because some of his staff belonged to a temperance society, four of the five hotels in the town had withdrawn their advertisements. Charleston was obviously an orthodox goldfields centre.

Later owners of the Herald were Alonzo Dwan and Thomas Dollman, and finally an able Australian journalist, Patrick Kittson, who was editor till his death in 1893. His widow and daughters later carried on the paper, which ceased publication in 1911. Charleston had by then shrunk from the status of a town; the whole riding had now only 264 inhabitants. The plant of the Herald included some relics of the long pilgrimage initiated at Riverton in 1863.

Brighton may have had a paper earlier than Charleston. Charles Mirfin is said to have started the Brighton Times about the end of 1866. Some accounts credit R. G. Neale with this foundation and he certainly appears as part owner when it was absorbed in the Herald at Charleston, which assimilated its title. Neale in 1871 took over the Talbot Leader in Australia. Brighton in 1902 had a recorded population of 19.

Irwin Paris, in his history of Charleston, records that this once busy little town used to employ a bellringer or town crier who stood at street corners to call out the news and special announcements. The newspaper proprietors did not object—for one reason it saved the labour of printing and distributing extras between issues—but strenuous opposition was offered to the crying of information in the nature of advertisements. In those days advertisements cost ss. per inch.

North of Westport the only newspaper outlier on record is a recent effort, the Karamea Chronicle (1923). It was printed in Westport and did not see the year out.

Reefton’s Three Dailies

The most noteworthy battleground of newspapers in the upper Buffer district was Reefton. Situated well up the Inangahua, a tributary of the Buffer, and about midway between Westport and Greymouth either by rail or road, Reefton has always had a certain positional significance, yet it never attained to the status of a borough. The pioneer of journalism there was that picturesque harbinger of the backblocks, Joseph Ivess. Having already collaborated with George Tilbrook in the Tomahawk and the Lantern

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in Hokitika, he now, at the age of 28 appears with Tilbrook, Hugh Thomson and Charles Mirfin venturing their fortunes in Reefton. On 3 February 1872 with the plant of the Westland Independent they brought out the Inangahua Herald and New Zealand Miner, a bi-weekly sheet printed in italic. Two years later it became tri-weekly and remained so until 1894, when the pressure of three papers in a district which had only 2,000 inhabitants converted them all into desperate dailies. Mirfin and Thomson each edited the Herald for a period. In 1909 it passed to Mrs Maud L. G. Beresford Wilkinson, who ran it competently for many years. It expired in 1936 in the general decline of business.

To go back to our narrative. Two years sufficed to bring forward a competitor against the Inangahua Herald. This was the tri-weekly Reefton Courier, started in 1874 —another step in the pilgrimage of a famous newspaper plant. The editor and proprietor was William Joseph Potts. In November it was a daily and by the end of the year it admitted its failure. The plant was bought in for £69 by the storekeeper who held a mortgage over it, and the Courier closed down.

Potts stuck to his guns though, and in 1875 brought out a morning tri-weekly, the Inangahua Times, which he owned till his death in 1901. In 1891-92 Patrick Joseph O’Regan 15 , a native of Charleston, was editor at a time when three papers fought for a livelihood in this none too affluent mining centre. In 1894 the Times became daily. Mrs Potts conducted the paper after her husband’s death and she profited by the knowledge and experience of James Noble, who started as a compositor on the Reefton Guardian and over a period of more than half a century served all three of the Reefton papers. He was editor and publisher till his death. In 1905 the business was taken over by the Inangahua Times Co. and in 1915 the directors, embarrassed by war restrictions, accepted the tender of the staff to pay all wages and debts and to carry on themselves. Ernest Nicolson ran it for the company till 1942, when war stringency forced it to close down. The last few issues were printed on coloured paper. In 1946 C. R. Sprackett revived the Times as a weekly (printed in Greymouth). It survived for ten years (part of the time as

I B This period was 1888-94. The Hon. P. J. O’Regan (1869-1947) was M.H.R. (1893-99) and in 1937 was appointed a judge of the Arbitration Court.

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the Inangahua and Murchison Times, and ceased in February 1956 (vol. 10, no. 529).

The Courier had been off the scene for more than a decade before another candidate came forward in Reefton. In 1888 W. F. Hall and James Wilkie started an evening daily, the Reefton Guardian. Its editors were James Wilkie (whose father helped to promote the Nelson Colonist), John Drake, Patrick J. O’Regan (to 1891), and thereafter William D. Lusty (later on the staff of the New Zealand Herald). In the three-sided tussle of the nineties the Guardian was acquired by the Inangahua Times (1894), leaving still two papers in the field. The Herald and the Times persevered as dailies till they were amalgamated in 1936. The population of Reefton was still only 1543.

Lyell and Murchison

In the seventies newspapers were planted at one or two of the small settlements up the Duller River. In 1872 the eerie little town of Lyell, then no doubt resounding with the mirth of bearded fossickers, had a paper of its own. The Lyell Argus and Matakitaki Gazette was a healthy looking 4-page paper with plenty of advertising, run by James Graham Niven. But the seventies were precarious years indeed. Once in 1878 the Argus commented:

There is no flour in the town. There has been no beef in the place for a week, and the last pig was killed yesterday after eating the last spud. Are the people to starve through the neglect of the Buller County Council? It is shameful. Our supplies have gone and our roads are blocked up; in fact, quite impassable for 10 miles on either side. What is to become of us? We must, thanks to the powers that be, either leave or starve; a pleasant prospect, truly.

By this time the Argus had shrunk to foolscap size and later it withered to quarto. The paper is still mentioned till 1882, the last recorded owner being Thomas John Metcalfe.

Early in 1873 Joseph Ivess thought of starting at Lyell but went instead to Greymouth, to become printer of the Star.

Edward Percy Smyrk, who had been employed on the Lyell Argus, is said to have been the founder in 1880 of another rival, the Lyell Times and Central Duller Gazette, which Walter Atkin acquired in 1888 and continued till 1899.

Far beyond Lyell is Murchison, yet another outpost on the Duller, near the confluence of the Maruia. In 1896, when the

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population of Fern Flat was only 83, Reginald H. A. Alexander established a weekly evening paper, the Buller Post. Fern Flat was renamed Murchison in 1898 and in 1900 Alexander sold the paper to Victor Thomas Macnamara. After being edited for a few years by Huddlestone (a schoolmaster) it disappeared from the official list in 1913 or 1914.

The field did not long lie fallow, however. In 1914 George Strathallan Hayes started the Murchison Standard which in 1917, owing to war scarcity, he was forced to print on bright green jobbing paper. In 1920 Walter Atkin took over the Standard and in the following year it suspended publication. It was owned in 1923 by Sherman Strachan (of the Westport News) and a local company revived it in 1924 as a bi-weekly, only to cease again in 1929 owing to the earthquake. It came to life yet again as a weekly, but folded up in 1937. Thereafter the field was later served for a decade (1946-56) by the Inangahua and Murchison Times (printed part of the time in Greymouth and part in Westport).

CHAPTER 17

MAORI AND RELIGIOUS PAPERS

Maori Newspapers

In the first century of our history Maori language newspapers do not figure prominently. Due to the solicitous regard of the new Administration a small periodical in Maori and English was established at Auckland within two years of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Te Karere o Nui Tireni, or the Messenger of New Zealand, though sponsored by the Government and edited at first by a distinguished Protector of Aborigines (Dr E. Shortland, M.A., L.R.C.P.), had a spasmodic career. Recurrent outbreaks of hostilities caused suspensions, but in the long run the paper lasted from 1842 till the outbreak of the Waikato war in 1863. Called by different variations of title, it was generally known as the Maori Messenger. Its editors after Shortland included Charles Oliver Davis, David Bum and Walter Buffer. In 1861 it was replaced by the Manuhiri Tuarangi and Maori Intelligencer, and it was again Te Karere Maori or Maori Messenger when it ceased during the Waikato war in 1863. Besides the various Maori Messengers, which were financed and controlled throughout by the Government, there were a few independent publications. In 1848, for instance, Hugh Carleton published 26 numbers of his Anglo-Maori Warder. In 1858-59 C. O. Davis brought out three issues of Te Whetu o te Tau and two of Te Waka o te Iwi, and in 1861-62 he published Ko Aotearoa, or the Maori Recorder.

The King Movement had no newspaper press until 1861, when the King’s runanga at Ngaruawahia made use of a printing press which had been presented by the Emperor of Austria to the young chiefs whom Hochstetter had taken to Europe in the Novara. In September 1861 appeared the first issue of Te Hokioi o Nui Tireni e Rere atu na (the warbird of New Zealand soaring above), the editor being Patara te Tuhi, a cousin of King Tawhiao.

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This organ had been for almost a year promoting Maori nationalism when Sir George Grey appointed (Sir) John Gorst as commissioner to the Waikato tribes specially charged with checking its influence. Not far from Gorst’s residence was the C.M.S. mission of Otawhao which had a printing press. Using this, Gorst published on 2 February 1863 the first number of a vigorous pro-Govem-ment paper, Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke i Runga i te Tuanui (the lonely sparrow on the housetop). The jocular irony with which Gorst rebutted the arguments of the Hokioi apparently struck home, for after the fourth issue a party of King supporters on 24 March 1863 resolutely seized Gorst’s press and carried it off.

This act of defiance terminated the current phase of Maori journalism and helped to touch off the Waikato war. The Kareres and Maori Messengers, now defunct, were at once succeeded by a new Government publication, Te Waka Maori. This paper also, between 1863 and 1884, had a spasmodic and peripatetic career, appearing at Auckland, Wellington, Napier and Gisborne under slight variations of title, e.g. Te Waka o Niu Tirani, o Poneke, o Ahuriri and o Aotearoa. James Grindell edited it for many years. Te Waka had a contemporary between 1874 and 1878 in Te Wananga, which was maintained by the Eastern Maori, printed for a while by Henry Hill and edited by John White. Then there was the well-known official gazette, Kahiti o Niu Tireni, started in 1865 and continued with one short lapse till 1930.

Other publications in the Maori language, or in both, include Henry L. Snow’s Te Korimako (edited by C. O. Davis), 1882-88; Te Paki o Matariki, a King organ published at Maungakawa between 1891 and 1902; Te Puke ki Hikurangi (Greytown) 18971913; Te Pipiwharauroa; he Kupu Whakamarama, established at Nelson in 1898 by the Rev. F. A. Bennett (afterwards Bishop of Aotearoa) and continued by the Te Rau Press at Gisborne till 1913. A later editor was the Rev. R. T. Kohere. Te Manukura, the Maori Recorder, appeared at Auckland 1916-23; the Maori Record at Hawera (1905-07); and Te Toa Takatini at Hastings (1921-32).

The Ratana organisation has been publishing at Wanganui since 1924 a forthnightly called Te Whetu Marama o te Kotahitanga.

The leading Maori review today is the scholarly and finely produced Te Ao Hou (The New Age), established in 1952 by the Maori Purposes Fund.

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Religious Papers

New Zealand has a few outstanding religious newspapers. The Presbyterian Church in different provinces made several attempts (the earliest in 1866) to establish a church organ. It was in 1880 that the Otago Synod started the New Zealand Presbyterian, edited by the Rev Dr Salmond, who was later professor at Otago University. In 1894 the Christian Outlook appeared at Dunedin, edited by Dr Rutherford Waddell. After initial trials it became simply the Outlook, a weekly of 32 pages selling at Id., and it was adopted as their official organ by several other nonconformist churches. Amongst its editors were the Rev. J. Chisholm, William Hutchison and Alfred Henry B. Grinling. The Outlook is now published in Christchurch.

The Roman Catholic organ known as the Tablet was founded in Dunedin in 1872 by Bishop Moran (its first editor). The first committee included R. A. Loughnan as secretary, and Thomas Bracken (who canvassed for capital). From 1898 to 1908 the Tablet was conducted with great distinction by the Rev. H. W. Cleary, who was decorated by the Pope with the gold cross pro ecclesia et pontifice. His successors included John A. Scott, M.A., LL.B., Dr J. M. Liston, Dr James Kelly and Leonard J. Cronin (1932-37). In 1918, a few years after being elected Bishop of Auckland, Dr Cleary established in the northern city a new organ, the Month. This was edited for a while by his successor, Bishop J. M. Liston. In 1934 the title was changed to Zealandia and in 1937 the paper became a weekly.

Not the least important of the religious papers is the Salvation Army’s weekly War Cry, which was established at Christchurch in 1883, a few weeks after the Array started its operations in New Zealand. Amongst its editors (who were generally senior officers of the Army) was Alfred H. B. Grinling, who had done similar service in Australia and was from 1901 editor of the N.Z. Outlook. The War Cry has been published at Wellington since 1913.

CHAPTER 18

THE NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS’ ASSOCIATION

The formation of a Newspaper Proprietors’ Association in New Zealand was first mooted about 1895, the chief advocate being (Sir) George Fenwick, of the Otago Daily Times. Christchurch papers were also interested and the first annual meeting was held in that city in 1898. George Fenwick was elected president and J. C. Wilkin (of the Lyttelton Times) vicepresident. The first secretary (James Hunter) and his successor in 1900 (William Easton) were both employees of the Otago Daily Times, while Frank E. Hyman, who succeeded in 1901, was employed by the Lyttelton Times.

Fenwick presided at the first three annual meetings, which were all held in Christchurch. At the 1901 meeting, which took place at Napier, Wilkin was elected president, and on that occasion Louis Blundell (of the Evening Post) was elected to the committee, the first North Islander to hold office. With the idea, no doubt, of interesting Auckland papers, the next meeting was held there, and at the meeting in Christchurch in 1903 (Sir) Henry Horton, of the New Zealand Herald, took a seat on the committee.

During Wilkin’s presidency (1901-07) the Association gained considerable strength. To assist the drive for membership annual meetings were held at Napier, Auckland, Dunedin, Rotorua, Nelson and Christchurch, and all newspapers became eligible. Herbert Keys (of the Christchurch Press) succeeded Hyman as secretary.

At the 1908 meeting in Napier Phineas Selig (of the Press) was elected president. During his term of office (1908-21) the activities of the organisation rapidly expanded and the foundation was laid for the present Association. Of the many problems created by the First World War one of the most difficult was the supply of newsprint. A modified pooling arrangement was made, but in 1917 the Association had to approach the Government for special ships to bring paper to New Zealand. There were industrial

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difficulties, too, in the negotiation of which the newspaper proprietors were handicapped, since they had no industrial association within the meaning of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1908. The outcome was the formation in 1916 of four industrial unions and a New Zealand Industrial Association.

The Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, which in 1920 had 73 members, was reconstituted in 1921. Selig was the first president and Leonard James Berry, who had been part-time secretary since 1915, was appointed full-time secretary. The office was removed from Christchurch to Wellington, being housed for a while in the old Dominion building in Lambton Quay and since 1928 in the new building in Mercer Street. Berry became manager in 1939, and on his retirement ten years later Cyril Ernest Owen, an experienced journalist who had joined the staff in 1945, was appointed secretary.

Charles Westwood Earle, who was elected president in 1922, was to guide the destinies of the Association until 1948, when he handed over the reins of office to Ronald D. Horton, 8.A., of the New Zealand Herald. Like his predecessor (Selig) Earle was called upon to pilot the papers through the difficulties of another major war. Once again the main problem was the supply of newsprint. All the papers were severely restricted in size, but a rationing scheme ensured that none had to cease for want of newsprint. Another grave problem was staffing, which bore so heavily upon some papers that their existence was threatened. Earle was one of the prime movers in sending a recruiting officer to the United Kingdom. The number of tradesmen obtained through this medium was not sufficient to meet all requirements, but with a greater intake of apprentices the scheme did much to meet staff shortages in later years.

Neither question, newsprint nor staffing had been resolved when Horton assumed office, and throughout his presidency, which lasted five years, they continued to cause grave concern. Horton played a prominent part in negotiating a satisfactory contract for the supply of Tasman newsprint to New Zealand publishers.

The heavy burden cast upon newspapers during the post-war years by steeply rising costs was increased by the fact that the industry was controlled under the Control of Prices Act and advertising revenue was severely cut through the reduced size of the papers. During the war the first move was made by the

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Association to alleviate the trouble, and after lengthy negotiations the Price Tribunal made an order allowing newspapers to increase their advertising rates by 25 per cent. With the end of the war costs of production sky-rocketed, but owing to the shortage of newsprint papers were still restricted in size. A revision of advertising contracts was granted, but it was merely a palliative. Further representations were made to the Tribunal for the decontrol of the industry. In 1950 the decontrol of advertising was gained, but the selling price of newspapers was still controlled. It had remained at 2d. since before the war.

A further case, for decontrol of the industry as a whole, was stated to the Tribunal. Again it was declined, but in 1951 the Tribunal agreed to a selling price of 3d. per copy for casual sales, with a subscription rate of Is. 3d. a week to regular subscribers.

In 1953 Stanley David Smith (of the Evening Star, Dunedin) was elected president, and shortly afterwards another case for decontrol of the industry was stated. Again it was refused, but in February 1954 the Tribunal withdrew the 3d. a week discount to regular subscribers. It was not until February 1956 that the newspaper industry was at last decontrolled.

In 1958 P. R. Scoble was elected president.

Committee Organisation

In 1921 there was a movement by city newspapers to form a Metropolitan Association. While not opposing it officially, the president (Selig) was strongly of opinion that the Association would be in a better position to show a united front if it had all newspapers as members. He proposed as a solution the formation of sectional committees within the Association: One for the metropolitan press, one for the large daily provincials, one for smaller daily provincials and the fourth for tri-weekly, biweekly and weekly newspapers. This was adopted in principle, and the rules of the re-constituted Association provided for these sectional committees, with others to administer advertising, industrial and paper questions. In view of attacks which had been made on the freedom of the press a Parliamentary Committee was set up to watch this all-important question.

Little change in the constitution of the Association has taken place since 1921. The only major alteration to the rules was made in 1951, when membership was restricted to daily newspapers.

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It was provided, however, that non-daily papers which were already members should continue so. The present membership of the Association is 66.

The Commonwealth Press Union

Ever since the foundation in 1909 of the Empire Press Union—now known as the Commonwealth Press Union—the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors’ Association has been closely allied with it. Quite recently the functions of the Parliamentary Committee—later called the Editorial Committee—were combined with the Press Freedom Committee of the Commonwealth Press Union.

Life Membership

By the rules adopted in 1921 the Association has power to confer life membership on any person who has given outstanding service to the Association. In 36 years only seven people have been so honoured, the first being Phineas Selig. He was followed by Sir Henry Brett, Louis P. Blundell, Sir George Fenwick, Charles W. Earle, C.M.G., and Leonard J. Berry.

The last life member (elected in 1957) is John M. Hardcastle, who had served on committees of the Association since 1934. He retired as general manager of the New Zealand Herald in March 1957.

NEWSPAPERS OF TODAY

OF the 95 newspapers now being published in New Zealand 42 are daily, 12 tri-weekly (t), 14 bi-weekly (b), and 27 weekly (w). In the list which follows all are daily unless otherwise indicated.

The dates of first publication are given where available.

Taranaki Herald 4 August 1852

Wanganui Chronicle 18 September 1856

Taranaki Daily News 14 May 1857

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune (as Hawke's

Bay Herald) 24 September 1857

Southland News 18 February 1861

The Press (Christchurch) 25 May 1861

Otago Daily Times 15 November 1861

Southland Times 12 November 1862

Evening Star (Dunedin) 1 May 1863

New Zealand Herald (Auckland) 13 November 1863

Weekly News 28 November 1863

(w)

Bruce Herald (Milton) 14 April 1864

(b)

Timaru Herald 11 June 1864

Evening Post (Wellington) 8 February 1865

Grey River Argus 14 November 1865

Nelson Evening Mail 5 March 1866

Greymouth Evening Star 18 March 1866

Marlborough Express 21 April 1866

Wanganui Herald 4 June 1867

Christchurch Star-Sun (as Star) 14 May 1868

Thames Star (as Evening Mail) 1869

Auckland Star 8 January 1870

Daily Telegraph (Napier) 1 February 1871

Waikato Times 2 May 1872

Westport News September 1872

Bay of Plenty Times 4 September 1872

New Zealand Tablet 1872

(w)

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NEWSPAPERS OF TODAY

Gisborne Herald (as Poverty Bay

Herald) 5 January 1874

Clutha Leader 9 July 1874 (t)

Inangahua (and Murchison) Times 1875 (w)

Manawatu Times (Palmerston North) 23 October 1875

Oamaru Mail 22 April 1876

Akaroa Mail 21 July 1876 (b)

Tapanui Courier 29 November 1876 (w)

Northern Advocate (Whangarei) 6 June 1877

Mataura Ensign (Gore) 10 May 1878

Foxton Herald (as Manawatu Herald) 28 August 1878 (w)

Waipawa Mail 14 September 1878 (wj

Wairarapa Times-Age (as Wairarapa

Daily) 4 November 1878

Ashburton Guardian September 1879

Hawera Star 10 April 1880

Ellesmere Guardian July 1880 (b)

Manawatu Standard 29 November 1880

Wairarapa News (as Observer) 1880 (w)

Kaikoura Star 1880 (b)

Hokitika Guardian 1881

TeArohaNews 9 June 1883(b)

War Cry 16 June 1883 (w)

Rotorua Post (as Hot Lakes Chronicle) June 1885

Petone Chronicle (as Hutt and Petone

Chronicle) August 1887 (w)

Hauraki Plains Gazette (as Ohinemuri

Gazette) 31 December 1891 (t)

The Chronicle (Levin) (as Manawatu Farmer) 1893

Outlook (Dunedin) 3 February 1894 (w)

Eltham Argus December 1897 (t)

Waimate Advertiser 28 May 1898

N.Z. Free Lance 7 July 1900 (w)

Rodney and Otamatea Times 3 April 1901 (w)

Raglan County Chronicle 1903 (w)

Taihape Times (as Taihape News) 1904 (t)

Northland Age (Kaitaia) 18 August 1904 (t)

Martinborough Star 4 October 1904 (t)

Waikato Independent (Cambridge) 15 November 1904 (t)

North Auckland Times (Dargaville) December 1904

N.Z. Truth 24 June 1905 (w)

Central Hawke's Bay Press (as

Waipukurau Press) 29 December 1905

Taumarunui Press 14 September 1906

King Country Chronicle 6 November 1906 (b)

NEWSPAPERS OF TODAY

300

Bay of Plenty Beacon (as Whakatane

County Press) January 1907 (t)

The Dominion 26 September 1907

Dannevirke Evening News 16 October 1909

Huntly Press 27 May 1910 (w)

Standard (as Maoriland Worker) September 1910 (w)

Te Awamutu Courier (as Waipa Post) 18 April 1911 (t)

Morrinsville Star 9 May 1911 (b)

Te Puke Times 6 February 1912 (b)

Franklin Times 8 March 1912 (t)

Otorohanga Times August 1912 (w)

Waiuku News (as Waiuku Advocate) 9 June 1915 (b)

Zealandia (as the Month) 13 July 1918 (w)

Northern News (Kaikohe) 16 July 1919 (b)

Wairoa Star 23 January 1922 (t)

Putaruru Press 1923 (w)

Te Rau Weekly Press 4 October 1924 (w)

North Canterbury Gazette (as North

Canterbury News, Rangiora) 1924 (b)

Hutt News 1 April 1927 (w)

Coromandel Gazette 1931 (w)

Matamata County Mail (as Sports Review) 1 June 1934 (wj

Opotiki News February 1938 (b)

Hokianga Herald 20 October 1938 (w)

Upper Hutt Leader 6 January 1939 (w)

Feilding Express January 1940 (w)

Rodney and Otamatea Courier 7 April 1948 (w)

Central Otago News 1 June 1948

Howick Post 1953 (w)

Ribbon 1954 (w)

Waihi Gazette 21 June 1956 (w)

SOURCES

The main source used in the compilation of this history is the actual files of the publications held by libraries in New Zealand and abroad. The extent and location of these files as at 1938 are recorded in the Union Catalogue of Newspapers published by the General Assembly Library.

Official sources include primarily the registrations under the Printers and Newspapers Registration Act 1868. Such of these as survive are in the custody of the registrars of the Supreme Court throughout the Dominion.

In the archives of the Colonial Secretary’s Department (now Internal Affairs) are recorded the preparation of returns to Parliament of expenditure on advertising, printing electoral rolls and so forth.

The Post and Telegraph Department is responsible for listing the newspapers registered for transmission by post. Until 1913 these lists were printed in the Official Yearbook. Since that date the Department has published them as separate publications. Other useful returns are in printed Parliamentary papers, notably in 1872, 1899, 1907, 1908, 1910.

Secondary Sources

Amongst the more useful printed sources are: Claridge, J. H.: Seventy-five years in New Zealand, midst

pakeha and Maori, Wanganui, 1938

Cyclopedia of New Zealand, 6 vols., 1897-1908

Fenwick, Sir G.: The United Press Association: Foundation

and Early History, Dunedin, 1929.

Heaton, J. H.: Australian Dictionary of Dates and Men of the Time . . . 1542-1879.

Hocken, T. M.: A Bibliography of the Literature relating to New Zealand, Wellington, 1909.

Hocken, T. M.: Beginnings of New Zealand Literature, pt. ii English Section (Trans. N.Z. Inst., v. 34, 99-114).

Lusty, W. D.; List of New Zealand Newspapers, Whitcombe and Tombs New Zealand Diary, 1892.

301

302

SOURCES

Mackay, R. A. (Ed); A History of Printing in New Zealand 1830-1940, Wellington 1940.

Main, G. M.: The Newspaper Press of New Zealand, Auckland, 1890.

Meiklejohn, G. M.: Early Conflicts of Press and Government: Story of the First New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 1953.

Newspaper Proprietors Association of N.Z.: A Guide to the New Zealand Market, Wellington, 1956.

Paul, J. T.: The Newspaper Press of Otago and Southland, Dunedin, 1924.

Scholefield, G. H.: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Wellington, 1939-40.

Scholefield, G. H.: A Union Catalogue of Newspapers preserved in public libraries, etc., Wellington, 1938.

Scholefield, G. H.; Who’s Who in New Zealand, edns. 1 to 5, Wellington, 1908-51.

Stewart, G. V. and T. S. Jones: Yearbook of New Zealand, 1885, 1886-87.

Thomson, A. S.: The Story of New Zealand, London 1859.

Tercentenary Handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers . . . The Times, London, 1920.

Wakelin, R.: History and Politics, leaves from the writings of a New Zealand Journalist, 1851-77, Wellington, 1877.

Williams, F.: Dangerous Estate: The anatomy of Newspapers. London 1957.

Williams, H. W.: A Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900, Wellington, 1924.

Wimble’s Reminder, quarterly trade journal (containing articles by T. L. Mills, New Zealand correspondent).

INDEX

Ablett, L. A., 139

Acheson, R. J., 65

Adams, R. N., 174

Age (Dunedin), 182

A’Hearne, J. C. F., 38, 45, 51

Akaroa Mail, 230-1

Akitio Midget, 67

Albertland Gazette, 99

Alderton, G. E., 100

Alexander, R., 110, 136, 150, 257 , W. F., 40, 179, 234

Alexandra Herald, 199

Algie, D. G. and J. S., 192-3

Allen, G. H., 0., W. D. and W. R. 160-4

Allen, G. T. and Mrs Mabel, 53, 68

Allsworth, E. G., 54, 134, 136

Anderson, G. J., 195

Anderson, H., 28, 32, 37, 47

Anglo-Maori Warder, 258

Anti-Chinaman, 40

Anzac, 103

Apted, W. F., 251

Aratapu Gazette, 103

Arnot, A. K., 61

Arnott, J., 145

Arrow Advocate, 202

Arrow Observer, 202

Ashburton Daily News, 233

Guardian, 231-3

Herald, 231

Mail, 231-2

Standard, 233

Ashcroft, J., 175

Asher, J. P., 98, 121

Ashford, R. H., 44

Atack, W. H., 15, 216

Atkin, W., 251, 253, 257

Atkinson, A. S., 131

Atkinson, H. W., 124, 126, 155

Auckland and Thames Leader, 94

Chronicle, 73-6

Daily News, 94

Free Press, 94

■ Independent (1859), 82

Labour News, 96

Standard, 74

Star, 87

Times, 74

— Weekly News, 79, 86

Weekly News and Farmers Gazette, 82, 86

Weekly Register, 81 Aucklander, 82

Australasian Union Shipping Gazette, 185

Avery, T., 133

Avondale News, 97

Bagnall, C. L., 104

Bailey, G., 197

Bain, J. W., 203, 205

Baldwin, W., 34-5, 176

Ball, J., 49

Ballance, J., 35, 49-50, 56, 58, 135

Bambridge, J., 235, 237

Bannehr, T. H., 159, 237

Bannerman, J. W. H., 207

Barker, H. H., 153-4

Barry, W. J., 201

Barton, G. 8.. 174

Bateson, C. H., 43

Bathgate, A., 180-1

Bathgate. J.. 173. 181-3

Bay of Islands Advocate, 70

Luminary, 101-2

Observer, 71

Times, 102

Bay of Plenty Beacon, 110

Press, 110

Times, 107-9

303

INDEX

304

Beacon (Dunedin), 184 Beauchamp, A., 162

Beck, J., 180

Beckett, C. G., E. W. and G, 18, 52, 65, 100, 104, 110, 117, 137, 150

Belfield, H., 234

Bell, A., 102

, Sir F. D., 8, 29, 157

, G, 169, 178

, H. G., 40, 85

, R., and R. 8., 93, 214, 231, 233-4, 236

Bennett, Bishop F. A., 259

Bennett, Dr J. B., 7, 81

Bennington, N. J., 45, 66

Berndtson, G. R., 208-9

Berry, J. B., 100-2, 154

, L. J., and T., 220, 262, 264

, W., 84, 94

Billens, R. H., 55, 59

Birch, J., 212

, T., 197

Black, A., 66, 139-40

Blomfield, W., 42, 92, 144, 217

Blue Jacket Examiner, 83

Bluff Press, 207

Blundell, F., 159-60; , H., 7, 30-2, 164; , H., junr., 31-2; , J., 31; , L. P., 31-2, 261, 264.

Bodell, J., 108

Bodle, F. H., 93, 114, 120

Bond, G., 55

, J. S., 118, 121

, R. P. 8., 139

, W. T., 159

Boulton, V. G., 121

Boundy, J. H., 161, 163

Bowen, Sir C. C., 34, 213, 219

Bracken, T., 180, 260

Bradshaw, J. B. B., 201

Braithwaite, J,, 180

Brame, J., 94

Bratska Sloga, 96

Brennan, A. J. and M. J., 137

Brett, Sir H., 13, 87, 99, 114, 117, 144, 182, 215, 264

Briggs', C. E., 220, 223

Bright, T. L., 204, 243

Brighton Standard, 226

Times, 254

Brightwater Independent Chronicle, 160

Bristed, A. H., 221

Brittan, J., 218-9.

Brodie, G., 200

Brown, C., 130, 132

, E. J., and J., 63-5

, G. P., 60

, J. C, 198

, R., 130-1

, S. N., 182-3, 201, 202

, W., 4, 76

Browne, J. S., 84, 116, 153, 242-4, 245, 250

Bruce, Rev. D., 92, 107

Bruce Herald, 190-1

lndependent, 191

Standard (1869), 191

Standard (1877), 191

Brunner News, 250

Buckley, Sir P. A., 35, 250

Budget (New Plymouth) and

Taranaki Herald, 131, 133 Buick, T. L., 55, 150-1

Bull, E. and J., 24-30

Bull, J. W., 154

Buffer Advertiser, 253

Miner, 253

News, 252

Post, 257

Times, 252

Bulletin (Invercargill), 206

Burn, D., 77, 81, 83, 258

Burns, A. M., 164, 220-1

Burns, Andrew, 44, 164, 193, 197-8, 206, 208

Busby, J., 82

Bush Advocate, 149

Butler, S., 8, 219

Byrne, F. M., 140, 198

Cambridge Gazette, 121

News, 119, 120-1

Camp Courier, 45

Campbell, D„ 168, 173, 174-5

Campbell, Sir J. L., 76

Campbell, W. D,, 234, 236

305

INDEX

Canning, F. S., 192, 194

Canterbury Shipping Gazette, 226

Standard, 213, 218

Times, 213, 216-7

Capper, G., 52

Card, A. T., 162

Cargill, W. C, 64, 97, 122, 140, 258

Carleton, H., 7, 77, 258

Carlile, W. W.,'142', 152

Carncross, A., 145

Carncross, Sir W. C. F., 35, 138, 189-90, 238

Carpenter, R. W., 67, 139, 149

Carrick, H., 151, 193-5

, R. 0., 7, 65, 189, 192, 196, 197, 201, 207

Carson, Hon. G., 81

Cassidy, P. S., 35

Catchpool, E., 27

Caygill, J„ 223-4

Central Districts Press, 55

Hawke's Bay Press, 149

Hawke's Bay Review, 149

Otago News, 199-201

Chain newspapers, 17-18, 54, 56-7, 122-3, 125, 138, 151, 190-4, 208, 237

Chappell, Rev. A. 8., 109

Charleston Argus, 253

Herald, 253

— News, 252-3

Chatwin, E. J., 44

Cheviot News, 230

Christchurch Guardian, 217-8

Times, 215

Christie, John, 139, 186, 188, 233

Church, J., 191

Clapperton, F. E., 178

Claridge, C. J., 105, 125

Claridge, J. H., 18, 52-3, 66, 68, 96, 98, 115, 122, 124-5, 137-8, 149

Clarion and Eketahuna Echo, 68

Clark, A. 8., 165

Clarke, F. A., 215

Clavis,' W. A.', 115, 120

Clayton, J. H„ 18, 43, 47, 108, 124, 134, 136-7, 140, 145, 149, 164, 178, 182, 223, 231

Cleary, Bishop H. W., 260

Clifford, (Sir) C., 27

Clutha County Gazette, 193

Free Press, 192

Leader, 191-2

Telegraph, 191

Times, 190, 192, 194

Codlin, G. C., 85

Cohen, M., 177, 179

Collie, W., 162

Collins, E. G., 159

Collins, W., 129

Colonist (Nelson) 158-9

Commonwealth Press Union, 264

Connell, J. A., 147, 155, 160, 164, 236, 249

Connelly, M., 42

Cook, W. T. and E. A., 105

Coombe, L, 57, 149

Cooper, Sir T., 99

Coppock, T. S., 93, 94, 116

Corbett, W., 73

Corlett, C. F., 112, 220, 223

Coromandel and Mercury Bay

Gazette, 116

Argus, 116

County News, 116-7

Mail, 116

News (1874), 116

News and Peninsula

Gazette (1887), 116

Sun, 117

Couriers, Ltd., 122

Coward, G., 161

Craig, S. R., 125-6

Craig, W., 126, 203, 205

Crawford, H. W., 101

Crawford, P. A., 108-9, 111

Crebbin, R., 155

Creighton, R. J., 34, 78, 84, 86, 94, 176

Crisp, P., 95, 226

'-, T., 153

Critic (Wellington). 43

Crompton, W. M„ 129

Cromwell Argus, 200-1

Guardian, 201

Times, 201

Cronin, L. J., 249

Cuming, C. E., 67

Cuming, R. C. W., 238, 246

Curie, D., 31, 37, 52, 149, 164, 243-4, 246

Cutten, W. H., 168, 170

Daily Advertiser, (Dunedin), 180

Advertiser (Wellington), 30

News (Dunedin), 183

Telegraph (Dunedin), 171, 179

Telegraph (Napier), 143-5

Telegraph (Wellington), 36

Dannevirke Advocate, 149-50

Evening News, 149

Morning Press, 149

Dargaville News, 105

Darley, E. L., R. L. and W. A., 67, 116

Davis, C. 0., 258

Davy, A. E., 147

Dawes, J. S., 244-5

Dawson, F. J., 43

Day Star, 178

De Bourbel, H. H., 107, 226

de la Perrelle, P. A., 202, 210

de Lautour, C. A., 198

Denniston, T., 205

Despatch Thames and Ohinemuri Observer, 113

D'Esterre, E., 86

Dick, J., 171, 180, 185

Dinwiddie, P., 142, 152

Dispatch (Hokitika 1866), 241, 243

Dixon, G. H., 35, 43, 92

Doga, 96

Dolamore, A., and J. H., 194-5, 224

Dombrain, A. J., 74

Domett, A., 8, 141, 157

Dominion, 38-40

Donchaisse, J., 96, 106

Donne, G., 162, 179

Donnelly, 1., 235

Downes, 205, 207

Drew, H. T. 8., 55

Drumm, J., 182

306

Dufaur, F., 152-3

Duff, 0., 219, 226, 229, 234 Duigan, J., 47-51

Dungan, J. 8., 55, 187-8

Dunne, P. J., 196, 199, 201, 244 Dunlop, T. J. V., 102

Dunshea, 1., 97

Dunstan News, and Dunstan

Times, 186, 199-200

Fames, R. J., 97, 101, 139

Earle, C. W., 38-40, 221, 226, 262-4

Earle, F. J., 43, 160

East. C., 101, 135, 201, 236 Eastbourne Sun, 47

Easton, W., 175

East Coast Guardian, 109-10

Mail, 147

News, 155

Press, 155

Watch, 155

Echo (Auckland), 89, 91, 118

(Carterton), 66

(Dunedin), 180

(Christchurch, 1880 and 1893), 224

(Wellington), 38

Edgcumbe, E. M., 107-8, 118

Edgecumbe, G., 118, 120

Edwards, E., 114, 115

Egmont Courier, 137

Post, 136

Settler, 136

Star, 139

Eketahuna and Pahiatua Mail, 64, 68

Eketahuna Express, 68

Star, 68

Eklund, A., 230

Ellesmere Advertiser, 227

Chronicle, 227

■ Guardian, 227

Elliott, C. and J., 156

Ellis, A. W., 115

Ellis, W. A., 52, 65, 103

Ellison, H., 147-8

Eltham Argus, 137

Guardian, 137

Evans, Dr G. S., 8

INDEX

307

INDEX

Evening Argus, 36-7

Federated Union Shipping Gazette, 185

Bell, 89, 92

Chronicle, 37

Feilding Express, 53

Echo, 231

Guardian, 52

Star, 52 '

Herald (Dunedin), 183

Herald (Wanganui), 50

Feldwick, H. and J., 203-4

lndependent (Dunedin), 178

Fenwick, Sir G., 89, 169, 174, 182 197, 200-1, 261, 264

Mail (Christchurch), 215, 222

Fenwick, W,, 169, 174, 176, 187-8, 201

Mail (Oamaru), 187-8

Ferguson, A., 193, 198

Mail (Timaru), 235

Ferrar, W. T., 87, 178

News (Ashburton), 231

Field, A. N., 40

News (Auckland), 87-8, 93

Fisher A. A. and J., 209

FitzGerald, G. G., 11, 34, 49 205, 212, 218, 234

News (Christchurch), 223

News (Dunedin, 1862 and

FitzGerald, J. E., 2, 29, 257

1867), 177, (1876) 182 News (Gisborne), 154

Fleming, D. T. and J. S., 192

Forbury News, 184

Post (Christchurch), 222

Forsaith, T. S., 77, 81, 170

Post (Wellington), 30-2

Fox, E. 8., 34, 174

Fox, Sir W., 8, 157'

Press, 37

Star (Auckland), 87

Foxton Herald, 58

Star (Blenheim), 164

Telegraph, 58

Star (Dunedin), 7, 177-8

Franklin Times, 97

Star (Hokitika), 242-4

Frankton Record, 120

Telegraph (Timaru), 235

Fraser, C., 169

Telegraph (Wellington), 36

Fraser, J. G., 195

Fraser, Rt. Hon. P., 249

Telephone, 92

Fraser, W., 106-7, 112

Tribune, 182

Fraser, W. W., 223-4

Free Press, 91

Evison, J. S., 43, 223

Examiner (Auckland), 82

Freeman (Greymouth), 250

Freeth, P. C. and P. H. N., 35, 44, 55, 186, 216, 219

Eyton, R. H„ 78, 131, 159, 216-7, 231

Fryer, L., 54, 125

Furness, S. J., and R. P.. 163-4, 231

Fache, G., 200 1T,..,*.. 1 C<

Facts, 154

Fussell, J. C. and R. S., 98

Fail, E. H., 104

Fairlie Standard, (or Star?), 237

Galbraith, J. and R. S., 107-9, 114, 117

Falwasser, H., 74-5

Farjeon, B. L„ 173, 176

Galloway, W., 208

Farmers' Advocate, 52

Galvin, P., 137-8. 153

Union Advocate, 52 Farnall, H. W., 95

Gardiner, T., 37

Gardner, D., 11l

Fawcett, J. G., 62, 65

Geddis. J. M., T. M. and W. J., 35, 42-3, 92-3, 117. 144, 217

Featherston, Dr I. E., 28

Featherston Chronicle. 65

George, A. A., 145, 152, 193

lndependent, 66

George, S. T., 35

INDEX

308

Geraldine Advocate, 237

Grigg, E. H., 61, 142, 152

County Chronicle, 234-5

Grinling, A. H., 260

Guardian, 237

Guardian (Dunedin), 178

Mail, 237

(Kaitaia), 103

Gifford, F., 31-2

Guerin, W. J., 134

Gifford, W. H., 35. 108

Gumdiggers Weekly, 100 Guthrie, J. S., 219-20

Giles, J., 157

Gill, A. H,, 189

Guy, E. G., 11l

Gillies, J. L., 190

Gwynne, R. J., 119

Gillon, E. T., 12, 15, 30, 32, 35-6,

Gyles, A., 40

173, 191

Gilmour, R. and R, J., 203-6

Racket, R. M., 85, 86

Gisborne Courier, 122

Haggen, E. A.. 66, 107-8, 151

Herald, 152-4

Hall, J. H., 39, 139, 226

Photo News 229

Ham, J., 171, 187, 205

Standard and Cook

Hamerton, C. E. H. and T. E., 137, 140

County Gazette, 154

Hamill, J. E., 54, 98, 125

Star, 154

Times, 154

Hamilton Courier, 122

Weekly Tribune, 155

News, 120

Gladstone Guardian, 237

Hanby, O. W., 160

Glas Ishne, 96 Glen, Esther, 220

Handley. T. 8., 114, 151, 208

Hanson, Sir R. D., 8, 27 Hardcastle, J. M., 85, 264

Globe (Christchurch), 216, 222 (Dunedin), 182-3

Harding, T. B. and R. C„ 143

Godby, A., 195

Harnett, J., 112, 162, 203

Golden Age, 115

Harris, J. C., 34-5, 190, 205

Golden Bay Argus, 160

Harris, R. P., 239

News, 160-1

Harrison, W. H., 29, 34, 173, 248, 250

Times, 160-1

Goldfields Advocate, 115

Hastings Standard, 145-6 Star, 145

Goldthorpe, H. L., 57, 208

Gore Standard, 195-6

Hauraki Plains Gazette, 116

Gorst, Sir J., 81, 121, 259

Tribune, 115

Gothard, W., 251

Havelock Mail, 31, 165

Graham, A,, 152

Hawera Morning Post, 139

Graham, D. M., 63

Star, 138

Graham, H., 167

Times, 139

Hawke’s Bay Daily Mail, 147

Grainger, J., 106, 121

Grant, C. L., 191

Herald, 141-3

Herald-Tribune, 142, 145-7

, J., 151, 190, 194

Green, F. W., 96, 124

Times, 143

, W. J., 41, 249

Tribune, 142, 146-7

Greenslade, H. J., 113, 115, 119

Weekly Courier, 142

Grey River Argus, 248-9 Grey Valley Times, 251

Weekly Times, 143

Hawkins, W. H., 67

Greymouth Evening Star, 250

Hay, J., 28

Griffin, H. L., 190

Hay, P., 193

Grigg, A,, 41

Hayward, A. K., 100, 125

Grigg, C, 61

Helensville Times, 105

309

INDEX

Hemingway, E. F., 140

Hutchinson, W. H., 98

Henderson, A. G., 214-6

Hutchison, W., G. and Sir J., 36, 43, 48, 86, 159, 175, 183, 260

Henningham, G. A. and W. J., 177, 180, 289

Hutt, J. L. A., 101

Henry, R., 107-9, 111, 114 Hertslet, H. C., 198

Hutt and Petone Chronicle, 44 Hutt News, 45

Hickey, T. S., 137, 140 Hill, H. R., 42

Valley Independent, 44

Valley Weekly News and Advertiser, 44

Hinkley, T. M., 15

i iiiirwiv v , i . .11,, i -J Hoben, E. D., 35, 55

Hyde, F., 101, 111, 208

Hocken, Dr T. M., 175

Hutton-Potts, R. M., 204

Hodge, C. W., 135, 136, 216

Hogg, A. W.,'64, 182, 231-2

Illustrated New Zealand Herald, 220

, R., 41, 43

Hokianga County Times, 106

Illustrated Press, 220 Ilott, J., 114, 115 Inangahua Herald, 255-6

Herald, 106

Star, 106

Times, 105

Times, 255-6

Hokioi e Rere Atu na, 258-9

and Murchison Times, 257

Hokitika Advertiser, 243

Independent (Christchurch), 222 Inglewood Record, 136

Chronicle, 247

Daily News, 243-4

Times, 137

Guardian and Star, 244-5

Innes, J. 8., 138

Holcroft, M. H., 206

Invercargill Times, 204

Holland, H. E.. 41, 249

Ivess, J., 17, 53-4, 59, 64, 67, 115, 120, 135-6, 137-9, 140, 208, 227, 230-3, 235, 237, 246, 250, 254, 256

Holloway, H., 118-9

Holms, A. C., 62, 149

Hopcraft, J., 113

Hornblow, J. K. and R. E., 58, 68, 101, 104-5, 106

Izett, J., 216

Hornsby, J. T. M„ 44, 65, 145, 148, 202, 226

Jackson Bay Chronicle, 247

Horowhenua Chronicle, 60

Jacobson, H. C. F., 59, 230-1

County Record, 60

Jago, J. W., 178

Review, 60

James, C. E., 120, 193

Times, 58

, E. A., 233

Horsburgh, J., 185

Jenkins, H. C., 49

Horton, A. G., 79, 83, 112, 233; Sir H., 85, 261; R. D., 85, 262

Jenkinson, S. H., 35, 192

Jennings, W. T., 125, 182

Hosking, J., 81, 82

Jewell, C. L„ 93

Hot Lakes Chronicle, 111

Johnson, H. J., 184

Howard, E. J., 249

Johnson, 0., 67

Howick District News (Howick Post), 97

Johnson, S., 99, 148, 163

Jones, E. J. A., 188, 204

Huie, E. C, 42, 121, 147, 224

■, F. A., 104

Humphries, F., 153, 187

, G. and W. J., 91, 118, 145, 182, 187-8, 204, 222

Humphries, G., 15

Hunterville Express, 53

Joplin, R. C., 75

Huntly Press, 98

Joyce, J. P., 204-5

Hursthouse, C. F., 127

Kahiti o Nui Tireni, 259

INDEX

310

Kaiapoi Record, 228-9

Kaikoura Herald, 165

Star, 165, 230

Sun, 165

Kaipara Advertiser, 105

and Waitemata Echo, 105

Times, 105

Kaitangata News, 191

Kamo and Hikurangi Gazette, 100

Kamo Echo, 100

Kaponga Courier, 137

Mail, 137

Karamea Chronicle, 254

Karere Maori, 258-9

Karere o Niu Tireni, 72, 258

Karori and Northland Mail, 44

Kawhia Settler, 123-4

Keane, M. C, 40, 219

Keay, W., 42, 184, 186, 193, 210

Kelly, J. L., 35, 92-3, 115, 233

Kenworthy, J., 131, 133

Kerr, E. G., 234-5

Kerr, J., 248

Kerr, J. and W., 44-5

Kerridge, R. J., 155

Kerslake, H. G., 55, 59

Kidd, R., 81, 116

Kilgour, F. H., 250

Kimbolton Times, 53

King, H. F. S., 150

rvmg, 11. i . j., i-/\j King, J. W., 133, 195

King, W. A., 134

King Country Chronicle, 119, 125

Kirkbride, J. L., 38, 51, 55

Kitchen, J., 74-6

Kitchen, W. F., 184, 223

Kittson, P., 254

Klein, J. P., 242-3

Knowles, E. W., 143

Knowles, J., 28

Ko Aotearoa, 258

Kopuru Bell, 103

Korimako, 259

Kumara Mail, 250

Times, 245, 251

Kunst, P., 77

Kupu Whakamarama, 259

Labour Advocate, 95

Lake County Press, 202

Lake Wakatip Mail, 201-2

Laloli, W. A., 199

Lambert, T., 148

Lambert, W., 170-71

Land and Sea, 185

Lane, A. 8., 216

Lane, W„ 85

Langbridge, W. 8., 30, 100, 107

Lantern, 246

La Roche, A. W. C, 105, 109 Lawrence, A. E., 186, 235, 245

Leader (Auckland), 95

(Carterton), 65

(Dunedin), 171, 179

(Hokitika), 241-5

Leary, J. P., 55

Lemon, M., 55

Levin and Manukau Express, 59

Levin Chronicle, 60

Times, 60

Levy, I. M., 41

Leys, T. W., 88-90, 144 Leys, Sir W. C„ 89-90

List, T. C., 34, 44, 134-5, 139

Liston, Bishop J. M., 260

Little ’Un, 108

Logan, R. G. A. and R. J., 228-30, 239

London, G. T., 38, 44

Loney, G. H., 235

Lord, R. H., 144

Loughnan, R. A., 35, 213, 217, 260

Low, D., 217

Lucas, K. G., R., and R. S., 159-60

Luckie, D. M., 32. 79, 84, 159

Lukin, G., 32

Luminary, 101-2

Lumsden Chronicle, 210

Lusty, W. D., 256

Lye, J., 169, 174

Lyell Argus, 256

■, Times, 256

Lyes, H., 56, 116, 135, 139

Lyon, W,, 27

Lyon, W. J., 207-8

Lyttelton Chronicle, 226

Times, 2, 211-5

N 19

311

INDEX

Macandrew, 1., 170

Manning, A. E., 119

McCarthy, F. R., 29, 248

J., 245

McCracken, T., 62, 201

Mantell, W. B. D., 28

McCullough, F. E. and W., 92, 112-3

Manuhiri Tuarangi, 258

Manukau Advertiser, 96

McCurdy, A. J., 44

Advocate, 96

McDougall, J. W., 144, 148

and Franklin Mail, 96

McEwen, S. V., 221

Examiner, 96

Macfarlane, J. S., 91, 152

Gazette, 96-7

McGlashan, J., 167

County Chronicle, 96-7

Mackay, J., 174, 176, 181, 201

— News, 96-7

Mackay, Joseph, 17, 18, 190, 192, 194, 197

Times, 96

Manukura, 259

Maori Messenger, 258-9

Mackay, J. A., 155

McKeague, J., 233

Record, 259

McKellop, J., 59, 67

Maoriland Worker, 41 Marcroft, C. H., 124, 137 Marlborough Express, 162-4

McKenzie, F., 65, 95

McKenzie, Francis, 100, 101-3, 105, 117

Herald, 164

■ News, 162, 164

McKenzie, J., 134

Mackenzie, M. J. S., 198-9 McKenzie, T. W., 25, 28, 33

Press, 161, 164

Times, 161, 164

Mackenzie County Chronicle, 237

Weekly News, 163

Marris, C. A., 35, 221, 226

McLagan, A., 42

McLean, C. L., 159

Marsden Free Press, 100

McMinn, A., 51, 56, 151

Times, 100

McNicol, A., 151

Marsh, W. J., 193, 202, 209-10

Macpherson, E. G., 195, 210

Marten, C. R., 32, 34, 206

Mcßobie, N., 35, 67, 117

Martin, J., 30, 50

Martin, R., 205

Madsen, H. C., 162

Madsen, N., 135

Martin, Dr S. M., 73, 76-8

Mahony, J., W. and W. junr., 36, 193, 227-8.

Martinborough Star, 66

Marton Mercury, 52

Main, G. M., 80

Mason, W., 72

Maingay, J. T., 95, 115

Matakaoa Messenger, 155 Matamata County Mail, 123

Major, A. C., 64

Malvern Independent, 227

Record, 122-3

Manawatu Farmer, 59

Review, 123

Herald, 58

Mataura Ensign, 190, 194-5 Matiere Gazette, 125

Press, 57

Standard, 56

Matheson, E., 209

Times, 55-6

Matthews, J. A., 7, 189, 197 200-1, 207

Weekly, Oroua and

Rangitikei Record, 57

Michael, W. A., 64

Weekly Times, 56

Michell, F. S., 66

Mander, F., 100

Millar, J. A., 185

Mangakino Chronicle, 123

Millington, T. W., 161, 164

Mangaweka Mail, 54

Mills, C. H., 165

Settler, 54

Mills, T. L., 52, 234

Mangonui County Times, 102

Millward, G.. 114, 118

INDEX

312

Milton Mirror, 191

Mirfin, C„ 254-5

Mitchell, C. F., 81, 115

Mitchell, J., 36, 72, 187-8

Moffett, J., 175

Molyneux Mail, 200

Monro, Sir D., 8, 157

Month, 260

Montrose, C. 0., 118, 120

Moody, J. G., 178

Moore, J., 72-3, 82

Moorhouse, W. S., 109, 148

Moran, Dr P., 260

Morning Advertiser (Auckland), 94

Advertiser (Nelson), 160

Herald (Dunedin), 174, 181-2

News (Auckland), 93

Press (Whangarei), 100

Star (Dunedin), 178

Dim i/o Morrinsville Herald, 122

Star, 122

Morrison, T., 142

Morton, W., 96

Moss, F. J., 179

Motueka Herald, 161

Star, 161

Star-Times, 161

Mount Benger Mail, 199

Mount Ida Chronicle, 198-9

Mount News, 109

Movie Gazette, 121

Muir, A. R. and A. L., 153

Muir, E. E., 67

Muir, H. E., 184, 235

Mulgan, E. K., 107

Munro, (Sir) L. K., 85

Munro, W. H., 39, 236

Munson, F. and J. L., 251, 253

Murchison Standard, 257

Murison, W. D,, 169, 172-3, 174

Napier Evening News, 145

Nash, N. H., 57, 149

Nash, Rt. Hon. W., 42

Nathan, F. L. J., 110, 155

Nation, W., W. C., C. C. and E.

J., 54, 58-9, 61, 138, 158, 237

Neale, R. G., 254

Nelson Advertiser, 156, 159

Daily Times, 158

Evening Mail, 159-60

Examiner, 156-8

lntelligence, 159

Spectator, 160

Star, 160

Times, 160

Weekly News, 160

Nenthorn Recorder, 189

Neo-Zelandais, 96

Neu-Seelandische Zeitung, 96

New Advertiser, 30

New Sun, 226

New Zealand Advertiser (Bay of Islands), 69

Advertiser (Wellington), 29

Celt, 245-6

■ Colonist, 27

Farmers Weekly, 91

Free Lance, 42, 91, 93

Gazette (Wellington), 1-2, 24-7

Government Gazette, (Bay of Islands), 70

Graphic, 86, 90-1

Herald, 7, 83-5

Herald and Auckland Gazette, 71

Junior, 215

Labour, 95

Ledger, 251

Mail, 33, 33-5, 40, 91

Observer, 92

Presbyterian, 260

Public Opinion, 181

Referee, 221

■ Spectator, 27-8, 127

Sporting Life, 221

Standard, 154

Sun, 174

Sunday News, 57

Times (1867), 30; (1874), 33-5, 40

Truth, 43

Woman's Weekly, 91

Worker, 41, 95

New Zealander (Auckland), 4, 7, 77, 79-81

313

INDEX

New Zealander (Wellington), 35-6

News Letter (Masterton), 62

News of the Day, 94

Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, 261-4

Newton Sun, 97

Newtown Advocate, 43

Ngaruawahia Advocate, 120

Nicholas, W. D., 116, 139

Nicholls, A. C, 103

Nicol, A. C, G. W. and J.R., 62, 66, 112, 162

Nicolson, H. M. J., 59

Niven, J. G., 228, 256

Nixon, H. W., 114, 119, 216 Noble, J., 255

Nokomai Herald, 196

Norrie, J., 196, 198

North Auckland Age, 102

Press, 100

Times, 104

North Canterbury Gazette, 229

lndependent, 228

News (Kaiapoi), 228

News (Rangiora 1875 and 1924), 228

Standard, 229

Times and Border Express, 230

North Otago Times, 186, 234

North Shore Times, 97

North Wairarapa Herald, 67

, News, 67

Northern Advertiser, 104

Advocate, 100

Chronicle, 100

Luminary, 101-2

Mail, 101

Mail Weekly, 101

News, 103

Wairoa Gazette, 103-4

Northland Age, 102-3

Gazette, 102-3

Times, 105

Tribune, 101

Northlander, 102

Nosworthy, W. H., 112, 135

Novatska Trublja, 96

Novi Suijet, 96

Oamaru Herald (1870), 187

Mail, 187-8

Time's, 186

O'Brien, J., 249

O'Conor, E. J., 252-3

O'Flynn, F. E., 248

Ohakune Times, 54

Times, Rangataua Advo-

cate and Waimarino Gazett, 54

Ohinemuri Gazette, 115

■ Observer, 115

Times, 115

Ohura Advocate, 125

Mail, 125

Valley Gazette, 125

Okarita Times, 246

On Guard, 103

Onehunga Independent, 97

Warden, 81, 96

Onslow Review and Advertiser, 43

Opotiki Herald, 109

Mail, 109

News, 110

Opunake Courier, 137

Times, 137

O'Regan, P. J., 255

Orepuki Advocate, 207-8

Miner, 208

Otago Central Leader, 199

Colonist, 170-1

Daily Mail, 179

Daily Times, 7, 11, 170,

Guardian, 174, 176-8

Liberal, 184

News, 2, 167-8

Witness, 2, 22, 168-9

Workman, 184

Otahuhu Dispatch, 96

News, 97

Post, 97

Recorder, 97

Otaki Mail, 59

Times, 59

Otautau Farmer, 209

Mail, 208

Standard, 208

Otorohanga Times, 126

Outlook, 260

Owaka News, 193, 207

Owen, C. E., 262

INDEX

314

Oxford and Gust Observer, 230 Observer, 230

Pahiatua Argus, 67

Era, 67 u~..„u en

Herald, 67

Star and Eketahuna Advertiser, 66-7

Paki o Matariki, 259

Palamontain, W. J., 62, 65

Palmerston and Waikouaiti Times, 189

, Weekly Times, 189

Pamment, G., 38

Papworth, D. S., 54, 60 Paraekaretu Express, 53

Parker, J., 32

Parkinson, W. A., 138-9

Parris, R., 129

Parsons, R. S. F., 29-30

Patara te Tuhi, 258

Patea and Waverley Press, 140

County Mail, 140

County Press, 140

Daily Mail, 140

Evening News, 140

Mail, 139-40

Patriot, 96

Paul, J. T., 169

, M. E. 190

Paull, R. J., 119

Payton, J., 61-2

Peacock, R. G. and W. R., 160

Pelorus Guardian, 165

News Bulletin, 165

Penn, F., 59, 121,

, W. J., 131

Penny Journal, 81

Post, 189

Pensioners Settlements Gazette, 96

Pennycook, W, S., 190, 192

People’s Journal, 184

Perrier, J. M„ 34, 37, 94, 113, 182, 190, 192, 194

Petre, H. W., 27

Petrie, J., 250

Petrie, J. T., 136, 246, 250

Pheney, R., 130-2

Philpott, Lieut., 75

Pihoihoi Mokemoke, 121, 258-9

Pile, G., 159

Pilling, T. and R., 198

Pioneer, 236

Piopio Post, 125

Pipiwharauroa, 259

Pirani, H. C, 142, 164, 246; D., 57, 121; F., 44, 52, 57; L. J., 52

Pleasant Point Mail, 237

Pollard, J. J. W., 206

Pollen, D., 8, 34, 81

Pollock. W., 155

Poison, (Sir) W. J., 223

Pongaroa Mail, 67

Midget, 67

Popotunoa Chronicle, 193

Port Chalmers Independent, 185

Watch and Shipping Gazette, 185

Port Lyttelton Herald, 227

Postage on newspapers, 8-9

Potts, W. J., 251, 255

Poverty Bay Herald, 152-4

lndependent, 154

Standard (1872), 152

Standard (1883), 152

Pownall, C. J., 55

Press (Christchurch), 2, 213, 218-20 t : inn

Junior, 220

Weekly Budget (Whangarei), 100

Press Association, 11-15, 22-3, 88-9

Price, R., 144

Pritchard, C. A., 220, 222

Province, 161

Public Opinion (Dunedin), 181

Puke ki Hikurangi, 259

Pukekohe and Waiuku Times, 97

Punch in Canterbury, 217

Purnell, C. W., 32, 47

Putaruru Press, 123

Pyke, R. A., 121, 190, 200

Pyke, V., 176

Quaife, Rev. 8., 69-71

Quin, W., 193 '

Rabone, S., 164

315

INDEX

Rae, C. J., 165, 217

Rag-planters, 16-19, 53-5

Raglan County Chronicle, 124

Rangiora Record, 228-9

Rangitikei Advocate, 51-2

Mail, 52

News, 52

Rathbone, A. S., 92, 107

Rationalist, 95

Recorder and North Canterbury

Observer, 229

Redfern, C., 227

Redman, F. T., 68, 140

Reed, G. M., 84, 87, 92, 169, 174, 176

Reefton Courier, 255-6

Guardian, 255-6

Reese, A. A., 115, 121

Reeves, W., 35, 213-4

Reeves, W. P., 35, 214, 217

Reid, A., 34, 159, 244

Reid, R. C, 34-5, 244, 250, 253

Renner, G. and A. W. 0., 67, 121, 140, 164-5, 194-5, 227

Revans, S., 1, 5, 24-7, 62

Reynolds, H. A., 181, 184, 205

Rhodes, R. and T. W„ 107, 111, 116

Ribbon, 97

Richards, W. E., 245, 251

Richardson, G. R., 156

, J., 82

W., 94

Richmond, Hon. J. C., 9, 157 Rigg, J-, 41

Riley, W., 227, 246

Riverton Times, 207-8

Roberts, J., 42

Robertson, C. E., 207, 209 Robinson, H. W., 169

Rockel. J. M., 62

Rodger, R. A., 193

Rodney and Otamatea Courier, 105

Times, 105 Roe, C., 29

Roe, E., 24, 26, 28, 29, 56 Roe, J., 30

Romayne, W. H., 95

Ross and Okarito Advocate, 246

Ross Guardian, 246

Mercury, 246

News, 246

Rossiter, J., 198-200

Rotorua Chronicle, 111

Morning Post, 111

Times, 111

Roydhouse, T. W., 105

Roydhouse, W. F. and R. W., 37, 62, 63, 65

Rush, C. S., 55, 104-5, 137-8

Russell, A. E., 192

Russell, G. W., 55, 58, 120, 217

Russell, J. R., 55, 58, 150-1

Sale, G. S., 219, 242

Sandford, E. H., 202

Sargent, A. F., A. K., and L. E., 239

Saturday Advertiser, 180

Night (New Plymouth), 131

Saunders, A., 8, 159

Saunders, S., 214, 217, 232

Savage, Rt. Hon.M. J., 42, 96

Saxton, D. F. C., 135

Scales, A., 86

Scanlan, A. 8., 132

Schnackenberg, E. H., 124

Scholefield, G. H,, 64, 190

Scoble, P. R., 39, 263

Scott, J. A., 260

Scott, W. 8., 109

Scoullar, J. G„ 184, 195

Searle, G. S., 34, 195, 206 Seffern, W. H. J„ 81, 131

Selig, P., 220-1, 261-4

Sentinel (Rangiora), 229

Shand, J. A., 113

Shannon Advocate, 60

News. 60

Shaw, W., 94, 112, 162, 203, 241-3

Sherrin, R. A. A., 36, 61, 95

Shortland, E., 258

Shortland Times, 112

Shrimpton, I. and J. 1., 211-2, 233

Simmons, Rev. F. C., 157, 159, 173

Skandia, 57

Skipper, J. H. A., 67, 105, 106

INDEX

316

Slack, E. A., 147, 154

Smallfield, G., 81, 203

Smart, A., 184

Smith, C. S., 178; S. D., 179, 263

, H. L., 101, 111

, J. J., 64

, J. M., 213, 215, 218

, M., 238-9

, S. E. G., 115, 118, 164

, T. H., 40

\ W. A., 180

, W. H., 51, 55

, Walter H., 45

, Wm. H., 222

Smithyman, F. C. R., 19, 53, 96, 114, 189, 191 , W. E., 95-6

Smyrk, E. P., 154, 256

Snow, H. L., 30, 115, 244, 259

South Auckland Courier, 97, 122

South Canterbury Farmers Weekly Gazette, 235

Times, 234

Weekly Review, 238

South Waikato News, 123

Southern Cross (Auckland), 4, 76-84

(lnvercargill), 206-7

(Wellington), 20, 42

Southern Free Press, 194-5 T ~—..~ 1 r\„:i.. A A,

League and Daily Advertiser, 180

Mercury, 169, 175-6

News, 203

Standard, 194-5

Southland News, 203

Times, 204-6

Southlander, 204

Southwell, C., 82

Sparks, T. W., 68

Spectator (Christchurch), 217

Speight, W. J., 112

Spooner, C. F„ 96, 114, 122

Sporting Review, 221

Spragg, S., 175

Stack, M. W., 197

Stafford, Sir E„ 29, 157

Stallworthy, A. J. and J., 103-5

Standard (Brunner), 250

(Cambridge), 121

Standard (Wellington), 41

and Featherston Advocate, 62

and North Canterbury Guardian, 229

Stanford, R. L., 182-3, 185

Star (Christchurch), 213, 215, 222, 225-6

(Napier), 143

Star of the Evening, 244

Star-Sun (Christchurch), 216, 224-6

Stark, D., 191

Stevens, H. E. and S. A., 199-200

Steward, Sir W. J., 186-7, 231-2, 238-9

Stewart, G. V., 107

, H., 115

Stock, D. C, 193

Stokes, H., 46

Stokes, R., 27-8

Stout, Sir R., 180-1, 192

Stowell, H. M., 139

Strachan, S., 253, 257

Stratford Courier, 122, 136

Evening Post, 136

Sullivan, D. G., 42

Sumner-Redcliffs Herald, 226

Sun (Auckland), 94-5, 225 u 10-7-7\ -)-)£

(Christchurch 1877), 226

(Christchurch 1895), 226

(Christchurch 1914), 223-6

(Wellington), 38

Swainson, W., 4, 74

Tablet, 260

Taieri Advocate, 189

Taihape and Mangaweka News, 54

Daily Times, 54-5

Post, 54

Takaka News, 160

Tapanui Courier, 193, 198

Taranaki Advertiser, 132

Central Press, 136

Herald, 2, 128-35

News, 2, 130-5

Weekly, 136

Tararua Newsnet, 60

Taumarunui Echo, 125

Press, 119, 124

317

INDEX

Taupo Times, 123

Tauranga Advertiser, 108

Argus, 106

■ Evening News, 107

Evening Star, 108

Guardian, 108

Herald, 109

Mail, 108

Record, 107

Telegraph, 107

Taylor, A. L., 161

-, T. D., 137, 165, 233

W., 162

Te Ao Hou, 259

Te Aroha and Ohinemuri Mail, 115

and Ohinemuri News, 114

Times and Waiorongomai Advocate, 114

and Waiorongomai Times, 114, 197

Gazette, 114

Mail, 114-5

■ News, 114-5

Miner and Thames Valley Gazette, 114

Weekly Mail, 114

Te Awamutu Courier, 122

Telegraph (Christchurch), 222-3

Telegraph agencies, 11-13

Telephone (Auckland), 92

(Gisborne), 154-5

Temperance Advocate, 95

Temperance Reformer, 95

Temuka Advocate, 238

Evening Standard, 238

Leader, 237-8

News, 237

— Record, 238

Times, 237

Te Puke Times, 111

Te Rau Weekly Press, 155

Terry, C, 72, 77, 81

Teviot Herald, 199

Thames Advertiser, 83, 112

Evening Mail, 113

Evening Star, 113

■ Guardian, 114

Star, 113

Thomas, W., 124

Thomson, H. C, 29, 37, 148, 153, 223, 255

Thomson, J. C, 208

Thomson, W. M., 57, 124

Thorn, J., 41-2

Thornton, C. R., 227

Timaru and Temuka Chronicle, 235

and Gladstone Gazette, 235

Evening Herald, 235

Evening Mail, 235

Herald, 233-4

Morning Post, 236 Times (Gisborne), 155

(Palmerston North), 56

and Thames Miners Advocate, 94, 112

Toa Takatini, 259

Tolaga Bay Times, 155

Tomahawk (Hokitika), 246

(Timaru), 235

Torrance, J. A., 180

Totara Chronicle, 246

Toy, W. H., 117

Trades and Labour Chronicle, 230

Tribe, G. H., 246

Tribune (Wellington), 36

Triggs, W. H., 219, 234

Trumpeter, 82

Truth (Christchurch), 223

Tuakau Argus, 97

and District Times, 98

Press, 98

Tuapeka Press (1866 and 1883), 197-8

Recorder (1865 and 1896), 197

Times, 197-8

Tuatapere Guardian, 207-8

Tucker, E., 159, 162, 254

Turner, H., 229

Twomey, J. M., 237

Twopeny, R. E. N., 175, 222

Tyrrell, J., 240, 247, 250-1, 253

Unwin, F„ 59

Upper Hutt Leader, 44

Times, 45

Weekly Review, 44

INDEX

318

Valentine, H. S., 196

Veel, J. V. C, 219, 242

Venables, G. W., H. and V., 97, 105, 119, 145, 149, 229

Vennell, C. W., 109, 121

Victoria Times, 27

Vile, A. H., 64, 68, 151, 160, 186

Vincent, W. E., 28

Vogel, Sir J., 11, 33, 37, 78, 169, 173-4

Voice of Labour, 95

von Sturmer, F. J., 83, 116

Waihi Chronicle, 117

Daily Telegraph, 116-7

Gazette, 116-7

Miner, 117

Times, 117

Waikaia Herald, 196

Waikato Advocate, 118, 121

Argus, 118

Gazette, 120

lndependent, 121

Mail, 120

News, 118

Times, 118, 121

Waikouaiti Advertiser, 188

Herald, 189

Waimarino and Ohakune Times, 54

Argus, 54

County Call, 54

News, 55

Waimate Advertiser, 239

Star, 238

Times, 238

Witness, 49, 139

Waimea Chronicle, 243, 247

Plains Review, 196

Times, 160

Waipa Post, 122

Waipawa Mail, 148

Waipukurau Press, 149

Wairarapa Age, 64

Daily News, 66

Daily Times, 63

Free Press, 63

Journal, 61

Liberal, 64

Mercury, 60-1

News, 62, 66

Wairarapa Observer, 65

Register, 62

Standard, 61

Star, 64

Times-Age, 63

Valley Guardian, 65

Weekly, 63, 65

Weekly (1937), 65

Wairau Record, 162

Wairoa Bell, 104

Free Press, 147

Guardian, 147-8

Star, 148

Waitangi Tribune, 189, 238

Waitara Evening Mail, 135

Press, 134-5

Times, 135

Waitemata County Messenger, 95, 100

Post, 97

Waiuku Advocate, 98

News, 98

Waka Maori, 259

Waka o te Iwi, 258

Wakamarina Intelligence, 163

Wake, C. A. and T., 97, 102, 105-6

Wakefield, D., 28, 29; E., 37, 234;

E. G, 1, 24, 27; F., 212

Wakelin, G. K., 61, 165

Wakelin, R., 7, 28, 61

Walls, J. P., 190, 192

Wananga, Te, 259

Wanganui Chronicle, 46-8

Herald, 49-51

Record, 46

Sentinel, 47

Times, 49

War Cry, 260

Warbrick, A., 107

Warburton, A., 98, 120, 139, 201

Warburton, A. G., 122

Ward, C, 8, 213, 217

-, E. R., 211

, F. V., 149

, G. A., 108, 111

\ John, '206-7

Warren, W. and W. D., 201-2

Wasteneys, Sir W., 114, 120

Watchman, 95

Watson, C. J., 184

319

Watson, L. C, 114, 137, 140

Watts, F. H., 46

Waverley Tribune, 140

Wearne, E. C, 161

Weatherall, J.,'197, 199

Webb, C. H. C. and H. E., 152

Webber, E. G., 43, 111

Weekly Argus (Auckland), 81

Argus (Greymouth), 249

Budget (Dunedin), 184

Chronicle (Wanganui), 49

Colonist, 171

Despatch (Invercargill), 204

Examiner, 82

Express (Auckland), 93

Herald, 40

Herald (Auckland), 86

Herald (Wanganui), 51

Mail (Oamaru), 187

Marlborough Express, 163

Mercury (Napier), 143

News, 79, 86

Observer (Hokitika), 243

Press, 220-21

Record (Inglewood), 137

Standard (Oamaru), 186

Star (Masterton), 64

Times (Invercargill), 206

Tribune, 36

Weeks, H. J., 231

Weller, A., 54

Wellington Independent, 28-30, 33

Journal, 61

Wells, 8., 133

Western Star, 208

West Coast Mail, 59

Standard, 249

Times, 240-4

Westland Advertiser, 246

Chronicle, 245

Evening Mail, 243

lndependent, 244, 246

Observer (1866), 242; (1868), 247

Register, 244

Weston, J. J., H., and W. C. 129, 131-2

Westport Advertiser, 253 Evening Star, 251

Westport News, 252

Times, 251

Times and Star, 251

Whakatane County Press, 110

Times, 110

Whangarei Advertiser, 101

Comet, 100

County Press, 100

Daily News, 101

Whetu o te Kotahitanga, 259

Whetu o te Tau, 258

Whitaker, Sir F., 188; F. A., 118

White, R. V., 220

Whitlock, W.' C. and W. A., 136, 145-6

Wickham, J. D., 91

Wicksteed, J. T., 47 \x/: —. c:_ u it ti^

Wigram, Sir H. F., 214

Wilkie, J. C. and W., 158, 251, 256

Wilkin, J. C, 214, 261

Wilkinson, Mrs M. L. G. 8., 255

Wilkinson, W., 92, 112, 114

Will, W., 86

Williams, F. (quoted), 23

Williamson, C, 78-9, 86, 87, 92, 112

Williamson, Hon. J., 80-1, 96, 129

Willis, A. D., 47, 50

, H., 227, 232-3 Wilson, A., 35

, C, 52, 145, 154

■ —, C. A. and S. H., 239

, Hon. D., 42, 96

, H., 198-9 D 1 £Q 1 O-J

, R., 169, 183

• , T. E., 18, 53-4, 120, 124,

135, 189-91, 228, 239

, W. C, 4, 70, 80, 83-4

., W. W., 120, 191, 239

Wilton, A., 102-3

Winter, N. A., 124

Winton Record, 210

Withy, E., 95

Wonderland Gazette and Rotorua

Times, 111

Wood, J., 141

Woodville Examiner, 56, 151

Woon, G. W., 129

Worker, 40

INDEX

INDEX

320

Wright, D. McK., 160

Yeoman, 51

Wright, E. G., 232

Yorke, J. C., 138-9

Wyndham Farmer, 209-10 Herald, 209-10

Zealandia (Auckland), 260

Zora, 96

Yardley, A. G., 122-3

Zouch, W. H., 227, 232

Yates, F. T, 24, 25

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