Couple Married For 60 Years

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32052, 29 July 1969, Page 2

Couple Married For 60 Years

A shave cost threepence and a haircut sixpence when Mr Charles Hudson started a hairdressing business in Christchurch. That was in 1908, when cigarettes were 6a a packet and tobacco was 6d an ounce.

Mr Hudson went into business with a shop in Manchester Street a year before he married. He had come to New Zealand from Melbourne on a working holiday, but met an Australian girl in Christchurch and stayed.

Today Mr and Mrs Hudson, who live at New Brighton, are celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary. They were married by the Rev. C. H. Laws in the East Belt Methodist Church, Fitzgerald Avenue, on July 29, 1909.

In those days, hairdressers were paid £2 10s for a 52-hour week, but Mr Hudson was making £5 a week in his shop. “And I thought I was doing famously,” he said. He learned the hairdressing trade in Melbourne after emigrating from England with his parents. Mr Hudson, who will soon be 87. and Mrs Hudson (85) are incredibly spry. Yesterday, they spoke with relish about the past.

KELLY COUNTRY Mrs Hudson, formerly Miss Emily May Muirson, came originally from the heart of the Kelly country in Victoria. As a young girl her mother met Ned Kelly, when he and some of his friends came to the house and asked for. a drink of water. They wanted to know which direction the

police had taken. “My mother told them, more because she was scared than anything else,” said Mrs Hudson.

“Although it was before my time, I think, from what my mother used to say, that there was a good deal of sympathy for the Kelly boys.

I believe they suffered a fair bit of injustice before they became outlaws." Mn Hudson was surprised when Mick Jagger was cast as Kelly in a film on the life of the Australian bushranger, being made in Victoria at present "I just cannot imagine a pop singer as Ned Kelly,” she said. Mrs Hudson's father was a farmer and she was one of a family of 12. Six of them are living still and the eldest a sister in Auckland, is 94. After the death of her husband, a drought and a fire

which destroyed all their belongings, Mrs Hudson's mother decided to come to New Zealand with nine of her children. An elder son was already here POOR PAY While their mother worked as a maternity nurse, Mrs Hudson and a sister had a dressmaking business above what was then Lord’s fruit shop in High Street. The work was hard and the pay poor. When they married, Mr and Mrs Hudson lived in Olliviers Road, in a little house that was about 10 years old when they bought it for £250. Later they moved to St Albans and, during the depression, bought their present nine-room house at 21 Oram Avenue for £l5OO. “I intended to sell it again, but no-one would buy it. We liked it and decided to stay, even though we lost £BOO on our St Albans home. That was 35 years ago, and we are among the oldest residents in the district,” said Mr Hudson. The couple have two children, Mr Leslie Hudson, of Auckland, and Mrs Muriel Cooper, of Spreydon. There are eight grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. Until last year, Mr Hudson was an active member of the New Brighton Bowling Club. He still enjoys indoor bowls, a sport which his wife took up last wintier. Mrs Hudson still belongs to the Women's Division of Federated Farmers, the New Brighton Horticultural Society, and the Save the Children Fund, and she is patron of the New Brighton Ladies* Bowling Club.

The couple will celebrate their anniversary with a party this evening.