PEARL WEDDING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23811, 18 May 1939, Page 18

PEARL WEDDING

MR AND MRS R. C. WAGHORN MEMORIES OF EARLY DUNEDIN To-day is a very important occasion for Mr and Mrs Richard Charles Waghorn, ,of South Dunedin, for it is the sixty-fifth anniversary of their wedding at St. Peter’s Church, Islington, London. Mr Waghorn is 84 years of age, and his wife is 82, and both have been looking forward with no little enthusiasm to the celebration of their pearl wedding. Eighteen months after their wedding. Mr and Mrs Waghorn, both of whom are Londoners, depided to try their fortune in New Zealand, and after a long voyage on the Corona arrived at Port Chalmers in February, 1870. Mr Waghorn said that he had read all about New Zealand “ from the year one ” and he was glad he had made up his mind to come out to the Dominion. He retains many interesting memories of his arrival. He built a house at Selwyn for himself and his wife out of timber cut from the bush, and for a while they had to cook in Maori

fashion. Then he and his wife built a chimney and the cooking was done inside. There were just a few shops like shacks in Princes street in those days, wtih an hotel every 100 yards. He remembers when the bullock wagons used to come in from Mount Cargill loaded with firewood. There were only one or two houses on the flats where they lived now, Mr Waghorn said, and he remembers walking across the swamps to Forbury. There were farms on the flat and at St. Clair in those days, and he was employed haymaking where Forbury Park now stands.

Mr Waghorn was a painter by trade, and he and his workmates helped to build and decorate most of the old houses in the city He has lived practically all his married life in Dunedin except for two years spent in Melbourne. They went for a trip Home in 1905, but they had no regrets that they had left their native London. When they left the huge city workmen were employed for 10, 12 and 14 hours a day for a few shillings a week, and it was the promise of an eight-hour day and 8s a day that induced Mr Waghorn to set sail for New Zealand His trip Home recalled many memories of old London He remembers seeing Queen Victoria and the then Prince of Wales and he remembers quite well the great Tooley street fire when the Thames was literally afire with melted fat from the blazing stores.

Mr and Mrs Waghorn have one son (Mr Edward Waghorn) and two grandchildren. Their present address is 33 Rankeilor street.