The New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection, 1975-1985

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIX, Issue 1, 1 May 1986, Page 47

The New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection, 1975-1985

DIANA MEADS

‘lf women’s part in making our history is to be recognised we must ensure that the historians have the raw material. Allow the written records to disappear and you consign women’s efforts to the dustheap of history’ insisted the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library, J. E. Traue. The occasion was a function held on 23 September 1975 at which the New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection was launched with the transfer to the Library of the records of the National Council of Women.

The marking of 1975 as International Women’s Year focused attention on the role of women in society and, in New Zealand, highlighted the lack of documentation about women’s activities in this country. The Turnbull Library’s response to the growing demand from researchers for material relating to women was the creation of the New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection with the aim of building on existing manuscript holdings such as the papers of Elizabeth Colenso, Jane Williams, Frances Hodgkins and Katherine Mansfield by actively seeking out material from a wide range of individual women and women’s organisations. A group of consultants was appointed 1 to advise the Library on the development of the collection and an advertising campaign begun. In September 1975 a large three-colour poster titled ‘New Zealand Women: The Missing Half was distributed for display in public libraries throughout the country, and a press release solicited ‘. . . original materials such as letters, diaries and notebooks of individuals and the minutes, annual reports, correspondence and files of organisations’. 2

It is interesting to note that this plea echoed a press statement released by the Library thirty years previously to announce the formation of the Women’s Biographical Research Committee, 3 a group of women from the Wellington Lyceum Club 4 who had sought support from the Turnbull .in the matter of accumulating documents and records relating to women and their contribution to the pattern of life in New Zealand’. The press release stated that material sought was . letters, diaries, autobiographies and business and professional records’. 5 In July 1946 one thousand information returns were printed and distributed with a covering

letter from the Turnbull’s Chief Librarian C. R. H. Taylor requesting that personal details of New Zealand’s pioneer women be recorded on the forms and returned to the Library. It was also suggested that ‘. . . photographs, early letters, diaries, or other papers that may add to your record’ also be deposited. 6 It would appear that these early attempts to document the lives of New Zealand women were not particularly successful. A total of only eleven completed forms have survived in the Manuscripts Collection 7 and the Library’s acquisitions files do not show a significant amount of women’s material being added to the collections during this period. The fate of the remaining nine hundred and eighty nine forms is a matter for speculation.

In 1975 the Library’s attempts to collect women’s material were significantly more successful, particularly in attracting the records of women’s organisations. A check through the ‘Notes on Manuscripts Accessions’ which appear in each issue of the Turnbull Library Record reveals a number of significant collections in addition to the records of the National Council of Women which provided the impetus for the Library’s renewed efforts. Included are the records of the Abortion Law Reform Association, the New Zealand Federation of University Women, the New Zealand Free Kindergarten Union, the New Zealand Maori Women’s Welfare League, the New Zealand Nurses’ Association, the Society for Research on Women, the United Women’s Convention (1975), the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Young Women’s Christian Association of New Zealand. The papers of individual women include those of doctors Agnes Bennett and Mary Barkas, politicians Mary Batchelor and Marilyn Waring, artists Rita Angus and Helen Crabb, composers Jenny McLeod and Gillian Whitehead and writers Nelle Scanlan and Ngaio Marsh.

Often of just as much interest to the researcher are the papers of those who are not well-known —the so called ‘ordinary women’ whose thoughts, activities and reactions to events of the day can help flesh out the bare facts of history. So the researcher will find in the collection an 1867 letter written by Mary Ann Hunter describing life in Auckland and her conditions and pay as a domestic servant; the shipboard diary of Jane Findlayson, a young Scottish immigrant to Port Chalmers in 1876; the letters of Daphne Commons, a nursing sister in Egypt during World War One, Jean Anderson’s letter of 3 February 1931 giving a first-hand account of the Napier earthquake, and the reminiscences of Zelinda Froh, a German internee during World War Two.

In the ten years since the inauguration of the New Zealand Women’s History Collection, the interest in women’s studies has continued to grow, with study courses being offered at most New

Zealand universities. While the collection has not had the publicity it received in 1975, the Library’s interest in women’s studies has remained constant. Collections first solicited in 1975 are still being followed up, for example the records of the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs which, ten years on, are to find a place in the collection in 1986. Other organisations, such as the New Zealand Nurses’ Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association of New Zealand, which first deposited their records in 1979 and 1976 respectively, have maintained their links with the Library and have transferred further records in 1985.

In view of growing academic interest in the whole field of women’s studies, the Library has also been increasing its efforts to ensure that access to this material is improved, by providing more information to researchers. Significant new accessions are now briefly described in lists published regularly in the Turnbull Library Record, Archifactsf and (for music) Crescendo , 9 before being fully catalogued and, where appropriate, listed in the National Register of Archives and Manuscripts.' 0 Increasing use is made in the public catalogue of appropriate subject headings and added entries to draw attention to women’s papers. In 1975, in an attempt specifically to identify material relating to women, an in-house ‘Women’s Collection’ file was established, providing short descriptions in one alphabetical sequence. This goes some way towards making it easier to identify material which is still awaiting cataloguing, concealed within larger collections, or where subject headings formerly allocated were not sufficiently specific for current demands. It has also formed the basis of a forthcoming published contribution to women’s studies in New Zealand.

As 1985 marked the first ten years of the New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection and the end of the United Nations Decade for Women, it seemed an appropriate time for Library staff to assist researchers by compiling an annotated guide to all the material held in the Manuscripts Collection which related to women. Two members of the Manuscripts staff began the project by carrying out an exhaustive survey of the entire collection, discovering that, whereas in 1975 two hundred collections had been identified, in 1985 there were one thousand with women’s content. Faced with such unexpected riches, the decision was made to work initially on the nineteenth-century material, with the aim of publishing a companion twentieth-century guide at a later date. The nineteenth-century volume which is to be published by the Library late in 1986 will comprise some four hundred entries each with a descriptive contents note. Of particular value to researchers will

be the subject index which will provide access to collections from a variety of approaches. Already the work on this project has proved helpful to a researcher preparing a book on food consumption and production (many nineteenth-century women’s diaries record the process for making butter and cheese and details of favourite recipes), and to researchers working on women’s entries for the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Taking stock of the collection in 1985, there are obvious gaps. While pioneer women are well represented by the diaries and letters of missionary women and the shipboard diaries of young immigrant women, and while there are significant collections of literary and artistic women, there is very little relating to Maori women, to women scientists or unionists, or to women in business and professions. There is little which deals with the working woman either in the paid workforce or in the home. This latter gap relates more to the paucity of available material than to the Library’s failure to solicit it. Poorly educated and over-worked women in the nineteenth century had neither the skills nor the time to record their impressions of daily life, and in the twentieth century technology and a faster pace of life have seen a decline in letter writing and the keeping of diaries.

The difficulty in documenting the individual experience may be answered in part by the growing interest and activity in the field of oral history which is reflected in recent additions to the collection. In 1985 the New Zealand Nursing Education and Research Foundation’s Oral History Collection was received. 11 The results of a project begun in 1982, it records on tape the reminiscences of 185 ex-nurses and ranges from the dramatic account of a nursing sister who survived the sinking of the troopship the Marquette in 1915 to the reminiscences of nurse probationers in the 1930 s whose duties included sprinkling damp tea leaves in hospital wards to lay the dust. Material from the New Zealand Oral History Archive 12 deposited in the Manuscripts Collection includes interviews with elderly women residents of the small South Wairarapa town of Martinborough and the reminiscences of New Zealand State Dental Nurses. 13 The recent appointment to the Manuscripts Section of a librarian to take responsibility for oral history collections will ensure that researchers are alerted to this valuable material.

And what of the future of women’s studies in the Turnbull? The Library will continue to seek out material relating to women and make it accessible to researchers. Now that ten years have elapsed since the inauguration of the New Zealand Women’s History Research Collection, the original list of individuals and organisations to be approached has grown and changed. There are still important collections on that list to follow up and new ones to

chase, particularly the records of contemporary women’s collectives and pressure groups. There is a need to gain the confidence of such groups —to assure them that confidentiality will be maintained wherever necessary, and that the integrity of their material will be respected. Most importantly, there is a need to spread the word that the Turnbull continues to have a strong interest in fostering the growth of women’s studies in New Zealand.

REFERENCES 1 Judith Aitken, Judith Binney, Sonja Davies, Miriam Dell, Betty Holt, Dorothea Horsman, Ria Mcßride, Rosemary Seymour, Margaret Shields and Mirika Szaszy. 2 Press release, 24 September 1975. ATL File 2/9/12. 3 Variously referred to as the Women’s Biographical Research Committee, Women’s Biographical Committee, New Zealand Women’s Biographical Committee and the Wellington Women’s Biographical Committee. 4 A social club for women, the Wellington Lyceum Club was founded in 1923. Mrs Catherine Andersen, wife of the Turnbull Library’s first Chief Librarian J. C. Andersen, was the Club’s second President and was an active member for many years. 5 Press release, 8 November 1945. ATL File 3/8. 6 Women’s Biographical Research Committee Records (MS Papers 3872). 7 Ibid. 8 The official journal of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand. 9 The official journal of the New Zealand Branch of the International Association of Music Librarians. 10 National Register of Archives and Manuscripts in New Zealand, compiled and edited at the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Archives (Wellington: National Library of New Zealand, 1979- ). 11 New Zealand Nursing Education and Research Foundation Oral History Collection (Tape Collection, Acc. 84-197). 12 The New Zealand Oral History Archive was founded in 1981 by Judith Fyfe and Hugo Manson. 13 New Zealand Oral History Archive, Martinborough Project (Tape Collection Acc. 84-112); New Zealand Oral History Archive, New Zealand State Dental Nurses Institute 50th Jubilee Oral History Project 1985 (Tape Collection Acc. 85-105).