WELLINGTONIANS IN THE 1890S
In 1892, the population of Wellington went through a brief passion for tug-of-war competitions. Match-ups would occur over a series of nights, including Welsh versus Chinese residents, Māori versus English and the ‘Colonials’ versus the Irish. Crowds of as many as 1500, both men and women, gathered to watch the teams compete in three of the largest public spaces in the city— the skating rink on Ingrestre Street (now Vivian Street), the Opera House on Manners Street and the Theatre Royal on Johnston Street. As on so many Wellington occasions, entertainment was provided by the Garrison Band, which played an appropriate piece of music as each team arrived on stage.
The ‘Colonial’ team, wearing ‘neat white uniform of jerseys and trousers, with sashes and dark blue rosettes, looked every inch athletes’ and were ‘at once installed as favourites’. The term ‘Colonials’ or ‘New Zealanders’ at this time meant Pākehā who were born in New Zealand rather than overseas, this being a distinction made at the time. By 1891, 56 per cent of all non-Māori living in Wellington were New Zealand-born, growing to 62 per cent in 1901. Even so, most would have thought of themselves as ‘British’. (It wasn’t just for amusements such as this that the distinction between New Zealand-born and immigrant Pākehā was made— for example, Wellington Hospital’s statistics separated the number of New Zealand-born patients from other groups, and the census identified New Zealand-born convicted prisoners separately.)
The English-born team wore red, white and blue rosettes. First-generation English-born immigrants made up 24 per cent of Wellingtonians in 1891, the next largest group after the New Zealand-born. By the end of the decade, however, this group made up only 18 per cent of the population. English (and British more generally) migration to New Zealand slowed when assisted immigration ceased in 1890, and as New Zealand became less appealing as a destination as a result of the Long Depression of the 1880s.
In their first appearance in the tug-of-war competition, the Scots, who made up a fairly steady 5 per cent of the population throughout the 1890s, wore everyday clothing, but having seen the uniforms of the other teams, turned up to the subsequent night’s competition resplendent in kilts and sashes. The Welsh community put up a good showing in the tug-of-war, despite making up a much smaller proportion of the city, with less than 1 per cent of the population having been born in Wales.
In their study of English, Scottish and Irish migrants, historians Jock Phillips and Terry Hearn argued that nineteenth-century New Zealand ‘must have been a place where people were continuously aware of the different ethnic and cultural origins that made up the settler community. There were different accents, distinct patterns of religion, patterns of eating and drinking, and different death customs and holidays’. However, they note, distinctions between these incoming British-born ethnic groups had begun to flatten by the turn of the century, particularly as a result of the introduction, in 1887, of universal compulsory state education for Pākehā children, the patriotic fervour whipped up by the South African War, which helped to reinforce the ‘Britishness’ of the colony, especially to the younger generations, and because, unlike in other large international colonial cities, there was not a critical mass of migrants from a particular group that could band together to reinforce their own cultural practices to the exclusion of others.
Phillips and Hearn argued that religious affiliation, however, remained a significant cultural, and even political, division among these British-born communities. Of the 78 per cent of Wellingtonians who professed to be Protestant in the 1890s, 44 per cent were part of the Anglican (Church of England) faith. Another significant number were part of the British ‘low church’ Protestant tradition. These groups were, as Phillips and Hearn argue, ‘much more activist and evangelical than the Anglicans. They were used to trying to convert people, and they held to strong moral views of correct behaviour’.
They were particularly active in many political and moral campaigns in this era, including temperance and women’s suffrage. Within this larger ‘low church’ Protestant grouping, around 13–15 per cent were Presbyterian, mostly Scottish and Irish from the north. Methodists made up around 11 per cent, split between three denominations that each maintained separate church buildings in the city in the 1890s. Other ‘low church’ Protestants made up another 8 per cent in 1891, rising to 11 per cent in 1901. The Salvation Army, which had a significant presence in the central city and Newtown, with both church and buildings providing welfare services, was among these.
One of the most raucous matches in this tug-of-war series was the Scots versus the Irish; a policeman had to keep the excited crowd back from the Irish team. ‘Amid deafening yells and cheers’, the Irish, who wore green sashes and a shamrock on their shirts and who were described as ‘a brawny set of individuals’, were the eventual winners. Their captain, James Doyle, served as the city council’s inspector of nuisances and was a well-known athlete and strongman; he is a recurring character in this book. Almost 7 per cent of the Wellington population in 1892 was born in Ireland, dropping to 5 per cent in 1901 — a total of around 2000 people.
Of the around 15 per cent of Catholic Wellingtonians in the 1890s, most would have been southern Irish-born, or New Zealand-born children of Irish families, plus a smaller portion of English, French and Italian Catholics. The children of this community were educated in the city’s separate Catholic primary and high schools, and families worshipped in churches dominated by French and Irish priests and nuns, supported Catholic charities and read Catholic newspapers, all of which helped to preserve their identity. Not all Ireland-born people were Catholic, of course — some would have been Protestant — but the proportion is not recorded in the census.
A group of Māori, probably mostly Ngāti Kahungunu, came to Wellington from Pāpāwai, outside Greytown, to compete in the tug-of-war competitions. At the time, Pāpāwai was an important site of the Kotahitanga or Māori Parliament movement, and had around 3000 Māori residents. At their first event, the team apologised for not wearing traditional clothing, as the train carrying their clothing had been delayed. Their captain, however, arrived ‘attired in full Maori rig, carrying a mere in his hand’. In one match they beat the British team and were loudly applauded.
Māori were counted differently from other ethnic groups in the census. The last reliable count of Māori living in the area of what is now Wellington City was in 1881. In that year, there were 28 Māori living at Te Aro pā, and nine at Pipitea. Despite these low recorded numbers, Māori were present in the city at the time of Ward’s map, as shown in this book, and there were significant connections between the city and Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Toa and other iwi living in the Hutt Valley and Kapiti.
As the capital, a number of Māori from around the country were attracted to live and work in the city. From 1894, for example, Tūreiti Te Heuheu Tūkino V, paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, lived mainly in Wellington with his wife Te Rerehau Kahotea (also known as Mere Te Iwa Te Rerehau) and their family. Their home was often visited by Māori in the city on political business. Māori MPs from around the country and their staff lived in Wellington for extended periods while Parliament was in session.
The Australia-born residents of Wellington also put together a team for the tug-of-war competition. There was a significant influx of Australians into New Zealand in the 1890s as the Australian economy struggled, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria. In 1891, the 1000 Australia-born Wellingtonians made up almost 4 per cent of the population.
In 1901, that had risen to 2500 people, or 6 per cent. The Australian team had not practised beforehand and lost their first two matches, but were ‘heartily cheered for the plucky manner in which they behaved throughout’.
The proportion of the Wellington City population born in New Zealand, Britain (including Ireland) and Australia was a steady 96 per cent through the 1890s. All British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand-born people in the country were automatically deemed to be British citizens. Information about those living in the city who were not part of this group can be found in two places: the five-yearly New Zealand census, which recorded birth places, and the records of ‘naturalisation’. ‘Naturalisation’ was the process of becoming a British citizen; if a person applied for naturalisation, they had to relinquish their former citizenship.
Between 1885 and 1899, around 440 people, almost all men, applied to become British citizens while living in Wellington. A man’s application covered his wife and children, which is why women generally did not apply, making their information harder to research. A few women did apply on their own behalf. They included Eugenie Godot, a French corset- maker; Elisa Lenzini and Estere Savieri from Italy, respectively classified as undertaking ‘domestic duties’ and a laundress; Austrian Rosa Pollaschek, who worked at the telephone exchange; and Martha Raffoul, a married woman born in Türkiye.
Around 200 men from China gathered to decide who would represent their community in the tug-of-war competition. The newspaper observed the physical strength of the Chinese team members that had been built up by years of hard labour, in particular in their gardening enterprises. They chose as their captain Tom Hung, sometimes reported as Tom Hong and likely to be the same Tom Hung who ran a restaurant on Lambton Quay. The team was brought up onto the stage by Frederick Haybittle, an auctioneer, who was later appointed the vice-consul for China in New Zealand.
By the 1890s, Wellington had one of the largest Chinese communities in New Zealand. Many were former residents of South Island mining communities, and had come to Wellington when the opportunities in the gold mining industry dried up. The census in 1891 put the figure of men born in China living in Wellington at 115, rising in 1901 to 260 men and seven women— the first time a census recorded Chinese women living in Wellington.
Almost 80 men born in China applied for naturalisation in Wellington in this period. On their application forms, almost all listed their professions as storekeepers, gardeners, grocers or laundry workers; one owned a restaurant, another was a cook and another a watchmaker. There was a well-known Chinese area around Haining and Frederick Streets (Sheet 60) in the inner city, but the Chinese community lived and worked throughout the wider city area.
Some of the tug-of-war newspaper reports of the Chinese contestants painted them as figures of comedy, and used racial slurs to describe the men, as newspapers often did at the time. But newspapers did list all the names of the Chinese participants, as they did for the other teams, and the reports suggest they appreciated the team’s involvement in the competition. The Chinese team wore a uniform of ‘imperial yellow’. In their first contest, against the Welsh, they were well matched, and the bout lasted for 50 minutes, until the Welsh finally managed to better the Chinese team.
The strong team of Scandinavians came on stage carrying a ‘Scandinavian Union Jack’ (the flag bearing the colours of yellow, red, white and blue to signify the union, at that time, of Sweden and Norway), and each man had a shield of the same colours on his arm. In their hour-long opening-night match, described as one of the best matches ever held in Wellington, they defeated their Irish opponents. Censuses between 1891 and 1901 recorded roughly 250 people from Scandinavia living in Wellington City; 108 applied to become naturalised British citizens between 1885 and 1899 while residing in Wellington. Almost all were labourers, carpenters or seamen, although there were a few working in other professions, such as cooks.
The Italians also put up a tug-of-war team (although at least one of the competitors, George Andrews, was a Greek fishmonger). In the 1890s, around 80 people born in Italy and 25 born in Greece were living in Wellington. Most who came to New Zealand in this period were originally from rural or fishing backgrounds, but in New Zealand they clustered in urban areas, running their own businesses, shops and restaurants, or working as fishermen or labourers. Partly this was because the capital required to buy rural land in New Zealand excluded them from taking up farming.
Some had been brought to New Zealand under Julius Vogel’s immigration schemes of the 1870s to drive public works projects and had later migrated to the city; others, including a number of the named Italian competitors who took part in the tug-of-war team, arrived in Wellington as part of an early chain migration from Livorno, in western Tuscany, and its surrounding areas. Almost all of these immigrants were men; a number later funded their wives or families to come to New Zealand.
The captain of the German tug-of-war team was Richard Baumgart, a foreman for the Wellington Harbour Board for many years. In the 1890s, around 250 people born in Germany and Austria were living in Wellington, 84 of whom applied for naturalisation. Their professions were mixed, and included wharf labourers, a billiard table maker, cabinetmakers, butchers and several accountants and engineers. Other small groups of Europeans included migrants from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland and Russia (a number of these being Russian and Polish Jews who had fled persecution).
It isn’t clear how many people of Indian descent were in Wellington in the period— as they were British citizens their number was not recorded separately in the census (but they were presumably counted within the ‘Other British’ group, of whom there were between 175 and 225 in Wellington in this decade). Ian Burnley’s brief history of immigrant groups in Wellington notes that as well as Newtown and Berhampore, the run-down houses on North Street (later Tui Street, Sheets 60 and 61) became home for some Indian families. A number may have been hawkers (itinerant sales people), a highly mobile population who worked in both rural and urban areas.
Censuses included a classification called ‘Other foreign countries’— accounting for 80 people in 1891 and rising to 118 in 1901 — which probably included the Christian Lebanese community discussed in Sheet 16. Around 34 men born in Lebanon and Türkiye applied for naturalisation in Wellington between 1885 and 1899. Many declared their professions as dealers, hawkers and shopkeepers. The Liberal government attempted to bring in restrictions on such salespeople (often called ‘Hindoos’ at the time; this term seemed to encompass all religions and cultures). Premier Richard Seddon claimed in 1896 that the colony had been ‘simply deluged for some time past with a class of hawkers whom it was not desirable to allow in the country’. Wellington MP John Duthie, however, queried why the House had not been presented with any evidence to prove that there was actually a problem. In 1901, there were also 63 Americans and 15 people born in the Pacific Islands in the city.
In addition to the Christian denominations, the 1891 census recorded 229 people of the Jewish faith, a figure that had grown by 1901 to 404 (but remaining at 1 per cent of the population). A number were European and others were English. The Jewish community was served by a synagogue on The Terrace. There was no category for the main Chinese religions in 1891, but ‘Buddhists, Confucians etc’ had been added as a classification in 1901, and the census counted 232 in that category in the city. There was no separate category for Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs, although they may have been captured in ‘others’. In 1901, there were also 119 spiritualists, and 272 ‘freethinkers’ in the city.
These raucous tug-of-war competitions were among the many events populating Wellington’s social calendar in the 1890s. In The Big Smoke, Ben Schrader explored the ‘new cultural spaces and sites of sociability’ that mushroomed in this decade, which not only made cities more interesting and appealing places to live but also helped support relationships between city-dwellers and encouraged them to form ‘horizontal communities of common interest’. Many such spaces in Wellington, for both men and women (although sometimes not at the same time), and including churches, sports teams, theatres, choirs and musical groups, helped to shore up and support social interactions between like- minded people.
As we will see throughout this book, there were plenty of special events, public entertainments, parades, sporting competitions and spectacles, musical evenings and theatre shows, nights at the pub and political meetings in Wellington in the 1890s. There were numerous large dances and ‘at homes’ in the ballroom of Government House and in private homes. There were educational groups such as the Athenaeum, and gentlemen’s clubs.
Sporting clubs were a particularly important part of working-, middle- and upper-class life. Although the working class often struggled to find time for sport, this changed in 1894 when employers were legally required to give workers a half-holiday, which in Wellington was on either Wednesday or Saturday afternoons. During the 1892 fad for tug-of-war competitions, a match was staged between the horse cab drivers of Te Aro and Thorndon. Sporting matches were often held between people working in different trades and for different employers. Employment, trade, union and professional groups played an important part in forming community, as did associated men’s groups and ‘friendly societies’, such as the Masons and Odd Fellows. Many professions took part in parades, such as the Eight-hour Day (later Labour Day) demonstrations, as a group.
Women’s employment also provided a setting for social connection. Women worked in factories and shops and in people’s homes, and many ran their own businesses, especially shops, boarding houses, dressmaking establishments and hotels. Many other women carried out unpaid work inside and outside the home, including in charitable and, especially, church organisations, all of which provided social contact and friendship.
Even those who lived perilous and sometimes tumultuous lives could find community. Many of these people were transitory, moving frequently and living in rented accommodation and boarding houses, but, even so, they formed urban communities, perhaps better characterised as a series of small local communities, in workplaces, pubs, schools and closely populated neighbourhoods. These lives are often encountered in the historical record when they came in front of the magistrate, after moments of tension between members of the community turned to violence. There was virtually no social safety net at this time, and the stakes were particularly high for women, especially if they were pregnant or caring for children. Many people struggled to make ends meet, and the courts and newspapers were constantly full of tales of petty crime and low-value thefts, domestic violence, vagrancy and drunkenness. Many of these resulted in short prison sentences, for both men and women, at the Terrace Gaol.
At the other end of the social scale was the small group of Wellington’s wealthy elite, who clustered in Thorndon and on The Terrace. Most had become rich through owning large pastoral estates, and many were politicians, senior professionals and merchants. Most were Anglican, but there were also wealthy Jewish and Catholic families. This upper echelon socialised in each other’s homes, in the home of the governor, at the clubs, and as part of their charitable work, which was carried out by both men and women. There was a small affluent merchant class, prosperous and comfortable, which had its own social circle. There was also a growing settled middle class, including many civil servants and those supplying services, who drove the expansion of suburbs such as Newtown and Mount Victoria, which were perceived to be healthier places to live than the inner city.
Politics and intellectual pursuits, for both men and women, facilitated social bonds. Many organisations provided places for discussions of the future of society and the city. For feminists, the 1890s was an exciting time, and different organisations were established to push for suffrage, and — after that campaign was successful in 1893 — to continue that forward momentum into other areas. At the bottom of Lambton Quay, near Parliament, there was even a Women’s Club, a two-storey establishment with a reading room, lending library, bicycles for hire and bedrooms for women travellers.
There were other, more covert, communities in urban New Zealand in the nineteenth century, including a gay community, which was often given sanctuary within artistic, amateur dramatic and musical circles, and among the leisured young members of the city elite. Chemist Robert Gant (1854–1936), for example, who lived and worked in wider Wellington (moving between the city and the Wairarapa) in this period and had many friends, lived with his partner in Seatoun. Gant was part of a musical community in Wellington and the Wairarapa, which included his cousins, the musically talented Hill family; he performed with them, often dressed as a woman, to great acclaim at concerts around the country. A study by historian Chris Brickell found that police were not overzealous in the prosecution of gay men in the nineteenth century.
One court case provides an enticing glimpse of an alternative world that existed in the city. William Hall had not been in the city long when he was apprehended wearing women’s clothes on a street near Clyde Quay. Such was the quality of his disguise, a policeman said, that he at first walked right past Hall quite unaware that he was a man. Hall claimed he had been visiting a brothel when he decided to put on the clothes and run around outside as a joke. Hall was charged with ‘wearing a disguise’ and sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment. The magistrate told him that he was lucky to escape a six-month sentence, which he would have given Hall except he thought the escapade had been ‘more folly than wickedness’.
