Heritage et AL

Times of crisis cause us to pay more attention to what we are cooking and eating. No matter what is going on in the world, meals are still a necessity. During the lockdown period of 2020, some of us were lucky and able to enjoy devoting more time to food preparation and returning to slower ways of cooking  - the luxury of making our own bread rather than buying it – while others were faced with the difficulties of putting food on the table while unable to work, or finding supermarket shelves stripped bare of necessities by panic shoppers. In past times of crisis, food has been equally central to people’s experience. During the First World War and the following decades, New Zealanders, like much of the world, faced a time of austerity. Cookbooks from this period underline the need for ‘economy,’ making food go further, and letting nothing go to waste. Elsie Gertrude Harvey. The “peace” recipe book : every recipe has been tested and is guaranteed economical. 3rd edition. Printed by N...

Raymond Leslie Baxter's photograph album came to Auckland Libraries as the result of a donation to the old Waitakere City Council. This donation might have been made after the tragic death of the album's owner, Miss Beverley Price, in the 1979 Air New Zealand crash at Mt Erebus in Antarctica. The photographs were taken by Beverley Price’s uncle, Raymond Leslie Baxter. They document his brief military career at Featherston Camp between July and December 1917. The details of this can be traced by consulting his army personnel file on Archway , Archives New Zealand’s system for government records. Baxter was a 28-year-old clerk from Newton who worked for the Auckland Education Board. In early 1917 he was called up and, along with his fellow recruits, transported by train to Featherston Camp in the South Wairarapa. His album includes three images of the troop train winding its way along the Wairarapa line across the Rimutaka Range. The Wairarapa Line railway across the Rimuta...

On 11 November 1918, an armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany, and the guns fell silent on the Western Front. Armistice Day has been commemorated in New Zealand ever since, not only to celebrate peace but also to acknowledge the sacrifices of those who made peace possible. The depth of this sacrifice is exemplified by the experience of one small town, Manurewa. At the outbreak of the First World War, there were about 500 people living in the area. Few if any of them were to remain unaffected by the war. The photograph below was proudly taken on the opening day of Manurewa School, 3 September 1906. Little could it be imagined at the time that in less than a decade the ranks of the children assembled here would be significantly thinned by bullets, bayonets, sickness and bombs. Future soldiers, Manurewa, 1906. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Footprints 05367. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Manurewa Historical Society. Seven of the older boys in the bac...

After four years of the most horrific warfare the modern world has ever known, the First World War's end was in sight. More than 10 million soldiers were killed and around the same amount of civilians. Of the number killed, 18,000 New Zealanders had been lost on the battlefields and at sea. In a population of just over a million people, the loss of 18,000 meant that no family was left untouched. The public waiting their turn at the inhalation chamber, Health Department's Buildings, Auckland. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, AWNS-19181114-36-3. There was a feeling of anticipation tempered with feelings of loss, for our people returning home. A cruel twist of fate meant that any celebration was curtailed, as influenza swept through the world killing upwards of 50 million people. More than the war itself. In a couple of short months approximately 9000 (over 2000 are known to be Māori) New Zealanders succumbed to the influenza and the associated secondary infections...

When I started researching New Zealand women who worked in the war effort overseas during the First World War, I realised much of the material I needed was in a cupboard in someone’s spare room – or in a box under the bed. While the soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and the nurses of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service all had numbers – and files at Archives New Zealand – women who paid their own fares and often worked with the British, the French and the Serbs were more or less untraceable. Enter Kate de Courcy who contacted me when she saw a little plea for information under an article I wrote for North & South magazine on the World War 1 Oral History Archive interviews I did with Nicholas Boyack in the 1980s – when our veteran interviewees were between 86 and 99 years old. Kate sent me transcriptions of letters from her grandmother, Dr Grace Russell from Auckland which are in her family’s possession.  Grace had been a port doctor at Port Said, largely d...

As part of the ongoing centennial commemorations for the First World War, this week marks the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele . It was during this battle that one of the most famous New Zealanders of the day, the ex-All Black captain, Dave Gallaher was killed. Image: Portrait of Dave Gallaher. From: The king and his navy & army. A weekly illustrated journal for society, the salon and the services. 1905. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. The centenary of Passchendaele and Gallaher’s death seem an appropriate time to reflect on how his 1905 All Black team were viewed in Britain.  A colleague recently alerted me to the existence of the publication, Navy & army illustrated : A magazine illustrative of everyday life in the defensive services of the British Empire . Tracking Gallaher’s 1905 Originals tour through this weekly British Armed Forces publication we can see the mystique that Gallaher and his team created as well as the legacy they left. On...

John A Lee was, amongst other things, a war hero, politician, publican and author during his unusually eventful and varied life. In his will Lee asked that his private papers be deposited with Auckland Libraries a year after his death. Recently described by John Horrocks in the Journal of New Zealand literature (2016; Vol. 34 (1)) as a “vast and chaotic archive”, researchers will be pleased to hear that a project is underway to undertake fuller arrangement and description of this collection, thanks to support provided by the Auckland Library Heritage Trust . Lee’s papers came to the library in a staggered manner which leads to challenges for the archivist trying to follow archival concepts of provenance and original order. At the end of this project we will have a rich finding aid for Lee’s papers which will make it easier for future researchers to find and use them. Whilst this work is ongoing it provides an opportunity to highlight some of the things that make up this coll...