Heritage et AL

For the past few months, the heritage floor, on the second floor of the Central City Library, has hosted a display titled Our Girls -- a tribute to the role of women in the First World War. The content covers the following topics: prohibition and making-do, cartoon depictions of women, the anti-militarists, the fundraising effort, working girls, nurses abroad, and the absence of men. It has been an interesting exercise to find images to cover such a variety of topics. Women were not always portrayed favourably, especially in the political cartoons of the day. Publications like Freelance and Truth condemned the ‘wowser’ prohibitionists as out to spoil a boy’s fun (men did not escape the condemnation, either) or they depicted women as vain and ignorant.  Ref: Cartoon from the New Zealand Freelance , 6 March 1915, p.11.  The caption for the cartoon above reads:  Shopman: “Yes, Miss, all face powders have gone up in price on account of the war.” Y...

During WW1 (and indeed WW2), soldiers aboard troopships en route to war sometimes published magazines. Theses troopship magazines ranged from hand-written to professional looking publications. They were highly valued and were intended to be informative, entertaining and to help the morale of soldiers. A number were also written on the return voyages back to NZ. Ref: AWNS-19150708-47-3, 1915, NZ troopship Ludzow at Alexandria, Egypt, 1915, Sir George Grey Special Collections Auckland War Memorial Museum Library has recently completed the digitisation of its troopship magazines . These are are listed on the library's online catalogue and are also available as pdfs (simply click on the publication, then click on the link in the Notes field). Examples of the museum's holdings of troopship magazines include: 'Father Neptune's day on the New Zealand Transport 75, "S.S. Waitemata" and other items of interest / N.Z.E.F. 21st Reinforcements', 1917 (D526....