Heritage et AL

Matrimonial agencies and personal ads were the colonial era equivalent of today’s dating apps like Tinder. In 1885 the owner of Auckland’s only agency , Thomas Hannaford, claimed to have found 115 wives for socially isolated men. He was particularly proud of encouraging “many respectable English girls to wed Maori Chiefs” who were subsequently “living lovingly together”. He felt his match-making skills helped promote “the fusion of the races” and he petitioned Parliament to recognise his expertise in this area ( Star , 16 July 1885 ). Ref: Charles Dawes, Unidentified wedding couple, 1890s-1900s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1142-D441. Hannaford started finding potential life partners for gentlemen in 1868. He also married people at “any day or hour they like.” His Queen Street offices were open for business between 10.00 am and 9.00 pm. Although scandal didn’t brew over such quickie marriage ceremonies here; in Australia, Holt’s Matrimonial Agency wa...

One of the delightful aspects of the research centres is the absolute diversity of material we have here. Some might question just why we collect the material we do but there are times when one feels particularly pleased with the powers-that-be who have, over the years, built up the collections.   In this case, I am talking about the work of the renowned Kiwi romance writer, Essie Summers .  She was a Mills and Boon phenomenon, a pastor’s wife who began writing for the publisher in the 1950s, and became one of their best selling and most loved authors. She died in 1998, but her popularity is such that at times M&B still reprint her novels as part of their Bestseller programme.  Essie Summers books at the Central Auckland Research Centre A few months back, a customer came in to the Central Auckland Research Centre looking for the fiction. She was a huge Essie fan and, as all fan-girls do, she was going through a re-reading stage. However, she was missing a few tit...