Country living, country dying: Rural suicides in New Zealand, 1900-1950

Journal of Social History

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 933-961

  Weaver, John C ^a,c   Munro, Doug ^b  

^a MCMASTER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^b Department of History   (Canada)

^c Department of History ^*  (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67749091148     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh/42.4.933     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Records of the Lands Department (LS), Series 36, Box 24, File on Discharged Soldiers Settlement: Notes on Reports for the Year Ended 31st March 1924. Abbreviated as LS 36, Box 24. Unless otherwise stated, all archival material comes from Archives New Zealand, Wellington repository.
2. LS Box 29, File 29/50, G.W. Forbes, Prime Minister, to W. Sullivan, Mayor of Whakatane, 2 June 1932.
3. Government of New Zealand,Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, 1931 (Wellington, New Zealand, 1932), Appendix H-35, 8-9.
4. LS 1, Box 21, File 21/149/3166, Preliminary Report on Subdivision of Farms for the Settlement of Returned Servicemen in Thames, Bay of Plenty, and Rotorua-Taupo Regions, 16 August 1946.
5. A contemporary statement to this effect is in G.T. Alley and D.O.W. Hall, The Farmer in New Zealand (Wellington, 1941), 115-16.
6. Barry Gustafson, Kiwi Keith: A Biography of Keith Holyoake (Auckland, 2007), 51. Coincidentally, Holyoake entered Parliament in 1933 as a result of the by-election created by the suicide of the sitting member.
7. See Coroner's Inquest file relating to George Black, Records of the Department of Justice, Series 46, Wellington, Archives New Zealand, file 1279 for the year 1932. The files are henceforth abbreviated, for example to J46, 1932/1279. Names and ages of individuals are in the body of the text.
8. H.C.D. Somerset, Littledene: A New Zealand Rural Community (Wellington, 1938). Littledene is the fictitious name for the mixed dairy and sheep farming area surrounding the mid-Canterbury township of Oxford. Another statement of rural community cohesion is "Best of Both Words: Ngahinepoiri's Community Life," New Zealand Listener, (13 June 1947): 6-7.
9. Scholarly editions of Frank S. Anthony's work are Gus Tomlins, together with the original stories of 'Me and Gus', edited by Terry Sturm (Auckland, 1977); Follow the Call, together with an unfinished novel entitled 'Dave Baird' (Auckland, 1975); John Mulgan, Man Alone (London, 1939);
10. Quoted in Bill Pearson, "The Banning of The Butcher Shop," in Jean Devanny, The Butcher Shop, edited by Heather Roberts (Auckland, 1981), 228.
11. Eg. R.M. Burdon, The New Dominion: A Social and Political History of New Zealand between the Wars (Wellington, 1965), ch. 11 ("The Indispensable Farmer");
12. Tom Brooking, "Economic Transformation", in Geoffrey W. Rice (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand, 2nd ed (Auckland, 1992), 230-53. Much of the literature on rural New Zealand relates to the nineteenth century. Miles Fairburn examines the origin of the Arcadian myth in his seminal The Ideal Society and its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society, 1850-1900 (Auckland, 1989), and he carries the argument into the twentieth century in "The Rural Myth and the New Urban Frontier: An Approach to New Zealand Social History, 1870-1940," New Zealand Journal of History (hereafter NZJH), 9:1 (1975): 3-21 (esp. 4-5).
13. For the nineteenth century, Rollo Arnold uses four farming diaries to dispute Fair- burn's notion of New Zealand being an "atomized" society. Rollo Arnold, "Community in Rural Victorian New Zealand," NZJH, 24:1 (1990): 3-21.
14. It would be useful to make comparisons across societies, especially employing case- based data. However, Cororners' inquests in many common law jurisdictions were often conducted by county or city-based coroners. This is true of England and much of the United States and Canada. Local courthouses were not dedicated to record preservation. In New Zealand, the inquest files were retained by the national government; in Australia, some states preserved inquest files. Although a thorough comparative study is impossible, we do not think that the hard lives of farmers and especially farm laborers was unique to New Zealand. The country was neither an exceptionally fine country for working men nor a dreadful one. For recent data on rural suicides in Australia see Andrew N. Page and Lyn J. Frager, "Suicide in Australian Farming, 1988-1997," Australian and New Zealand Journal ofPsychiatry, 36 (2002): 81-85.
15. These have been coded as probable suicides, as distinct from certified suicides. Our criteria are: was the person concerned experiencing severe difficulties, was the person's behaviour in the period leading up to his or her death out of character, and was the person's mode of death consistent with a suicide rather than an accidental death? The question of open verdicts (in the nineteenth century English context) is discussed by Victor Bailey, "This Rash Act:" Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Stanford, 1998), 62-65.
16. H. C. D. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns of Change (Wellington, 1974), 14. This volume contains the original work and a follow-up study conducted in the 1950s. Littledene and its successor volume bear more than passing resemblance to Robert and Helen Lynds' studies of "Middletown" (code for Muncie, Indiana). Both "Littledene" and "Middle- town" were represented as being typical and each project involved follow-up studies.
17. Approaching the issue from the urban angle, a recent study makes similar points about the difficulty of urban-rural distinctions. Eric Olssen and Maureen Hickey, Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality (Dunedin, 2005), 24-26.
18. J46, 1916/262.
19. On wartime profits see James Watson, "Patriotism, Profits and Problems: New Zealand Farming during the First World War", in John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (eds), New Zealand's Great War: New Zealand, the Allies and the First World War (Auckland, 2007), 534-49.
20. Gerald T. Bloomfield, New Zealand: A Handbook of Historical Statistics (Boston, 1984), 362.
21. J46, 1920/1069.
22. J46, 1922/759. Apart from the evidence on this point that appears in many inquests, see Somerset, Littledene: Patterns ofChange, 199.
23. J46, 1946/1099 (Verrall); J46, 1946/416 (Brieske).
24. LS 36, Box 24, File on Discharged Soldiers Settlement Account: Report for the Year Ended 30th June 1935, p.1; Brooking, "Economic Transformation," 231-33.
25. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns of Change, 16-17; Burdon, The New Dominion, 149-50.
26. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns of Change, 18-19. Nonetheless, the only suicide in our sample where a farmer blames a stock agent ("a crawler &powerfull" [sic]) is that of forty-two-year old Francis Bartholemew (J46, 1934/117).
27. Barrie Macdonald and David Thomson, "Mortgage Relief, Farm Finance, and Rural Depression in New Zealand in the 1930s", NZJH, 21:2 (1987): 228-50;
28. H. Belshaw, D.O. Williams and F.B. Stephens, "Farming Industries during the World Crisis", in H. Belshaw et al (eds), Agricultural Organization in New Zealand (Melbourne, 1936), 786-806;
29. H.G. Philpott, AHistory of the New ZealandDairy Industry (Wellington, 1937), 202-03, 255-60. Many of the contemporary secondary sources used in the present study were commissioned during the 1930s by organisations such as the Carnegie Foundation and the Workers' Education Association. See Ian Carter, "Most Important Industry: How the New Zealand State got Interested in Rural Women, 1930-1944", NZJH, 20:1 (1986): 30-31.
30. LS 1, File 22/4476, John Mee, Supervising Field Inspector, Department of Lands and Surveys, to The Under-Secretary for Lands, Memorandum on Farm Labour, 11 January 1939.
31. J46,1940/1320; J46,1940/1664, J46,1942/1250; J46,1944/492.
32. Somerset, Littledene: A New Zealand Rural Community, 27.
33. New Zealand Listener, 13 June 1947 (letter to the editor). See also W.T. Doig, A Survey of Standards of Life of New Zealand Dairy-farmers (Wellington, 1940), 48-55;
34. Somerset, Littledene, 28-34. The labor patterns of orchardists, and their risk to natural disaster, are described in Gustafson, Kiwi Keith, 23, 31, and those of sheep farmers in Richard Wolfe, A Short History of the Sheep in New Zealand (Auckland, 2006), 123-41.
35. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns of Change, 15.
36. D.B. Copland, Wheat Production in New Zealand: A Study in the Economics of New Zealand Agriculture (Auckland, 1918), 28.
37. George A. Duncan, The New Zealand Dairy Industry (Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1933), 284.
38. J46,1902/591.
39. J46, 1944/57.
40. J46, 1938/1147.
41. J46, 1926/166. The Coroner's complaints to the Department ofJustice are enclosed in the file.
42. J46,1924/1121.
43. J46, 1932/906.
44. J46, 1914/1456.
45. Jim McAloon, No Idle Rich: The Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago, 1840-1914
46. (Dunedin, 2002), 118.
47. H. Belshaw, "Agricultural Labour in New Zealand", in Belshaw et al., Agricultural Organization in New Zealand, 194-210; W.M. Hamilton, The Dairy Industry inNew Zealand (Wellington, 1944), 106.
48. J46,1928/790.
49. J46, 1936/1011.
50. J46,1936/1395 (Cliffe); J46, 1936/339 (Sanson).
51. J46, 1938/713 (Whittaker); J46, 1944/294 (O'Callaghan).
52. J46, 1920/573.
53. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns ofChange, 61.
54. J46, 1946/670.
55. NEB, (National Efficiency Board), Box 15, File 679, Thomas Moss, Wellington District Commissioner, National Efficiency Board, Report on Dairy Farms in Taranaki, 1 November 1917.
56. J46, 1930/636.
57. J46, 1930/385.
58. LS 36, Box 24, File on Discharged Soldiers Settlement Account: Report for the Year Ended 30th June 1935, p.3.
59. Gustafson, Kiwi Keith, 51.
60. J46, 1932/309.
61. J46, 1926/556.
62. J46, 1946/800. The transition from hand- to machine-milking in the 1920s dramatically boosted dairy production but there was a down side to this dependence on mechanization.
63. J46, 1934/318.
64. J46, 1920/1311.
65. J46, 1930/1343.
66. A.N. Gould, "Proof of Gratitude?: Soldier Settlement in New Zealand After World War I," PhD dissertation, Massey University, 1992;
67. Michael Roche, "Soldier Settlement in New Zealand After World War I: Two Case Studies", New Zealand Geographer, 58:1 (2002): 23-32. Some of the Australian studies take a sterner view. Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915-38 (Melbourne, 1987).
68. J46, 1930/738.
69. J46,1924/161.
70. J46, 1922/262.
71. Miles Fairburn, Nearly out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer's Diary (Auckland, 1995), 137.
72. Fairburn, Nearly out ofHeart and Hope, 83-85.
73. The seasonality of agricultural labor also has statistical implications. There is a predominance of harvesters in the 1926 census and virtually no shearers, because that year's census was conducted after the shearing season had ended. Olssen and Hickey, Class and Occupation, 37.
74. J46,1914/116.
75. J46, 1922/1213.
76. Edwin Arnold, "People Nobody Wants," 1-28; "No Friends, No Home," 1-7 in Unpublished Autobiography, MS-Papers-7237-25, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand.
77. J46,1916/317.
78. J46, 1922/251.
79. J46, 1930/130.
80. J46, 1916/200.
81. J46, 1904/745.
82. J46, 1946/927.
83. J46, 1928/413; J46, 1928/414. This is another case where pressure was put on the Coroner to deliver an open verdict. Florence's father-in-law was "satisfied she went into the water accidentally," but the Coroner would not hear of it.
84. J46,1926/1170.
85. J46, 1934/679.
86. J46, 1930/744. In this instance, a seventeen-year-old laborer was deemed backward even by his father.
87. J46, 1941/104.
88. J46, 1936/1284.
89. J46, 1934/232.
90. J46, 1934/319.
91. J46, 1934/1291.
92. J46, 1928/553.
93. J46, 1932/848.
94. J46, 1940/584.
95. J46, 1932/710.
96. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns ofChange, 52.
97. J46, 1942/1371.
98. J46, 1928/829. This file contains a discussion on prolonged insomnia being "the foundation of suicide."
99. J46,1926/229.
100. J46, 1926/410.
101. Doig, A Survey ofStandards ofLife ofNew Zealand Dairy-farmers, 58-60.
102. NEB (National Efficiency Board), Box 15, File 679, Thomas Moss, Wellington District Commissioner, National Efficiency Board, Report on Dairy Farms in Taranaki, 1 November 1917. Similarly, a survey of 451 dairy farms in 1940 revealed that "60% were run without any permanent hired male employees, the family members either alone or assisted by relatives being responsible for the work," meaning that "wives and children of school age are of considerable importance to the organisation of work." Doig, A Survey of Standards of Life of New Zealand Dairy-farmers, 50-51. The importance of children's labor is further discussed by Hamilton, The Dairy Industry in New Zealand, 107-08.
103. J46, 1920/609.
104. J46,1916/24.