New Zealand milk for 'building Britons'

Medicine and Colonial Identity

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 79-102

  Smith, Philippa Mein ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY   (New Zealand)

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EID: 84908947914     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203522318     Document Type: Chapter

References (102)

1. see W. K. Hancock, 'Agenda for the Study of British Imperial Economy 1850-1950', Journal of Economic History, vol.XIII, no. 3, 1953.
2. On ideals in advertisements, see G. R. Lealand, A Foreign Egg in Our Nest? American Popular Culture in New Zealand (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1988), pp.6-9.
3. Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation ((Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p.137.
4. See Gil Docking with additions by Michael Dunn, Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting (, rev. edn (Auckland: David Batemen, 1990).
5. A. L. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), p.200.
6. Culture refers to a shared set of values or beliefs, and ways of living, while identity refers to defining the self, including in relation to agreed values. A. Pagden and N. Canny have usefully encapsulated the relation between culture and identity in their observation that the 'possession of an identity also presupposes the existence of a shared set of cultural values'. 'Afterword: From Identity to Independence', in N. Canny and A. Pagden (eds), Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.269.
7. In 1973, the writer Frank Sargeson published a memoir which revealed how white (Pakeha) New Zealanders internalised this image of the Empire's dairy farm: 'looking back across the patchwork of farmland', he wrote, 'I saw the crowns of a group of cabbage trees superimposed against an immense blue ribbon of sea: it was all very well for the Empire's dairy farm to be momentarily annihilated, but I could not help being suspicious of the involuntarily romantic images of tropical islands and palms that it was immediately replaced by.' F. Sargeson, Once is Enough: A Memoir (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1973), p.41.
8. Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
9. S. A. M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800 (Basing-stoke and London: Macmillan, 1997).
10. See also D. W. Curtin and L. M. Heldke (eds), Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992).
11. Francis McKee, 'The Popularisation of Milk as a Beverage during the 1930s', in David F. Smith (ed.), Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Routledge: London and New York, 1997), pp.123-41. This association with purity and life was cross-cultural, as images attest of the Indian god Krishna as a baby, fed by the cow-mother.
12. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, p.1.
13. Recent works on the international infant welfare movement include Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland (eds), Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870-1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992);
14. Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1993);
15. Cynthia Comacchio, 'Nations Are Built of Babies': Saving Ontario's Mothers and Children 1900-1940 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993);
16. Lara V. Marks, Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth Century London (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1996);
17. Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990);
18. Philippa Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby: Infant Survival and Welfare in an Imperial World: Australia 1880-1950 (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1997).
19. This idea has benefited from Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire; K. Oliver, 'Nourishing the Speaking Subject: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Abominable Food and Women', in Curtin and Heldke (eds), Cooking, Eating, Thinking;
20. C. Smith-Rosenberg, 'The Body Politics', in Elizabeth Weed (ed.), Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics (New York: Routledge, 1989).
21. Curtin and Heldke (eds), Cooking, Eating, Thinking, p. xiii.
22. These thoughts have been assisted by C. P. Gutierrez, Cajun Foodways ((Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), pp.3-4, 33, 137.
23. F. Truby King, The Feeding of Plants and Animals ((Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1905), pp.5, 6, 8.
24. Truby King promoted his ideas as being true to natural law. But in fact the Truby King 'system' was most unnatural. On Truby King and his rules, see Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, ch. 4. Other sources include Mary Truby King, Truby King the Man (London: Allen & Unwin, 1948);
25. Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983).
26. The term 'fattening human stock' is from Margaret Tennant, Children's Health, The Nation's Wealth: A History of Children's Health Camps (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books/Historical Branch, 1994), ch. 2; also P. Mein Smith, Maternity in Dispute: New Zealand 1920-1939 (Wellington: Government Printer/Historical Branch, 1986), p.3.
27. S. W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power ((New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. xxix.
28. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 ((New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
29. H. G. Philpott, A History of the New Zealand Dairy Industry 1840-1935 ((Wellington: Government Printer, 1937), p.12.
30. NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 25 July 1925, pp.30-1.
31. W. D. McIntyre, 'Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands', in Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4 (Oxford: OUp. 1999).
32. The films were described at length in the NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 29 May 1926; quotation from p.21.
33. Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and Its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850-1900 ((Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1989), p.29.
34. NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 29 May 1926, p.44. The reference to Maori warriors and imperial troops related to the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s. Much of the land confiscated as a result of the wars was used for dairy farming from the 1890s.
35. NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 29 August 1925, pp.18-19. For a cultural studies view of domestic imperialism, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York and London: Routledge, 1995).
36. Offer, The First World War, p.149.
37. Display at London Grocers' Exhibition, AJHR, 1939, H-30, p.1.
38. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, pp.7-11.
39. AJHR, 1925, H-31A, p. 28, cited in Mein Smith, Maternity in Dispute, p.25.
40. W. M. Singleton, Director, Dairy Division, Department of Agriculture, NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 25 July 1925, p.30.
41. Adshead, Material Culture.
42. On the transformation in the value of the (white, normal) child as the child changed from a worker to a scholar, see Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (New York: Basic Books, 1985), republished 1994.
43. See also Roger Cooter (ed.), In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare 1880-1940 (London: Routledge, 1992).
44. Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, p.63.
45. See, for example, Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, ch. 6.
46. See Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, pp.66-7 and ch. 4.
47. On 'scientific' infant feeding in the United States, see Rima D. Apple, Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding, 1890-1950 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
48. Truby King to ed., Argus Melbourne, 17 February 1923, cited in Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, p.93.
49. Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, p.103;
50. see also Helen May, The Discovery of Early Childhood: The Development of Services for the Care and Education of Very Young Children, Mid Eighteenth Century Europe to Mid Twentieth Century New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books, 1997), p.145.
51. E. Pritchard, Infant Education, 2nd edn (London: Henry Kimpton, 1920), p.64
52. cited in Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, p.102.
53. The word 'mothercraft' was invented ca. 1910. Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood', HistoryWorkshop, issue 5, Spring 1978, p.34
54. Deborah Dwork, War is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England 1898-1918 (London and New York: Tavistock, 1987).
55. R. P. T. Davenport-Hines and Judy Slinn, Glaxo: A History to 1962 ((Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chs 1-2. On Newman, see Dwork, War is Good for Babies.
56. Philpott, A History of the New Zealand Dairy Industry 1840-1935, pp.108, 152-61.
57. Davenport-Hines and Slinn, Glaxo: A History to 1962, pp.41-3.
58. On the infant feeding row, see P. Mein Smith, "That Welfare Warfare", in Fildes, Marks and Marland (eds), Women and Children First, ch. 11, and Mothers and King Baby, ch. 5.
59. Ada G. Paterson and E. Marsden, 'Physical Growth and Mental Attainment: New Zealand Schoolchildren', Appendices to Journals of the House of Representatives, hereafter AJHR, 1927, H-31, Appendix, pp.54-63.
60. On the nutritional transition, see D. Grigg, 'The Nutritional Transition in Western Europe', Journal of Historical Geography, vol.21, no. 3, 1995, pp.247-61.
61. For a useful essay review of developments in anthropometric history, see Bernard Harris, 'Health, Height, and History: An Overview of Recent Developments in Anthropometric History', Social History of Medicine, vol.7, no. 2, August 1994, pp.297-320.
62. Major works in the field include R. W. Fogel, 'Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality since 1700: Some Preliminary Findings', in S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman (eds), Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp.439-555
63. R. Floud, K. Wachter and A. Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
64. For relevant work on Australia, see R. V. Jackson and Mark Thomas, 'Height, Weight, and Wellbeing: Sydney Schoolchildren in the Early Twentieth Century', Australian Economic History Review, vol.XXXV, no. 2, 1995, pp.39-65.
65. Department of Health, Hints on Diet ((Wellington: Government Printer, 1935).
66. Davenport-Hines and Slinn, Glaxo, p.26.
67. Flora Davidson file, Ministry of Health; Tennant, Children's Health, The Nation's Wealth, p. 33. Initially subnormal nutrition was determined by clinical judgment of a child's skinniness, pallor and posture. From the 1930s doctors and teachers adopted more 'scientific' (quantitative) tests based on height and weight charts, and in New Zealand the measure for child malnutrition became 10 per cent below the ideal weight for age line, as used in Toronto. School medical officers used the Toronto scale to make an age-height-weight survey of New Zealand children in 1934, H. C. D. Somerset, Child Nutrition in a Rural Community (Wellington: NZ Council for Educational Research, 1941), Studies in Education no. 6, pp.15-16.
68. NZ Dairy Produce Exporter, 25 July 1925, p.31.
69. On vitamins and their commercialisation, see Sally M. Horrocks, 'Nutrition Science and the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries in Inter-War Britain', in David F. Smith (ed.), Nutrition in Britain, pp.53-74.
70. 'Milk in Schools', Muriel Bell Papers, MS 1078, Box 1. The advertisement featured in the New Zealand Trades Alphabet, 1955, p.47, and copies were delivered to ca. 250,000 schoolchildren. Christchurch City Council, CCC CH 380, vol.2, c/154, National Archives, Christchurch.
71. Vera Scantlebury Brown, 'Nutrition of the Pre-School Child', Medical Journal of Australia, 30 July 1938, p.153;
72. Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby, p.229.
73. Medical Research Council, Report of Nutrition Research Committee, 1939-40, Muriel Bell Papers, MS 1078, Box 1;
74. E. Gregory, P. R. Jackson, E. C. Chambers and E. C. G. McLaughlin, 'New Zealand Dietary Studies I: Dietary Studies of One Hundred and Seventy Families of Varying Occupations', NZ Medical Journal, April 1943;
75. E. C. G. McLaughlin, 'New Zealand Dietary Studies II: Dietary Survey among Basic Wage-Earners', NZ Medical Journal, August 1943;
76. E. C. G. McLaughlin and I. Wilson, 'New Zealand Dietary Studies III: Dietary Survey among Maoris', NZ Medical Journal, April 1945, pp.1-6. Average daily consumption of milk was 0.7 pint (395 ml), and among Maori, 0.6 pint (342 ml)
77. Muriel E. Bell, 'School Milk in New Zealand', XIVth International Dairy Congress Proceedings, Nutrition Section, vol.1, 1956, p.1.
78. H. C. D. Somerset, Child Nutrition in a Rural Community, p.28. Somerset was an exceptional teacher who conducted his own surveys. His wife Gwen Somerset was an expert on early childhood.
79. Muriel Bell to G. A. Q. Lennane, 'Milk in Schools Scheme', 11 February 1961, in Flora Davidson file, Ministry of Health.
80. The British Ministry of Food renewed long-term contracts for all New Zealand's exportable surpluses of dairy products from 1944-8, AJHR, 1944, H-30, pp.35. Bulk purchasing arrangements only ceased in 1955.
81. See, for example, J. A. Kinsella, 'A Plea for Purer Milk Supply for Human Consumption in our Cities and Towns', unpublished paper, 1906, CCC CH 343/94a, National Archives, Christchurch. Cf. comments in 1948 by Dr Lonie, MOH Palmerston North, Flora Davidson file.
82. Milk Commission, Report on the Supply of Milk to the Four Metropolitan Areas of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, AJHR, 1944, H-29A.
83. Palmerston North had 90 per cent pasteurised milk, and Gisborne 97 per cent. By comparison, in London in 1942 pasteurised milk comprised 90 per cent of the supply, while in Scotland 44 per cent of town milk was pasteurised. F. B. Smith, The Retreat of Tuberculosis 1850-1950 (London: Croom Helm, 1988), p.193. My source for Wellington as a model for Delhi is Ian Catanach.
84. S. Coney, 'New Zealand Women's Food Value League 1937-1948', in A. Else (ed.), Women Together: A History of Women's Organisations in New Zealand (Wellington: Daphne Brasell/Historical Branch, 1993), pp.270-1.
85. P. Mein Smith, 'Muriel E. Bell', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Vol. 4 (Auckland and Wellington: Auckland University Press/Dept of Internal Affairs, 1998), pp.47-8; Muriel Bell Papers, MS 1078, Hocken Library.
86. See also D. A. Dow, Safeguarding the Public Health: A History of the New Zealand Department of Health (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995), pp.144-6.
87. F. Devonport, 'An Enquiry into the Condition of the Liquid Milk Industry in Christchurch', M. Com. (Hons) thesis in Economics, Canterbury University College, 1949.
88. Consumption figures calculated by Flora Davidson, 'Trends in Milk Consumption in New Zealand', unpublished conference paper, Nutrition Society, August 1982, Ministry of Health.
89. See, for example, Meckel, Save the Babies;
90. McKee, 'The Popularisation of Milk as a Beverage'.
91. J. A. Kinsella, 'A Plea for a Purer Milk Supply for Human Consumption in our Cities and Towns', unpublished paper, 1906, CCC CH 343/94a, National Archives, Christchurch.
92. Kinsella, 'A Plea for a Purer Milk Supply'.
93. W. B. Crowley on radio with W. Kennedy, MOH for Christchurch, Listener, 7 August 1953, p.5.
94. The formation of Christchurch identity is analysed in John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall (eds), Southern Capital: Towards a City Biography 1850-2000 ((Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2000).
95. Press, Christchurch, 9 June 1954, p.9.
96. Christchurch Metropolitan Milk Board, Minutes, September 1958-June 1959, February 1960, CCC CH 380, vol.2, c/154, vol.3, c/155, National Archives, Christchurch.
97. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, p.13, also pp.3-4.
98. Muriel Bell, 'Osteoporosis as a Dietary Problem', Journal of the NZ Dietetic Association, vol.15, no. 1, June 1961, pp.13-18.
99. Muriel Bell, 'Milk - Our Best Single Food', Listener, 23 May 1941; AJHR, 1950, H-31.
100. See, for example, Wendy Larner and Paul Spoonley, 'Post-Colonial Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand', in Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds), Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class, Sage Series on Race and Ethnic Relations, Vol. 11 (London: Sage, 1995), pp.39-64;
101. Donald Denoon, 'Settler Capitalism Unsettled', NZ Journal of History, vol.29, no. 2, October 1995, pp.129-41;
102. Donald Denoon, Philippa Mein Smith and Marivic Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Blackwell History of the World Series (Oxford and Malden: MA: Blackwell, 2000), for an extended treatment of the formation of identities in the region.