THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PROTECTION OF AUTHOR ’S COPYRIGHT This copy has been supplied by the Library of the University of Otago on the understanding that the following conditions will be observed: 1. To comply with s56 of the Copyright Act 1994 [NZ], this thesis copy must only be used for the purposes of research or private study. 2. The author's permission must be obtained before any material in the thesis is reproduced, unless such reproduction falls within the fair dealing guidelines of the Copyright Act 1994. Due acknowledgement must be made to the author in any citation. 3. No further copies may be made without the permission of the Librarian of the University of Otago. August 2010 1 MIDDLEMARCH 1914 - 1918 SONIA INDER A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF POSTGRADUATE DIPLOMA IN HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO, DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND, 1992. 'I> -- - _______:_:__-_-=_:~ 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I should like to acknowledge the help of people from Middlemarch, especially Elliot Matheson, who started me off in the right direction, and those locals too numerous to mention, for their time and effort. I should also like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the Hocken Library and the McNab Room of the Dunedin Public Library. I would like to thank Erik Olssen and~Philip Sallis for their time and patience. A special thank you goes to my parents, Sam and Wendy, for their constant ! • encouragement and to my friends and flatemates, Nicki, Susan, Phil and Debs, thanks for putting up with me this year. I would like to dedicate this work to the memories of Grandad and Nellie. 1~ ,rI ,. ,, - 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement 2 Table of Contents 3 List of Figures 4 Introduction 5 Chapter One Middlemarch on the Eve of War, 1914. 7 Chapter Two The Homefront, 1914 -1917. 22 Chapter Three The Men Who Went To The War. 34 Chapter Four 1918 - The Beginning of the End. 49 I ·' I Chapter Five Conclusion - The Aftermath. 59 ' > Bibliography 62 I I ! Appendix 68 ii ~ Map I 4 LIST OF FIGURES 1. MAP OF OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND : INDICATING THE POSITION OF I _. GLADBROOK ESTA TE . ' 5 INTRODUCTION. · This dissertation attempts to provide a short overview of the effect of the Great War, 1914 - 1918, upon a small rural community in Central Otago. This work concentrates on the social aspects of the war's impact on the people of the I > township of Middlemarch and the outlying area, the Strath Taieri district. I ~ The first chapter outlines the area and its community on the eve of war, thus providing a basis for comparison to assess the impact of the war in the following chapters. Chapter Two : The Homefront, illustrates the initial response to the war, while the last chapter attempts to determine if anything has changed after four years of war. The third chapter, on the men who went to the war from the district, proved the most difficult to research. This chapter attempts to follow the exploits of the servicemen from Middlemarch, while also looking at the impact of their absence from the Middlemarch community. The study of men, who fought in the First World War from the district, is limited by the scarcity of military records. Service records were retained by defence authorities in order to grant war pensions and issue service medals amongst other things. The Ministry of Defence, however, has classified these files as personal information under Section 24 of the Official Infom1ation Act 1982. Thus, they are not available for research purposes. These files contain a great deal of useful information concerning New Zealand servicemen, including : their full name; date and place of -birth, occupation, place and date of enlistment, next of kin, employer, a physical description, details of overseas service, date of discharge and the date of death. Trying to piece together the details of all the Middlemarch servicemen, from a variety of sources, produced a limited result. The name on a Roll of Honour or · t Nominal Roll was not always enough to go on and the men were not always specific l 6 about their details. For example, J. Gordon could have been one of twenty J. Gordons who enlisted from the Otago region. Hence, the figures used in relation to the Middlemarch servicemen are not accurate but they are the result of an estimate based on the limited infom1ation available. i ~ I,, 'u 'I " I ! I> 1 t L 7 CHAPTER ONE MIDDLEMARCH ON THE EVE OF WAR, 1914. In the centre of the town, across the road from the school, stands the war memorial,"Erected by the residents of Strath Taieri and Deep Stream to ' . perpetuate the memory of the men who left the district in the service of their country overseas,during the Great War. 1914-1919. The Strath Taieri district, situated 48 miles north-west of Dunedin encompasses 'f,.,, the area east of the Rock n' Pillar range extending to the Lone Pine or One Tree Hill on the Taieri ridge opposite. From the Deep Stream in the south-west the district extends to the northern end of the plain with the Kakanui mountains acting as a natural boundary. The Taieri River, one of the longest rivers in New Zealand, rises. in the Lammermoor Range, travels north-east down the Maniototo Valley on the other side of the Rock and Pillar Range, rounds the northern end of the Rock and Pillar at Kokonga then progresses south through the Hyde Gorge until it reaches the Strath Taieri from where it enters the Hindon Gorge, the same route followed by the Central Otago railway. Emerging from this gorge the river crosses the Taieri Plain then winds down through coastal hills to reach the sea - a journey of 290 kilometres. The climate of the Strath Taieri is similar to most Central Otago districts, with a low rainfall, cold winters and hot summers, with the ever. present risk of drought years, floods and snow to low levels. Screaming nor'westers heralded by an unusual cloud formation known locally as the Taieri Pet are two more features of the area's - climate. Gales have been known to last for over a week on end, creating clouds of drifting dust. Early transport into the area had to contend with fierce gusts of wind capable of flipping covered wagons. The eastern side of the valley is dryer than the western side and more susceptible to drought conditions. In contrast the western side 8 is well supplied by a series of permanent strc,eams which run off the Rock and Pillar Range. In addition to these surface streams there is a considerable reservoir of water underground, and in most areas of the plain pumps could be driven to tap this underground source. The fogs which occasionally blanket the plain are another feature of the local climate. These fogs are often very shallow so that some parts of the plain with an altitude of an extra hundred feet enjoy sunshine while the rest of the plain remains emersed in thick fog. 1 I During the years before radio (which did not reach the district until after the war) and electricity (which did not arrive in Middlemarch until the next world war in 1939), when motor cars were still very much a novel sight the farming district was serviced by a small and isolated rural community. Most of the inhabitants of the district worked predominantly in the fam1ing and pastoral area. Agricultural and pastoral development in the district was dominated by large scale cattle and sheep graziers for the first thirty years, gradually breaking down into closer settlement and dairying. From the earliest stages of settlement in the 1850s the natural pasture of the Strath Taieri had been divided up into a handful of large runs, including the Cottesbrook and Gladbrook estates, which ran either side of the Taieri river, the length of the entire valley. At their peak, Gladbrook accounted for the west side of the Taieri River from the Rock and Pillar Range almost as far as Outram ; Cottesbrook held the east side right down to the outskirts of Dunedin. 2 Wool was the major commodity as carcasses were valueless with the exception of feeding the staff and work dogs. The 1880s brought sub-division and refrigeration. The 1870s had witnessed the expansion of flocks of sheep at a faster rate than the population. There was little money involved in the boiling down of carcasses for tallow and the canning of mutton for export. Both methods wasted -,r much of the animal that could have been useful. At the same time it was realised 1 H.M. Thompson, East of the Rock and Pillar (Christchurch : Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., 1977), pp.4-5. 2 Ibid. pp.125-126. I L 'P' 9 that due to the fall in wool prices, New Zealand could no longer rely on wool as its sole export commodity. Considerable interest began to be shown in the various methods proposed for preserving meat, especially in the possibility of freezing it. The first refrigerated meat cargo from New Zealand left Port Chalmers for Britain I, in 1882. By the 1890s refrigeration had opened up the British market to New Zealand butter and cheese. By the turn of the century, a new economic opportunity I • was opened to farmers and this combined with the closer settlement brought about by sub-division resulted in the growth of dairying and fat lamb farming. 3 Following the Liberal land policy towards closer settlement, James McKerrow, secretary of Crown Lands, reported in May 1881, that the leases of 71 runs, comprising 2,681,000 acres were due.