Book Excerpt – Only An Orphan

Only an Orphan

First-hand Accounts of Life in Children’s Institutions

by Peggy Crawford

Page 4

St Hilda’s Orphanage Otane (c1929)

(photo courtesy Ruth Hammond)

Page 15

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RUTH

In March 1931, eight-year old Ruth’s mother died of peritonitis. She left two daughters, Doris, who was two years old and Ruth. It was the height of the Depression in New Zealand and their father was out of work. For a short time their grandmother looked after the girls, but when their father was offered work in Hawkes Bay, following the dreadful earthquake in February of that year, he accepted and took the children with him. They were first cared for by a family in the area and then admitted to an orphanage a few miles away. Ruth’s first impression was of a fire burning in the grate in the nursery and her father talking to the matron, but all too soon her father was gone. She says, “I cried my eyes out.”

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Page 23

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WILLIAM

William remembers just after the disastrous Hawkes Bay earthquake in 1931. “My mother was taken by ambulance to hospital and some time later my father told me he was going to take me to visit her. I became rather confused as Mum’s bed was in a large tent. I found out later the Napier Hospital had been very badly damaged by the earthquake and patients were cared for in tents.” William’s mother subsequently died and his father went back to sea on the ship the HMS Veronica where he was employed as a captain’s valet. Sadly, contact was severed completely after this. William was sent by train from Napier to Wellington to stay with a grandmother for a short time and from there he was put into a welfare home and then placed in the first of many foster homes.

Page 118

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The February 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquake had a profound effect on Monica. “We were in the school playground and were very frightened at the rumbling and moving ground. All of us from the orphanage walked back from school in the middle of the road because the power lines were down. When we got back, we saw a mass of broken glass everywhere. The matron had just done a lot of bottling fruit and jam making because it was that time of the year. All the jars were smashed. Windows were broken and bricks were dislodged. Because of the damage, we kids from the orphanage were sent down to Dannevirke for six months while the buildings were repaired.”

Page 119

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Mary also recalls the 1931 earthquake. “I remember the earthquake very well. I was put in a room by myself. No way was I going to stay there. We girls slept in chairs, all huddled together. I screamed everytime the shakes came. It scared the living daylight out of me.” In the early 1930s a wonderful endowment came the way of the children in the form of a wireless set. “Curiosity got the better of us ignorant kids. There we were wondering how all the people got inside that band box!”

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