Peloha

PELOHA or Children of the sun. Doctor Herbert Sutcliffe of “The School of Radiant Living”

I would like to add some information from my own perspective of this subject.

Peloha means Peace, Love and Happiness.

Records exist of this School of Radiant Living. Two books are kept at Victoria University in the Library. I wish to add to this some things from my own knowledge from about 1993. My husband John and I had decided to do a Hundred Year history of the Frederic and Edith Horner life. The book is called “The Roving Horners”. They were my Grand parents. I began the book knowing of 97 close relations and ended up eight months later knowing and having met most of 486 people who turned out to be all related to me. This was down to second cousins. Most had a happy demeanour, all liked sunshine and had plenty of vitality.

When I visited a cousin in New Plymouth she proudly told me that her second name was “Peloha”. When I looked blank she told me about how a large number of the Horner family in the Hastings and Havelock North area were members of “The School of Radiant Living”. She told me about a drink mixture that Dr Sutcliffe endorsed of drinking daily a glass of the boiled up brew of parsley, silverbeet and sour thistle and other green vegetables, for the cleanliness of our alimentary tract. I had always unknowingly been given this drink by my various relations but I had had no idea that it was part and parcel of a belief that a large number of my aunts, cousins and family members  had or were members of the school had followed.

The three main tenets of the School were of course peace love and happiness. It was not to be regarded as a religion but as a helpful and beneficial way of life. It was very much followed in the Havelock North and Hastings area in the 1940s to the 1960s. I believe that even to this day a lot of Dr Sutcliffe’s teaching of light, bright colours exercise and  music are all ideas gained from original followers in the Horner family for his philosophy of life.

Erica Tenquist. (nee Horner)