Carterton District Historical Society
Health Services in Carterton
The early settlers all over the country may have survived the rigours of three months at sea sailing to New Zealand but moving onto land needing clearing was a monumental task.
It was harsh living and keeping themselves well and healthy was a daily challenge.
In the early years of Pakeha settlement, the large number of serious accidents reflected the dangerous nature of the heavy manual work which both men and women were called upon to do. Men had to clear the land, build houses and create roads while women had to do the heavy work associated with running a home in primitive conditions without the labour saving devices of today. Injuries included severe lacerations, fractures, amputations, spinal and crush injuries and severed tendons.
Traditionally, Maori had developed their own form of healing methods, relying on plants and the herbal properties they offered. But with an increasing European population and disease which colonisation introduced, it was very soon obvious that medical care was an important factor in keeping both Maori and Pakeha healthy.
The Three Mile Bush area was then a dense forest with a single track and was considered a hazard by travellers who dreaded going through it as, and even during the day, they had to light lamps.
By 1875 Greytown had a hospital, and improved roads and bridges helped make life a little easier. The medical needs of the Carterton people were looked after by a succession of doctors, some of them resident in Greytown. As in other new settlements it was often family or neighbours who nursed the sick and injured. Death was a common reality.
While Carterton may not have had a resident doctor for many of its early years, the town boasted a Medical Hall built by entrepreneurial immigrant, Thomas Hooker, north of the Marquis of Normanby Hotel. This boasted a dispensing chemist in the town and was run by chemist, Daniel Keir. In 1884 Walter Lindop bought the Medical Hall and it became known as Lindop’s Chemist. His son Arthur took over the business in 1910. He was well known for his large range of veterinary supplies. The building was severely damaged by fire in 1887.
In 1894 a second chemist, James Baillie, set up business on the corner of Belvedere Road and High Street.
Health Services in Carterton
Sources: To be supplied
Carterton Doctors
In 1886 when the town’s population had reached around 1200, its first permanent resident doctor arrived. Dr David Johnston served the Carterton district for nearly 50 years. Dr Johnston and his family lived at Carrington Lodge (183 High Street North), formerly owned by the Booth family.
The surgery was at the front of the house and inside, a ballroom was the central feature. Over the years, the Johnston family hosted many weddings of their own children and for many notable Wairarapa families.
In 1932 Dr Johnston retired aged 69, and sold the practice to Dr William Wells.
In 1928 Dr Frank Morton and his wife Winifred, also a qualified doctor, arrived in Carterton. Dr Frank Morton’s service to Carterton was short lived as one morning in 1930 his car was struck by a train at the Clareville railway crossing and he died at the scene, aged 31. His wife, Dr Win Morton took over her late husband’s practice for the next 20 years. She later married Doug Taverner, a solicitor and later Mayor of Carterton.
Dr William Wells moved from Carterton in 1946 and Dr Harold Fookes took his place at Carrington House. ‘Hatch’ to his friends and ‘Dr Hatch’ to his patients, he was a popular GP from 1946-1957. Dr Fookes was also an accomplished obstetrician and he and Sister McKenzie worked well together. He was often called to Papawai Pa in Greytown or further out into the country to deliver babies. Dr Fookes was very inventive and once created callipers out of an old cooking pot for a child born with a foot deformity. The callipers could be altered as the child grew.
Also in Carterton was Dr Robert Bakewell who, in the 1940s lived in a large two-storey home in Rexwood Street which later became a social welfare home for youth. Keen gardeners, the Bakewells were responsible for the planting of the kowhai trees which today line Rexwood Street. Dr Bakewell’s surgery was in the former Wairarapa News building on Belvedere Road.
Dr Henry Howell Spratt, whose father was Dr Henry Thomas Spratt of Greytown in the 1850s, owned the house of Daniel Jensen fame. However he did not practise in Carterton.
Carterton Doctors
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Midwives and Maternity Care
The Wairarapa Hospital Board minutes in 1919 reveal the Board was running a hospital at Daleton House on the corner of Dalefield Road and High Street at the south end of town.
The property was owned by Mrs Kate McKay who did not live there. It was used as a maternity home run by Sister Whitehead and later as a refuge for soldiers returning from WWI. The building also became an emergency hospital during the influenza epidemic of 1918. The Hayes family took over the lease of the property in 1921.
Until the early 1950s most babies were born at home or in private nursing homes. Popular midwife Lenore Dulcie McKenzie (Lyn) or ‘Sister Mac’, ran a nursing home in Carterton for nearly 30 years. Born in Carterton in 1905, Lyn attended Carterton District High School and did her nursing training at Masterton Hospital. She completed her midwifery training at the Alexandra Maternity Hospital in Newtown, Wellington.
Sister McKenzie began her service to Carterton mothers at her private hospital in Howard Street formerly run by Sister Isabella Strang. In 1936 when obstetric regulations changed, disallowing maternity hospitals from having surgical patients because of the risk of cross infection, Sister McKenzie sold to Sister Ann Kelly who named the property Croydon Private Hospital. After WWII Sister Ann Grant bought it and in 1952 it was taken over by the Sisters of Compassion who ran it as a home for intellectually and physically disabled children for the next 40 years. It is now a private residence.
To enable her to purchase Dr Warren Young’s rooms on the corner of High and Seddon Streets in 1936, Sister McKenzie raised a Government State Advances loan, a major achievement for a single working woman in the 1930s. The building had been built as a private hospital by the Booth family for two daughters, both trained nurses.
It cost £6 a week for a single room and £3 to share a triple room. Jim McKenzie, her cousin, related that if the husband arrived at Sister McKenzie’s hospital and asked first after the welfare of his wife before the infant, the bill for her stay would be much cheaper. She would also not admit husbands if they smelt of alcohol. The well-being of the mothers was paramount to her.
Although Sister McKenzie was a working single woman, in November 1936 she adopted a baby girl born in her Howard Street hospital. The child was literally left behind by her unmarried mother who sanctioned the adoption. However, it took six years of battling the authorities before the adoption was complete.
Sister McKenzie gained national recognition for keeping premature babies alive, swaddling them in a cocoon and keeping them warm, fed by dropper and never left alone. Fresh and nutritious food was also important to Sister McKenzie, delivered to the home by her father from his garden. She encouraged breast feeding and had her own formula for those with not enough milk. She also had other ‘potions’ which the local chemist Gordon Stubbs would help her concoct. Her cough mixture was especially popular. She was not keen on babies in the parents’ bedrooms citing mother’s need for rest and was also a fan of contraception with many a father turning up at Stubbs’ for condoms.
Sister McKenzie retired in 1960 leaving a legacy of care for new mothers.
Another maternity home was on the corner of High Street South and Howard Street where the Brigidine Convent used to be. This large home was built by Mr Grengor whose wife was a maternity nurse. The Brigidine nuns bought it circa 1916.
Janet Wilson owned the Roseneath property on the corner of High Street South and Howard Street opposite the convent site, in 1965 and operated it in the form of a maternity home, convalescence hospital and a private geriatric hospital before converting it to an 11 bed rest home in 1987 due to a change in legislation. It was purchased by Karen and Lance Scott in 1991.
Miss A D Fitzgerald had a private maternity home at Braemar, 295 High Street South in 1939. This building is visible from Moreton Road.
Midwives and Maternity Care
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Māori Health Challenges
Settlement of the Wairarapa by Europeans began around 170 years ago in the 1840s when they began leasing and buying land. However, Maori had lived in the region for over 700 years.
Prior to 1800, a holistic system of healthcare was used by all hapū. It incorporated teachings from the ancestors (tipuna), as well as the values which shaped the practice of hauora or well-being, and was managed by tribal leaders.
At this time a range of healers within traditional Maori society included tohunga (priests or learned persons who possessed special knowledge of holistic interventions). The tohunga was a revered person and was an essential part of the religious framework of society.
Traditional midwives assisted with all aspects of birthing from conception to the safe delivery of infants, and often worked in conjunction with tohunga and whanau. There were also other healers skilled in the traditional uses of plants (rongoa) and massage (mirimiri). This knowledge was gained through the teachings of tohunga, at wananga and from whanau members.
Maori did not see sickness as a scientific/medical problem but as a moral problem; it was a temporary disharmony with nature and society.
Captain Cook’s botanist Joseph Banks noted Maori were ‘cleanly in their persons’ and that at pa sites there were ‘necessary houses’ or latrines away from the main settlement and a regular dunghill was heaped up for food and other waste.
Oral health problems have always existed, but it was likely they were relatively mild in the pre-European Wairarapa as the Maori diet was varied, coarse and contained much mineral matter – all contributing to oral health. Wear of the teeth was the greatest problem as shown in archaeological evidence. A number of factors contributed to wear on the teeth including their use in daily tasks and the presence of sand in the food. Treatment was crude – affected teeth were knocked out with stone tools and some substances may have been applied to wounds.
In the mid 1800s, one of the Wairarapa’s prominent chiefs was Te Potangaroa. As well as being regarded as a prophet he was also a healer. During the 1860s, when all the marae along the Ruamahanga River were stricken with illness, he visited all of them and through a combination of ritual rongoa and Christian prayer was able to cleanse all the marae and cure those who were ill.
In March 1856, Dr Henry Spratt of Greytown wrote to the head of the Native Affairs Department outlining the work of his practice and pointing out that he treated several Maori patients. He asked if he could have an official appointment to treat Maori and this was eventually approved in May 1859 when he was appointed Medical Attendant to the Natives for the Wairarapa at a salary of £100 per year.
Amongst a number of health related initiatives which were introduced in native schools, the most successful was a system where teachers were given responsibility for the health of their Maori pupils and were able to treat them for a number of aliments.
Included in the guidelines for treatment, a section of the cultural significance of death within whanau and hapu was used by Maori as a basis for marae campaigns on health and sanitation.
Attempts were made in 1897 to establish a Maori nursing workforce. In the initial scheme young women in Maori schools were awarded scholarships to work in a public hospital for a year where they received training to become certified basic care givers in their own communities. This was replaced by the Nurses Registration Act (1901) when the Crown decided that Maori could compete with their Pakeha counterparts for positions in hospital schools of nursing.
In 1897, a meeting at Hawke’s Bay’s Te Aute College, old students of the school launched what became known as ‘The Young Maori Party’ which sought to combine technological, cultural and other benefits of European civilisation with preserving the ‘best’ of Maori culture. One of their aims was, through education, to reverse the trends of poor health and lifestyle amongst Maori with a programme of health reforms based on traditional practices. Perhaps the most prominent leaders of the party were Maui Pomare and Te Rangi Hiroa, also known as Peter Buck, both of whom were doctors of medicine, and James Carroll and Apirana Ngata. All four became Members of Parliament and as, over the years, the government increasingly turned to the Young Maori Party for advice and mediation over a wide range of issues related to Maori, they were later knighted for their invaluable service to their people and the country.
Māori Health Challenges
Sources: To be supplied