And so the kiwifruit myth continues

I saw in Sunday's NZ Herald that Dame Christine Cole Catley has passed away, aged 88. In the obituary prepared and distributed by NZPA, however, a myth disproved late last year (and discussed by email with Dame Christine at the time) is still perpetuated. Why, I'm not sure. She had a wonderful career covering the real facts in her life, rather than this:

In 1961, while working as an advertising copywriter, she was tasked with renaming the Chinese Gooseberries to appease the American market, which was uncomfortable with the Communist overtones of the fruit's name. As a result, Dame Christine coined the name Kiwi berry, which later evolved to kiwifruit.

This myth sparked off Naming the Delicious Little Ray, which I published online in October last year. The following is from that article:

In March 1960, Grahame Turner had a telephone call from one of the Auckland opposition firms: the Fruitgrowers Federation.

“ … they asked me the position regarding the American market as this organisation is exporting on behalf of growers to Australia and to Great Britain. I told them in no uncertain terms that I considered there was definitely not room for more than one shipper. I don’t think they will ship this season but I am sure they will try and get in on the market should the quantities we send start assuming worthwhile proportions.”

Grahame Turner was right. Stan Conway and the Federation did remain determined to get into a market which, from the results of Turners & Growers’ efforts, seemed to be profitable for the Chinese gooseberry. But they certainly didn’t want their product mistaken for that of their opposition. Roly Earp in his book, wrote:

"Following correspondence, Stan visited the United States in 1961, and made a point of visiting the firm's headquarters taking several trays containing fruit conditioned for eating ... With the prospects of a large order for 1962 Stan was extremely disappointed when the tasting proved unfavourable ...This was a set back for Stan, for the growers, and for the Harry & David staff who had been very confident. In anticipation of a favourable response, the latter had already begun making arrangements for the following year, planning how they would handle the late change and make the necessary alteration to their promotional material at short notice. They had also taken steps to find a new name which it was intended would be exclusive to their own use."

Bolding mine. According to David Yerex and Westbrook Haines:

"Other exporters also tended to look on 'kiwifruit' as the Turners and Growers' name, and to think in terms of finding one for their own use. In 1962 the Fruitgrowers Federation put up a prize of 20 guineas to go to the advertising agency that could provide the best alternative name, and received over 60 suggestions. But in the event there appeared to be nothing that improved on the 'kiwi' label. The Federation did however plump for kiwi 'berry', instead of kiwifruit, and this was adopted for a time by both their UK agents and by Harry & David in the States ... "

Again, bolding mine.

Dame Christine Cole Catley, in an email to me in September this year, said that in the early 1960s she was a copywriter for the Wellington based office of the Catts-Patterson advertising firm. The firm was asked to come up with a list of alternatives to Chinese gooseberry, a name not wanted because of perceived “commie fruit” associations. She came up with “quite a few” possibilities, including kiwi berry. In a further email, she said that as far as she could remember none of the Catts-Patterson clients included those involving fruits, vegetables or any kind of plant. As well, neither before nor after the kiwi berry / kiwifruit naming instance was she asked by the Catts-Patterson firm to do anything for Turners & Growers.

The following may seem to the reader to be a rather long quote to include in this article. But, I do so because it is a chance to see Dame Christine’s own words on this subject. She provides background here as to how she came to be where she was employed in the early 1960s, when the other main instance of a name for the Chinese gooseberry arose.

“My family returned in May 1958 from years overseas. We'd decided to build a house so at once I sought a job as an advertising copywriter, beginning almost at once with Carlton Carruthers Du Chateau & King, in Molesworth St, Wellington. (Lew King was historian Michael King's father but I didn't know Michael until 1971 when he joined my journalism-teaching staff.) This work went well but a former employee (John Blennerhassett who happened to be an old friend of ours) was partly incapacitated and wanted to return from Australia to his old copywriting job with this same firm, so would I mind resigning in his favour? Of course, I said. I was given a handsome testimonial and within a week found another copywriting job, and at a higher salary.

“It's important to have some dates here but unhappily so far I haven't found any. Nor can I remember the name of my next agency employer, whose offices (long gone) were diagonally opposite Stewart Dawsons corner. I hadn't been there long at all when I was headhunted by Catts-Patterson Advertising Agency of Upper Cuba Street. This agency too has long gone.

“I find it really hard to believe that, within only 13 months of becoming a copywriter, and with my third employer, I became involved in thinking up another name for chinese gooseberries. That's why I've said all along that this must have occurred (for involved I most definitely was) in the early 1960s, probably 1961. It definitely happened at Catts-Pattersons, however.

“I am writing my autobiography, with three books planned. It's a kind of overview of social change in NZ over my lifetime. Book One will be published next year, taking me just past the Tangiwai disaster. Book Two will encompass our time working overseas, advertising copywriting, being TV critic etc for The Dominion etc, and teaching journalism at Wellington Polytechnic ... probably ending around the mid-1970s. So that's the book which will have the kiwifruit reference, and before long I'll be able to make a serious start on going through my huge accumulation of relevant but unsorted papers, clippings, diary and journal entries. There I hope I will find a date!

“Have I said clearly that the name of the Fruitgrowers' Federation was never mentioned to me? My two bosses -- and Lisa, I'd really appreciate your mentioning their names, George Lewis and Arthur King, in the hope that families/friends might have something to add, as surely this was just the kind of work-anecdote that would be passed around and some more detail might emerge -- never at any time said to me that Turners & Growers were clients. I don't know now whether I was told, "Turners & Growers want us to come up with possible names..." or "We've been asked to come up with possible names because Turners & Growers want to export...".

“Also please note that whoever it was who approached my firm came back later to them a SECOND time with the news, passed on to me, that "Mrs Turner liked kiwiberry but when a botanist was consulted he'd said it was a fruit, not a berry." TWO contacts! We were all pleased and that was that, except that I told the story stressing my carelessness in not thinking to get a botanist involved. "A cautionary tale," I told students. "Always check such things."

“I must take up the matter in my Book Two because many people have heard that I was the one who came up with "kiwi". I will do my best to convey everyone's views, and will be happy to let interested people have a preview, and get back to me. Similarly, Lisa, I'd love to see your finished piece. It's just occurred to me that Carlton Carruthers may still have staff records and could tell me when I left them, so I'll ask them. But I think it's only a faint possibility that I was working for three agencies within a space of 13 months ... A mystery indeed, but to me the questions are WHO asked Catts-Patterson for help, when, and why.”

After she wrote this, Dame Christine contacted me on 14 October and said that The Kiwifruit Story’s description of the 1962 “20 guineas” competition does closely match her recollections – although there is still the matter of no mention made at the time, as she remembers, regarding the Fruitgrowers Federation, or the prize itself.

Turners & Growers had come up with, and decided on the "kiwifruit" name in mid-1959, the process clearly documented at the time. But, in the light of the obituary this month, so it seems, the Cole Catley myth concerning her part in creating the famous trade name appears likely to continue.

A sheep and kiwifruit beside Rosebank's cemetery

This mural on the power box on Orchard Street, just outside the George Maxwell Memorial Cemetery,  is new this year, and looks wonderful.

The main theme it features is that of kiwifruit -- with Hayward Wright's former land close by on Avondale Road, the choice doesn't surprise me -- but I wonder if the sheep is connected with the ovine legend in the cemetery?

Once, so the stories go, last century the Cemetery Trust Board kept sheep in the cemetery, as living lawn mowers. When one died, it was buried in the cemetery. So they say.

Legends aside -- this is certainly an attractive addition to Avondale's landscape. Well done Vector for allowing this!

Naming the Delicious Little Ray

Just published on Scribd: "Naming the Delicious Little Ray", a result of some research I've done into the story behind the coining of the name kiwifruit for the export markets for the Chinese gooseberry. "Kiwifruit" was definitely a result of a meeting within Turners & Growers here in Auckland in June 1959 ... but there has been an alternative story around the bounds within the last two decades that it came from a Wellington advertising agency. I felt the need to investigate.

Our Warden of the Hundred: William Edgecombe

Image from NZ Graphic.

Updated: 30 April 2013

Arguably, Edgecombe was Rosebank's first gardener. It was he who placed the following advertisement in the Southern Cross in March of 1855:

Turnips and Potatoes Grown at the Wahu

Parties interested in bets respecting the measurement and weight of Turnips and Potatoes grown on Mr. Edgecombe's Farm at the Wahu, to be decided at the Exchange Hotel, Auckland, on Saturday, 31st inst. May see the same growing on the Farm as above, on Friday, 30th inst.
March 27th, 1855.

At the time he had his Avondale farm on Rosebank up for sale in October 1858, it was described as:

"A choice Farm of 200 acres, on the Whau, far and favourably known as Edgecombe's Farm. This is a property of no common description, Fenced and Cultivated, well and picturesquely Wooded, and abundantly Watered, bounded on one side by the Whau River, in which a vessel of 30 tons may load alongside the banks."

Even taking into account the exaggerations of land agents of that time and this, Edgecombe does seem to have created from an area where sheep farming was probably the best commercial use anyone could get out of the area (both John Kelly and Robert Chisholm were sheep farming in the early 1850s and 1860s-1870s respectively) -- a veritable farming paradise.

William Edgecombe (1814-1895) was born and christened in North Devon, the township of Milton Damerel, according to a family historian, Alan Taylor. According to Taylor, Edgecombe sailed to New Zealand with his wife Ann and arrived at New Plymouth in 1841, leaving in 1846 for Auckland. Another William Edgecombe had preceded him to New Plymouth, but remained there. The Auckland William Edgecombe eventually made his way north, setting himself up first as a butcher at Mechanics Bay, then a storekeeper, then as a cattle owner. He left the colony for a time in 1850, heading to California, but was back by 1852. Around that time he may have taken out a lease on Allotment 10 of the Parish of Titirangi, which was to become his Whau Farm, purchasing it outright in 1856. Certainly in March 1854, he was successful in the election for the Wardens of Auckland (sharing the job with John Russell and Benjamin Turner). In that position, he administered the isthmus cattle runs, particularly those in the Whau district. During a court case in 1854, where one Samuel Fleming breached a new bylaw made by the Wardens of the Hundred, Edgecombe deposed:

"I am a settler living at the Wahu; I am a licensed cattle holder for the district of Auckland; my cattle are mostly all running at the Wahu..."

(Note the spelling of "Whau" in those days of the mid-1850s.)

So, in amongst his cattle-dealing, his warden duties -- William Edgecombe found the time to grow some turnips and potatoes. "So what?" some today might say, but this was a very important thing back then, considering the Whau, along with much of West Auckland, was considered inhospitable to crop growing in any form back then, the soils declared to be "sour" and only good for grazing (hence the cattle and the sheep). It could be, ironically, that very system of agriculture which provided the start of the fertilisation and redevelopment of the Rosebank Peninsula into the later market gardening goldmine it became by the end of the 19th century. Back in 1855, Edgecombe was advertising a diversified land use for the cattle and sheep paddocks of Avondale which, one day, would prove to be an icon for our history.

But, by 1858, Edgecombe had had another career change come to mind. Land at what would become Western Springs, opposite Low and Motion's mill, came onto the market, so he put his Whau Farm up for sale and purchased the site of his Great Northern Hotel. (The buyer was Dr. Thomas Aickin, another experimenter in the agricultural field amongst others -- and in the 20th century, after subdivisions, Hayward Wright was to use 10 acres of the former Edgecombe land to develop new commercial fruits and plants, including the Hayward cultivar of kiwifruit.) Edgecombe's story doesn't stop there, of course -- his fame hit even greater heights with his hotel, fondly known still as the Old Stone Jug. But even there, on the scoria outcrops of Western Springs, he never quite forgot about the Whau. The initial boundaries of the Whau Highway District in 1868, at his instigation, included his Western Springs land for a time.

An additional note (21 January 2009): William Edgecombe's surname, over the course of his lifetime, went through a variety of spellings. This may have been due to assumptions, or changes in style -- one version, in the 1881 Newton electoral roll, is simply a straight-out typo. Here's a brief list of the varieties:

Southern Cross, 8 March 1850, p. 2 (public notice inserted by him) - "Edgcombe"
In the deed between him and Dr. Aickin back in 1859, his name is spelled Edgecombe.
In the 3 May 1879 death notice for his son (also named William) (NZH), it's "Edgcumbe".
Boylan & Lundon's plan of the purchase of his property (waterworks reserve) - "Edgecombe"
1881 Newton electoral roll: "Edgemnbe"
NZ Graphic 22 October 1892, p. 1046 -- "Edgcombe"
His own death notice: "Edgcombe"
Auckland Provincial Index offers "Edgecombe" and "Edgcombe"

His isn't the only name this happened to (Bernard "Barney" Keane is another -- Keane / Kean / Kane and probably also King). Ah, the joys of historical / genealogical research ...

Samuel Hayward Ford: NZ’s first resident surgeon

 Photo of Samuel Hayward Ford, courtesy Cally Whitham

When Samuel Hayward Ford died on the 19th of July, 1876, shipping in the harbour at Russell in the Bay of Islands had their flags at half-mast. He had established a hospital in the area in 1858 “for destitute seamen and others”, and it is said that at least two “whaling babies” were born in the Ford household, American “whaling wives” having accompanied their husbands on their round the world voyages. He was well-respected in his community, and his son Ernest Ford would be elected one of the first councillors on the Bay of Islands County Council in 1877.

Born c. 1811, Samuel H. Ford qualified as a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1832, and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1833, after studying at St Thomas’ in London. He proposed to Martha Wilcox when he was 17 years old, and was rejected, but three years later succeeded with a second proposal in Belgrave Square. They married in December 1834, and the couple initially took up residence in Hampstead.

In 1836, Ford volunteered for service as a medical missionary with the Anglican Church Missionary Society, and arrived at the Paihia Mission Station in 1837. The Fords left Paihia for Te Wahapu in 1842, officially due to Ford’s poor health at the time, but unofficially there may have been problems between himself and Archdeacon Henry Williams. Even so, the two men got along amicably enough, as long as they worked independently of each other. Ford attended the Archdeacon during the latter’s last illness at Pakaraka.

Hone Heke’s war in 1845 meant the Fords had to leave Te Wahapu, although reluctantly, to live in Auckland for a time. From the obituary for Martha Ford in 1894 (NZ Herald), this remembrance of those turbulent times:

“On the day succeeding the sack of Kororareka (of which event and its surrounding circumstances, even when four score, Mrs. Ford had a clear recollection) she received a letter from Hone Heke desiring that she would come to his camp at Uruti, as he desired to see her. A chief named Paumuku had been killed in the previous day’s fight, and one of Heke’s requests was that Mrs. Ford would get the body across to Paihia, so that the deceased chief might be buried at the Paihia Mission station. Mrs. Ford agreed to do so, and got the seamen from the American warship to tow the body over to Paihia, she and some of her children going ahead with a flag.

“While this was going on Dr. Ford was away on board HMS Hazard, attending to Capt. Robertson, who had been wounded in the action. Archdeacon Williams got uneasy at the isolated position of the Fords at Wahapu and sent a boat across to bring them to Paihia. From thence they went on board the North Star, Sir Everard House, commander. Capt. McKeever, of the U.S. St Louis, kindly sent some of his men to bring off as much of their effects as could be saved, and they came to Auckland.

“Mrs. Ford had a kindly feeling towards the memory of Hone Heke. She stated that he was averse to the evacuation and sack of Kororareka, and exclaimed, “Why do you go away? We have no quarrel with you. The settlers should stand aside and let the Maoris and the Queen’s soldiers fight it out.”

In 1849, they returned to the Bay of Islands, and there Ford spent the rest of his life at Russell. Out of 10 children, only Ernest survived into adulthood; four of the others had perished during a scarlet fever outbreak in Auckland in 1848.

His widow Martha outlived him until January 1894, and died at the age of 83.

There are two reasons why Dr. Ford (although, according to A Most Noble Anchorage, A Story of Russell and the Bay of Islands by Marie King, he preferred being addressed as Mister, because he was not a doctor but a surgeon) is of interest to me in terms of Avondale history here in Auckland. His ownership of Crown Grant titles for Allotments 66, 67, 70, 71 and 72 from May 1845 meant that, while John Shedden Adam owned the part of today’s New Windsor that lies south and west of New Windsor Road, Ford owned most of the remainder to the east, as well as Allotment 81 where today’s Miranda and Ruahine Streets wind their way through Housing New Zealand subdivisions between Taylor Street, Wolverton Street, and Blockhouse Bay Road. So Samuel Hayward Ford was an early owner of a considerable amount of Avondale and Blockhouse Bay areas.

The second reason comes from his wife Martha’s family.

Martha’s sister Helena married Lt. Joseph Henry Wright in 1845. He was serving with the First Madras Native Infantry, the son of a chaplain of the East India Company. He later rose to the rank of Major. Helena and Joseph’s son, Martha’s nephew, was Ernest Edward Hamilton Wright (1847-c.1895) who lived in the Bay of Islands and married Sarah Atkinson there in 1873. After a failed attempt to manage a plantation in Fiji, Ernest’s wife and children left him. He was killed by tribesmen in the Solomons.

His eldest son was Reginald Hayward Wright, known last century simply as Hayward Wright in most sources, the horticultural experimenter and businessman who developed the kiwifruit cultivar named after him and a range of other plant types at his nursery on Avondale Road, in Avondale from c.1901 until he retired in the 1940s.

Hayward Wright was therefore the grandnephew-in-law to New Zealand’s first resident surgeon, and one of Avondale’s early landowners.

Sources:
Margaret Edgcumbe, who was the first to tell me about the Ford and Wright connection, and provided me with information on the Wilcox, Ford and Wright families.
Obituaries in the NZ Herald
R E Wright-St Clair, Medical Practitioners in New Zealand From 1840-1930, 2003
Marie King, A Most Noble Anchorage, A Story of Russell and the Bay of Islands, 1992