This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content. You can search the text using Ctrl-F, and you can also play the audio by clicking on a desired timestamp.
I'm a a senior archivist here. I've been here at archives in New Zealand for about eight years. The difference between our holdings and other institutions is that we hold the New Zealand government record so we don't go out to collect a broad range of community based records such as Alexander Turnbull Library may collect. We certainly don't purchase records. The records come to us usually directly from the government [00:00:30] agency that has created or used or inherited those records. Uh, that's the main difference between us and a library, uh, or a large institution like Alexander Turnbull or the or Auckland War Memorial Museum. So can you give me an example of a government agency? What are we talking about? Government agency might include a ministry, Um, would include the courts. New Zealand police, uh, government [00:01:00] departments, uh, in it includes a royal commissions, um, includes, um, government agencies involved in health and education. Um, schools in the past have deposited material with us either directly or through the the erstwhile, um, education boards. So it's a fairly broad range of institutions around the country that we broadly call [00:01:30] government agencies. So would it go as far as say say, like the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, which is funded via the Ministry of Health. No, no, it wouldn't. That's a stand alone organisation that exists with financial support. Um, but it is not deemed to be a New Zealand government agency. It, uh, as a trust or as as a separate entity, it has its own life outside government. So can you give me the, uh, um the scope of the collections, the size [00:02:00] and how far back the collection is going? We collect records regardless of medium. So if they are deemed to be a permanent value perpetual value, then we would take them in. If they're New Zealand government records now, that can be film. It can be audio tape. Uh, it can, in some limited instances, be published material, but usually it will be one off material. It can be old fashioned paper files. It can be artwork. [00:02:30] If the artwork is deemed to be a government record. Such as, for example, the national collection of war art. That is a government record. It's a record of New Zealanders experience in places and times of war. Um so the scope extends as broadly as it can in terms of medium. Now we're moving more into bringing in born digital records. So they do not have to be hard copies. They can be born digital [00:03:00] the size of the holdings. Well, that's a moot point. Um, here in the Wellington office, by far the largest repository, we have approximately 80 kilometres of shelving or the equivalent of 80 kilometres of shelving in this building. We've got smaller holdings in the Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin offices. But certainly it would be over 100 well over 100 kilometres of shelves. Uh, of of holdings. Um, our earliest record, [00:03:30] rather bizarrely is not. In fact, it couldn't be deemed to be a New Zealand government record. Um, but it was given to the New Zealand government. Um, it's a letter from Captain James Cook, uh, to Captain Clark, uh, on the I. I hope I remember this correctly on the second voyage cook made around the world. So it was given to New Zealand by the city of London. Uh, and it ended up in archives here. [00:04:00] That's by far our oldest record. But most of the records we hold are from 18 40 onwards when a a European style government bureaucracy is created here. So a bureaucracy of that sort starts creating records. So the records start from that point and grow in size from then on. Yeah, and so is it compulsory for government agencies to deposit with you? [00:04:30] No. No, it's not compulsory. Um, determinations have to be made about whether or not the records are deemed to be of permanent value. Certainly not all records are kept permanently. Um, all government agencies, um, are held by the conditions of the Public Records Act. So the relationship and the and the the fact of whether they are beholden to deposit certain records with us is determined by that act. [00:05:00] So that becomes the field in which we work. The parameters are set by the act. There would be an enormous quantity that's held long term by an agency and then disposed of one way or another after a specified period of time. As you can appreciate the amount of record created nowadays, it's simply impossible to keep the lot. It can't be done in relation to rainbow communities. What does [00:05:30] archives New Zealand hold? We hold here wondrous treasures, I think, is the best way to put it. Um, we hold records here from agencies, New Zealand government departments about those government agencies, relationship and dealings with New Zealand people so that it can be any one of many, many, many agencies that will have had dealings [00:06:00] with members of our communities. So they may be the fairly obvious kinds of records. They may be records like court records or police records, but they can be a much wider set of records. So there's no narrow scope where where our records sit within the larger holdings. Uh, that makes searching sometimes quite slow and makes surprises even more wonderful. Um, I would [00:06:30] say possibly the majority of records will be those records that fall within law in the broadest sense, Um, and also within the governance or parliamentary process. We have a significant number of records that relate to things such as parliamentary select committee hearings and findings, petitions and so on. But there's certainly more wider [00:07:00] scope than just those. Maybe be an opportunity here to even bring up AAA specific example Here, Um, I have on the table here in front of me as a small selection of some of the records that we've identified over the last few years. Um, one of them is a collection of newspaper clippings. Um, that has come to us, uh, from the old Parliamentary, the national parliamentary research unit. [00:07:30] Now they would have over the decades, collected newspaper clippings from around a vast number of topics that they decided to keep tabs on what was out there in the public arena. This one here, this record here is a box full of paper newspaper clippings regarding homosexual law reform so that if I just open the box up and we will just see that it's a a relatively unsorted pile of newspaper clippings but nevertheless would be incredibly [00:08:00] useful for a researcher in that it brings together what's in the public arena. And it also shows us what was available easily to parliamentarians when they were wanting to research homosexual law reform so that the service provided within the parliamentary services have bequeathed that to us. So we can now look back and say, Well, what was it? Parliamentarians and previous previous parliaments [00:08:30] were laying their hands on to make their decisions. So it's not just about the object, but it's actually where the object came from who was using it and why they were using it. Yes, exactly. And what influence it may have had on decision making. Um, if one analysed the newspaper reports that have been clipped out of the papers and put in there, are they supportive of law reform? Um, was there a suggestion in looking in them that there was a bias against law reform? [00:09:00] We don't know. Until we actually had a really thorough look what? Newspapers were being sourced. Um, were they just the the the large national papers that were providing that sort of information, or maybe something like the or was it smaller local, regional and even small town papers that were being sourced with those local community? Uh, opinions or purported opinions be made available in that way to MP [00:09:30] S. That's the kind of research you could get, perhaps from a record such as this. Are there other topics covered by the parliamentary library that have got kind of rainbow connections? Yes, Yes, certainly. Well, coming out of Parliament, the parliament, if I speak more broadly about parliament itself, as well as the the research unit we have here a wonderful record entitled it's from the 37th Parliament. So it's 1975 [00:10:00] and it's from the Privileges Committee. And it's an inquiry they made into Carmen. And when she spoke on television, she made some statements on television about the statistical probability of there being homosexual members of Parliament. And this caused great ruckus, and she was hauled before the Parliamentary Privileges Committee. Um, and [00:10:30] so this is a record of those events. Um, now we would find that utterly absurd to even suggest that she was impugning the the the the morals, you know, the the vigour of the purity of the parliamentarians. But at that time, it was considered that she had overstepped the mark. Um and so there is a record of that happening in 1975 and her response also [00:11:00] to the accusation and the charge that she had breached parliamentary privilege. And I'm not sure, was she found kind of guilty of breaching or Yeah, yeah. Essentially, Yes. My understanding from memory is that yes, it was a breach of privilege. Um, and the and there were repercussions. So the difficulties were not only for herself, but, uh, also the, uh I'm pretty sure in those days, it was still the NZ BC. [00:11:30] So the interviewer, uh, there were a number of people who became involved in it. Um, I don't remember any severe sanctions placed against her. Um, but there was the potential of that happening. Um, breach of parliamentary privilege is is can be a very severe. There can be severe outcomes from that. So, um, we have, um yeah, a number of such reports and other things coming out of parliament [00:12:00] or parliamentary services parliamentarians. Um, we have one here, for example. Much more recently. It's a, uh, the Justice and Electoral Committee. And they're reporting upon, uh, the civil Union bill. So once the bill had been submitted and then submissions are made in response to the bill, we can now look at how it was that that committee responded and the bill that they sorry the report that they wrote as a response to public [00:12:30] feedback they got So is everything that's tabled in Parliament. Does that eventually come to archives? Not necessarily, as I understand it, but usually usually our holdings for records that are tabled go way, way back into the 19th century. So very frequently they will be. I'm not aware of many of them that early or any of them. In fact, that early, uh, having a specific rainbow connection or LGBTI [00:13:00] can connection. But certainly there are petitions. There are reports of this that and the other. So things like, say, the, uh, the anti homosexual law reform petition from 85 86. Do you do? Do you have that? I've never cited it. Um, but I Yes, I assume so. Because we have we do hold petitions once they come to us. Um, the most famous of which is the women's suffrage petition of 18 93 the final and successful petition [00:13:30] that is by far the most famous of those petitions. But there are many, many petitions that come through to us. They can be quite small, and they can be of tens of thousands of signatories. So how long does it take you to process and accession? Something after the event. So you've got civil unions from, what, 2005 ish. How long does it take it before it's publicly available? That is incredibly [00:14:00] variable. Records don't necessarily come to us immediately or promptly. There is a kind of understanding that records should be available for us to make a determination about after 25 years, but not necessarily. Some records will come much sooner than that if they are not needed for any further government or business. If a government function ceases to exist, then the records might come to us something like a royal [00:14:30] commission. Once that royal commission is wound up, then that that function of the government examining those matters that finishes so the records become available to us very quickly. Other records might remain with an agency because they say, Well, we might need them or we are still using them even many years later, Um, other records, to be honest, may be just sitting somewhere, and there are plenty of instances of records sitting in places and being unearthed [00:15:00] as it were, and then people making an appraisal how to deal with them. What's the appropriate place for those to go? Do they need to be kept forever and so on? So that's a very, very variable, um, outcome for records once they're created or once they're finished with even and just thinking about, say, the um Select Committee for the Civil Union act that was all public. Well, I think most of it was [00:15:30] when it comes to archives, New Zealand, Does it still Is it still public? Can Can the public still access that material freely? Yes. Yes. These records that I've got here with me today. These are all public open records. Um, and I wouldn't be talking about them, particularly if they were not unrestricted or open. Certainly there are large numbers of records that are restricted have restrictions placed on their access. That [00:16:00] usually is for privacy reasons. It may be for preservation reasons. The record may be too delicate and too fragile. So we would make the record available in some other format. Some of them may be restricted for reasons of for diplomatic sensitivities. Um, national security and so on. Um, physical security building plans, for example, at Parliament house are not available to the general public. But by [00:16:30] the most part, the records we deal with are restricted either under the Privacy Act or under the clean Slate act. So those that relate to criminal convictions have limitations placed on their access so that that has a direct impact. When we're dealing with the histories of gay men being charged under the Police Offences Act, for example. Those records are not necessarily available for quite some [00:17:00] time, however, in that instance, and in all instances where a record is restricted, there are provisions for a researcher to make application for access for research purposes, and conditions may be placed on that researcher um, the agency that still controls their records might want to be satisfied that personal privacy is no longer placed at risk. For example, evidence [00:17:30] that that individual has passed away might be required, and then privacy is no longer such a great concern. Um, so there are ways in which you can do research even if the records are nominally restricted, there's just some other processes and procedures to go through to get the permissions. Are you aware of some kind of, uh, significant court cases or police cases involving rainbow people that you have material on? Yes, [00:18:00] Um, we have an interesting record here in front of me. Now, this is, um, but it's not so much a police file there. There's police involvement in it. Um, and I will show you the photos and the and the photographs of this remarkable woman will be going online. I understand, but here she is. Here. Um, her name is Doctor Daville. She stated that she was danish. Now this record that we have [00:18:30] of her about her dates from the first World War, she came to the notice of the authorities because they weren't sure whether she was Danish or German. She was not a British subject. Um so therefore, she was deemed to be an alien. They had to decide whether she was an enemy, alien or not. Now, as you can see from the photographs, she wore men's clothing [00:19:00] for for the tie, the high collar, the jacket, the watch chain. She wore very short hair, but she did at the same time wear a very long skirt. She's the most wonderful dress since an extraordinary woman she lived with a woman in Kilborn. Um, some research has been done to her. Certainly she warrants a lot more, but we We're assuming that a great deal of her difficulty with New Zealand authorities is that they [00:19:30] couldn't quite deal with the fact that not only weren't they sure about her political allegiances during times of war, First world war, but Maybe they couldn't actually deal with the the clothes she wore. They couldn't deal with her views on medicine. For example, The, um they couldn't deal with the fact that she was quite probably the lover of a woman, and they were living together up in Kilburn. Uh, so there are a lot of she came to to the attention of [00:20:00] police and army authorities because of that. And so and we have AAA fairly good file about her and a verbatim record of her interviews with, um the figures who of the personnel who interviewed her and tried to work out what? How they were going to deal with her in in in the middle of the war. Was she a threat to national security? For example, how did she come to the attention of the authorities? She, like anyone who was not a British subject [00:20:30] at that time, would have been investigated during during the period of the first World War. Um, and they immediately would have decided that she was an alien IE, not a British subject. Then they had to make a determination. Was she an enemy alien? Was she a German national? Although she said she was of Danish background, and some of the documentation on here suggests that they weren't sure whether to believe her or not, because everything else in her story is pretty fluid. [00:21:00] She's not someone who's going to stick to the hard and fast rules of society. So she's presumably a bit suspect as far as a very straight laced society would have been at the time of the concerns and even the paranoia that swept around in that period from 1914 to 1918. So in the documentation are they open about, say, her relationship with another woman? I mean, the kind of language that's being used. Are they? Are [00:21:30] they using words like lesbian? No, I'm not aware of that. It's quite some time since I've read. Read this. No, I don't remember that being stated, but it is mentioned that she lives lives in KBO. Um, it doesn't That is simply part of the mosaic of her nonconformity, I think rather than, um, something to absolutely focus on. At that time, they they were just on edge, it seems, [00:22:00] because of her general nonconformity and dress and her attitudes towards modern Western medicine, For example, she had a clinic. She ran out AM memory, which was probably what now? Nowadays, we would call of a holistic nature rather than a very, um, how would you call it? A A straight, [00:22:30] um, science driven, uh, medical profession driven approach to illness and well and well being. So she she stepped outside the boundaries in a lot of ways. Yeah. When you're looking at these early records, do you have tips for, um, the kind of language that kind of flags somebody as possibly different rainbow? What sort of what What words do [00:23:00] you look for? Um, I did a little test earlier today. Just checking on our main listing system for indecent assault. And I took that test as following your suggestion. When? When you'd emailed me earlier. Um, so using terms or words like that can be useful, but indecent assault can certainly be perpetrated by a man against a woman. So it's not necessarily [00:23:30] a rainbow matter. And it's not necessarily relating to the two men having having sex together, although it may be, um, but certainly if you're doing research, you would want to get as broad a set of search terms. Um, so I wrote out a small list, and I printed out rather a list here of the records that we have listed with the word homosexual [00:24:00] in them. And surprisingly, there's only 81 in all our millions of records, only 81. So a lot of them are about homosexual law reform. Um, and most of them are relatively recent. Um, the oldest one of the oldest ones here, for example, is, um, there's a 1930 to 1973 record, uh, medical treatment and services medical special treatment for homosexual, [00:24:30] uh, prisoners. And this is for Justice Department. Now that is a restricted record. It is publicly listed. There's no restriction on the listing of that in public, but it's quite likely that that that contains the names of individuals. So that is a restricted record. And that would need approvals before that could be made available to a researcher. Um, [00:25:00] we have, uh, indecent publications. Um, for example, Doubtful Publication Society and the homosexual Budgie Westwood. So that's been brought to the attention of customs. So that brings us into another whole field of control of our lives through through censorship, for example. And there are a number of censorship related records that we hold that can be quite useful in examining that way in which we had to interact with the state [00:25:30] and the state impinged on our lives through the decades. I did another search simply searching for the word, um, lesbian in the titles of records. Um, and here there were only 44 records. So again, mostly fairly recent and very much to do with the rep. Uh, the writing of, uh, reports applications, uh, for funding [00:26:00] for women's suffrage year, Uh, projects, for example, Um, and so on. So one does have to be fairly broad. And rather than just the really obvious keyword searches, does the archive retrospectively go back and tag records? If it becomes known that this person was homosexual even though they wouldn't necessarily use homosexual back then Yeah. No, we don't. We don't have [00:26:30] a tagging facility on our current listing system. Um, it was used for a short while on another set of records we had on a separate system, but it did not progress. So that idea of tagging is not is not in use at the moment. There is a There is a facility for adding short notes so that if a researcher wanted to let us know that something warranted [00:27:00] a note, we could add a note. But that's only available for staff members to activate. And we would have to be let Nose and some institutions around the world have public tagging and public note making. We don't have that currently. So if we go back to the example of the doctor in World War One, if we didn't know she was in a relationship with another woman, how would we? How would we know she was possibly [00:27:30] a lesbian? We wouldn't. Um this is one of the factors at work in our holdings that things come to light through use, um, and and people searching, possibly searching for something else entirely and coming across records that that suddenly shine light on an individual's life. And we say, Ah, there's something we couldn't have found out simply by the listings. [00:28:00] We might come across them, for example. Uh, if there is some kind of, as it were de facto cross referencing for something like, uh from papers past, for example, um, recently we had a researcher contact us, um, to ask for a copy of an individual's coroner's inquest file that is open. Uh, and the person doing the research [00:28:30] had been on, uh, papers passed and discovered that this individual had lived her life all her adult life as a woman but had been born a boy and lived the first several years of her life as a male child. And then sometime in her teens, she took women's clothing, moved well away from where she was brought up and reinvented her public self as [00:29:00] a woman. So that became, um, came to light because this person had found reference to that, actually, in a truth article. Not surprisingly, it's the sort of thing that, um, appallingly truth, uh, headlined when the when the matter became, uh, public. Uh, in 1946 truths Headline has kept a grotesque secret for 41 years. Um, and it only [00:29:30] became public knowledge, uh, that she had been born a boy and lived her life mostly as a woman. After she died, she died very suddenly, and it was the coroner. It was during the coronial inquiry that it became public knowledge that, uh, anatomically, uh, she was a man and it and it was kind of scandalous. It was a terrible event and the newspapers probably loved it. Um, [00:30:00] but to read the coronial inquest now is actually very poignant. Um, she had married and so to read the statement from her husband and they had been together for many decades and his statements, I would take them with a sprain of salt. He says he didn't know at the time, and they did not live together and sleep together as man and wife once he found out. We don't know now [00:30:30] at this point, whether that was the case. But there is a sadness about the story I personally feel in that because of the stigma associated, um, she had to lead, lead her life so hidden that it only became public knowledge upon death. So that is an instance of a of a another source leading the research to records we hold. And what a quandary, Because on one hand, I'm thinking of the truth. What a what a nasty [00:31:00] little newspaper. But unless you had that newspaper and that article and that headline, you may never have come across the story. Exactly. Exactly. And and truth is one of those resources that people, particularly for family history purposes we'll find out a great deal because there are a lot of things happening and always are a lot of things happening in families that are not passed down generation to generation. Whereas in this at this time, truth was reporting [00:31:30] things such as divorces and they can be it can be a very useful source for people, uh, to to find information about past members of family or other people where it was not talked about. So truth can be a very useful entry into prohibited histories and purposefully consciously forgotten histories. Um, one place, um, where you [00:32:00] will find very public histories is where that kind of information becomes very public and Amy Bock being an example of of someone whose life is thrown wide open to public examination. Um, and we have a few records regarding Amy Bock. Um, particularly I have here on the table photographs. Now, this is a really good example of a record that has survived from the most unlikely source [00:32:30] it survived. The photograph has survived because someone took her photograph and then applied for copyright applications. The copyright of the photograph So we have. The record is only about Amy Bock, because there was public interest in her and the fact that she lived and dressed as a man. And then someone saw that there was a pound to be made there. And so I photographed her and and and got copyright over the photograph. [00:33:00] So that's a fairly good example of a fairly obscure source, but nevertheless a wonderfully valuable source. If we want to see photographs of Amy Bock and can you just describe, um, Amy Bock's story like What kind of era was she in now? Amy Bock. I was very early 20th century, Um, I have the record 1909 is the year in which the application for copyright was made. Um, I don't [00:33:30] know her life in detail, but she lived, and I'm in a bit of a quandary here as to say she or he, because she is always known as Amy. Although lived under a number of male persona with a number of male personas and whether she identified as a man, she certainly identified as a man publicly, um, ran into trouble with the law on a number of occasions as a fraudster. [00:34:00] Um, and so the courts were told, fraudulently married a young woman. Um, And then the young woman found out that her new husband was, in fact, biologically a woman. And and this hit the news that the marriage was dissolved by the state. It was It's personally. I find it interesting that partly her story, but also the ongoing interest [00:34:30] in her story right up until the 19 seventies. Um, her story is still told, for example, in New Zealand heritage magazines that came out. It's the first time I ever saw a photograph of Amy Bock was 70 years, or more than 70 years after the big events where she became. It's not as if she is personally, um, I would say, a historically significant individual and what she did. Maybe it's more to do with the set of [00:35:00] anxieties her life unleashed or brought to light with the New Zealand society. That there was this discomfort, uh, about a woman living her life as a man. Uh, and also perhaps it illustrates her life. She maybe felt that she had no options other than to live by certain fraudulent means financially fraudulent. For example, um because other options were closed [00:35:30] to her. So those those are some of the interesting things that arise out of her her life and and what we know of her life now, the image that was, um, asked to be copyright is that the one that, um subsequently made was made into a postcard. Uh, no. This is a slightly different one, I think, from what you may be familiar with, but, um, we'll have a look here. I think that [00:36:00] might be the one that it's a lovely portrait of a of a gentleman sitting with a neat haircut that probably would sit quite well in in a lot of coffee lounges in town at the moment. Um, with a high collar again, um, double, um, waistcoat, um, wearing a medal of some sort that I can't quite make out what it is. So and that was dated. [00:36:30] Uh, this this application is 1909. Now, I don't know whether you want me to speak about other kinds of photos. I know that, um, I don't want to overshadow our discussion about photographs, but they are often, um very interesting. Interesting ways in which to to get into a story or there are clues and photos that were not apparent at the time of the making of the photo. [00:37:00] Um, for example, we have an album here, official photographs of the second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Pacific. So we're talking about the latter part of the 19 forties, Um, when New Zealand forces are in the Pacific. And this album here, um, is a dated August and September 1943. Now, this is another example of [00:37:30] a history that's sitting here and you would not know to look in this small photo album. Uh, unless you had an inkling to have a look and you'll see lots of photos of men in uniform, uh, at work, um, swimming, Um, in the Pacific. More photos of officers, for example. Uh, and so on various army activities in the Pacific. And, of course, one of the activities [00:38:00] is drag these wonderful photographs of of performers, um, soldiers, um, in the field, uh, up in the Pacific And this performer here and she's really damn glamorous goes by the extraordinary name of Marlena Heat rash. Uh, I It's a name that will live forever, I reckon. Marlena die. Uh, might be quite [00:38:30] pleased to be remembered as Melena. Heat rash. Um, we have a number of other performers, uh, drag performers who were, uh, getting together to put on musical entertainment, Uh, for the rest of the troops, Uh, while they're out in the Pacific, in Bougainville and other places. Um, we have someone here. Perhaps. I think he's looking rather a little bit more like, um, we're looking a little Latin, isn't he? The Carmen Miranda? [00:39:00] Maybe, Um oh, no. Her name here is Minnie from Trinidad. OK, so I'm I don't know the details of this, but I understand that some of these guys doing, um, getting into drag performance at this time went on to full full careers. Um, to to a lesser degree, I think in New Zealand and more in Sydney. So what is it like when you're you're going through albums [00:39:30] and you suddenly come across these kind of bread crumbs, these remnants of of kind of histories? It's a buzz. It's really great. It's I think I mentioned earlier. There are a golden tree. There are treasures sitting within our holdings, and you don't know when you're going to come across them. It's not only a buzz in terms of the immediate thing that you're holding, but also the fact that they may well be a trail to further records. So [00:40:00] once having seen these photos and the named performers and their non drag names their names as soldiers, then it would actually open up the opportunity for a researcher to say, Well, who was this person? Where did he live? What happened after the war? For example, Um, did he go back into civilian life and live no more and drag? Or did he go into [00:40:30] what? Now we would call a queer lifestyle. We don't know. And but these are ways of examining that If there's a little little trail a little, um uh, a few crumbs here, as you said to to lead you on the path of doing research. Yeah, another really interesting set of records we have. And we go right back, perhaps to the beginning of what we're talking about in in our communities. Uh, dealings with the law [00:41:00] are police records now, generally speaking, they are restricted for 100 years. You can get permissions from the New Zealand police to access those and you provide them with your reasons. And there may be conditions placed upon your use of the information, but, um, New Zealand police gazettes are open earlier than that. And the police gazettes do hold some wonderful information. Um, and we do have, for example, here [00:41:30] this will take me just a moment to open this one up, but a police gazette, and it's from 1920. And this holds information in here, including a photograph again, um, of Charles Mackay or of Charles McKay. Now, if my memory serves me well, he was, uh, had been mayor [00:42:00] of, uh, or Wanganui, as it was known to many at that time and was charged with attempted murder. He was homosexual. He was a married man. And there is a long story about, um, the circumstances of that, uh, attempted murder. Um, why, why it occurred? The consequences for him. Um, and indeed, the consequences [00:42:30] for the city. Um, so there's a little remnant of that story sitting in here. Uh, that would give you a lead in to other police records. That might be quite valuable for your record, Uh, for your research. Um, And what would What was the police because it used for the police. Gazettes were are a published work, Although not made available to the general public, they came out [00:43:00] on a fairly frequent basis, uh, and were sent out to every police station in the country. And I have a suspicion, also to every customs house so that the local police and customs officers had a record of what was going on in the rest of the country in terms of police business, it might have photos, um, of people who were wanted. It would certainly have information about people [00:43:30] who had been charged and found guilty. It would have information about recently released prisoners so that a local copper wouldn't go hunting down or following up someone who was legitimately on the streets. So there was AAA frequent, uh, information coming out out about so and so is released from jail, but it will have information about how long they've been there and what the charge was, and so on. So the police gazettes can be quite, uh, succinct [00:44:00] in the records they hold, but but have a really nice set of detail there, uh, about individuals either wanted or currently under arrest or recently released and so on so that they are a wonderful resource. They've they've only just been, um, not all of them, but many of them being digitised and can be viewed online. So they're a great resource. One of the other sets of records. [00:44:30] I know that there was some interest in as to whether they held information to, uh, Rainbow researchers and researchers in our into our lives and our community lives of the first World War Military service records. These have all been digitised and put online. I'm not aware of there being any specific references. If there were, I think [00:45:00] generally it might only show up. If it did exist, it would probably show up in court martial type records because I think if there might be inferences, you might be able to get inferences of of a man nominating as his best as the next of kin. Another man who is simply, uh, categorised as friend. Certainly that wouldn't always be [00:45:30] the case that they were lovers. But if you were being sent overseas, then maybe you you might nominate. If you had a male lover and you were a man going overseas, you might nominate your lover as your next of kin. So there might be ways of reading those those records with an open mind and and to see whether they might lead you to further investigation and further results. But that would have to be done very carefully. I think with those records, you wouldn't want to make too many assumptions about the nature [00:46:00] of relationships. There would have been many men going overseas who had no family, for example, in New Zealand. Um, and therefore, somebody did nominate another good male friend. So how that would work? One would have to kind of think about how you are interpreting that information. Unless I guess you came from the standpoint that everyone's homosexual until proven otherwise. Well, true enough. True enough. Yes. Yeah, [00:46:30] Yes. I can't argue with that one. I can't argue with that one. I think there would be a fair number of records in there that would be recording the lives and experiences of men who who enjoyed the loving and sexual company of other men. Their lives would be recorded in first World War Service records, but not that aspect of their lives. So they may well be useful for, uh, enlarging [00:47:00] the picture of a known individual you might be researching. Yeah, just, uh, going back to the political records. And we were talking about, um how things tabled in Parliament often come to archives. New Zealand. What about, um, personal correspondence to members of parliament? So, for instance, uh, Fran Wilde had quite a few papers that were destroyed in a Bernie storage unit. Wouldn't they have come to somewhere like archives [00:47:30] New Zealand? Or is there a difference between personal papers? And yes, there is. And and, um, my understanding of this is that under the act that we operate under section 42 of the act does have some stipulations about which of those records come to us or are eligible to come to us, which we may take in. And generally they only apply to ministers papers. Um, So if you are not a minister, [00:48:00] then but you are an MP. Then your papers remain yours. So that's your business and your relationship with your electorate. Your relationship with the broader community, your relationship with the parliament and your party. Uh, if you are a member of a party so that those records do not have to come to us. Um, ministers papers, Yes, they may come to us, but not necessarily. [00:48:30] And it's a matter of working through the various ways in which that section of the act can be applied as to whether we would want to take in those that minister's papers or not. Certainly some ministers papers don't come to us. They will go to other repositories. So our holdings, for example, of prime ministerial papers is quite patchy in that some prime ministers have lodged their papers with other institutions. Um, [00:49:00] for whatever reason. And that's her or his decision to make, um, But we do have some significant collections, and then others may have part of their collection. They hold their papers with us, and part have gone elsewhere. So that's that's a quite a complex matter that that's determined when the negotiations occur, Uh, between a minister or former minister and or [00:49:30] his or her estate, for example, uh, and who? Whoever might be the recipient of those papers. So if you were researching a minister's a former minister's papers, it would be a good idea to have a fairly broad understanding of where they may have gone. They may have come here to archives. New Zealand. They may have remained with the family. They may have gone to Alexander Turnbull, for example. They may have gone to a university library. [00:50:00] There are all sorts of places that would be options that you'd have to consider when doing your research. Which leads perfectly into the question about how does one go about searching archives? New Zealand? Well, research here is available to absolutely anyone. Um, assuming that any given record that you're interested is unrestricted, that it is open. You can simply come into the office that holds that record. And [00:50:30] the majority of the records are held here in the Wellington office. If you're not already registered with us, you register with us. It takes about four minutes. It's a bit like getting a library card. All you need to bring with you is some photo ID. Most people bring in their driver's licence or a passport. Uh, you can bring in, um, student ID and various other forms of ID. We sign you up, we give you a card. Uh, and then you can request items to be brought to you in the reading room. [00:51:00] You may need some assistance in working your way through the finding aids that we have the various databases. Um, they're not necessarily the easiest databases to work with. They are not, strictly speaking, catalogues like a library catalogue. They are listing systems. So, um, but we have staff here always to assist people doing that research. It's best to bear in mind that although the [00:51:30] majority of the records are here in the Wellington office, some records are held locally in Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin. And that particularly applies to some records, such as a court records. Um, so if you're wanting to look at records coming out of, for example, the Rotorua Supreme Court or Hamilton, Auckland or Tahou District Court, all those kinds of records you would be going to our Auckland office and [00:52:00] then similarly, for those courts of, uh of Canterbury and Westland would be in the, uh Christchurch office and Dunedin office holding the Otago and Southland Court records. So there is some divvying up in that sense of records being held locally. Um, but that's the approach is quite straightforward, and it's not limited to some. As some instances, you'll find around the world where you have to be a bona fide day researcher. [00:52:30] No, no, not here. You just are an interested person who wants to come in and you can be a professional researcher. You can be a secondary school student doing your your school assignments. It makes no difference to us in terms of the services we provide. You can ring us. Um, I don't have the phone number to hand, but it's better if you're wanting to contact the Wellington office to email. If you're wanting to make first contact to discuss your research [00:53:00] needs, then you can always just reach us at research dot archives at DIA dot gov T dot NZ. And we will take that your inquiry and, uh, get back to you offering whatever advice we did you know, seems appropriate at the time. It may be that we say Well, yes, we've got plenty of stuff here. Come on in and get rid. Bring your ID. Bring a camera. We [00:53:30] encourage people to bring their own cameras. About 98% of the records we hold we can permit or we indeed encourage people to take their own photographs. So bring a camera. Bring your ID and and begin your research. And I do like, uh, the the the point you made a bit earlier about, um, say looking at the truth to get, uh, a kind of a bread crumb or the start of a trail Because I'm thinking that if you go to archives, New Zealand just say I want to see something [00:54:00] about homosexuality. I don't know the specifics. It must be very hard to actually kind of narrow it down. So, actually, if you've got a newspaper article that you can go OK 1942 January This is the name? Yeah, uh, newspaper articles. Um, references given in published works are great. So if you are reading a published book or a report monograph of some sort [00:54:30] and it gives reference to an archives New Zealand item, they can be incredibly useful. If you're starting out from absolute scratch, then it's a very good idea to see what's out there in the published world. Someone's already more than likely done at least some of this research before. And if if they are writing in a in a manner, uh, where they're wanting that information to be out there available, then hopefully, they've given their references. Uh, and they can be incredibly useful [00:55:00] for speeding your research up and helping you focus more precisely on what you want to research and how you can get to where you want to be. Um, other other ways of, uh, focusing your research or getting those lead ins will be simply to speak with other people who may have, uh, undertaken the research as well as publish books and so on. There may well be, uh, articles and other fairly popular, uh, journals or in [00:55:30] academic journals and so on. So they're all worth having a look at as well. Um, going online. Having a look online as well as hard copy is can be really useful. Yeah, In your time at archives New Zealand, what has been the, uh, most thrilling or most significant kind of rainbow? Uh, discovery? You've come across Not thrilling, but, um, poignant, I think is the one we mentioned earlier [00:56:00] this this one, this this small record coming from the coroner's office about someone who lived her life, um, and looped her life in a way that presumably was satisfactory to her. And despite the constraints placed on her life in New Zealand in the 19 twenties and thirties and forties. I find that a very, very poignant story and the story of [00:56:30] the probable difficulty of her husband, um after it was discovered, that he had married someone who had been been a boy and lived, lived childhood and early adolescence as a boy before changing identity. Um, although not changing physical nature, I found that a very poignant story that that there's a reality and a personal touch in there. Um, [00:57:00] the surviving partner speaks in that record of saying to the coroner and to the police, This is the day I've been dreading so that he had always worried, um, that the life that they had led would would perhaps be ridiculed would certainly be held out, held up to public [00:57:30] gaze in a way that he certainly didn't want to be gazed at. Um, and I think that's a powerful statement about many people's lives and those earlier generations who just wanted to live their lives in love and and peace within community and stigma prevented them doing so or prevented them living it outwardly and openly. So that's the That's the one [00:58:00] I'll nominate for your question. I am quite touched by their story.
This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content.
Tags