Plunket’s Palmerston North connection
of the weather’’ Palmerston North ‘‘did its level best to look pleasant’’ and give the visitors a huge welcome.
Their train was met at the Main St west railway station by the mayor, the MP for Manawatu and various dignitaries, and everyone was whisked away to the Showgrounds in horse-drawn carriages for revelry, speeches and music under colourful swathes of bunting. At the end, the vice-regals were led in procession to the gates of their new home in Te Awe Awe St.
Two weeks later, William Lee, Lord Plunket, and wife Lady Victoria were guests of honour at a Grand Vice-regal Command Night, a musical comedy at the Opera House.
Lord Plunket was an imposing man, but it was his wife who fascinated Palmerstonian society. She was 35 years old, tall, slender and attractive, and a riveting public speaker.
She was also the mother of seven children under 14. There were five daughters: Helen and Eileen, who were at boarding school; Moira, Joyce, and baby Ethne, and two sons, Terence and Brinsley Sheridan, named after Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Born Lady Victoria Alexandrina Temple-blackwood in Ottawa, when her father, the first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, was governor-general of Canada, Victoria was from a large, closeknit family. Her two older married sisters, Helen and Hermione, were both involved in nursing and nurses’ rights.
At 18, in Italy, Victoria had met William Lee Plunket, 26, son and heir of Baron Plunket of Newton. He was instantly smitten. Like herself, he was Anglo-irish, and worked as an honorary attache in Rome’s diplomatic service. They married three years later in Paris, and William became governorgeneral to New Zealand in 1904.
The following year, Victoria and William met Frederic Truby King, a 50-year- old Dunedin doctor
who, with his wife Bella, was a passionate crusader for the health and well-being of children. His aim was to ‘‘help the mothers and save the babies’’ at a time when ignorance and neglect caused many infant deaths or illnesses. Victoria took up this cause with what proved to be lifelong gusto.
In 1907 King formed his Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children in Dunedin. After Victoria and William lent their surname and patronage to it in support, it would eventually be known simply as the Plunket Society.
On July 3, 1908, Victoria spoke in Palmerston North’s Municipal Hall about King’s work, to a packed audience. The Standard reported: ‘‘Never before in the history of this town has there been such an assembly of ladies.’’ Her talk, the reporter continued, was ‘‘terse, free of technicalities of any sort, and wholly convincing. She said that up to now, mothers have been left to untangle for themselves the great difficulties of rearing their babies… Many lives have been lost through the hopeless ignorance, or wellmeaning but dangerous advice of a neighbour.’’
At the meeting’s end, a Palmerston North branch of the society was promptly formed. Victoria’s idea for a guild of special nurses – Plunket nurses – sprang into being, with uniforms and badges designed by her. The nurses promoted healthy food, good hygiene, fresh air and especially breastfeeding for babies. If breastfeeding wasn’t possible, there was Dr, later Sir, Truby King’s ‘‘humanised’’ milk – cow’s milk without the curd, mixed with water and sugar of milk. The nurses’ services were free to all mothers, at their request.
In February 1909, the Plunkets’ eighth and last child – Denis Kiwa Plunket – was born in Palmerston North. The following year, their vice-regal term up, the family returned to England.
‘‘Woodhey’’ was eventually sold to another family, and renamed Caccia-birch. In England and New Zealand, Truby King continued his work to help mothers and save babies.
When Lord Plunket died in January 1920, Palmerstonians sent Victoria hundreds of condolence letters. Just nine months later, in London, Victoria was married again, to Lieut-colonel Francis Braithwaite, who had been on the late Lord Plunket’s staff in New Zealand, and was now a stockbroker.
Their wedding, at St Simon’s Church in Chelsea, was a quiet ceremony attended only by close relatives. Newspaper accounts recorded that Victoria wore ‘‘a grey draped gown of mirror velvet bordered with mauve, and a grey velvet hat trimmed with grey and pink ostrich feathers’’. They honeymooned in Monte Carlo and later settled into Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge.
Visiting New Zealand again in 1936, Victoria toured the Truby King Karitane Hospital and told reporters she was amazed at the progress of both the country and its children.
Sir Truby King died in 1938. Lady Victoria lived to be 95. Today, the Plunket Society, though changed and modernised, is still described as an icon of international infant welfare.