The streets of her city
Fanny Irvine-Smith set out to write a social history, but it was much more than that, writes Tina White.
For years, people living in Wellington’s inner city got used to seeing a certain person regularly tramping along its many footpaths, stopping occasionally to make notes.
A tall woman, she was not young, with an upright carriage and a halo of plaits around her head.
She could also be glimpsed poring over city council documents, looking up information in the central library and the museum, or being ushered into various homes and businesses to interview people.
Her name was Fanny Louise Irvine-Smith, and her intense research would eventually produce what was called ‘‘the first book of its kind to be published in New Zealand’’.
Now a classic, it’s called
The Streets of My City.
Some, including Irvine-Smith herself, called it a social history. But the 325-page illustrated volume was much more than that – because, as she told a Dominion
reporter in 1948, just before publication, ‘‘I love Wellington.’’
Her heart was deeply invested in this piece of historical pioneering, in which she explored how, why and when the streets of Wellington were created, formed and named.
The book’s first edition sold out in a fortnight, but by then Fanny was dead.
Fanny Smith was born in Napier on September 10, 1878, daughter of Thomas Smith, a master mariner, and his wife Margaret; when she was only six months old, Thomas died in a fall from the topmast of his ship
Mohaka.
Margaret married again, to a police officer named Max Bollinger, and soon Fanny had a flock of young step-siblings. As they grew up and left, and Thomas and then Margaret eventually died, Fanny would continue to live in the family home at 41 Simla Crescent, in Khandallah.
Teaching was her chosen profession – after matriculating in 1898, she started at the-then Victoria College in 1901 and founded the university magazine Spike. Her BA followed in 1908, and a masters in history in 1920.
Fanny was a respected lecturer at Teachers’ Training College until 1932, specialising in two subjects which weren’t generally taught at that time: New Zealand history and Ma¯ ori culture. At some point, she added Irvine to her Smith surname.
By all accounts, Fanny, who never married, was an inspirational teacher who sought to bring out the best possible in her students. Enthusiastically involved in university drama-club theatre, her ‘‘tall and sweeping presence’’ masked a deeply sensitive nature.
In retirement, Fanny at last embarked on her Streets of My City project.
Her book is split into three parts: Part One is dedicated to the pioneers, Port Nicholson and the beginnings of the future city. Part Two explores the streets – including early Ma¯ ori street names, church streets, configuration streets, ‘‘women’’ streets, legal and soldier streets, ‘‘little ways o’ Thorndon’’ and others. Part Three wanders through the suburbs. Many photos and illustrations are scattered through the text.
The opening paragraph runs: ‘‘If it were possible to condense all New Zealand’s early history into one word, it would certainly be the word ‘ships’ for there is assuredly no country whose beginnings have been so closely associated with ships as our own ...’’
In the book’s illustrator, artist Arthur Messenger, Fanny had an ideal colleague. They were about the same age. Fanny’s father had been a ship captain; Messenger was fascinated with ships and had worked on many. Fanny was absorbed in Ma¯ ori culture, and Messenger had grown up in the bush alongside Ma¯ ori families at Pukearuhe, north of New Plymouth.
(Around this time Fanny also leapt into a personal crusade to get a branch library for her home ground, Khandallah, tirelessly collecting petition signatures. She succeeded, and a library opened there in 1947.)
A former student, Professor C.L. Bailey, wrote in the Onslow Historian of 1976: ‘‘As the work neared completion I have a hunch that Fanny knew her time was running out. She had to undergo major surgery, and she did not come through.’’
On December 20, 1948, aged 70, Fanny Irvine-Smith died at a private hospital.
Two days later, on a breezy Wednesday, her funeral service was held at the Lychgate, 87 The Terrace, and ended at the Karori cemetery’s crematorium.
The book’s first edition sold out in a fortnight, but by then Fanny was dead.