Days of future past
He was only 47 years old when he died but W. Burns ‘‘Tussy’’ Smith was a well-known, highly respected Hamilton personality. He was a baker by trade, known mainly as a star rugby player.
Smith grew up in Thames where his baker and confectioner career began as an apprentice for the firm of Mennie and Dey. It is also where his rugby career started: he represented Thames when he was only 15 years old. He shifted to Hamilton in 1899 and immediately became involved in rugby as a member of the City Football Club. He was a representative of the Hamilton, South Auckland and the Waikato Rugby Unions and was captain of the respective teams for many years. After retiring from active participation he was on the management committee and was sole selector of the Hamilton Reps. The Waikato Times noted in its obituary for him: ‘‘he was noted on the football field as a man who set a sterling example. He never lost his temper and never questioned a decision. The game is poorer for his passing’’.
Rugby was not his only sporting interest – he was an expert swimmer and diver. The Waikato Times reported that he had been instrumental in saving lives several times while at Thames.
In 1905 Smith was boarding at Claremont Villa in Thackeray Street, but was later listed as Victoria Street. He worked for Tidd and Stanton who had a general store that included confectionery. He subsequently set up on his own account, with a shop and bakery in Collingwood Street. Smith also catered at events such as the Waikato Central Show, Te Kowhai Sports Day, the opening of the Frankton Town Hall in 1911 and Waikato Sheep Dog trials. At a fundraising concert and dance held at Eureka for the Thrupp family, he catered and made a big donation.
In 1911 Smith advertised that because of the large increase in business in the catering and dining room he had sold his bread baking department. He sold his tea rooms, pastry and confectionery business in early October 1916 and stated he was keeping his catering business, but just three weeks later the sale of all his catering plant was advertised. It included tables, folding chairs, table linen, cutlery, plates and his horse, cart and harness. Three large marquees were among the items up for auction. Smith married twice – his first wife, Louisa Grattan, died suddenly in 1906 after only seven months of marriage. At breakfast one morning she said she felt unwell and would lie down for a while – William went to work but came home an hour later to find her comatose on the bed. He called for help but the doctor could only confirm she was dead. A postmortem found heart damage and that she died of syncope induced by the sickness of pregnancy. Smith lost both his wife and child. Smith and his second wife, Evelyn Cora Mayes, who he married in 1910, had a son Norman and a daughter, Evelyn.
Several years before his death Smith was afflicted with a serious illness ‘‘which he bore with great fortitude and cheeriness’’. He was on the receiving end of charity in September 1928 – the Hamilton Rugby Club played a match against Auckland Grammar Old Boys, the proceeds to go to Mr ‘‘Tussy’’ Smith as support during his long illness. He died in November 1928 aged 47. He was buried in the Masonic section of Hamilton East Cemetery. Louisa was buried in the AA1 Block, Evelyn and their daughter with him in the Masonic Block. Today street advertising in and around towns and cities is a commonplace affair. We live in a time of digital signage, once the stuff of science fiction, where hoardings have become screens. The age of Blade Runner is almost upon us.
Ninety years ago the public had a greater sensitivity to the despoilment of their environment. In Cambridge, in 1928, the erection of an advertising hoarding saw a backlash from both residents and the local newspaper. The sign was positioned opposite St Andrew’s Church. It extolled the virtues of the Railways Department.
In an editorial entitled ‘A Disfigurement’, the Waikato Independent waxed lyrical about local aesthetics. It imagined the impact of the hoarding on a first time visitor to Cambridge: ‘‘on motoring along Hamilton Road, he is delighted with the appearance of the town, and on turning the Anglican Church corner into Victoria Street, goes into raptures at the glorious sight, when he is confronted with a huge gaudy hoarding advertising the virtues of someone’s wonderful whisky, pink pills for pale people, etc.’’ The paper argued that the sign was at odds with Government policy which encouraged thoughtful town planning and beautification, which made the Railways involvement all the more ironic: ‘‘ . . . and yet we have a Government Department erecting a hoarding like this – probably the most beautiful and important spot in the town’’.
A campaign by citizens and a protest to the Railways Department by Mayor T. F. Richards had the desired result. The ‘‘colossal monument to the bad taste of those responsible and a constant eye sore to the public’’ was removed after the head of national railways advertising visited Cambridge. This success did but whet public appetite. Shortly after someone signing himself or herself ‘Aesthete’, wrote to the paper complaining about ‘‘ . . . the gross disfigurement of our Town Hall by the plastering up of such an advertising monstrosity as that which now appears on its frontage’’. The correspondent trusted that ‘‘this matter will be taken up and dealt with as vigorously as the Railway Department hoarding’’.