Season rocked by news from Home
As Palmerstonians rushed around in December 1936, King Edward VIII decided his time on the throne was up.
Saturday, December 19, 1936: Weather: fine and warm, with light to moderate westerly winds. Palmerston North’scmross department storewas proudly featuring an impressive display: a replica exhibition of the English crown jewels.
The Manawatu¯ Standard quoted a visitor who said he had seen the exhibition before, in Auckland and Australia, but the local version was far better.
The event, to publicise the coronation of King Edward VIII, had drawn big crowds.
But suddenly, on December 11, it had all become irrelevant.
On that day
Edward broke the news, in a dramatic radio broadcast, that he was giving up the throne to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.
It caused international shock. However, in our town – now rebranded a city – life went on, with everyone gearing up for a sunny Christmas and New Year.
December marriage licences soared to 23.
And, according to the Standard, ‘‘although only six months of the licensing year have passed, the number of driving licences issued by the Wellington City Council already exceeds the number issued for the whole of last year – by 100.’’
The whitebait season had just closed: ‘‘Early closing has been enforced by the Internal Affairs Department to give the later run of whitebait near Christmas a chance to pass up the streams unmolested, in the hope that larger quantities will breed for the following year.’’
Children roamed suburban streets declaiming: ‘‘Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat/ Please put a penny in the old man’s hat/if you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do/if you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you!’’
On this theme, a letter to the editor from ‘‘Canny’’ asked an ‘‘important question: is there anything between this simple old rhyme and the fact that bands are already out carolling?
‘‘To what good purpose does the money collected by the bands go? I should be glad to have an answer to this Christmas problem.’’ The letter went unanswered.
A baker, Charles Robertson, 26, had the embarrassing fate of being mentioned – not in a goodway – in the newspaper on December 19. For being ‘‘intoxicated while driving a motor-car’’ his licence was suspended and he was fined £10 – in default of 21 days of hard labour – imposed by stipendiary magistrate E D Mosley the previous day.
Over at the Standard’s rival newspaper, the Manawatu¯ Times, the editorial the same day, The Code of the Road, echoed road safety themes.
‘‘Motorists, their numbers now approximately almost half of the Dominion’s population, will be pleased to see that cycle and pedestrian traffic is to be regulated ... Whenever an accident occurred in which amotor vehicle was involved, there was always an assumption that the motorist was at fault.
‘‘Actually, the carelessness ofmany cyclists and pedestrians renders motor driving unnecessarily hazardous.
‘‘The new code of the road recognises that care on the part of pedestrians and cyclists must be insisted upon.’’
Foxton’s Manawatu¯ Herald printed a ‘‘lastminute plum pudding’’ recipe, containing flour, baking powder, soaked bread, sultanas, mixed peel, apples, grated carrot, lemon rind and juice, mixed spice, an egg, milk and treacle.
The ingredients were to be put into a greased, covered basin and steamed for seven hours.
The ominous foretaste of a coming scourge came in the Standard’s mention of an infantile paralysis outbreak in Dunedin, affecting 43 children, with others under observation. The condition would later be known as polio, finally halted by the Salk vaccine in the early 1960s.
A happier kind of contagion was reported in the Times, with a Makuriwomen’s Institute president’s message: ‘‘There is nothing in the world so contagious as laughter and good humour.’’
In Pahı¯atua, the Dramatic Society scored a hit with a season of Noel Coward’s comedy Hay Fever. The society went all out, with the Pahı¯atua Municipal Silver Band, led by Mr A Madsen, playing outside the theatre before the performance. This was reportedly ‘‘greatly appreciated by the playgoers’’.
In national news, the proposed award for New Zealand tearoom restaurant workers was discussed for the second time in conciliation council. The final agreement was that wages and conditions should be the same as last year’s award, ‘‘the main difference being an agreement for a 44-hour week, not more than eight hours to be worked on any one day without overtime’’.
In Palmerston North, in the first ceremony of its kind in the Dominion, Feilding’s Missmarjorie Garrett received her cap and gown as a fellow of Trinity College, London.
JC Williamson Ltd, the giant Australian theatre firm, was preparing for a ‘‘stage boom’’ and a bumper tour of New Zealand.
Arthur Tait, the company’s representative, had arrived in the country ahead of the Gilbert and Sullivan season.
At Broadway’s Regent Theatre, the big movie of the monthwas The Man Who Could Performmiracles, a London Films production based on a story by H G Wells, produced by Alexander Korda, starring Roland Young, with Ralph Richardson in a supporting role.
‘‘A notable feature of the production is the remarkable photography, which records scenes of impossible happenings with a perfection that is convincing,’’ raved the publicity story in the Standard.
All this – and only four days until Christmas Eve.