Old days look pretty good, according to papers
MY old mate George always buys the ODT, but only on Tuesdays. “Why just Tuesdays?” I asked coyly, eager to hear, “I wouldn’t want to miss that excellent column of yours,” but instead I got, “They have the TV programmes for the week on Tuesdays.”
Of course, George, who thinks television is worth watching, is not quite the full quid. He’s not an ODT subscriber and has no idea what he’s missing out on. Not only a daily dose of the ODT, but the issue from exactly 100 years ago which is available on the eedition website.
Reading the 100yearold newspapers should be made compulsory, if even only to prove that the more things change, the more they are pretty much the same, although in 1921 the big news about the American president was simply that he was the first to arrive at an inauguration by motor car. Happy days.
The ODT for January 12, 1921 reports that hundreds of New
Zealanders were stranded in Australia, not by Covid but by a strike by ships’ stewards. Prime Minister Massey suggested a New Zealandcrewed vessel might be sent over to pick them up but admitted, “nothing much can be done except to see that the stranded New Zealanders are not in want.”
Auckland was already established as a pretty selfcentred place and a Dunedin visitor reported that when local praise of the Queen City “degenerates into rabid and vainglorious boasting, odious comparisons, and a continual panegyric of praise it becomes an offence and an infraction of the eternal fitness of things.” He adds, “go where you will in Auckland, you cannot find the long stretches of clean white sand to be found at St. Clair, nor the great rolling breakers that impart such splendid exhilaration to the sport of surfing.” The right stuff for his southern readers!
You would be hardpressed to match the entertainment on offer in 1921. Maybe take in a film (silent) at the Octagon Theatre. It was advertising “a most attractive photoplay, Blind Husbands. It tells of a busy man married to a beautiful woman, whom he does not pay sufficient attention to owing to his keen interest in his profession. Then, a man who is described as ‘‘a Hun hounder of women’’ comes upon the scene and nearly upsets everything, but has his designs frustrated at the last moment.” But 100 years ago a really great show was on at His Majesty’s Theatre. The New Zealand Diggers who had entertained the troops in World War 1 were making a farewell tour and magic names from the old days were on stage including Stan Lawson, the great female impersonator, and Tano Fama (“his comedy is clean, incisive, and irresistibly funny”). He later managed the old Plaza Theatre. Bookings could be made at the Bristol Piano Company (which had quickly changed its name from the Dresden Piano Company during the war).
The 700 members of the Otago Motor Club were suggesting that their beach racing could be moved from Warrington to Lower Portobello, a foretaste of the hoons of today. But some things have changed. Five shillings was being paid for each kea beak presented at the
Agriculture Department. The kea is now a protected bird and the culls of the 1920s at five bob ($20) a head must have devastated the species.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of reading old news is the predictions. Ernest Blamires, a New Zealand Baptist minister, was touring Britain and proudly announced that New Zealand would be free of alcohol in two years. The ODT reported, “he was sure that by 1923 New Zealand would be ‘dry,’ and it was his prayer that the Homeland would quickly follow in its train.” The misguided minister was redeemed, however, by his cricketing skill. He was captain of Otago in 192425 when the province won the Plunket Shield for the first time. He made 117 in 183 minutes in the match against Wellington and continued to captain the side until the 192627 season. Not bad for a nondrinker.
Readers were told of a British expedition to climb Mt Everest now that the Tibetan government had dropped rules which “had prevented any white man from going within 40 miles of the mountain’s base.”
In 1921 quackery was still going strong and under the headline “There’s no longer the slightest need of feeling ashamed of your freckles” the Kintho company was proclaiming. “Now is the time to get rid of those ugly spots!” Their product was highly poisonous but was still on the market in the 1960s.
But on this day in 1921 some real history was being made. Dunedin citizens could take to the air in flights from the foreshore at Andersons Bay in the actual Avro biplane which had recently made the first crossing of Cook Strait.
Makes you wish you’d been there.