How times have changed
Monday May 2 will be the 150th anniversary of the Waikato Times, a fitting time to look back at the early owners and editors who kept the newspaper going in its first decades.
Several of them have featured in the Dead Tell Tales since the column began 11 years ago and today some of them are reviewed and some omissions added, perhaps the most important being the newspaper’s founder, George Jones.
Jones, ‘‘a smooth-faced, pleasant voiced and facetious-dispositioned young gentleman’’ according to the Observer, established the newspaper in Ngaruawahia, which was deemed then to be the most important of the new Waikato settlements.
The first issue of the Waikato Times and Thames Valley Gazette was published from a modest two-roomed cottage.
The newspaper office shifted to Hamilton in February 1875 and occupied the recentlyvacated St Peter’s Church in southern Victoria St opposite the Hamilton Hotel, the editor’s room being the church porch.
Jones sold out at that time, to Langbridge and Silver.
The first editor was Henry Holloway, an experienced journalist. Holloway moved with the newspaper, but not for long.
His performance seems to have been unsatisfactory: a history of the Times, written in 1880, stated he was ‘‘a gentleman who gave promise of much excellence, but who did not redeem it . . . The sheet was unpretending enough and if its columns were occasionally bare, it must not be forgotten that in those days news was scarce . . . and the settlers themselves, not yet alive to a taste for periodical literature, did not perhaps support it as they ought to have done.’’
The gossipy ‘‘Pars about People’’ column in the Observer (May 13, 1905) described
Holloway as a ‘‘new Peter the Hermit’’, an allusion to an 11th century French ascetic and monastic founder who was an aggressive leader in the Crusades.
The article stated Holloway’s ‘‘bellicose articles nearly started another war’’ between the government and Waikato Maori.
Early in June 1875 Langbridge and Silver replaced Holloway with Charles Otho Montrose as editor.
He lasted barely five months.
The Bay of Plenty Times noted ‘‘when Mr Montrose went to the Waikato Times his energy and general enthusiasm in his work won the hearts of the settlers, and in less than a couple of months he became a big man, in fact much bigger than either of the proprietors.
But his discretion is not equal to his ability, and forgetful of his subordinate capacity Mr Montrose preferred to follow his own dictates rather than condescend to follow the lead of advice of his employers.
Clearly Langbridge and Silver objected and Montrose was dismissed.
Montrose was succeeded by Frederick von Sturmer, a former gold miner, soldier, journalist and editor.
Under von Sturmer’s watch the newspaper’s ownership changed, according to a rather sardonic history published in the Observer, as ‘‘Langbridge and Silver, who had started with the mistaken notion that a country newspaper is a gold mine or a mint, quickly came to grief’’.
Langbridge and Silver parted company and Langbridge continued as sole owner until he sold the paper to Frederick Whitaker, an Auckland lawyer and politician.
The Bank of New Zealand later bought a controlling influence.
Von Sturmer’s stint as editor seems to have been uneventful, perhaps as he was not in the role for long – one source states that Sidney
Greville Smith was editor from 1876, another that he was editor from about 1880 until 1887 and again later. Just when von Sturmer left requires further research.
George Edgecumbe joined the paper in 1878 as its business manager and in 1882 he became part-proprietor with Edward Mortimer Edgcumbe (no middle ‘e’, no relation).
As Jeff Downs wrote in his biography of Edgecumbe, for the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, under Edgecumbe’s editorial emphasis ‘‘the paper became less parochial and more tolerant of change’’.
In 1896 the Times’ owners, the Bank of New Zealand Assets Realisation Board, refused to renew Edgecumbe’s lease and instead sold it to James Shiner Bond. By then Holloway had returned as editor but went with Edgecumbe when Edgecumbe established the Waikato Argus. The history of the Waikato Time in its early years is convoluted, sometimes quixotic, with strong personalities of those involved.
Alittle bit of old Hamilton in August 1967. In the day, the population of the city was about 63,000, about a third of the Hamilton inhabitants today. So, the city had quite a bit of growth to go on with.
This photo has a distinctly rural look about it and indeed, it was rural some years ago. Note too, in those long-gone times, the only way to get in the photo if you haven’t got delayed shutter stuff is to have the sun behind you. Is this a selfie? The photographer is standing in the entrance way to timber merchants Tuck & Watkins which was a large timber mill and yard on the corner (more or less) of Avalon Dr and Forest
Lake Rd. Forest Lake Rd runs across and the road heading off in the distance is Chilcott Rd which disappeared in the redesign of Lincoln St to Avalon Dr.
Contributed by Perry Rice, Heritage Librarian – Photographs, Hamilton Central Library. If you have any information you would like to pass on or would like to buy an electronic copy of the photo, please e-mail archives@hcc.govt. nz quoting: HCL_03529