Post researched and written by HUMS intern, Ceri Spivey Amongst the business records held here at the Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, are those from the eminent local and national department store chain, the Drapery and General Importing Company of New Zealand (lovingly known as the D.I.C.). Established in 1884 by prominent businessman Bendix […]

​Post by Anna Petersen, Curator Photographs These past twenty years have certainly proved a boon time for putting names to previously unidentified photographs of people and places.  As cultural institutions and private individuals all over the world continue to digitise their collections and create searchable databases, new information emerges on a daily basis that brings […]

Post written and researched by David Murray, Archivist This year marks one hundred years since the devastating influenza pandemic that claimed between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide. It arrived in New Zealand not long before the armistice at the end of World War I. Soldiers returning on troopships were among those who unknowingly brought […]

Post written researched and written by Kari Wilson-Allan, Collections Assistant – Archives Blighty is a tiny (72 by 124mm) pocket book, published by the New Zealand Young Men’s Christian Association.  Despite its diminutive size, it contains worlds of insight into respectable expectations of service men on leave. Judging by its condition, our copy has certainly […]

Post researched and written by Dr Anna Petersen, Assistant Curator of Photographs. Housed in the Hocken Photographs Collection is an album compiled by a World War I soldier, Francis Leddingham McFarlane (1888-1948) from Dunedin, who occupied a short-lived but significant place in the long history of the Shellal Mosaic. Sapper McFarlane of the New Zealand […]

Post prepared by Dr Anna Petersen, Assistant Curator of Photographs Hocken Album 512 has seen a busy time these past few weeks with University of Otago Art History students opting to study it for an assignment and images copied for an exhibition at Fraser Island in Australia to commemorate the part the hospital ship ‘Maheno’ […]

Post researched and written by Amanda Mills, Liaison Librarian Music and Audio Visual Music touches our lives in many ways, and often stays with communities and individuals for decades, even centuries after it was first written.  Sadly, this is not often the case with music written for, and around, The Great War of 1914-1918 (WWI). […]

George Malcolm Thomson was MP for Dunedin North from 1908-1914. At the time war was declared Thomson was in Wellington as Parliament was sitting. He was in the habit of writing a diary entry most days, recording a mix of parliamentary activity, letter writing and family news. What follows are extracts from his 1914 diary, […]

Llewellyn Beaumont was raised in Dunedin and served in both WW1 (in artillery units at Gallipoli and the Western Front in France) and WW2 (commanding coastal artillery at Taiaroa Heads). As a civilian Llewellyn worked in the wool industry, starting out as a wool classer and eventually working for David Reid and Co. as head […]

This wonderful image is a photograph of the ship Maheno, which served at Gallipoli as well as elsewhere in the Mediterranean during the First World War.  Along with sister hospital ship Marama, it transported over 47,000 wounded soldiers to safety. For the winter months of 2012 the Hocken Library is using this image to promote […]