New Zealanders and their Typewriters

A young Māori woman photographed at a Remington typewriter in Christchurch in 1906 by Steffano Francis Paulovitch Webb (1880-1967). 

Politician Sir Ethelbert Alfred Ransom (1868-1943) with his Royal Bar-Lock typewriter in 1938. A former sheep farmer and saddler, he was an officer in the Ruahine Mounted Rifles in the Second Boer War.  In politics, he was twice acting Prime Minister. 

Politician George Robert Sykes (1867-1957) at his Empire Aristocrat portable typewriter in 1956. He was a Member of Parliament for 24 years, from 1911 to 1935. 

Writer, poet and educator Sylvia Constance Ashton-Warner (1908-1984) in 1968. She spent many years teaching Māori children, using stimulating and often pioneering techniques which she wrote about in her 1963 treatise Teacher and in the various volumes of her autobiography. Her success derived from a commitment to "releasing the native imagery and using it for working material" and her belief that communication must produce a mutual response in order to affect a lasting change. Her novel Spinster (1958) was made into the 1961 film Two Loves (also known as The Spinster) starring Shirley MacLaine. Her life story was adapted for the 1985 biographical film Sylvia, based on her work and writings. The Ashton School in the Dominican Republic was founded in 1998 and was named in her honour. She said, "You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are."

Politician Hubert Maxwell Christie (1889-1982) in 1938. He was a former shearer in New Zealand and Australia.

Doris Clifton Gordon (1890-1956) at a first model Imperial Good Companion typewriter in 1938. She was a doctor, university lecturer, obstetrician and women's health reformer. Gordon was born in Melbourne, Australia.

George Eric Oakes Ramsden (1898-1962), seen here in 1942, was a journalist, writer and art critic. He is at an Underwood Noiseless portable typewriter.

War correspondent Graham Evenson Beamish (1906-1975) at a Royal portable typewriter in the Libyan desert during World War II in 1941.

The shipping news writer. The Wellington Evening Post's Sydney David Waters (appropriate name!) at an Imperial Good Companion portable typewriter in 1958.

"'It was a dark and stormy night'. What comes next?" Adele Jansen at her Imperial 65 typewriter in 1959.

John Bryan Clayton of Whites Aviation at a Royal 10 typewriter in 1946. Whites was a company which flew around New Zealand taking aerial photographs of towns and cities and publishing them in very fine books.

 Journalist Thomas Wilson Ewart worked for Whites in 1946.

Miss Cullen worked for Whites and for Qantas in New Zealand in 1948.

Unidentified female journalist at a Corona portable typewriter, Evening Post, Wellington, 1956.

Stenographers at the Court of Arbitration in Wellington in 1959. The typewriter is an Imperial 65. 

A student working on an Underwood electric typewriter at the Kimi Ora School for children with special needs in Thorndon, Wellington, in 1958.

John Thompson of Gisborne works on an Imperial 50 at the New Zealand Divisional Field Workshops on the Italian Front in 1944.

The typewriter repair section of the New Zealand Electrical and Mechanical Engineers workshop at the Maadi Camp in Egypt in 1943.

 A typist in 1947.

Four New Zealand soldiers who have lost limbs in World War I learn new skills on typewriters at Oatlands Park in Surrey, England. At this time, Oatlands Park, a hotel, was being used as a hospital by the New Zealand Expeditionary Force for medical and tuberculosis cases and limbless men (informally known as 'limbies'). Oatlands Park was a few miles south-west of No 2 New Zealand General Hospital at Walton-on-Thames. It was also near the Queen Mary Convalescent Hospital at Roehampton where the amputees could be fitted with artificial limbs.