A Better Class of Pauper? From Kent to Port Nicholson

Abstract

It is perhaps a bit of a cheek for an Englishman. and a newly arrived one at that. to be writing about New Zealand history. However. I take heart that H.R.F. Keating, whose 'Inspector Ghote' novels brilliantly evoke both the squalor and the grandeur of Mother India, didn't actually set foot in the sub-continent until after his fifth best-seller.

While casting around in Britain for a subject for a short dissertation. I came across an interesting little notebook in the Kent Archives Office in Maidstone. This seemed to be the personal accounts book of the Reverend Hornbuckle, Vicar of Staplehurst in the Weald of Kent, for the years 1830 to 1843. Part of the book kept tally of the amount of work various labourers had done in the churchyard to repay loans. The main content, however, was a record of payments made against the Poor Rate to assist the emigration of six families from the Staplehurst Work-house to New Zealand in 1839.