Here is another in a series of extracts from our many Oral History audio files.
Our archive contains many recordings of talks given to the society in the 1980s and 1990s
In this extract, in his 14th May 1991 talk on emigration to New Zealand , the late Duncan Waugh offered this amusing anecdote:
Listen to the clip
Transcript
Not all the arrangements for receiving immigrants worked perfectly and one chap who got to Christchurch spent a few days in the immigration barracks at Addington, but they were so overcrowded that he’d never had his clothes off the whole time and slept chiefly on the mess room table.
Having obtained work but not accommodation, he was sent with his wife and child to the old police barracks in Armagh Street and was much surprised to be ushered into a police cell. The only alteration being that the old iron bar door was taken off and laid outside and a more civilized one put on.
With this exception, the cell was in the same condition as when used for prisoners, the authorities not even having taken trouble to erase the choice compositions both of prose and verse with which the cell had been adorned by its previous compulsory occupants.
As my wife cannot read and is like most of Eve’s daughters a little curious, she wanted to know what all the writing was about. So I had the pleasant task of pretending to read them to her, converting them to what Scriptural texts I could remember.
Upon which she remarked “Dear me. I wonder what they locked the poor fellows up for. They must have been very religious.”
The recording of the full talk is here >>>
