Christchurch Cycling Craze #10 - Nurse Maude Association, District Nursing

Nurse Maude's District nurses, with their bicycles, utside South Durham St District Nursing Office, Christchurch, 29 August 1914. Reference Number: 1/1-005293-G. Alexander Turnbull Library.

District nurses, in uniform and with their bicycles, outside the South Durham Street headquarters in Christchurch. Left to right they are: E Browne, Sister Constance, M Palmer, M Rogers, Sibylla Emily Maude, D Savory, L Laing and Tolerton. Taken by the Steffano Webb Studio on the 29th of August, 1914.

Sibylla Maude, 1862-1935, born in Christchurch but who later trained in nursing in England returned to become matron of Christchurch hospital. She was the first to establish a system of district nursing in Christchurch after she chose to practise nursing rather than continue to deal with the dead hand of hospital bureaucracy. (See Nurse Maude's biography at the NZ Dictionary of Biography.)

Concerned for the health care of the poor, especially the aged and infirm, Nurse Maude set up an office in South Durham Street in the working class suburb of Sydenham in 1896 and in 1901 formed the Nurse Maude Association to provide in-home nursing for those in most need.

In the early days carrying out her practice on foot, burdened by her equipment and supplies, Nurse Maude and her nurses eventually were provided with a horse and cart for transport then bicycles. Apparently in later years she received a car but her driving was reputed to put other road users in fear of their lives.

In addition to in-home care, Nurse Maude established camps for the treatment of tuberculosis until a sanatorium could be built and in the 1918 Influenza epidemic she was placed in charge of coordinating nursing services.

Nurse Maude, circa 1900. Canterbury City Libraries

The Nurse Maude Association continues to carry out Nurse Maude's mission today with community, acute, and hospice nursing care. Several generations of this bird's extended family have both benefited from and contributed to Nurse Maude's good work for which he is sincerely grateful. The work of such communitarian organisations helps bridge the sometimes yawning gap between private effort and state largesse.

Christchurch Cycling Craze #9 - The 1918 Influenza Epidemic

A nurse leaving a sub-depot on her daily round of visits, during the 1918 influenza epidemic, Christchurch [1918]. The Weekly Press, 4 December 1918. Christchurch City Libraries.

In the influenza pandemic between October and December 1918, New Zealand lost about half as many people to influenza as it had in the whole of the First World War.

The death toll had topped 8600 before the pandemic subsided in December, with Maori affected disproportionately with an overall rate of death of 42.3 per thousand people, seven times that of the European death rate of 5.8 per thousand people.

The flu's impact on communities was uneven too. Some were hit hard while others escaped without much loss. The most consistently lethal sites for death from influenza were the military camps such as those at Featherston and Trentham where the rates were 22.6 and 23.5 deaths per thousand people respectively.

With the medical profession already stretched to the limit by wartime conditions with many doctors and nurses serving in the military abroad, volunteers were called upon to serve in providing medical care, food service, transportation, funeral and burial services. The bicycle provided the means for volunteers and nurses to make house calls upon the ill & dying at a time when quarantine regulations and the lack of manpower prevented transportation to hospitals and temporary treatment stations.

Walter Ford Gibbs (1893-1918), Kuaka's great uncle, was one of 458 Christchurch residents to die of influenza.

Walter Ford Gibbs, 1893-1918

Like many of those most severely ill or who died, Walter was young. In early November 1918, Christchurch was crowded with people attending the Show weekend races and as a cab driver Walter would have no doubt appreciated the increased business. But the large crowds were the ideal breeding ground and transmitting device for influenza.

After becoming ill, Walter was transported from his home at 20 Melrose Street, a small side street just south of Bealey Avenue to Christchurch hospital. He died there on 14 November 1918. Two days later he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Sydenham cemetery in Simeon Street. He was just 25 years old.

It wasn't until towards the end of the century that a modern generation "re-discovered" Walter and restored him to family memory.