6

1930s: Decline and Discontinuance

From 1929 to 1937, immigration authorities in New Zealand adhered to a firm ‘closed door’ policy to any new arrivals. The devastating impact of the global economic depression silenced any debate about the Kalimpong scheme, and John Graham accepted the economic justification for not allowing any further groups to emigrate. By 1937, Graham was hopeful that better economic conditions might mean the scheme could resume. As a 75-year-old, he visited New Zealand for a second time, meeting his former pupils, many of whom were now middle-aged, and lobbying the government. Graham was pleased with the fortunes of those he met and encouraged by the official response to his queries. He departed New Zealand further convinced of its leading role in the British Empire on the question of race relations, and did see one final group into New Zealand in 1938. The following year, however, in the context of pre-war pressure on immigration authorities from European refugees and an upsurge in enquiries from South Asian mixed-race communities as India headed towards Independence, the scheme was finally halted.

In addition to economic downturn, this period was marked by important shifts in British imperial rule. The Dominions assumed greater autonomy in governance, while in non-settler colonies, nationalist movements that had made strident demands of Britain following the First World War continued to gain momentum.¹ Indian nationalism had reached a position by the 1930s that meant Britain’s withdrawal was viewed as not only inevitable but imminent. This prospect was greatly troubling to the Anglo-Indian community, and a point of discussion for British and Indian officials alike.² From a Kalimpong perspective, these imperial and global dynamics presented an enormous challenge: economic depression and the indefinite removal of New Zealand as a destination hampered placement of Homes graduates, and British withdrawal from India would threaten the institution’s very existence. How and where did a Scottish institution, set up for the children of British tea planters and funded largely by British interests in India, fit in an independent India?

The archive of Graham’s hectic and very public tour communicates his deep concern about this eventuality. The records left by his visit included two diaries, transcripts of his broadcasts on National Radio and numerous newspaper articles. In this chapter I make extensive use of his personal diary, entitled ‘Pour Les Intimes’, which offers a different angle on the Homes narrative of the emigration scheme. Here Graham walked into the homes of graduates he had not seen for decades, met their children, learnt of their early hardships and through his own filter recorded their successes and failures. The diary provides a useful snapshot of the community in 1937, and lights up Graham’s network of Presbyterian and ex-India supporters around New Zealand. These records mark a brief but important moment in building the collective narrative, because in the years prior to Graham’s visit there was a significant reduction in their archived stories. The Homes Magazine carried very few reports of the New Zealanders in the 1930s, and the family files were also noticeably bereft of correspondence.

The immigration files too were quiet in the 1930s, yet they do contain information useful for continuing to illuminate the policy that was applied to Anglo-Indians, and within that category, the Homes emigrants. Previous anxieties about the social and economic absorption of migrants with Indian ancestry were displaced by the late 1930s by a broad rejection of any ‘half-caste’ migrants. Given his many claims about New Zealand’s progressive racial politics, Graham expressed considerable shock at this justification for ending the scheme. As Damon Salesa has shown, New Zealand state policies towards mixed-race peoples changed in the interwar period.³ But Graham was not privy to such subtleties, clinging to his belief that New Zealand provided ‘striking proof’ of Lord Olivier’s claim that racial mixing created individuals who were ‘potentially a more competent vehicle of humanity’.⁴ Prior to 1939, what Graham read, saw and heard about Māori in New Zealand was a steady source of inspiration to continue with the scheme.

Immigration policy and the Kalimpong scheme

A memorandum in the Customs Department file headed ‘Policy followed during the year 1931’ makes plain the difficulty of obtaining a permit to enter New Zealand in the depression era. Five categories of Race Aliens were listed: Chinese, Indians, Syrians, Palestinians and Other Race Aliens. In total, one Syrian child and ‘8 wives and 25 children’ of Indians living in New Zealand were granted permits. No permits were issued to ‘other coloured people’ except for the Japanese wife of a New Zealand resident and two Anglo-Indian families ‘of superior standing’.⁵ Aside from these two Anglo-Indian families, no permits were issued to ‘alien’ migrants in 1931 who did not already have family resident in New Zealand.

The differential treatment of Kalimpong emigrants within this restrictive regime highlights the ad hoc nature of policies developed to implement the permit system. Like any community involved in chain migrations, changes to immigration policy caused great anxiety. But as the Customs Department memorandum demonstrates, there was a continued emphasis on kinship during this restrictive period, at least for Indian families. Yet the same concessions were not made for Kalimpong emigrants, whose siblings were effectively blocked from joining them when the scheme halted in 1929. This distinct treatment of Anglo-Indians is also apparent in the Memorandum, where it was their ‘mixedness’ rather than their ‘Indianness’ that determined their inclusion in the ‘other race aliens’ category; and Anglo-Indians were the only ‘new’ migrants from any of these categories allowed to enter in 1931. Their ‘family’ status probably explains why they were granted permits while the Kalimpong emigrants – single and seeking unskilled employment – were not. These subtleties aside, the distinct treatment is important because it disrupted the Homes practice of sending siblings to the same destination.

The policy change also created uncertainty about the rights of exit and re-entry for those already in New Zealand. The only letter in the Customs Department file regarding Anglo-Indians between 1929 and 1937 was one that sought clarity about the citizenship status of a Homes graduate. Mrs J. A. Tripe wrote the letter in 1932, requesting advice about taking her ‘Eurasian maid’ to England. Unsure if the woman would be allowed to land and reside there, Tripe queried, ‘If she wished to come back to New Zealand, would she have a right to re-enter?’⁶ This question of citizenship and mobility would continue to trouble the Kalimpong emigrants. Stability in the Dominion can be read, as it was by Graham, as evidence of contented settlers whose heads had been turned away from India; but it also indicates a fear of not being allowed to return, especially when Anglo-Indians were being denied permits. In Tripe’s case, the permit register contains no record of her Kalimpong employee returning to New Zealand in the 1930s; presumably the uncertainty over her re-entry saw her take up employment in another household.

The halt to the emigration scheme in 1929 weakened the threads connecting Kalimpong and New Zealand, and this was evident in the reduction of content regarding those living abroad in the 1930s editions of the Homes Magazine. This archival quietening can be linked to various causes. First, without an emigration scheme to promote, there was less motivation to include reports about graduates’ progress overseas, despite the professed desire to promote continued connections among the dispersed Kalimpong family. Second, there was perhaps a scarcity of source material, with no eager new arrivals writing letters in the initial lonely phase of settlement, and little positive news for others to report in the depression era. Third, financial tightening may have reduced the size of the 1930s editions, since it was circulated free of charge. In 1931, for the first time, no issues of the Homes Magazine were published, probably due to Graham’s absence from Kalimpong that year (discussed below). Finally, the scarce mention of New Zealand surely suggests the declining relevance of the Dominion to Indian interests, and vice versa. The shifting dynamics of the British Empire affected the audience and circulation of this vehicle of imperial fundraising, and this was reflected in its content.

Changing priorities at the Homes were evidenced more directly by Graham’s activities in the 1930s. In 1931 he was appointed moderator of the Church of Scotland, which saw him spend eight months away from Kalimpong. One of the topics he often spoke of during his tenure in Britain was unrest in India as the nationalist movement gained momentum.⁷ Graham’s concern about where Anglo-Indians might fit under any new regime saw him encourage them to seek a more ‘harmonious’ relationship with Indians, which he saw as a necessary shift if Homes graduates were to find employment in an independent India. Late in 1934 Graham delivered a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts in London entitled ‘The Education of the Anglo-Indian Child’ which reiterated this concern.⁸ Appealing for British and Indian support, Graham apologized to Indian audiences for the Anglo-Indian tendency to act with ‘partiality towards their Western kin’.⁹ James Minto traced these sentiments to Graham’s 1921 address to the Calcutta Committee, in which he stated that

one of the best lessons we can teach the youth of the domiciled community of our schools is to be proud of their motherland. … An undoubted weakness of the domiciled community in the past has been in cherishing too often the thought that because of blood relationship with the paramount Power, they were entitled to special privileges. At the Homes we have sought from the beginning to emphasise the thought of the brotherhood of the people of India.¹⁰

The Homes, of course, did no such thing. Even Minto, a great supporter of Graham’s, was bemused by the blatant contradiction between this sentiment and the Homes’ original vision and the ensuing decades of activity, which sought to turn the children entirely away from their Indian heritage, and wherever possible, away from a future in India.¹¹

While Graham had previously spoken positively to Indian audiences about his graduates’ placement in India, his imagined integration of Anglo-Indians into an Indian ‘brotherhood’ demonstrated a much-heightened concern for the fate of the community. A survey of Homes Magazine articles reporting Indian placements in the 1910s and 1920s revealed that Graham was careful to establish a place for his graduates among his British contacts in India, utilizing existing channels of employment and housing for Anglo-Indians as well as creating new ones that continued their historic segregation – a far cry from this call for integration with all Indians.¹² By the mid-1930s, some years after the last group was emigrated and with India’s withdrawal from Empire looking likely, this rhetoric assumed a more prominent and urgent place in Graham’s thinking. Yet he had not given up on his original ‘colonial’ solution for Anglo-Indians. In 1937, at the age of seventy-five, Graham returned to New Zealand, hopeful that the improved economic outlook would aid his call for the emigration scheme to resume, and knowing that this would be his last opportunity to meet his former students and to reflect on the successes and failures of his grand scheme.

‘Pour Les Intimes’: The associates

The Kalimpong emigrants’ later silences regarding their Indian heritage have led to speculation that they received a specific directive to be discrete about it. Graham’s very public visit to New Zealand in 1937 would seem to contradict this possibility. He spent six weeks touring both islands, visiting Kalimpong emigrants in their homes and meeting their in-laws and friends. He gave press interviews and advertised his presence in local newspapers; broadcast twice on National Radio; delivered numerous sermons; and addressed schools, church groups, rotary clubs and a Women’s Temperance Union meeting. In his public appeals for the scheme to resume, Graham spoke candidly about those who had already emigrated, naming individuals and employers. His personal diary of that trip, entitled ‘Pour Les Intimes’, reads as an open letter to his family and recorded candid assessments of those he met. An edited version of the diary was published in the Homes Magazine. In his diary and in the many public accounts of his tour, there is no indication that Graham sought to conceal the emigrants’ Indian heritage nor the terms upon which they had entered the colony.

Graham’s diary makes explicit the deep involvement of the Presbyterian community in the emigration scheme. In Wellington ‘dear old Rev J.H. MacKenzie’, a Presbyterian minister, met him at the train station.¹³ He stayed with the MacKenzies for a week and met many members of the local Presbyterian community. In Christchurch, Graham stayed with ‘Mr Armour, the minister of Knox Church’.¹⁴ The Armours took him to church meetings and to visit Kalimpong emigrants, and arranged a reunion on the evening of his return to Christchurch. In Dunedin, Graham stayed with a Homes graduate, George Langmore, but was otherwise hosted by the Presbyterian Church. He was driven by Dr Dickie of Knox (theological) College to two institutions run by the local Presbyterian Services Support Association (Ross Home for the elderly and the Glendinning Cottage Homes for children), addressed meetings at Knox College and conducted services at two Presbyterian churches. On a day trip to Gore, in the south, he was hosted by the local Presbyterian minister, Mr Barton, who organized a missionary meeting and gave an account of the two Kalimpong women settled there, before putting on an afternoon tea for the women and their families. Auckland was the only place where Graham did not record meeting with the Presbyterian community in his diary; however, local newspapers reported that he was entertained by the Presbytery and delivered two sermons there in the days before he departed New Zealand.¹⁵

The other main constituent of this network of supporters was ex-India settlers. Graham’s diary affords a unique glimpse of this community in 1930s New Zealand.¹⁶ Of the sixty-five associates Graham mentioned in his diary, at least twenty had stated connections to India. Four were ex-planters, five were related to missionaries in India, another four had previously worked in the medical field there, one was ex-army and another was on furlough from working on the Indian railways. He met a teacher at Waitaki Boys School in Oamaru who had stayed at the Homes in Kalimpong on a climbing expedition. Graham met others with Indian connections by chance and took opportunities for eliciting new assistance. While visiting a tourist attraction in Rotorua, for example, he met an ‘old retired planter from Kandy, Ceylon, WWAT Murray, 84 years of age, came here for health, with a programme of 2 years more globetrotting’.¹⁷ Graham found many points of contact through him ‘with people in Ceylon, South India and Jersey’. Murray was a friend of Sir Herbert Newbiggin, who Graham had hoped to meet but had missed by a few days. He left a message for Newbiggin with Murray.

Others with connections to India heard of Graham’s visit and sought him out. In Nelson, a Mr Anderson-Smith heard Graham’s first radio broadcast and arranged to meet him. Anderson-Smith had been a tea planter in Assam for twenty-two years and his family in Glasgow had employed a Homes graduate. Another who contacted Graham was the former health commissioner of Bengal, who had visited Kalimpong in 1907. After working on a number of tea estates in Ceylon, this visitor (who had the distinction of being the only person Graham recorded meeting but whose name he forgot) had settled in Auckland. Numerous associates were connected through both India and the church, and they were not exclusively Presbyterian. The Anglican Bishop of Wellington, who Graham found to be ‘most sympathetic’ to the Homes scheme, had two brothers working as missionaries in India. In Dunedin, Dr North, who had employed Kalimpong women, was formerly a medical missionary with the Baptist church in East Bengal. The minister of the Lyttleton parish near Christchurch, Mr Stevenson, was related to an ‘aunty’ at the Homes.

The people of greatest interest to Graham on this visit were those in political circles who could assist his attempts to have the emigration scheme resumed. Associates in Wellington arranged a lunch for Graham with the governor general, Lord Galway, soon after he arrived there, and Galway then advised Graham ‘whom to see on the subject’ of emigration.¹⁸ This culminated in an appointment with the acting prime minister, Peter Fraser, on Graham’s return to Wellington after touring the South Island. The meeting was set up by Charles White, a barrister and long-time supporter of the scheme in Dunedin and Wellington. White escorted Graham to the meeting. Graham later recorded his intentions for the meeting in his diary, referring to the extant connections between Wellington politicians and the women emigrants:

My object was to get the Government of New Zealand to allow us to resume sending more boys and girls. I had a good argument to make in my experience of the OGBs [Old Girls and Boys] in N.Z. Mr Fraser is the Minister of Education, a Presbyterian and a Scotsman. His wife too knows of the good service given by our girls. He was most sympathetic and asked me to send in a formal application which he could lay before his colleagues.¹⁹

Graham noted that some members of this first Labour government were held in suspicion by ‘the more conservative element. But Mr Fraser is not one of these. I found he had a knowledge of India and many of the present Indian conditions. We are now certain of sending a batch in autumn’.²⁰ As with his 1909 visit, Graham’s confidence was at its highest point when he met educated men of influence who sympathized with the scheme, shared his Scottish Presbyterian origins, knew something of the particular conditions of India and with whom he could now claim a personal connection. He was known as a tireless campaigner, and the 1937 diary certainly supports that characterization.²¹ But for the emigrants, his visit evoked an emotive response and was a chance to reconnect with an important figure of their childhood.

‘Pour Les Intimes’: The emigrants

In his final broadcast the day before he left New Zealand, Graham stated that he had ‘had personal contact with nearly all’ of the 119 Kalimpong graduates settled there.²² In his diary, he recorded meeting around 75 in person. Including those whom he heard news of but did not meet, the number is closer to 100. While Graham referred to the men and women in similar numbers (49 women and 45 men), he only actually met 27 of the 45 men named, compared to 48 of the 49 women. Thus he saw almost twice the number of women as men. This statistic reveals the persistently isolated and impermanent nature of the men’s work, in contrast to the relatively dense clustering of the women in urban centres. As Figure 6.1 illustrates, the majority of those Graham met were in the four main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. There was a broader dispersal of the men around the regions, a higher proportion of men in the South Island than women and a greater concentration of women in Wellington. This clustering in the capital was partly due to the higher numbers of female than male arrivals in the 1920s, most of whom were placed in Wellington.

These gendered geographical trends were reflected in attendance at social gatherings recorded by Graham. In Dunedin, the two get-togethers were held at the homes of Kalimpong men, one of which was specifically for the ‘Old Boys’; while in the North Island, the women hosted numerous dinners and social events, and attended the reunions in much higher numbers than the men. The first gathering in Wellington, at Reverend MacKenzie’s home, was attended by seventeen Kalimpong women and only one male graduate; and a similar disparity was evident at the ‘great party’ hosted by Didsbury family in Wellington. In the photograph taken to mark the occasion, there were twenty-three Kalimpong women and five men present (Figure 6.2). Notable among the guests in the photograph was Janet Fraser, wife of the acting prime minister and an active supporter of the women in Wellington. Another evening was held at the home of Mary Gibson (nee Ochterloney), a 1912 emigrant. In Auckland, Alice Stewart (nee Peters) hosted a ‘big gathering’, which Graham found ‘so happy that I didn’t get to the hotel till 12.30am’.²³

Figure 6.1 John Graham’s journey around New Zealand, 1937. Map created by Harley McCabe.

Figure 6.2 Reunion of Kalimpong emigrants with John Graham at the Didsbury family home, Wellington, 1937. Courtesy Gammie private collection.

Graham emphasized his enjoyment of these functions in his final broadcast from Auckland, where he reflected on his experiences over the previous six weeks:

No experience has given me a keener thrill of pleasure than to see – at the Re-unions we have had – the light-hearted, happy camaraderie and affection they have for each other. They have certainly imbibed much of the sense of humour, good-natured leg-pulling and vivacious banter so characteristic of New Zealanders. They have successfully dug themselves in to good purpose.²⁴

This comment provides a useful insight into Graham’s assessments of his graduates’ integration. He noted twin accomplishments of absorption into the host community evidenced by the traits they had ‘imbibed’, plus the maintenance of strong bonds to their fellow settlers. While this closeness to others from Kalimpong could be cast in a negative light, Graham was satisfied that they related to each other as ‘New Zealanders’. In his public broadcasts Graham emphasized the emigrants’ contribution to their communities and to the nation, but privately he seemed as much buoyed by their domestic contentment. He observed their situations through a discrete and detached paternalism, writing of the men as looking ‘manly’ and ‘successful’, and taking pride in the women’s community and family involvement. For men and women, his most consistent accolade was for happy marriages and children with bright prospects.

Of the first four emigrants, Graham met three: Leonard Williams and Clarence Sinclair in Dunedin, and Eustace Boardman in Napier. He called first at Williams’s place of business, a ‘master’s tobacconist’s shop’ on Stuart Street, in the centre of Dunedin city. Williams recognized Graham at once and gave him ‘an affectionate greeting’.²⁵ Graham then called on Clarence Sinclair, who was ‘more restrained in his welcome and didn’t even ask us in’.²⁶ Graham’s explanation was that Sinclair had married a ‘keen Catholic’, and he attributed his lack of attendance at the social functions to Sinclair’s employment as a night watchman. Williams, however, not only attended the party but also hosted the final gathering in Dunedin at his ‘delightful home’, which he shared with several in-laws who were ‘all well educated’. ‘Len’s boy promises to be a clever young man’, Graham added, noting that Williams added a ‘special gift’ to the combined offering of the Dunedin community, ‘a walking stick with a silver label “J.A.G. from No.1” – referring to his being the first of the emigrants’. The ease with which Graham located Williams and Sinclair, neither of whom had prior notice of his tour, attests to the continued functioning of the Kalimpong community in the south.

In Napier, Graham wrote a detailed entry on the fortunes of Eustace Boardman. Boardman was the emigrant who reported on life as a ‘rolling stone’ in the early 1900s. Now Graham heard the full story of the incident that ended his initial placement, which can be read both as a clash of distinct colonial masculine types and an expression of Boardman’s forthright personality. A foreman who was a ‘drunkard’ disliked Boardman ‘because he spoke to him of his carelessness and drinking’.²⁷ This eventually led to a physical altercation, where Boardman ‘struck him [the foreman] with a hoe and cut his face’. Boardman ‘confessed’ to his employer and left. Graham relayed the incident in his diary in order ‘to show what some of the early boys had to put up with’. He met Boardman and his family at Molly Ireland’s home. Though the family were ‘not so refined as the Irelands’, Graham found Boardman to be ‘a well-built intelligent man who has done many different things’, including having his own business which had folded after the devastating 1931 Napier earthquake.²⁸ Any concern about Boardman’s current occupation, which he noted as ‘odd jobs in connection with shipping’, was overridden by his children’s prospects. One son was working in the Woollen Mills and ‘his second who is a baker in Auckland was one of the best swimmers in the Hawkes Bay district’.²⁹

George Langmore, a 1911 emigrant who had visited India in the 1920s, hosted Graham in Dunedin. Graham was impressed by Langmore’s wife and two teenage daughters, and his ‘cement double-storied’ home (Figure 6.3).³⁰ He mentioned the ‘soft carpets’ that came from Glasgow, and that George had named the house ‘Lopchu’ after his father’s tea plantation – testament to the enduring transnational connections that the emigrants embodied and made tangible in their new homes. Graham’s conclusion that Langmore ‘must have done well’ was characteristic of a degree of restraint in his enquiries. Langmore drove Graham around Dunedin locating ‘Old Boys’ and arranging a social evening. Several attendees were returned servicemen, but because they all ‘looked successful’ Graham made no mention of their war service, nor their particular occupations. His report on Terence Buckley was typical of the concise assessments he made:

Terence is a particularly sweet affectionate and gentlemanly lad, doing well and with a little car of his own. He has the reputation of helping any O.B. in need. He corresponds regularly with his brother in London. He is not married.³¹

Figure 6.3 John Graham with George Langmore and his daughters, Dunedin, 1937. Courtesy Langmore private collection.

Throughout the diary there is occasional mention of the men’s occupations. Of the sixteen men whose occupation Graham did state, almost all of those who had arrived in the 1920s were engaged in rural labour. In contrast, only one of the earlier emigrants was active in the rural sector, and he owned his farm rather than being an itinerant worker (see Table 6.1). The transience of the later arrivals, which we learnt of in Chapter 5 via the Homes Magazine reports, had continued through the 1930s and affected their ability to meet with Graham. Some travelled long distances to meet him in urban centres; others were included in a list compiled by Graham towards the end of his diary of those he had not met due to them being in an ‘isolated situation’ or because their whereabouts was uncertain.³² Graham spent considerable time ‘tracking’ several individuals, with limited success. His search for Donald McIntyre involved the greatest detour and suggests a genuine concern for his former charges:

We started about 9am for Masterton to seek out Donald McIntyre who we had been told was working there. That meant going back towards Wellington for 85 miles. … Alas we could not find Donald. The P.O. people said he had gone to Dannevirke, nearly a year ago but no one knew his address. So we went back over 85 miles to Dannevirke! We were no more successful there. But the Farmers’ Union Secretary was to send out that evening a circular to all the members asking if anyone knew about him. … [We] got back to Napier at nightfall … a journey in all of 252 miles.³³

Graham’s diary sheds light on the reality of life in the rural sector in New Zealand for the men and the women. While in his Auckland broadcast Graham stated that many of the men were still employed in the agricultural sector and that this was the appropriate entry point for them, it was quite apparent from his diary that the majority of Kalimpong men found their place in urban employment and suburban family life. The one emigrant who did own a farm did not receive any special mention. Four of the women had found their place in farming through marriage. In Levin, Graham visited Mary Woodmass (nee Greig) and her family, who farmed seventy-five acres of land. Another Kalimpong woman had married ‘a farmer boy’ in Christchurch, a smaller holding of five acres on which they milked cows. Lorna Peters, my grandmother, was described by Graham as the ‘undoubted leader’ of the poultry farm at Pine Hill, and Ellie Davenport ran a strawberry farm with her husband near Auckland. Graham’s diary is thus a useful counter to Homes Magazine reports that generally portrayed women as either domestics or married. It demonstrates that farming was available to the women through marriage, that these enterprises were heavily reliant on their labour and were often run as partnerships.

Table 6.1 Men’s occupations by year of arrival (as per Graham’s diary)

As to the unmarried women’s work, Graham recorded three as being employed in roles other than domestic service (see Table 6.2). All three lived in Auckland. Evelyn Fullerton, the 1912 emigrant who was sent straight to nurses’ training, was a district nurse; Alison Gammie was working at the Presbyterian Girls Orphanage; and Alison Stuart was a dressmaker’s presser. All other unmarried women mentioned by Graham remained in domestic service, and here too he found cause for praise. Eva Masson had been working for Mr and Mrs Green in Nelson for four years, and when Graham asked whether they were happy in the arrangement, all answered positively. ‘Eva is bright and full of fun’, Graham wrote, ‘ready to laugh on all occasions. … She like all of them would talk about Kalimpong for a week.’³⁴ In Dunedin, Kate Sarkies was ‘a big success as a mother’s help’. Sarkies took Graham to see two former employers, both of whom were ‘devoted to her’.³⁵

Graham’s positive assessments aligned closely to national narratives of egalitarian social structures and the ‘democratic’ family home. Even in the ‘best of homes’, he wrote in his diary, when the ‘help’ had her day off ‘the mistress looks after the supper herself or with the help of the husbands’.³⁶ Graham reiterated this point in an amusing and lengthy tribute to the ‘dinner wagon’ in his Auckland broadcast, which repeated his persistent claims about New Zealand’s ‘simpler’ social structure that matched the values of the Kalimpong Homes:

It might be used as an all-New Zealand emblem and put on the corner of the National Flag. It is a time-save and its usage is not confined to the women’s sphere. The New Zealand man shares in domestic duties. … Under the law of the land domestic helps have certain days and evenings off … and then mother has to take up the domestic’s duty in the kitchen and the husband pushes along the emblematic waggon, and even helps to wash up the dishes and clean the shoes. This all conduces to simpler and more real social relations.³⁷

Graham looked for these qualities in the homes of the Kalimpong women who were married. ‘Mary Ochterloney (Mrs Gibson)’, he wrote, ‘has a nice home with a good husband and three fine children.’ Rose Duck (nee Cooper) ‘looks like Mary, fairly stout. She too has a good husband who is a delicate man, and two daughters’.³⁸ Molly Ireland’s (nee Roberts) husband was described by Graham ‘as a comedian, and everyone calls him Wally. He exercises his gifts in the interests of charities especially for poor children’.³⁹ In Dunedin he ‘saw a great deal of Mary Pattison who got married lately to a Mr Robinson, a very nice well educated blonde New Zealander’ – a telling statement about spouses who would help to erase from the next generation the skin colour that inscribed a lifetime of racial difference upon the emigrants.

Table 6.2 Women’s occupations by year of arrival (as per Graham’s diary)

Others had not fared so well. Graham described several women as having a ‘hard life’, which he variously attributed to poor choice of marriage partner, ill health, death of children and the economic depression. In these cases Graham concluded with optimistic comments about better prospects ahead. The hardships Graham observed on his visits to the returned servicemen were likewise balanced against signs of domestic happiness and the promise of improvement with the next generation. Some received state support, which Graham took as evidence of their treatment as full citizens.⁴⁰ In Dunedin, Hamilton Melville was ‘much broken down’ as a result of being ‘badly gassed in the war’, and suffered from asthma and ‘occasional fits’.⁴¹ But his wife was ‘such a nice woman’, Graham wrote, and ‘they have one fine boy’. Melville’s wife owned their home in Belleknowes, a relatively affluent suburb adjacent to the town belt. Melville was compensated for his war wounds and received ‘6s a week extra allowance because of the D.C.M.’ He was using the extra allowance to pay off a radio, which Graham associated with his intelligence and ‘interest in world affairs’. In Dunedin Graham also heard news of Edward Snelleksz, who was ‘badly disabled in the War’ through his brother Wilfred, who hoped that Edward’s children (there were six at that time), ‘will be better off’.⁴²

Another who lived with the legacy of the war experience was Llewellyn Jones. Jones had a letter published in the Homes Magazine in 1930 describing his slow return to work after a long period of disability. By 1937 he was resigned to his inability to live independently. Graham visited him at Sunnyside mental institution in Christchurch, where he was a voluntary patient. Attesting to the psychological scars of battle, Graham noted that Jones could ‘leave any time he likes, but he doesn’t feel he could bear the strain of the outside world’.⁴³ Jones was reportedly ‘delighted’ to see Graham. A second Kalimpong inmate at Sunnyside did not recognize Graham and was a more serious case, having been confined to the institution permanently as a result of a criminal conviction. His mental illness was present prior to leaving India, Graham wrote, and was the reason that he had not served in the war. Graham’s conclusion that he was ‘one of the cases we should not have emigrated’ signals his reluctance to find any negative outcome of the scheme itself.⁴⁴ Graham visited two other Kalimpong men in mental institutions, both in Wellington. One was ‘well behaved and helpful’ but had ‘no hope of recovery’, while the other had suffered a nervous breakdown after a business failure and was soon to be released. Like the support extended to returned servicemen, in Graham’s eye’s the provision of these care facilities testified to their eligibility for and inclusion within wider state services and hence was still regarded as a positive outcome.

The tendency to attribute all ills experienced in the post-war period to war service can be seen in the way Graham wrote about the returned servicemen.⁴⁵ War service was only ever mentioned to explain or justify difficulties the Kalimpong men were facing. Robert Ochterloney was an example of this. When Ochterloney failed to show at the arranged meeting point, Graham and his driver spent two hours searching the town, albeit ‘a small one’, and were about to give up ‘after telephoning up to the mines from which he came’ when someone suggested they could find him at a certain hotel. Indeed they ‘found him in the bar!’ Graham exclaimed.⁴⁶ Ochterloney was living the lonely life of an unmarried gold miner, and admitted to Graham that he had ‘gone back’ after his promising start. Testimony to this effect was given by a local ‘gentleman’ who knew Ochterloney well and remembered his former days as ‘a strong temperance man … a fine worker on a farm, [and] a noted football player’. Reminding readers of his diary that Ochterloney was ‘seriously wounded in the Great War’, Graham was hopeful after extracting promises from him to ‘give up spirits’, write an account of his work as a miner for the Homes Magazine and, notably, to write to his mother in Darjeeling. ‘I am sure that if all his friends help him he will change,’ Graham concluded.

As to the ‘six families’, Graham’s diary speaks to enduring contact between siblings, many of whom emigrated separately. All three Gammie sisters attended the party at Alice Stewart’s (nee Peters) home in Auckland. They passed on news of their brother Fergus’s marriage and children, as he lived south of Auckland and was not able to attend.⁴⁷ Dora and Charles Moller were both married with children in Christchurch, an outcome which no doubt pleased Graham after Charles’s earlier angst-ridden letters. The Mortimore siblings, Rend and Jeanette, were not mentioned in Graham’s diary but both were present in the photograph taken at the Wellington reunion. As noted in Chapter 5, Egerton Peters’s arrival in New Zealand led to a family reunion in the south. This did not persist, however. When Graham visited Lorna on the poultry farm in Pine Hill, her brother George was not mentioned, and Alice was settled in Auckland. And although the Spalding brothers continued to have a very close relationship, they too were separated by distance at the time of Graham’s visit. Tom was in Kaitaia, north of Auckland, while Charles was in the reunion photograph taken in Wellington. (In fact Charles died suddenly, soon after Graham left New Zealand.) Richard Hawkins was also in Kaitaia. He made the journey south to Wellington to attend the reunion there, a return trip of 1,200 miles, and again to Auckland, almost 400 miles return, for the final gathering.

The eagerness with which the emigrants met Graham in 1937 challenges any simple connection that might be drawn between their later silence and the trauma of family separations and prolonged institutionalization. Lorna Peters, who never spoke of Kalimpong to her children, hosted Graham for an afternoon at her home. While the Peters family do not appear to have attended any of the gatherings in Dunedin, the fact that George Langmore took Graham to Lorna’s home suggests her continued association with the Kalimpong community. Graham christened Lorna’s first child and she kept his note of this in her Homes Bible. Richard Hawkins was another who refused to discuss his heritage with his family in later years, but as noted above he travelled huge distances to meet Graham. Among the photographs Richard’s children found in his collection was one of him bidding Graham farewell at the port in Auckland with other Kalimpong emigrants. Descendants of Peters and Hawkins have been surprised to learn of these meetings.

The memory of Graham’s visit is still alive with the descendants who are old enough to remember it. Mary Milne vividly recalled her mother’s (Kate Pattison’s) anticipation of the event and emotive response to meeting him; and Richard Cone (Dora Moller’s son), who was one year old at the time, still has the book Graham signed and gifted to him.⁴⁸ It was a brief moment in the lives of the Kalimpong emigrants but one that must have stirred all manner of thoughts and reflections; one final chance to meet the man many still referred to as ‘Daddy’, with fresh news of Kalimpong and of old ‘aunties’ at the Homes and other graduates. It is understandable that even those who were reluctant to engage with other Kalimpong emigrants would take the opportunity to meet with him, and to show him how well they had done. Graham’s departure may also have started to close some doors on the emigrants’ ponderings of their pre-New Zealand lives.

1938: The final group

Graham’s initial justifications for resuming the emigration scheme centred on imperial relationships and the caution with which the Dominions should approach any actions that overtly discriminated against India. He revealed his intentional shaping of this public rhetoric in his diary, where he noted the invitation to broadcast on National Radio and promised to send a copy of the speech to his family in order to ‘show you my attitude in approaching the New Zealanders’.⁴⁹ While he referred to the plight of Anglo-Indians in similar terms to his 1909 visit (they had been wrongly treated as ‘step-children’ rather than ‘our own kith and kin’), his speeches now aligned with the political realities of India in the 1930s, promoting a sympathetic view of his ‘adopted home’ as ‘the birthplace of leading religions and the home of deep philosophies … with a brilliant record of thinkers and scholars’.⁵⁰ Quoted in the Evening Post on 30 June, Graham argued that although British citizens entered India freely, Indians were subject to ‘unfair restrictions’ when entering British territories. ‘If they [the Dominions] were not careful,’ Graham warned, ‘they would find that entry into India was also restricted.’⁵¹ Indirectly, his sentiments point to the crucial differences in mobility between the white branches of British imperial families and these ‘step-children’, whose movements – along with their Indian relatives – were subject to a high degree of regulation.

Graham’s second broadcast was made from Auckland the day before he departed New Zealand. His message was less political and he spoke with a renewed confidence in colonial settlement for Anglo-Indians based on his experiences of the previous six weeks. Using his graduates’ labours and war service, Graham claimed that they had ‘fully approved themselves as good and helpful citizens’; while their marriages demonstrated that they were ‘taking a worthy share in all phases of the social organization’.⁵² Thus at a time when the government was reconsidering the policy of excluding ‘outside labour’, Graham asked that they allow more Homes graduates to emigrate. Careful as always to rule out any possibility of an influx, Graham added that ‘we can only send a small number each year, for, although we have 610 children in residence in our settlement at Kalimpong, other openings are more feasible for the majority’. Appealing to local pride in New Zealand’s egalitarian reputation, Graham described the Dominion as ‘the best part of the Empire’ in the quality of home-life, the lack of class distinction and freedom from colour prejudice which the ‘presence of Maori has doubtless produced’.⁵³ ‘In this matter of colour,’ Graham lauded, ‘New Zealand is peculiarly fitted to become the teacher of the whole Empire.’⁵⁴

Graham left New Zealand on the 10 August 1937. Seventeen ‘OGBs’ were at the harbour to see him off. ‘They all had varied coloured streamers to which we hung on till they were broken by the steamer leaving the dock,’ he wrote. ‘We all tried to keep our spirits up but I could see tears in many eyes and my own were not dry’. He and his protégés continued to ‘signal to each other’ until they faded from view. The final words written in Graham’s diary as he sailed for the United States and Canada were that his ‘heart was sore to part with the children and with New Zealand’, and he ‘almost felt I wished I could stay there beside them’.⁵⁵ In November the Evening Post carried a story of Graham’s account of his tour to an Edinburgh audience. Graham repeated his belief that ‘there is no colour prejudice in New Zealand’, and stated that the practice of ‘increasing the number of Anglo-Indians among other peoples’ (presumably the white peoples of the settler colonies) should continue.⁵⁶ Comparing the three Dominions he had visited, Graham described Canada as the ‘chief centre’ of the British Empire, New Zealand as the ‘most British of the colonies’ and the one which impressed him most, and Australia as ‘very friendly, except on the question of colour.’⁵⁷

This high praise of New Zealand’s racial policies and confidence in sending more Homes graduates there was soon to be tested. In September 1937 the Customs Department logged an internal correspondence regarding Graham’s application to send another group. Graham’s letter itself was not contained in the file. It was referred to in a letter from the controller of Customs, E. D. Good, to the minister of Customs that mentioned the meeting between Charles White, John Graham and Peter Fraser. The letter stated that Graham had recently traced the emigrants settled in New Zealand and found them ‘well established as worthy citizens of the Dominion’.⁵⁸ The controller explained that ‘in 1929 it became expedient to discontinue the practice of granting permits in such cases’, and that Graham sought the renewal of the practice of issuing of permits ‘in a few approved cases each year’.⁵⁹ Good then referred to a memorandum attached (but not in the file) where ‘the position regarding the issue of permits to Eurasians during the years 1922–1929 is set out’. While the Department had no information about the scheme prior to 1922, Graham’s figure of 120 was repeated as the total number of emigrants up to that point, who were on average eighteen years old when they arrived. Good set the case out plainly for the minister:

It seems to me that there are three main factors which require discussion before a decision is reached:

(1)Whether there is scope in New Zealand for the employment of such children as domestic servants, farm labourers, etc.

(2)Whether from a racial viewpoint, they can readily be absorbed into the population of the Dominion.

(3)Whether by reason of the fact that they are of British nationality and partly of European race, they should receive special consideration.⁶⁰

In answer to his own questions, Good stated firstly that he believed the children were ‘thoroughly trained’ for employment and that ‘in addition there is evidence of a real shortage of farm labour and domestic assistance in the Dominion’.⁶¹ Against this, however, he ‘venture[d] the opinion that it is open to question whether the importation of labour from other countries will provide a satisfactory solution of the problems raised by the present scarcity of labour, and I would not, on this score alone, recommend that a favourable consideration be given to Dr Graham’s request’. Good here was complicating Graham’s simplification of the ‘labour shortage’ as a problem that could be solved by filling it with marginalized adolescents. If the scarcity of farm workers and domestic servants was caused by a local (white) reluctance to take on the lower echelons of work (rather than an under-supply of workers), did ‘importing’ labour from other nations represent the best solution? The issue of race is strongly implied in the phrase ‘imported labour’; British immigrants were certainly never referred to in such terms.

The ‘racial question’ was the one that Good found the ‘most difficult to dispose of’.⁶² Although he understood that some of Graham’s graduates were ‘almost completely European in outlook’ and it was ‘no fault of their own that they are of mixed blood … the fact remains that persons of mixed blood are not regarded, generally, as being the most desirable type of immigrant for reasons which are readily apparent’. The shift of the problem to ‘mixed blood’ rather than Indian heritage weakened Graham’s appeals to colonial authorities to be sympathetic to India. Good added that it was necessary to bear in mind that being British subjects ‘it may be thought possible to relax the general rule to some extent’. The question was ‘really one of policy’, he continued, which could not ‘be regarded entirely on the same basis as (say) that of the immigration of Chinese’.⁶³ After making ambiguous suggestions for finding a compromise, perhaps allowing a small number of Homes graduates to enter, Good received a reply from the minister and obediently drafted a kindly worded letter of refusal to Graham.⁶⁴

Despite the rejection of his 1937 request, Graham remained publicly confident of sending another group. The July 1938 edition of the Homes Magazine included an excerpt from a New Zealand publication, The Listener, regarding Anglo-Indians being ‘frozen out’ of traditional occupations in India, after which the editor added, ‘New Zealand doesn’t freeze them out.’⁶⁵ Indeed permits were granted to one final group from the Homes, who arrived in November 1938. The conditions of their entry were temporary; it was fifteen months after their arrival that a note in the permit register stated that they were ‘now permitted to remain permanently’.⁶⁶ Their arrival was reported in a New Zealand newspaper under the heading ‘Farm Workers: Eurasian Youths’.⁶⁷ A photograph of the group was printed on the front cover of the December issue of the Homes Magazine. The same edition included an article entitled ‘A White Australia’ by a church minister in Melbourne, who bemoaned the Australian immigration policy regarding Anglo-Indians:

Since 1907 more than fifty young farmers have gone from the Homes to New Zealand, and have proved their value to the community, as the open door into New Zealand to-day proves. And Australia shuts them out. Meanwhile Italians, Germans, Jews, Austrians in great numbers are pouring into our shores. I am very thankful that they are. … But why on earth bar the Anglo-Indians?⁶⁸

It was in this pre-war context of increasing pressure from non-British migrants seeking refuge in New Zealand and Australia that the scheme was finally halted. Two articles on the same page of the Homes Magazine, one announcing a party to go to New Zealand in autumn and the other responding to the numerous queries about emigrating received from ‘likely young Anglo-Indians’, were actually related in ways that were not yet apparent.⁶⁹ The pathway to New Zealand established by the Homes was sought out by Anglo-Indians with increasing frequency as the situation in India worsened, and as information about the 1938 group circulated. This publicity was becoming a double-edged sword. The Homes advised other Anglo-Indians to write to the Customs Department, claiming it could only support its own pupils.⁷⁰ Meanwhile the Customs Department was fielding these enquiries, including one that specifically referred to the 1938 group from Kalimpong. An internal correspondence agreed that although the Department would ‘have to admit’ that a Homes group had been allowed to enter, it was not to be regarded as a precedent and the enquiry was to be refused in accordance with the ‘general policy’ regarding Anglo-Indians.⁷¹

And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the group that the Homes hoped to send to New Zealand in autumn was not granted permits. News of this rejection was reported in the Homes Magazine and picked up by the Evening Post in Auckland. Graham later wrote of receiving a cable from ‘Mr C. G. White, Barrister, Wellington, Chairman of our NZ Committee’ which simply read: ‘Government grants no more permits.’⁷² The Evening Post story, subheaded ‘No Eurasians for New Zealand’, reported that the group had been refused admission on the grounds that ‘no half-caste Tongan, Fijian or Anglo-Indian could be admitted’.⁷³ The article cited a statement from the Homes Magazine that ‘we used to be proud of the contrast between the freedom of New Zealand and the exclusiveness of Australia regarding emigration. It is nothing short of a tragedy to have New Zealand shut against the Anglo-Indians’.⁷⁴ Graham expressed a similarly emotive response, particularly regarding the ‘half-caste’ rationale for refusal, writing that ‘the assignation of these races seems absurd’.⁷⁵ Restating his belief that most New Zealanders were a blend of Pakeha and Māori, Graham felt that they ‘should be the last to base their exclusion on such grounds as of mixed blood’.⁷⁶

This chapter has argued that the connections between Kalimpong and New Zealand, and the archive created by these connections, were deeply aligned with the continuation of the emigration scheme. In previous decades, when groups were regularly arriving in the Dominion, the Homes Magazine often carried news of New Zealand. This ceased in the 1930s, until being briefly reignited by Graham’s 1937 visit. His diary provides a thoughtful and detailed snapshot of the situations of the Homes graduates in New Zealand. While useful, it is an assessment by a man who had a particular understanding of success, and strong reasons for painting a positive portrait of the young people he sent away from India many years before. The reflective tone of Graham’s diary perhaps indicated his awareness that the road ahead would be a challenging one for Britain. It certainly inflected his stage of life, as an elderly man who knew that he would never see the New Zealanders again.

Graham’s descriptions of the men and women whom he sent out in their youth are reminiscent of the tea planters’ earlier assessments of the young adults that the Homes moulded from their children. For Graham, it was the employers, in-laws and local communities that he was grateful to for shaping his former charges into adult New Zealanders. Even in his private diary, Graham never attributed any negative aspects of the emigrants’ situations to the New Zealand social context. Negative situations were explained by pre-existing conditions, character flaws, war service and economic depression – challenges that were beyond the control of the Homes and not unique to New Zealand.

A noteworthy absence in Graham’s commentary was the local Indian community. He spoke positively about aspects of Indian culture, but not in a way that related it to New Zealand or New Zealanders in anything but the desire to keep India within the bounds of the British Empire. It was only on a superficial, political level that the Homes scheme was spoken of as connecting India to New Zealand. Yet this neglected both the maternal heritage of the Kalimpong emigrants and the fact that many had siblings placed in India. As the next chapter will demonstrate, the strain for New Zealanders with siblings in India had been raised during his tour. While Graham did act on these concerns, he did not record them, continuing to withhold any thoughts about the emigrants’ continued cultural and familial ties to India from the Homes archive.