Directories
Directories are books which are designed to provide specific information
about particular people. The directories discussed here were
business-residential directories, lists of householders along with their
addresses and occupations. Directories of this type were usually
published annually and often contained elements of the almanac which had
preceded them. The purpose of business-residential directories was, and
still is, commercial: to bring buyers and sellers together. They were
produced in large numbers in New Zealand from the 1860s and, while they
are still produced in a reduced format, their popularity began to
dwindle in the 1950s with the emergence of the telephone book and the
yellow pages.
The first
business-residential directories produced in New Zealand were based on
English examples. They were compiled, published and distributed by
immigrants, usually British. Yet the conditions that publishers such as
Henry Wise, John Stone and Arthur Cleave met in the colony were
radically different from those they had encountered at 'home'.
Directories had existed in Britain since the street guides of
Elizabethan times, but the rural, under-populated and non-mechanised
society of New Zealand was very different from the highly urbanised
factory economy of 19th-century Britain.
Directories in New
Zealand fulfilled three main functions: to boost the local and regional
economy by bringing producer and consumer together; to provide a
compendium of useful information to benefit the local population as well
as the would-be migrant; and to create in printed format a resource
which would help meld isolated communities together.
Directories commonly
contained as many as eight distinct sections. These included an almanac,
an alphabetical list of residents, a list of occupations together with
names of those who practised those jobs, a street directory, official
information pertaining to local and central government, non-official
information, advertisements, and a selection of maps. In the earliest
directories, those which preceded the publications produced by Wise and
Stone, the almanac was an essential ingredient. An almanac gave
directions for the current year in the form of tide tables, new
constellations, seasons, the physical landforms and so forth. It was of
great assistance to early settlers because subsistence farming and
fishing helped those newly arrived through lean patches.
Between 1840 and the
early 1870s there were literally dozens of directories published
annually throughout New Zealand. Nearly all of these were regional,
providing information about the local community. Most small directories
were produced by newspaper proprietors. Moody's Royal
Almanac for the Year 1842 was the first almanac ever printed
in New Zealand. It included a trade and official 'Directory of names,
&c.'. Other early directories included Chapman's Auckland Provincial Almanac and Goldfield's
Directory of about 1869, and further south the Otago Almanac and Directory , published between 1858 and 1859
by William Lambert of the Otago Colonist
newspaper. These directories were not only for local consumption: Lyon
& Blair's 1876 Almanac and Descriptive
Handbook of the Province of Wellington answered 'the questions
continually asked by the people at home [the United Kingdom]' and the
provincial government ordered 500 copies for sale in Great Britain.
There were two early
efforts at providing New Zealand with a national directory. The first
was The New Zealand Directory published in
Melbourne and Wellington between 1866-67 and 1867-68. The second was Wright's Australian and American Commercial Directory
and Gazetteer published in New York in 1881 and 1882-83. These
were short-lived and it was not until Wise's went national in the early
1870s that New Zealand finally had a directory of some substance which
was destined to survive for over 100 years. Between the early 1870s and
the mid 1950s, three firms dominated the market. These were the
directories published by H. Wise & Co. (NZ) Ltd, directories
published by Stone Son & Co. Ltd, and Cleave's directories which
covered the Auckland provincial district. Their directories represented
a break with the past because the almanac component was either dropped
(by Wise) or included (by Stone, but only reluctantly). What Wise and
Stone also had in common was a desire to promote large scale business,
both within the colony and between New Zealand and other countries, most
notably Australia and Great Britain. Wise was to create the country's
premier national directory while Stone (in conjunction with Cleave)
produced its provincial directories.
Wise produced his
first directory of Dunedin in 1865 and in 1872-73 went national with his
Wise's New Zealand Commercial Directory . In
1881, Wise won permission to refer to his directory as the official New
Zealand Post Office directory. Wise's continued to publish their mammoth
directories in a single volume until the mid-1950s, when they adopted
the provincial format copied from Stone's, who had ceased producing
directories in 1954. Wise's continued producing directories from their
Dunedin office until 1972 when they sold the publication rights to
Universal Business Directories in Auckland, who still produce them
today, albeit in a reduced format (and now also on CD-ROM).
John Stone's first
directory of Dunedin appeared in 1884 and within three years it had
grown to include all of Otago and Southland. By 1891 Stone was producing
a directory of Wellington and by the turn of the century Canterbury,
Nelson, Marlborough and Westland were included too. For the next 60 or
so years, Stone was a formidable rival to Wise. As Stone's directories
did not include the Auckland provincial district, his position was
strengthened by his 40-year working relationship with Arthur Cleave.
Cleave's directories covered the Auckland provincial district between
1889 and 1930. The last of Stone's directories were published in the mid
1950s, after which time the cost of producing such a detailed work
became untenable.
By the late 1960s
Wise's, too, were having problems in sustaining the production of such a
publication. Smaller, nimbler rivals such as Cook's
New Zealand Business Directory , which listed occupational
groupings only, had emerged in the mid 1930s, as had the Business Who's Who . In addition, the postwar
growth of New Zealand's cities meant canvassing on foot was no longer
feasible. There were more towns, too, as company towns like Tokoroa (a
forestry town) and Twizel (built to house hydro-electric workers)
emerged. As the number of domestic dwellings increased, so had the
numbers of telephones, as well as a newer reliance upon the telephone
directory and its Yellow Pages. The Equal Pay Act 1972 made the cost of
paying female canvassers prohibitive. All these factors conspired
against Wise's.
Information for the
three main sections of business-residential directories (the
alphabetical list of names, the names attached to the list of
occupational headings, and the streets directory) was acquired by means
of a house-to-house canvass of the country's metropolitan areas and of
homes in the surrounding countryside. The name of the head of the
household was listed, as well as male lodgers aged 18 years and over (21
years in some cases). The spouse was excluded unless he or she owned
property on his or her own account, as were children over the age of 15,
even if they were in the workforce. Those who only rented property were
also usually excluded. Official information (such as customs tariffs)
was gleaned by writing to the particular government department
concerned. Non-official information (such as the names and opening hours
of recreational bodies, cultural societies and church groups), was had,
again, by writing to the representatives of those bodies. Maps were
seldom compiled from scratch as copies of local street maps were usually
provided by a local printer or by the town council. For maps of the
country, the assistance of the Surveyor General was usually called upon.
Business houses were solicited for advertisements.
In the case of small
directories, the publisher was usually the owner of a newspaper who had
ready access to type, paper and the necessary printing skills. When
directories grew larger, a local printer or publisher was commissioned
to produce the item. Stone's, operating from Dunedin, at first used the
presses of the Evening Star . Later they bought
their own presses, not only because it was cheaper but because the
production schedules were tight and the company could not afford to
allow their printing needs to become secondary to those of the Star .
Both Wise and Stone
encouraged buyers to take out subscriptions to their directories. This
made the economics of producing directories easier as the number of
directories to be printed could be estimated with some accuracy. Copies
were also available through most bookstores and from catalogues. Wise
and Stone aimed not so much at the householder but at those in business:
hoteliers, mercantile houses, and manufacturers. Wise's, however, as the
publisher of the country's quasi-official directory, had to provide one
free reading copy in each Post Office.
It is remarkable that
for such a small country, New Zealand should have possessed not one, but
two firms producing outstanding directories, three, if Cleave's is
included. Clearly the emergence of significant directories rested
largely with the personal initiative displayed by Henry Wise, John Stone
and Arthur Cleave. Wise's directory had succeeded in part because the
Post Office had assisted him, while Stone and Cleave had boosted their
fortunes by promoting those of the provinces. But there are other
reasons. Nineteenth-century New Zealand was settled by Europeans whose
culture was a print-based one and they needed a printed resource which
helped them come to terms with, and understand, a new country. Secondly,
New Zealand was settled by small craftsmen and -women, and the
business-residential directories described in this section were a
necessary aid to people in business who had neither the time, expertise
or finances to advertise their wares and skills for themselves.
There have been few
studies of the directory-publishing industry in New Zealand. Keith
Maslen's pioneering study of Wise's directories which appeared in the
BSANZ Bulletin in 1988 was a start. Maslen's
study was complemented by a 1995 study of Stone Son & Co.
(coincidentally Wise's rival) by Michael Hamblyn in the same journal.
This was followed by the same writer's 1996 thesis 'Kei hea to whare?
Titiro ki roto: John Stone's New Zealand directories 1884-1954'. Prior
to this research, A.C. Penney of Wellington had produced Almanacs and Directories: The Alexander Turnbull
Library Collection of New Zealand Almanacs and Directories
(1979). In 1994 Donald Hansen published The Directory
Directory , based on the holdings of libraries nationwide.
Another recent publication is Maslen's 1994 'Early New Zealand
directories: a brief guide' which details almanacs and directories held
by the Hocken Library in Dunedin.
Future research
remains to be carried out on almanacs and directories printed in
Mäori. As well, work on the emergence of the telephone
directory and the Yellow Pages needs to be done. This is particularly so
as the telephone directory played a major role in dislodging the
business-residential directory from its position of pre-eminence.
Research is also needed on more recent directories specialising in
sport, commerce and the arts, such as the Air New
Zealand Almanac published between 1982 and 1989.