Domestic servants were as difficult to procure as nuggets of gold
We don’t hear much very about the role of women in business in the early days of Matamata. I would like to introduce you to the Misses North.
In 1920, they outlaid £97 13s & 6d to buy a section on Tower Road, now Broadway. What is remarkable about this is that the three sisters had only been in New Zealand for 6 years, working as domestic servants, for which there was a great demand, and this was not their first purchase of real estate.
Ruth Ann, Lucy and Nellie North came to New Zealand from Halifax, Yorkshire in 1912. There they had been working in the textile mills, but came to New Zealand in response to the high demand for domestic servants.
In just four years they had enough resources for Ruth Ann to return to England and bring back her mother and a nephew and in 1917 they all moved to Matamata and opened a confectionery shop, and a luncheon & tea room business (The Kia Ora Tearooms) and in 1918 had bought “Mr W. Bartlett’s two acre sections” (The exact number and location of these is yet to be identified) and were advertising for their own domestic servant. In 1919 they sold the tearooms, and enlarged the fruit & confectionery shop.
They did not keep the section for long, but later in 1920 on-sold it to James Corbett, the local pharmacist who built several of the buildings still in use in the business district of Matamata today.
Mr Corbett needed a mortgage. And who should provide it, but the Misses North! We can see in the newspapers they were very active within the Methodist church as well as the fledgling town of Matamata, participating in many fundraising events for the town, as well as raising money for missionaries in India.
Lucy North married in 1923. She and her husband, Nelllie & Mrs North all moved away but Ruth Ann remained in Matamata until 1940 working with another woman, Emily Paltridge. They developed an apiary & produce business, (now known to be in present day Tower Road, opposite the end of Rawhiti Avenue - see the long read) frequently winning awards for the same at Agricultural shows.
In 1923 tenders were called for the Matamata Sewerage Scheme. In 1925 it was still being laid, and not without problems. They probably were not expecting bees to be an issue!
From the Matamata Record of 26th November 1925
“Part of the Matamata sewerage line runs through the apiary of Messrs. (sic) North and Paltridge, and several of the men were so badly stung that the work in that section had to be done at night”
This apiary venture was successful enough to finance a two month holiday in Hawaii for them both in 1930, and in 1939 Ruth Ann & Nellie went on a trip to England. Leaving on the Wanganella.
In October 1940 both aged about 60, Miss North & Miss Paltridge sold their home and left Matamata. Ruth Ann & Nellie managed another trip back to Halifax in 1960 before Ruth died in 1968, age 87, Nellie lived until she was 93, Lucy until she was 89.
Much more detail of these intrepid women can be read in the pdf available to download below.
