‘I am sorry it is not more, but it is all I could earn’: Presbyterian Children, Christmas and Charity in Colonial New Zealand, c.1909-1945

In February 1884 the Presbyterian mission ship The Dayspring departed the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin, en route back to the New Hebrides [Vanuatu] via Sydney, after completing a tour of the colony’s main centres. The Otago Daily Times reporter observed that in Dunedin the ship was visited by ‘close on 14,000 persons – children and adults’, with another ‘600 children’ as visitors prior to its departure from nearby Port Chalmers. The children inspected ‘various curios’ in the cabins and at least saw, if not interacted with, five ‘natives’ on board. These four men and one woman, from the New Hebrides, had ‘shown themselves to be possessed of much intelligence and observation’ who, through ‘missionary labour and Christian instruction’, had been ‘transformed from savage cannibals into peaceful, gentle Christians’ (‘The Dayspring’ 1884, p. 2)