Hursthouse, Helen (1803-1895)

It is indeed true, my dearest Maria, that the decision is made, and we are about to leave the land of our nativity. You know that John has thought of it and talked of it long, and since his grandfather’s death, when a small sum of money was bequeathed him, the desire to go has become more and more intense. He has now given… three month’s notice to his uncles and… we shall quit England in June.

Our plan is, John and Charles join their funds, and we hope after paying passage etc... to land in our new country with a capital of five hundred pounds… With this sum they propose purchasing land in the immediate neighbourhood of Port Nicholson… and commence farming – it is possible that John may get some surveying appointment on his arrival… I hope to take a servant with me – they go passage free with a family, and I am afraid I should scarcely be able to do without one… indeed if she only costs her wages, it would be folly to attempt going without…

Maria dearest, it is to me an awful step. As it is fixed that we are to go, I have quite made up my mind to look at the plan in the brightest light I can, but you can imagine how intensely anxious I feel. I have been very, very low about it, but that I trust has passed away – I will endeavour to be so no more.

So Helen Hursthouse (nee Wilson) wrote to her sister Maria Richmond from Norwich on 14 March 1842, breaking the sad news that her husband John had decided to take Helen and their three small children to New Zealand.

The daughter of an army captain, Helen was born in Stockton-on-Tees on 24 August 1803. She met John Hursthouse, a solicitor nearly eight years her junior, while serving as governess to his sisters and they married in London in 1837.

John had been persuaded to emigrate to New Zealand in part by his younger brother Charles. After their father’s business collapsed, Charles had visited the United States and Canada with an eye to relocating there but returned home convinced that the Wakefield system of colonisation he had heard about in the Antipodes was preferable, not to mention the fact that winters here were said to be far less harsh.

John and Helen, their three toddlers and lifelong bachelor Charles left England on the ship Thomas Sparkes on 27 July 1842. The voyage to their new home took a punishing six months. A diary kept by John whilst on board describes chronic seasickness, inedible food, fleas, bad smells, cacophonous noise and quarrels between passengers and crew.

The Hursthouses finally arrived in Wellington on 31 January 1843. There they heard glowing accounts of life in Taranaki so, rather than staying in what would eventually become the capital, they made their way to New Plymouth. John worked as an auctioneer and land agent and was appointed a trustee for the New Plymouth Savings Bank (now the TSB). But he was also an alcoholic and an abusive husband.

Helen brought up their children, ran the family farm on Carrington Road and made extra money by opening a school in town, walking there and back five days a week in all weather. Friends and relatives were aware of how hard her domestic life was, referring to the “roughings” that she endured in letters to each other, but if they tried to intervene it appears to have done little good.

Helen finally left John in May 1860, ostensibly because she was evacuated to Nelson during the First Taranaki War along with many other women and children. But the situation at home must also have contributed to her decision to leave, for she wrote to her husband that “Before I left you, I told you that I would forgive you John, but I said then, and I repeat it now, that I never will live with you again, unless you give up all spirituous liquors”. Unable to do so, John Hursthouse drank himself to death in November 1860 aged just 49 and is buried in Hurdon Cemetery.

Helen outlived three of her five children and eventually went completely blind. The support of family and friends, and the chance to build her own life, playing her beloved piano which she had insisted accompany her on the voyage to New Zealand, encouraged her to remain in the colony despite her sadness and fear at the prospect of leaving England all those decades before.

Helen Hursthouse died in Nelson on 1 April 1895 at the age of 91 and is buried at Wakapuaka Cemetery in Nelson.

NB: Letter quoted in The Richmond-Atkinson Papers edited by Guy Scholefield (1960).