The Dutemple Girls

Correspondence 84/106 – dated 7-2-84

Passage granted to Wellington Nominees 511 & 512 E & R Dutemple in “Doric”

In 1883, a man named James Baker nominated two of his nieces, Elizabeth and Reine Dutemple, to come out to New Zealand.

Elizabeth and Reine were two of at least eight children born to Victor and Mary Dutemple in Liverpool.  Victor was French and UK census records have him listed as an interpreter (1861), merchant (1871) and insurance agent (1881).  According to advertisements for his services in the Liverpool Daily Post from 1860, Victor was fluent in French, English and Spanish.

The earliest document in this particular group of correspondence is a letter (dated 5 Nov 1883) from a priest by the name of Thomas Murphy, of St Francis Xavier’s Church in Salisbury Street, Liverpool to the Agent-General in London.  Father Thomas had known the family for many years and provides a bit of the family background.

Victor died in January 1883 in Bordeaux, France and as a result the family found themselves “suddenly reduced from comparative ease and comfort to very straitened means”.   Mary’s brother James, already living in New Zealand, nominated Elizabeth and Reine to come out as Governesses.  Fr. Thomas wrote to the Agent-General as he was concerned that the girls were “ two innocent and virtuous girls of 19 and 23, delicately nurtured in a comfortable home” but was concerned at them facing the “roughness and hardships” of the voyage to reach NZ.   Fr. Thomas was writing to appeal for consideration on behalf of the girls in order that they might travel on either the Aorangi or Doric which were passenger liners, rather than some of the less flash Government immigration vessels, and in doing so that the girls might be “more sheltered on these boats from any danger of rudeness or roughness which I so much dread for their delicate and sensitive nature”.  Fr. Thomas also wrote in his letter that their mother, Mary, intended to travel to NZ with the rest of the family once the affairs in England were tidied up.

The Agent-General, Mr Bell, forwarded the letter from Fr. Thomas on to the Minister for Immigration in NZ, noting that he had asked the NZ Shipping Company to provide the girls an enclosed berth on either the Doric or Aorangi.  Mr Bell also noted that “because for my own part I should refuse any application of the kind if it were made by girls here, nurtured as these ones have been, to be put on board an emigrant ship in company with a number of single women sent out for domestic service”.

Elizabeth and Reine travelled on the Doric, arriving safely in NZ in early 1884, and were met by their uncle.   Their sister Therese arrived later that year on the Aorangi.  It is unclear as to when their mother Mary came to NZ and which of the other children came with her, however an advertisement was placed in the Bush Advocate newspaper dated 27 July 1889 that states: Mrs Dutemple – Undertakes the repair at clothes at her residence (Mr J. W. Baker’s), main street, Danevirke.  I have also found Mary listed on the 1896 Electoral Roll as a widow, living in Carterton. 

Elizabeth married Duncan McLachlan in 1884, Reine married Edgar Mason in 1887 and Therese married Jim Jeffery Knight in 1889. It seems they all settled in well to a less sheltered life in NZ.