Two yards of serge for Mrs Pharazyn: Wellington women go shopping inthe 1850s

The Team from Alexander Turnbull Library

Tuesday 16 October 2018
5.30pm - 6.30pm
Te Ahumairangi (ground floor) National Library, Corner of Molesworth and Aitken Streets, Thorndon.

The Friends of the Turnbull Library supports the work of the Alexander Turnbull Library, and promotes public interest in the Library’s collections. This event is free.

What can you learn from the financial records of a nineteenth century draper tell us about shopping habits of the women of the time? Fashion and dress historian Angela Lassig will tell us what she has found out in this Friends of the Turnbull Library talk.

Nineteenth century shopping habits revealed
William Clark (1830-1902) was a draper in colonial Wellington, with his shop on Lambton Quay. Thanks to the extraordinarily detailed business records which are now part of the manuscript collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, the shopping habits of his broad variety of customers — Māori and Pākehā, landowners and labourers, sailors and rival shopkeepers, the military and the government — can be revealed.

About the speaker
Angela Lassig was delighted to find this treasure trove within the vellum bindings of Mr Clark’s ‘Day’ books while she was researching a book on the history of 19th-century women’s dress in New Zealand – the project for which she has received a FoTL research grant. Angela is a fashion and dress historian currently based in Auckland.

Image: Wellington Beach 1856, pencil and watercolour by William Holmes Howard (attributed). Ref A-032-040