By 1887 there were 30 independent Departments. An attempt was made to create a more compact administration by amalgamating nine of them under the title of “Treasury and Revenue”, but this grouping was never an administrative reality, and the process of expansion continued unchecked.

In 1890 the Liberal Government assumed office with the intention of correcting injustices in the industrial system, raising the living standards of wage earners and the aged, and facilitating the settlement of farm labourers and unemployed on the land. The legislation passed to achieve these objectives increased the duties of the Public Service. Existing agencies expanded in size, and by 1910 thirteen new Departments had come into existence. The 20 years from 1890 to 1910 set the pattern for New Zealand's machinery of government. Instead of placing related activities, such as life and fire insurance, under the care of an existing Department, the Government created new agencies to administer new duties of any size and importance. As a consequence, so many Departments came into existence that from 1910 onwards the question of securing a reduction in numbers was to be reconsidered at regular intervals.

Because the newly created local bodies were in the main small, poor, and serving sparsely populated districts, they could not, or would not, assume many of the duties performed by the old provincial administrations. Therefore, it was necessary to set up or continue in existence special authorities, such as harbour boards, hospital boards, and drainage boards, to perform specific tasks which for administrative or financial reasons required control over areas extending beyond the jurisdiction of a single territorial local body. Even so, many essential services, for example, railways, and certain agricultural, charitable aid, and mental hospital work, could not be maintained unless they were provided by the Central Government; and as a consequence the Public Service increased in size. From now on centralised Departments of State were to administer politically significant activities and perform work which could not be delegated to territorial or special-purpose local authorities.

The Constitution Act of 1852 outlined the legislative responsibilities of the Central Government and of the six provinces that it created, but it did not define their respective administrative duties or the relationships between the legislatures and the executives. Problems associated with the parliamentary control of the Central Government's executive were resolved by the introduction of responsible government in 1856 and by the eventual transfer to the colonists of the powers reserved to the British Government.

The difficulties associated with the division of administrative responsibilities were intensified by Governor Grey's action in establishing the provinces and delegating work to them before he convened the General Assembly. Subsequently, the General Assembly tried to devise a more satisfactory allocation of administrative and financial responsibilities, but the solutions were only temporarily successful, and had to be revised at frequent intervals. In the end, because some of the provinces were financially unstable as a result of the Maori Wars, dwindling land revenue, and heavy overseas borrowing, the Central Government assumed responsibility for immigration and works — two of the major functions within the jurisdiction of the provinces. In addition, the Central Government began to create Departments of State to administer the more important new tasks arising from social legislation — for example, the sale of life insurance and the administration of estates. Slowly, a more stable pattern of administration began to emerge. Had this progress continued, New Zealand would have developed substantial, effective units of local government. Instead, the provinces were abolished in 1876, and replaced by a large number of small territorial local bodies.

When New Zealand became a British colony, Lieutenant-Governor Hobson had to devise an administrative system which would cope effectively with existing unplanned settlements, newly organised colonies, and a numerous and warlike native race. He modelled his administration on the typical Crown colony pattern, and by the end of the year the Public Service consisted of a Governor's Establishment, Colonial Secretary's Office, Attorney-General's Office, Customs Department, Survey Department, Protectorate of Aborigines, Post Office, Harbourmaster's Establishment, Colonial Surgeon, Colonial Surveyor, Storekeeper, Police and Gaols, Court, Treasury, and a Public Works Department. These agencies employed 39 men, many of whom performed the traditional work of Government, while others carried out duties that experience had shown to be essential during the initial development of newly colonised countries. Before long, however, social and economic conditions forced the Government to assume tasks that, in England, were performed by private organisations. For example, a State bank with a monopoly of the note issue existed from 1850 to 1856.

The Colonial Secretary's Office, with its wide range of duties, was the focal point of the new administrative structure, but the Governors retained all executive authority in their own hands, and often issued instructions in minute detail. The appointment of a Superintendent of the Southern Division in 1844 to administer the southern portion of the colony did not distort this pattern. Even after 1846, when most of the central agencies were abolished and the colony was divided into two provinces, the Governor continued to make all important decisions, ruling one province through its Lieutenant-Governor and the other through its Colonial Secretary. These early Governors lacked administrative experience, and most were unpopular with those settlers who wanted full self-government. Some of this unpopularity was shared by the Public Service, which was criticised by the vocal, educated settlers, although on the whole it performed its work as adequately as could be expected.

(1823–89).

Merchant and philanthropist.

George Gould was born at Hambleden, Bucks., England, the son of Joseph Gould, who was lock keeper of Hambleden Lock on the Thames. He entered the employment of the Great Western Railway Co. and advanced himself rapidly. He married Hannah Lewis in April 1850, and arrived in Canterbury in the same year.

He opened a general store a few months later and made rapid progress. Soon a noted merchant in Christchurch, he expanded his business as agent for runholders, a shipper of wool, and a financier. He farmed, bred prize stock, and was partner in the great wheat-growing station of Springfield. His benefactions were notable, particularly to the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association (of which he was five times president), and to the museum. He was a member of the first Christchurch Municipal Council and of the Board of Education. He died at Hambleden, Christchurch, on 28 March 1889, aged 65.

by George Ranald Macdonald, Retired Farmer, Kaiapoi R.D.

• Life of Sir Julius von Haast, von Haast, H. F. (1947)
• Press (Christchurch), 29 Mar 1889 (Obit).

(1835–1916).

Politician, lawyer, author, and reformer.

A new biography of Gorst, John Eldon appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Gorst was born in Preston, Lancashire, on 24 May 1835, the second son of Edward Chaddock Gorst. His father, according to the dictates of a curious will, took the surname Lowndes on succeeding to the family property, a name also adopted as an additional christian name by J. E. Gorst's son, Sir John Eldon Gorst (1861–1911; Consul-General in Egypt, 1907–1911), to distinguish him from his father.

J. E. Gorst's mother was Elizabeth, daughter of John Douthwaite Nesham, of Houghton-le-Spring, Durham. He was educated at Preston Grammar School and matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1853. In 1857 he was third wrangler, to the disappointment of his relatives and his college, who had expected him to be first, and he was elected a fellow of St. John's (1857–60; honorary fellow, 1890). After months of hunting and then travel in Europe, he began to read law, but soon took a post teaching mathematics at Rossal School to be near his father, who was critically ill. When his father died he inherited a considerable fortune and, tired of a “tame and unadventurous life in England”, sailed for New Zealand in the White Star vessel Red Jacket.

Gorst landed at Auckland on 17 May 1860, during the first Taranaki campaign, where he met Bishop Selwyn, another fellow of St. John's whom he assisted for a few weeks. He then went to Australia to marry his fiancee (whom he had met in the Red Jacket), Mary Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Lorenzo Moore, once an Indian Army major, who later settled in Christchurch. In October 1860, Gorst and his wife went to the Waikato, where they stayed for some months among Maoris, some of whom were hostile to Europeans because of the fighting in Taranaki, in which sections of the Waikato tribes joined. Gorst taught a Maori boys' school at Hopuhopu, near Taupiri, and in June wrote three letters to the New Zealander, an Auckland newspaper, under the pseudonym Fabius, in which he adumbrated the ideas he was later to express in his book, The Maori King, criticising the failure of the Government to introduce law and order in the Waikato: “It is absolutely essential that men should go and reside among the Maori; the race can never be civilised by men sitting at mahogany tables in Auckland”. Governor Gore Browne offered him an opportunity to try his hand as a Government officer, but being superseded, recommended him to his successor, Sir George Grey. In November the Premier, William Fox, sent him to inspect Government-subsidised mission schools in the Waikato, and shortly afterwards he was appointed Resident Magistrate there.

Until June 1862 he and his wife (and their baby, John Eldon) lived at Te Tomo, near Te Awamutu. Gorst found that though he won the confidence and affection of many Maoris, including Wiremu Tamihana, it was impossible in the prevailing anarchy to carry out his duties as a Magistrate, and he therefore wished to resign. Grey induced him to carry on as the Civil Commissioner, whose task was to introduce the Government's new Maori policy, a scheme of local government based on cooperation with Maori Runanga (Assemblies). Because of the growing disaffection of the King Party and their fear that Grey meant to attack them, it was impossible to introduce the intended measures, and no official Runanga met in Gorst's district. In 1863 Gorst edited a Government paper Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke “The Sparrow that sitteth alone upon the House Top” (see Psalm 102, 6) in opposition to the Maori King paper, Te Hokioi (a legendary bird of ill omen). Te Pihoihoi gave great offence to the Kingites and some of them broke up the press and returned it to the Queen's land at Te Ia — at Preston Grammar School Gorst had edited The Scholar, a periodical which was similarly suppressed by the authorities because of its mocking spirit. With war threatening in Taranaki, he was obliged by hostile Maoris to leave the Waikato. He acted as private secretary to F. D. Bell, the Minister of Native Affairs, during the next few months, while the second Taranaki campaign began and Grey invaded the Waikato. In August he went to Australia with Bell to assist in the distasteful task of recruiting military settlers, and then returned to England, where he publicly attacked a policy which, he believed, was one of conquest in New Zealand.

Gorst's views are expressed at length in his book, The Maori King (1864; 2nd ed. 1959), in which he relates in detail events in the Waikato 1860–63, analyses the reasons for the rise of the King movement and the weaknesses of British policy, and describes with wonderful vividness the state of Maori opinion. This is perhaps the finest book written on the nineteenth century Maori, written with understanding, with love and, for leaders such as Ti Oriori and Wiremu Tamihana, with admiration.

Gorst's career in England was a disappointment — the more so since he had the misfortune to have it described, while he was alive, in terms which make it seem a failure, by his son Harold E. Gorst, in The Fourth Party (1906). But failure it was not, though his radical views, his independence, and his lack of aristocratic connections prevented him from achieving the glittering prizes to which service to the Conservative Party and ability gave him claims.

He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1865, stood unsuccessfully as Conservative candidate for Hastings in 1865, and was returned for the borough of Cambridge in 1866. He favourably impressed Disraeli, who asked him, when he lost his seat in 1868, to reorganise the party machinery on a popular basis. He spent five years on this task, without salary, and the Conservative victory of 1874 has been partly attributed to his efforts, which brought, however, no rewards. The titled leaders descended from aloof heights upon the spoils of victory. Later Disraeli asked Gorst why he had not, like everyone else, solicited office. From this time, if not earlier, Gorst's relations with the party leaders, other than Disraeli, were strained, as is evident from Gorst's occasional attacks on the Conservative Government after he was re-elected in 1875. During the years 1880–84, with Lord Randolph Churchill, Arthur Balfour, and Henry Drummond Wolff, Gorst formed a free-lance opposition, which was called “the Fourth Party”, to the Liberal Government. Its tactics of guerilla warfare, which Harold E. Gorst called “political ingenuities bordering upon practical joking”, were based often upon Gorst's considerable knowledge of parliamentary procedure. They gave pain to the Conservative leaders almost as often as to the Government. The four allies were not merely insubordinate; they increasingly came to represent a “Tory democracy” which was, at times, indistinguishable from radicalism. They gained control of the popular National Union of Conservative Associations, and made a bid for the direction of party policy, and on the part of Lord Randolph Churchill, for leadership. Then suddenly, while Gorst was away on holiday, Churchill made his peace with the party leaders, leaving Gorst, as Sir Winston Churchill later wrote, “in a position of much weakness and isolation. He had incurred very bitter enmities by the part he had taken in the quarrel”.

In 1885, when the Conservatives took office, Lord Randolph Churchill became Secretary of State for India, and secured for Gorst the post of Solicitor-General, which carried with it a knighthood. But Gorst never recovered politically from Churchill's desertion and surrender in 1884. He was to be Under-Secretary of State for India and later Financial Secretary to the Treasury, but he drew away from his party. In 1902, during Chamberlain's fiscal reform campaign, he broke with it altogether, declared himself a free trader, and in 1910 stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal.

Gorst was a radical by temperament, who took Disraeli's “Tory democracy” too seriously for his party, and drifted naturally to the left. His later years were spent in speaking and writing on social reform, especially education and health. In 1906 he revisited New Zealand, where he was much impressed by the improvement in racial relations and the progress of “assimilation”. He died on 4 April 1916 and was buried in the family vault at Castle Combe, Wiltshire. He was survived by two sons and six daughters by his first wife (d. 1914), and by his second wife, Ethel, daughter of Edward Johnson.

by Keith Sinclair, M.A., PH.D., Professor of History, University of Auckland.

• The Maori King, Gorst, J. E. (1864, 1959)
• New Zealand Revisited, Gorst, J. E. (1908)
• Lord Randolph Churchill, Churchill, W. S. (1906)
• The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Moneypenny, W. F., and Buckle, G. E. (1910–20).

Gore is situated on flats on the banks of the Mataura River in central Southland. The main part of the town extends along the west bank of the Mataura River. A smaller portion, called East Gore, occupies the opposite bank. The immediate surrounding country is undulating plain, but to the east the land is broken by hill country and on the northwest and west within about 4 miles the land rises steeply to the Hokonui Hills. Gore is the junction of the South Island Main Trunk railway and the Waimea branch line to Mossburn and Kingston via Lumsden. By road or rail Gore is 40 miles north-east of Invercargill, 47 miles north-west of Balclutha, and 7 miles north-east of Mataura. Roxburgh is 66 miles north-west.

The main farming activity of the district is sheep raising, but there is some mixed farming. Wheat and oats are grown. Several opencast lignite mines are worked in the district. The principal workings are at Waimumu (about 7 miles south-west). Limestone is quarried and processed near Waimumu. Daggy wool is processed near Otamita (8 miles north-west), and there is a fertiliser-mixing plant at McNab. Gore is the largest inland town of Southland and is the shopping centre for the farming community of an extensive district. The industrial activities of the borough include the manufacture of flour, oatmeal, and cereal foodstuffs; bacon and ham curing; bricks, field tiles, concrete products, joinery, livestock foods, and knitwear. Sawmilling, timber treatment, general engineering, seed cleaning, and fell-mongering are also carried on.

Prior to European occupation the flax and tussock flats, where Gore now stands, were at or near the routes used by Maori travellers. Tuturau, near Mataura, was the nearest settlement. Several notable European visitors passed through the locality in early settlement times — W. B. D. Mantell and Stephen in 1851 to initiate the purchase of Murihiku (Southland), and in 1852 C. J. Nairn and C. J. Pharazyn seeking country for grazing runs. Mantell completed the purchase of Murihiku in Aug 1853 and, soon after, large areas, including the district around Gore, were taken up for sheep runs, During July 1853 Nathaniel Chalmers visited Tuturau and, in September, with the Maoris Reko and Kaikoura, travelled through what is now Gore on a pioneer journey into the hinterland. As the river involved a long fording, the locality became known as “the Long Ford”, or Longford. In 1862 a few town sections were surveyed and Longford was named Gore as a compliment to the Governor, Thomas Gore Browne. A village which later sprang up on the east bank of the Mataura was named Gordon after Governor Sir Arthur Gordon, but eventually became known as East Gore. By 1864 the road from Balclutha through Gore to Invercargill was open for wheeled traffic and a regular coach service began between Invercargill and Dunedin.

Railway construction from Invercargill began in the early 1870s and the line was opened to Gore on 30 August 1875. On 22 January 1879 the railway reached Balclutha and there linked with the line to Dunedin. The Waimea Plains Railway Co. opened a line from Gore to Lumsden on 31 July 1880. (This was purchased by the Government on 13 November 1886.) The private railway linked Gore with the Invercargill-Kingston branch line which had been completed on 10 July 1878. On 27 November 1908 a branch line was opened from McNab to Waikaka (16 miles north-east). It was closed on 9 September 1962. Another branch line was opened from Riversdale (18 miles north-west) to Switzers — now called Waikaia (32 miles north-west) – on 1 October 1909. It was closed on 16 May 1959. These railways had a significant effect on the development of Gore. Gore and Gordon (East Gore) grew as separate town districts. In 1885 Gore was constituted a borough and in 1890 East Gore was amalgamated with it.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 5,551; 1956 census, 6,527; 1961 census, 7,270.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

(1890–1956).

Medical practitioner and social worker.

A new biography of Gordon, Doris Clifton appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Dr Doris Gordon was a general practitioner of medicine who played an important role in the establishment of an efficient maternity service for New Zealand. She was born in Melbourne, on 10 July 1890, daughter of the late Alfred Jolly of the National Bank of New Zealand. She came to New Zealand with her parents as a small child and received her education at the University of Otago. In 1908 she entered the medical school where she graduated in 1913, after a distinguished undergraduate career. She spent two busy years as a house officer in the Dunedin Hospital and then accepted the position of assistant to the Professor of Bacteriology and Public Health, Sydney Champtaloup. During this period she qualified for the Diploma of Public Health. In 1917 she married Dr William Gordon of Stratford and from then until her death she engaged in a busy dual private practice with a brief interregnum when she held the position of Director of Maternal and Infant Welfare in the Department of Health.

Dr Gordon was a woman of immense energy and enthusiasm. She could be well described as a “human dynamo”. To these natural gifts she added a flair for organisation and a great gift of effective public speaking. Her first notable public service was the organisation of a national campaign to endow a full-time Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Medical School in the University of Otago. She travelled throughout the country interviewing possible donors and addressing large meetings of women. The appeal was so successful that funds became available not only to achieve the objective of £25,000, but also to endow two national scholarships for medical graduates to go overseas for postgraduate training. This success only served to stimulate her active interest in the general improvement of obstetrical practice in New Zealand by the formation of a branch of the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of the United Kingdom and in the establishment and endowment of a post-graduate School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the University of Auckland.

In the course of all this extra-mural work she carried on a busy practice, gained the F.R.C.S. (Edin.), received the honour of an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and brought up a family of one daughter and three sons, two of whom have qualified in medicine. One is a member of Parliament. She died at Stratford, Taranaki, on 9 July 1956, shortly after her autobiography, Backblocks Baby Doctor was published.

Dr Gordon's life was one of service and achievement.

by Charles Ernest Hercus, KT., D.S.O., O.B.E., U.D., M.B. CH.B.(N.Z.), M.D., D.P.H., B.D.S., F.R.C.P., F.R.A.C.P., F.R.A.C.S., Emeritus Professor, University of Otago.

• Backblocks Baby Doctor, Gordon, D. C. (1956)
• Doctor Down Under, Gordon, D. C. (1957)
• Annals of the University of Otago Medical School, 1875–1939, Carmalt-Jones, D. W. (1945).

(1829–1912).

Colonial administrator and Governor of New Zealand (1880–82).

A new biography of Gordon, Arthur Hamilton appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Gordon was born at Argall House, London, on 26 November 1829, the youngest son of George Hamilton-Gordon, Fourth Earl of Aberdeen and Prime Minister of Great Britain (1852–55), by his second wife, Harriet, who was the daughter of the Honourable John Douglas, widow of James, Viscount Hamilton, and mother of the First Duke of Abercorn.

Gordon, a delicate child, was educated privately at Haddo, his father's Scottish seat, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1847. He was president of the Union, and graduated M.A. in 1851. Gordon had always been very attached to his father, and in 1852 he became his private secretary. In this period neither of them wrote nor received a letter that the other did not see, and Gordon came to know most of the influential people of the time. In 1854 Gordon himself entered the House of Commons as Liberal member for Beverley, Yorkshire, but he lost this seat three years later. In 1858 he became private secretary to Gladstone, and then High Commissioner Extraordinary in the Ionian Islands.

His career as a colonial Governor began in 1861, at the age of 32, and lasted until 1890. During these 29 years he was successively Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick (1861–66), Governor of Trinidad (1866–70), Governor of Mauritius (1870–74), the first Governor of Fiji (1875–80), and the first High Commissioner of the Western Pacific (1877–82), Governor of New Zealand (1880–82), and Governor of Ceylon (1883–90). He received the C.M.G. in 1859, was created K.C.M.G. in 1871, G.C.M.G. in 1878, and Baron Stanmore of Great Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1893.

Gordon was an outstanding success as a Governor of Crown colonies, but was less happy in New Brunswick and New Zealand, both of which enjoyed responsible government. He had a strong desire to participate in government himself, and was impatient both of the constitutional restraints imposed on the Governor of a self-governing colony, and of the low standards of education, morality, and competence he found among colonial politicians. The Crown colonies, however, gave him greater scope for his liberal paternalism, expressed in his land and educational reforms in Trinidad, and his Indian labour legislation both in Trinidad and in Mauritius. But perhaps his most enduring achievement was in Fiji, where circumstances offered him a unique opportunity to put into effect principles of native administration which anticipated those that became so much better known when applied to Africa by a later generation of colonial administrators.

Gordon so identified himself with his Fijian experiment that he could not contemplate handing it over to a successor. He was thus led to accept an expedient that was to have unfortunate consequences. He did not wish to be Governor of New Zealand; it is not too strong to say that he abhorred the prospect of heading a Government with a native policy of which he so strongly disapproved; yet he was prepared to go there if he could continue to have effective oversight of Fijian affairs and remain High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. It was an intolerable position for Des Voeux, his successor in Fiji, and Gordon's absence on a visit to Fiji allowed a serious crisis to develop in New Zealand native affairs.

Gordon arrived in New Zealand on 23 November 1880. His first task was to report on the dispute over confiscated Maori lands in Taranaki, which was causing some concern in Britain. Gordon's sympathies were with the Maoris, and he angered his Ministers by reporting to the Secretary of State his personal view that the Maoris were substantially in the right. The lands in question were nominally confiscated in 1863, but much that had happened in the succeeding 15 years. The Proclamation of 1865 exempting the land of loyal Maoris, speeches by Ministers, and the actions of officials of the Lands Department had led the Maoris to believe confiscation had lapsed. When, therefore, Sir George Grey decided in 1878 to sell the land to settlers, the Maoris systematically obstructed the survey, and Parliament passed measures sanctioning their arrest and detention. A commission, reporting in 1880, recognised the source of the trouble as the failure to define native reserves before the survey was attempted. Though the report was conciliatory in tone, the dispute continued, as the reserves proposed, particularly at Parihaka, the centre of the trouble, were not acceptable to the Maoris. Neither did the resignation of Bryce, the Minister for Native Affairs, who favoured strong action against Te Whiti, the Maori leader at Parihaka, lead to any improvement.

In September 1881 Gordon left New Zealand to visit Fiji, and it appears that the Government, using a provocative speech by Te Whiti as a pretext, took advantage of his absence to force the issue. Although Gordon was assured no new developments were expected, within two days of his departure the Government announced an increase in the constabulary in the Parihaka area, and eight days later Parliament approved an increase of £100,000 in the defence vote. Gordon heard of these developments only through his private secretary. He hurried back to New Zealand, but a mere two hours before his vessel docked at Wellington, a special meeting of the Executive Council under the Administrator, Prendergast, reappointed Bryce Minister for Native Affairs, and issued a Proclamation requiring Te Whiti to evacuate the surveyed area within 14 days. Though he doubted the validity of the Proclamation, Gordon took no action, as he believed his Ministers had the support of the Assembly. A month later the Government was confirmed in office at a general election. Gordon did, however, firmly resist his Ministers' claim to see and comment on his account of such controversial matters in his confidential dispatches to the Secretary of State.

Gordon finally left New Zealand on 23 June 1882, but this was not the end of his troubles. In 1886 Bryce appealed unsuccessfully to the Secretary of State to take action against Gordon for his part in supplying Rusden with information which Bryce had made the subject of his successful libel action against the author of the History of New Zealand.

In his retirement, after he was raised to the peerage in 1893, Gordon was an active member of the House of Lords Committees, and frequently spoke on colonial matters. He continued his writing begun by an account of an expedition he made while in New Brunswick, and published under the title Wilderness Journeys in New Brunswick in 1864. In 1893 he published a life of his father, The Earl of Aberdeen, and in 1906, Sydney Herbert, Lord Herbert of Lea: A Memoir. Between 1897 and 1910 he published privately several volumes selected from his own papers on Fiji and Mauritius.

Gordon was a High Churchman, and as a young man had worked with Samuel Wilberforce and Henry Phillpotts to restore convocation to an active part in church government. He remained a member of the House of Laymen in the province of Canterbury until his death.

A. P. Maudslay has given this character sketch of Gordon: “The Governor — A short man, dark, not good looking, careless of his appearance, shortsighted…. Nowhere has he been popular, since he has a very bad manner with strangers, and he is perfectly aware of it and regrets it very much. He is very determined, and puts aside all opposition when his mind is made up, but with people with whom he is in sympathy, though not agreeing, he is perfectly open to discussion and even diffident to subordinates. His personal staff have always been strongly attached to him; with them he is always on the most perfectly easy terms, and not in the least exacting. He is a High Churchman with strong religious opinions which he does not air. He professes to be a thorough liberal, but his aristocratic leanings come out insensibly. He is very proud of his family and descent. He is very large minded, and in some things almost an enthusiast. Well read, particularly in history and in some curiously odd subjects. Very fond of nature and scenery, he has a very artistic appreciation of light and colour. Active, a good walker, utterly careless of what he eats and drinks — or rather, I don't believe he ever knows what he eats and drinks. Often very preoccupied when there are difficult matters to settle or schemes to devise, he has a dreadful habit of putting off all writing until the last minute”.

In 1865 Gordon married Rachel, the eldest daughter of Sir John Shaw Lefevre, a distinguished lawyer and at that time Clerk of Parliament. They had one son and one daughter. Lady Gordon died in 1889. Gordon died in London on 30 January 1912. The funeral service was held at St. Paul's, Wilton Place, and he was buried at All Souls, South Ascot. He was succeeded by his son, George Arthur Maurice Hamilton Gordon, born 1871.

by Owen Wilfred Parnaby, B.A.(MELB.), D.PHIL.(OXON.), Associate Professor of History, University of Auckland.

• Stanmore Papers (Add. MSS.) British Museum
• History of New Zealand, Rusden, G. W. (1883)
• Pacific Historical Review, May 1959, “Sir Arthur Gordon and New Zealand, 1880–1882”, Knaplund, Paul
• Britain in Fiji, 1858–80, Legge, J. D. (1958)
• Life in the Pacific Fifty Years Ago, Maudslay, A. P. (1930).

(1880– ).

Dairy company organiser.

A new biography of Goodfellow, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Goodfellow was born at Paterangi, Waikato, on 26 May 1880 and educated at Auckland Grammar School. His first enterprise was an ironmongery business at Onehunga, but after he opened a branch at Hamilton in 1904 he became interested in the new trend towards cooperation in the dairy industry, and organised Waikato Cooperative Dairy Co. in 1908. Ten years later he was able to amalgamate the leading Waikato dairy companies into the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Co., of which he became managing director. He was a member of the first Dairy Control Board established under the Dairy Produce Export Control Act of 1923, which he was instrumental in sponsoring. In 1925–26 he formed the Amalgamated Dairies and Challenge Phosphate Co. His public benefactions include £30,000 for a chapel at Auckland University and £20,000 in 1950 to endow a chaplaincy in memory of his son Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow. He was knighted in 1953.