MORRINSVILLE

Initially at least, when Pop Johnston was transferred to Morrinsville, the family lived in Railway Road/Kiwitahi Railway Road, a few KM out of town. I only knew them living in Allen Street, at No.39, near Howie Park. Pop was employed by NZ Railways in Morrinsville until his retirement. Their house was one in a row of ‘railway houses’ in Allen Street which ran parallel to the railway line near the station. Allen Street is now part of the East/West bypass around Morrinsville township on route 26 between Hamilton and Te Aroha. The Google Maps/Street View of #39 certainly looks like the house as I remember it. For some of his retirement, Pop was the groundskeeper at Morrinsville College.

James and Jeannie had 5 children:

• Agnes Pearl (Mum) 23 June 1914
• Jane (Joy) Stewart 08 May 1916
• William James Alexander (Johnny) 26 July 1918
• Marguerite Valmai 17 March 1932
• Ivan Maurice 05 October 1933 (Maurice was actually the son of Jane (Joy) but was raised as one of the wider family.)

Note: When the family moved from Northland to Morrinsville, Mum stayed in the North, we think in Dargaville, and worked as a Nanny for a family there. She said that she loved the family and the job and enjoyed a lot more freedom to live her own life and left only reluctantly. When Maurice, Jane’s son, was born, the matriarchs of the family insisted that Mum join the family in Morrinsville to help look after the new baby. We can’t fix the date when she moved to Morrinsville, but it must have been soon after Maurice was born in 1933 and before 1935, when she appears on the electoral roll there.

None of the family seem to know when Alice, Dad and Cliff moved to Morrinsville or when Dad started work at Burmester’s Bakery. That was when and where Dad met Mum. I would imagine that the move to Morrinsville was probably when Dad was at least 20 years of age. It appears that when they moved there, they were on a farm property in Kuranui Road. Patricia McCabe, one of Dad’s nieces, recalls seeing a box of papers relating to the time on the farm, including some receipts from the local dairy company for milk the farm sold to them for processing. For the two elections 1935 and 1938 Dad and Cliff are listed as living at Kuranui Road and as Farm Hands on the Waikato Electorate roll. Alice is also listed as at Kuranui Road on the Supplementary Roll for the 1935 election. She isn’t on the 1938 Roll, but then she died in the middle of that year. Dad and Cliff are listed also on the Hauraki roll for 1938, probably because they moved into town that year.

There’s certainly the impression among the current generations that Alice was a difficult woman. There have been comments that she was a heavy smoker and liked her alcohol. Dad and Cliff were apparently scared that because she would sometimes/often be in bed with a lighted cigarette and some gin, she might possibly cause a fire! Mum left the impression that she and Dad couldn’t, or chose not to, get married while she was alive. That was more likely Dad’s position, and I understand it caused some shaky times during their engagement.

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Mum & Dad's Wedding: From left to right; Auntie Valmai, Dad, Mum, Uncle Cliff & (Auntie) Rhoda (née McKay) Read
The local Morrinsville newspaper carried an account of the Wedding (left). These accounts were supplied by Wendy Cooper, Dad’s niece, in Morrinsville. Click on the image (left) to enlarge. Close by clicking on "X" in the top right hand corner.

Mum and Dad married in November 1938, just five Months after Alice died.The ceremony was in the Morrinsville Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. E. Jones. Rhoda Read was the Matron of Honour, Uncle Cliff was the Best Man and Valmai Johnston, Mum’s sister, was the Flower Girl. I’m not sure why the Baptist Church was chosen as a venue. Neither Mum nor Dad have Baptist links in their background, so far as I know. Raymond reminds us that Dad did have some involvement with the Salvation Army back in Birmingham, where he played a cornet in the band.

We don’t know at what point Mum went to work at Burmester’s Bakery – G&G Burmester Ltd, but it must have been sometime after Maurice’s birth in 1933. She is described as a clerk and worked in the office, and it was at the bakery where Mum and Dad met. They married on 29 November 1938. Earlier that year Dad, Cliff and Alice moved into the Studholme St house - #87. Dad and Cliff’s mother, Alice, died in July that year.

The G&G Burmester Ltd bakery was established by George Leonard Burmester, and his Father, George William. The first location of the business was in Canada Street near the entrance to the Railway Station. I have a memory of going there with Dad when I was very young, and I have an image in my mind of the vehicle entrance off Thames Street on the right-hand side of the building. George senior died in 1950, and then In 1952 the bakery relocated to a new building in Moorhouse Street, opposite the old Police Station and Courthouse. The bakery was completely destroyed by fire in 1974, and the goodwill sold to Findlays Bakery of Hamilton. All 27 staff were re-employed. This had a profound effect on George, and he died just 2 months after the fire.

I have tried to discover some dates around when both Mum and Dad began their employment at the Bakery, but without success so far. A few years ago, I met with Patricia, the wife of Len Burmester, one of George’s sons, in Tauranga. I hoped she might have been able to clarify a few things for me, but her memory was not much more detailed than mine.

She did have the wages book from the time Dad worked there, that showed Dad’s last wage on 14 April 1945, £8-5-4, after £1-0-8 tax! That suggests that Dad left Burmesters in 1945 to establish Skett & Co. Mum most likely stopped working when they got married, or soon after. I was born in January 1940, Alice in September 1941, Raymond in November 1943, and Diane in January 1947.

Sadly, Diane died on 18 September the same year. In a small diary Dad had for that year there are some pencilled notes in September:

• Tuesday the 9th – Pearl and I took Baby to Hospital in Len’s (Burmester) car
• Wednesday 17th – Ring from Hospital. Baby seriously ill.
• Thursday 18th – Diane Pearl passed on.
• Friday 19th – Laid Diane to rest with Mum

Dad’s sister, Ivy Sophia Johnson, died in October 1947, and six months after that Mum and Dad adopted Ivy and Dick’s youngest child, Carol Leola. Carol’s family name was changed to Skett at adoption.

WARTIME

Cliff is listed on Roll 3 Nominal Roll (1 July 1940-31 March 1941) as being in Ry.Con.Coy, which I would assume to be Railway Construction Company. His rank is Spr. (Sapper) which is the Engineers’ equivalent of Private. He is described as a Truck Driver and Labourer, and having enlisted in Morrinsville. His address is Studholme St and his next of kin is Herbert Henry Skett, Brother. Cliff’s Service Number was 27058

Dad also enlisted, but whether it was at the same time as Cliff isn’t known. He was refused service because he was involved in an ‘essential industry.’ He is, however, listed on the ballot list in the New Zealand Gazette of June 24, 1942. The authority of this list is:

It’s not known whether he enlisted voluntarily or was simply selected in a ballot. My feeling is that he enlisted, but when called up he was declined on the basis of his occupation.

SKETT & Co.

About the middle of April 1945, then, Dad, and maybe Mum, left Burmester’s Bakery, and with the support and financial assistance of George Burmester, bought a small bakehouse just off Thames Street near the corner of Canada Street – the William Morris Bakery, and established Skett & Co, which later became Sketts (Morrinsville) Ltd. Whether at the same time or later, they also bought the shop with a Thames St frontage which they operated as a milk bar/tearooms. They renamed this The Florida Milk Bar. According to an obituary after Dad’s death in 1992, printed in what I can only assume was the local paper, the Florida had seating for 80 customers. Mum had a staff of 3 as I remember: Mrs Milton, Phyllis Conning and Eva Richardson. They sold bread and small goods from the bakehouse, sweets, and ice cream, and served basic meals cooked in the small kitchen at the back. Pie, peas, and potato is one I remember. They also catered for weddings and other functions.

Jean Burmester, the wife of the late Jim Burmester, the second of George Leonard’s sons, told me that when she came to Morrinsville from Whanganui, she went to work for the Morrinsville Dairy Company. She remembers that whoever was on morning tea duty for the staff would often head off to the Florida to buy sultana scones, which were “very yummy” and enjoyed by all.

Morrinsvile: 1951

In the small 1947 diary mentioned earlier, there are a couple of notes which I’m not sure I understand at this stage. On the page dated 13 April, but with ‘1947’ and ‘Sunday’ crossed out, and the year amended to ‘1950,’ there’s a note which says:

My first thought was that these notes related to the purchase of the milk bar. That would suggest a date for that purchase as 1950. At this point there’s no clarity as to whether the milk bar property was bought then, or earlier with the purchase of the bakery. Or even whether they were considering selling the milk bar in 1950. If that’s the case, it didn’t happen.

Dad and Mum fell out to some degree with George Burmester and often felt that he worked behind the scenes to make things difficult for their small enterprise. That feeling deepened when Burmester’s Bakery built the new building and relocated to Moorhouse St, opposite the old Police Station and Courthouse. This was just next door to the rear entrance of Dad’s bakehouse.

In the small space that was the bakehouse there was a single-arm dough machine, two long wooden troughs for the dough to ‘prove,’ and a work bench the full length of one wall. The oven at one end was coal fired and fan boosted. Sometimes it released smoke into the work area! The coal bins were outside the back door, and the flour storage room at the front. And a small lean-to adjoining that where preserved eggs were stored in square upright tins. There was a short concrete path from the front door to the back door of the milk bar.

On one occasion Dad and I travelled to Drury to collect a second-hand electrically powered bread moulding machine. But it never really worked well and sat unused in the bakery for years. I still recoil a little remembering a couple of occasions when Dad and I crawled into the cold oven on a Sunday to scrape soot off the ceiling and walls. There was barely enough headroom to crawl. Horrible job!

Dad, Ernie Hyndman, and later Gwilym Hughes worked the bakery side of the business. Gwilym Hughes, with his wife Marjorie and their children, were sponsored as immigrants to New Zealand for Gwilym to work in the bakery. The business also bought a section - I think it was in a cul-de-sac off either Coronation Road or North Street, up towards Morrinsville College - and had a house built for the Hughes family.

Bread delivery was operated both in town and Kereone and Kiwitahi. The deliveries involved driving the large and cumbersome 1941 Dodge Panel van. On a few occasions the van also became the Skett family transport to Whangamata for a brief holiday over Christmas. The back doors were removed, a mattress or something laid out on the floor, and we four travelled in the back over what was then an unsealed and very windy and dusty road to the beach. The dust and the movement often made us sick. Later Dad bought a mid-50s Austin A40 countryman for which he made a removable plywood lining in the back. With the rear seat folded down it became the combined delivery vehicle for the bakery, and our family transport. It was dark green but was later repainted blue and grey. Gwenda and I were given the use of the Austin for our honeymoon at the end of 1964.

In mid-1951 the family moved into the brand-new house Mum and Dad designed and had built for them by Morrinsville builder, Dan McAvenue. (I think that’s the spelling) It was originally #114 Studholme Street, but later when the Council re-numbered the street it became #108. Just as he had at #87, Dad built the garage at #114, and laid a concrete drive from the front gate to the garage. He was a great gardener and most of the rear part of the section was given over to vegetable growing and a few fruit trees.

In the late 50’s Dad and Mum sold the business. The Milk Bar survived for a while, but the bakery did not. Dad went to work for Morrice’s Bakery, owned by Eric Hobbs. When he retired from Morrice’s, he worked for a while at the Waitoa Dairy Factory, and then as the part-time gardener at the NZ Dairy Company.

Herbert Henry SKETT died on December 15, 1992

Agnes Pearl SKETT died on December 27, 1996