Dr Paul Moon: Few home comforts to be found in early houses

Maori Hill in Dunedin. Photo / NZME.

As the focus of popular scrutiny once again falls on the poor standard of New Zealand housing, some commentators have lamented the loss of our traditional houses - buildings with "good bones" nestled on spacious sections. These dwellings were cute, quaint, cosy and, by the standards of the time, even comfortable. And most importantly of all, they were where happy and healthy families were raised.

Or so the story goes. In the early 20th century, suburban New Zealand was seldom the bucolic paradise that a nostalgic glance in its direction might suggest. The chocolate-box-lid image of how New Zealand neighbourhoods appeared masks an uglier reality.

In the 1900s, rampant urban expansion, often unchecked by adequate public health measures or competent planning, resulted in some of the streets, alleys and spaces between houses turning into rancid arteries, capable of afflicting the neighbouring residents with all manner of diseases.

A report on certain residential areas in Dunedin at the turn of the century contained a worrying description of how bad the situation had become:

"In a right-of-way off Filleul St a terrace of half a dozen two-storey brick buildings is erected parallel with a brick wall at the back of which six feet of space separates the buildings and in this sunless alley six privies connected directly with the sewer, untrapped, emit a pestilential odour. The apology for a back-yard is paved with bricks. These however, are subsiding, into what I did not care to investigate."

Residents of the country's largest city were in no position to turn up their noses at Dunedin's filth, however. In May 1900, the author of one report noted: "The sanitation of Auckland is sadly neglected. Its drainage must be systematised, the unsanitary dwellings pointed out by the Premier and others must be improved out of existence. The city refuse must be burnt instead of collecting in festering heaps. The citizens must be provided with pure and copious water for their household needs."

Central Auckland's congested housing - in which around 35,000 people lived in an area of just 16sq km - presented an ideal setting for disease to develop and spread. If these reported circumstances are anything to go by, the lustre of late-Victorian villa-lined suburbs - lionised by later generations - must have been tarnished for those residents who had no choice but to put up with the stench of accumulated rubbish, leaking sewage, putrefying waste, and the inevitable rodent infestations that thrived in these environments.

It is little wonder that typhoid, polio, diphtheria and a host of other diseases took people's lives in unusually high numbers in the country's cities at the beginning of the 20th century. Just how badly the situation had deteriorated was made apparent when the most notorious of all infections paid a mercifully brief visit to New Zealand. In 1900, one Aucklander was killed by the plague. Two years later, a further three residents in the capital succumbed to the disease.

Improvements to housing eventually occurred, but they were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The major advance took place in 1935, when the Government issued its Manual of Instructions for Conducting Housing Surveys, which specified standards for homes.

The fabric of the house was to be "sound, clean, and in a good state of repair", and the appropriate sanitary facilities, paths, and ceiling heights were laid out in the guidelines. If the houses were not in good condition, inspectors had to report on whether they could be repaired or were better off being demolished.

There was even a prescription for the desirable number of residents for each house. A dwelling was overcrowded "if the number of persons sleeping in the house is such that any two of those persons, being persons 10 years old or more of opposite sexes and not being persons living together as husband and wife, must sleep in the same bedroom". Eighty years on, it's still not much to ask for.

Dr Paul Moon is Professor of History at Auckland University of Technology.