But the situation (certainly in New Plymouth) had improved 30 years later according to the Wanganui Herald (4 April, 1873), when it advised any young man seeking a mate to knock on the first door he came to. "The chances are that he will find at least three eligible young ladies, and it is his own fault if he does not soon get a wife; and a good one too."
The Herald hastened to add that it should not be inferred that New Plymouth ladies couldn't get married. It was just that there were so many of them that they were, "committing matrimony to an alarming extent."
Another advertiser from 1842 sought a handsome lady, about middle size and not too stout, with engaging manners, sweet temper and affable disposition. He described himself as being in the prime of life, rather handsome, possessing an income of £200 per year and promising the greatest secrecy to all applicants.
But finding a wife in Colonial New Zealand was usually a challenge as men outnumbered women by a substantial margin for many years. One startling suggestion – made to the Oamaru Times – was to make marriage compulsory as a means of populating the country, and seen by its proposer as preferable to retaining the services of a paid immigration agent. How his scheme would have worked in practice was not explained, but it reminded the editor of the tale of a Scottish border laird - the father of an aesthetically challenged daughter. Having captured a notorious fugitive, the laird ordered him to marry "Muckle-mouthed Meg" or be hanged. Fortunately for the victim he had seen the intended bride sans veil, so wisely chose "the halter for the altar".
However, steps were made to remedy the imbalance of the sexes, as revealed in this Herald article of 30 July, 1902. "The colonial marriage market is likely to liven up speedily. It is announced by the People's Journal that the Yorkshire Ladies' Council of Education at Leeds is training young women for the position of wives in the colonies. The training is in cookery, laundry work, needlework, household accounts, first aid and household management. For those anxious to become thoroughly equipped for life in the colonies the council has arranged a three months' course in dairy work and poultry keeping." (Sadly, not many years later, the Great War's terrible harvest on European battlefields played a part in correcting the imbalance which social engineering had struggled to achieve).
"But look at the great mass of marriages that take place over the whole world," the New Zealand Gazette & Wellington Spectator had warned many years previously, (4 January, 1843). "What poor, contemptible affairs they are! A few soft looks, a walk, a dance, a squeeze of the hand, a popping of the question, a purchasing of white satin, a ring, a clergyman, a night in a country inn and the whole matter is over. Then everything falls into the most monotonous routine; the wife on one side of the hearth; the husband on the other and little quarrels, little pleasures, little cares and little children gradually gather around them. This is what ninety-nine out of one hundred find to be the 'delights' of matrimony."
So the idea of compulsory wedlock, thereby circumventing the disruptive influence of romance, may not have been a bad one after all.
Perhaps the one out of a hundred unions to escape the Gazette's gloomy prediction was that of the gallant groom, newly married to "a little undersized beauty". In response to comments about her diminutive stature he replied, "She would have been taller, but is made of such precious materials that nature could not afford it."
*Murray Crawford is a Whanganui author with an interest in local history. Newspaper references sourced from Papers Past: National Library of New Zealand.
