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1915–1994Electrical engineer, engineering administrator
Philip William Blakeley was born in Lower Hutt on 3 April 1915, the son of George Philip Wilson Blakeley and his wife, Winifred Mary Overton. His father was an electrician at the meatworks in Petone and (later) in Christchurch and Wanganui. Meatworks were early and important users of...
Story: Blakeley, Philip William
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1878–1967Methodist minister, community leader
Edgar Percy Blamires was born on 7 January 1878 in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. He was one of nine children of Lavinia Henley and her husband, William Lizard Blamires, a Wesleyan Methodist minister. He was educated at Wesley College, Melbourne, and then worked for a Melbourne merchant firm for...
Story: Blamires, Edgar Percy
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1909–1998Insurance company manager, military administrator, sports administrator
Cecil Albert Blazey was chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union during the most turbulent period of its history. He was born in Hastings on 21 July 1909, youngest of the five children of William Robert Blazey, a wood-turner and later mill foreman, and his wife, Emily Cross. Ces grew up...
Story: Blazey, Cecil Albert
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1867–1958Lawyer, politician, agriculturalist, governor general
Charles Bathurst was born in London, England, on 21 September 1867, the son of Charles Bathurst, a barrister of Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Hay. He was educated at Sherborne School, Eton College and University College, Oxford, where he studied law, graduating BA...
Story: Bledisloe, Charles Bathurst
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1848–1926Decorator, artist, music teacher
Charles Blomfield, the son of Elizabeth Emily Hickman and her husband, William Blomfield, a cutler, was born on 5 January 1848 in Holborn, London, England, the seventh of nine children. Charles's father died in 1857 leaving Elizabeth a young widow with eight children (the eldest son, William,...
Story: Blomfield, Charles
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1893–1987Welfare worker, local politician
Dorothy Constance Christie was born on 2 November 1893 in Wellington, the daughter of Daniel Laurie Christie, a grocer, and his wife, Eva Evelyn Helen Bell. She attended a private school in Wellington and later the convent school, where she particularly enjoyed singing. After leaving school she...
Story: Blomfield, Dorothy Constance
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1908–1971Wrestler, hotel-keeper
Meynell Strathmore Blomfield, later known as 'Lofty', was born at Wellington on 18 July 1908, the son of John Collis Blomfield, a newspaper cartoonist, and his wife, Amy Ellis. The family moved to Auckland when he was a child. As a schoolboy he did track work for horse trainers but increasing...
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1866–1938Cartoonist, local politician
William Blomfield was born in Auckland on 1 April 1866, the son of Emma Watts Collis and her husband, Samuel Blomfield, a carpenter. The family moved to Thames the next year. In 1880 they returned to Auckland where William's uncle, the prominent artist Charles Blomfield, found him a job in a...
Story: Blomfield, William
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1889–1980Labour activist, community worker, feminist
Rhoda Alice Aspin was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, England, on 22 June 1889, one of three children of Maria Jane Aspin and her husband James Aspin, a loomer in a cotton factory. The family emigrated to Wellington, New Zealand, on the Whakatāne in 1901 and settled in Petone, where James became a...
Story: Bloodworth, Rhoda Alice
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1882–1974Carpenter, trade unionist, local politician
Thomas Bloodworth was born on 10 February 1882 at Maxey, Northamptonshire, England, the seventh child of Ann Jesson and her husband, Thomas Bloodworth, a groom and gardener. He left the village school at 10, and was apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner in Grantham, before emigrating to...
Story: Bloodworth, Thomas
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1914–2009Educator, potter, arts administrator
Doreen Blumhardt was the one of the most important figures in New Zealand’s arts and crafts world in the second half of the twentieth century. Her twin passions, for education and for the arts, were to help revolutionise the teaching of crafts in New Zealand schools, and she was widely...
Story: Blumhardt, Vera Doreen
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1814/1815?–1878Newspaper editor and proprietor
Henry Blundell was born in Dublin, Ireland, probably in 1814 or 1815. The names of his parents are not known. He worked for the Dublin Evening Mail for 27 years, becoming manager, before he resigned over a disagreement about the treatment of staff. He arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in 1860,...
Story: Blundell, Henry
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1859–1943Confidence trickster, criminal
New Zealand's most celebrated and energetic confidence trickster was born on 18 May 1859 at Hobart, Tasmania, the eldest child of Mary Ann Parkinson and her husband, Alfred Bock, and christened Amy Maud. Between her arrival in New Zealand in the mid 1880s and her spectacular trial for forgery...
Story: Bock, Amy Maud
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1847–1932Engraver, medallist, illuminator, stamp designer, lithographer, publisher
William Bock (the name Rose was added later) was born in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), on 5 January 1847, the son of Thomas Bock and Mary Ann Cameron, née Spencer, both of whom had been transported to Van Diemen's Land and subsequently pardoned. He was introduced to his craft by his...
Story: Bock, William Rose
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1905–1980Public servant
Herbert Leslie Bockett was born on 29 June 1905 in Ōpōtiki to Charles Frederick Bockett and his wife, Lilian Mary Bridger, who farmed in the area. Bert and his twin brother, Arthur, were educated at Dilworth Ulster Institute and Seddon Memorial Technical College in Auckland. Both became...
Story: Bockett, Herbert Leslie
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1831?–1892Soldier, businessman, local politician, writer
James Bodell was baptised at Arnold, Nottinghamshire, England, on 3 July 1831. He was the son of William Bodell, a framework knitter, and his wife, Maria Margrom. The family soon moved to Leicester, where Bodell went to school for three years. In 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, James...
Story: Bodell, James
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1883–1964Lawyer, local promoter, politician
William Alexander Bodkin was born in Queenstown on 28 April 1883, the son of Irish immigrants James Bodkin, a watchmaker, and his wife, Eleanor (Ellen) Black. In 1889 his father purchased the Monte Christo farm near Clyde, where Frenchman Jean Desire Feraud had experimented with grape growing...
Story: Bodkin, William Alexander
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1890–1917Soldier, diarist
The life and death of George Bollinger illustrate the extremes of nobility and prejudice engendered in New Zealanders by the experience of the First World War. Bollinger's father, Max, was a Bavarian who migrated to New Zealand in the late 1870s and joined the police in 1881, serving in...
Story: Bollinger, George Wallace
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1862–1929Mariner, naturalist, ethnographer, collector
John Peter Bollons was born at Bethnal Green, London, England, on 10 November 1862, the son of Thomas Bollons, a cab master, and his wife, Helen Elisha. His mother was Jewish but Bollons was brought up as an Anglican. At 14 he began his long sea career by shipping out aboard a barquentine bound...
Story: Bollons, John Peter
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1893–1963Aviator, aeronautical engineer, military leader
George Bruce Bolt was born on 24 May 1893 at Dunedin, the son of Frederick William Bolt, a salesman, and his wife, Mary Inkster Tait. His interest in aviation began as a nine-year-old when he watched early hot-air ballooning in Dunedin; after the family moved to Christchurch in 1908 he became...
Story: Bolt, George Bruce