THE CABINET THAT took office on the evening of 10 December 1928 ranged in age from forty-eight to seventy-two. Apart from Ward, Ngata and Wilford, none had ever held ministerial rank before. Forbes and Sidey knew what it was like to be members of a government caucus, but eight members of Cabinet were completely new to the Treasury benches; W. B. Taverner, Minister of Railways, J. B. Donald, Postmaster General, J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Industries and Commerce and Immigration, and A. J. Stallworthy, Minister of Health, were even new to Parliament, having been elected for the first time less than four weeks before. The United Party sprang from nowhere, flashed across the horizon, and was to fall like a spent meteor. The Labour Party, which had toiled long in the field, derided them. John A. Lee who later attributed the loss of his seat to ‘the musical chink of the seventy million’,1 enjoyed making humorous comments at United’s expense during the campaign. Waving his one arm at an election audience in Eden he declared: ‘The United Party is composed of odds and ends—like the glorious “black pan”, that dish they serve out to the firemen on ships. It is a dish of left-over food from the saloon. You might get a pork chop from one end or a sausage from the other.’2
In fact Ward’s Cabinet contained some people of considerable ability, and to the Governor-General they seemed a refreshing contrast to ‘the rather mediocre ingredients of a large section of the Reform Party’.3 Forbes, Wilford, Ngata, Veitch and Atmore were veteran politicians. In the depressed circumstances of the time fresh political faces could be seen as an asset.4 Taverner was mayor of Dunedin and an accountant with international experience; Donald was a wealthy Auckland merchant, while Cobbe had been born in Ireland and was a farmer from Feilding with interests in the freezing industry as well as being a past chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. The only new Cabinet member with a political background was Stallworthy: his father had been Liberal MP for Kaipara (1905–11). He was a journalist and editor from North Auckland who had taken an interest in health matters for many years. During their first few days in office until the House adjourned on 14 December the Cabinet acquitted itself well, ministers, according to one report, answering questions ‘like old campaigners’.5 They were prepared to work, and most were back at their desks by 3 January 1929 after the briefest of Christmas breaks.
Ward’s Cabinet that took office on 10 December 1928. New Zealand Herald.
On one critical matter, however, the new government was in trouble from the start. On 16 December Ward announced that he had discovered a ‘very important London transaction’ on taking office which meant that ‘some’ of the promised loan money would have to be raised in New Zealand.6 Next day he confided to the Governor-General that Coates’s Government had given assurances that they would borrow little on the London market for the next two years.7 There was a further problem. The government was going to have to refinance £24 million worth of loans coming due for repayment in London at the end of 1929. Ward did not immediately load responsibility for these discoveries on to his political predecessors; to make an immediate renunciation of borrowing could damage the new government’s credibility, and, after all, he probably should have known of Downie Stewart’s commitments before he made his campaign promises. Certainly the Secretary to the Treasury, R. E. Hayes, told Downie Stewart that he was surprised at Ward’s apparent ‘complete ignorance’ of the state of the London market.8 The effect of Ward’s discovery, nonetheless, was that apart from £7 million raised in January 1929 for public works and railway construction—£5 million of which Downie Stewart had already made plans to borrow when giving his commitment to scale down borrowing—little of Ward’s promised infusion of loan money from abroad ever eventuated. Certainly there was never any post-election concession from anyone in government that they were committed to borrowing £70 million in one year. In a statement on 20 December 1928 Ward dashed hopes of a large infusion of capital from overseas by stating that ‘no responsible man’ would wish him to borrow at such a rate.9 His New Year message talked of ‘solid grounds for predicting prosperous times’, but £70 million of borrowed money seemed not to be part of his calculation.
The official prime-ministerial photograph, 1929. Auckland Star.
George Finey cartoon of Ward.
Ward settled into his prime-ministerial routine of earlier times. Once more he grossly overloaded himself with portfolios, paying no heed to his medical advisers. Besides being Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, he took External Affairs and at the end of 1929 resumed his old office of Postmaster General as well. His diary and correspondence show that he received many deputations and was generous with appointments to existing as well as former colleagues. Known to be a centralist who relished detail while sometimes procrastinating on big issues, he drew to the Prime Minister’s office many matters that should have been dealt with by other ministers or departmental officials. With a stack of telegram forms at his elbow, he and his private secretary, C. A. Jeffrey, would despatch business, often simply informing ministers of decisions he had made with relevance to their portfolios. His habits of earlier years were ingrained. Occasionally the Prime Minister would gather a group of his MPs and take them around one of the head offices of a department. Many years later one woman recalled a meticulously dressed Ward—‘like a band box’—with grey spats and cane, leading a string of colleagues and officials through her office in Lambton Quay, talking all the time and recounting historical anecdotes about the department.10 Ward saw himself as the government, the others as functionaries who were to do the glad-handing around the country that his physical impairment made more difficult these days. Occasionally he and Eileen, who was almost constantly at his side, would set off to the provinces. Early in March he went to Napier and Gisborne, and then to Invercargill where, on 20 March, a ‘vast and enthusiastic assemblage’ paid tribute to him. He was entertained by, among others, the Scottish singer Sir Harry Lauder. One of the daunting list of speakers called Ward ‘the Grand Old Man of Southland’. Referring to the recent elections, another made the comment that it was not so much a question of Sir Joseph coming back to the country as the country coming back to Sir Joseph—a sentiment that was very much the Prime Minister’s own view.11 In May he was in New Plymouth, Napier again, Christchurch and Invercargill once more. There on 16 May he received fourteen deputations, and on the following day he saw nineteen more! He had still not learned to delegate. In the following week Ward was in Nelson, Motueka and Blenheim before returning to Christchurch. Early in June he was in Auckland for several days. He was so busy that even young Pat had to make formal appointments to talk to him.
Ward (left), Mackenzie (centre) and Coates (right), and their friends and wives. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Surprisingly, Ward’s health stood the strain for some time. There are film clips of him addressing a street-corner gathering in Queen Street in Auckland and at a reception at Mt Egmont hostel. He is wearing a homburg which he uses to good effect when speaking, always politely raising it to acknowlege cheers from his audience. As he moves about he seems reliant, to a considerable extent, on a walking stick. While he is thin and much balder than in earlier days he speaks at the same fast rate, his upper body movements no different from the Ward of old.12 The purpose of the trips seems to have been to rebuild the party that had been in decline at grass-roots level for so long. Davy was in and out of his office regularly with advice, and wherever the Prime Minister travelled he found time for party officials.
Ward at a 1929 Anzac Day service. Alexander Turnbull Library.
It was impossible for a seventy-three-year-old in his physical state to maintain the pace. In the last half of June 1929 he cancelled engagements because he had a bad cold.13 He was well enough to attend a function at Government House with Eileen on the 26th, but he cut back his appointments and had lost energy. Sir Charles Fergusson spoke privately with him after an Executive Council meeting on 29 July and noted, somewhat waspishly, that he ‘was more alive than usual’.14 It was about this time that the Oxford don, Margery Perham, visited Parliament and saw the Prime Minister. She noted how he came into the House, ‘step by step, like a man in the last stages of decrepitude’. With his ‘reddish nose and waxed moustaches’ she thought he looked like a ‘prosperous bartender’. On the occasion she witnessed him in the House, Ward lay down on his bench and apparently went to sleep with his bowler hat over his face.15
By now the government was living from day to day, dependent on the flickering state of the Prime Minister’s energy. His departmental secretaries and Vincent, his personal secretary, handled much of the paper work. Eileen performed some of the smaller public functions while Ward was at last obliged to delegate larger ones to his ministers. The United caucus became uneasy at the government’s seeming helplessness in the face of growing unemployment. The government was not borrowing as some still hoped it would, nor was it moving towards establishing the unemployment insurance scheme promised in the party’s election policy.16 For a time the government survived because it suited neither of the other two parties to disturb the status quo. Labour wanted more spending on employment creation, but did not want an early election which it could not afford. Should they rock the boat too vigorously there was always the danger that they might get a Reform Government back in office. For their part, Reform remained uncertain about their prospects if there were an early election. A kind of informal truce sustained the ailing ministry. The danger to the Government came more from within its own ranks: in September, under pressure from his constituents who were suffering from rising unemployment, J. S. Fletcher from Grey Lynn threatened to resign from the United Party if something was not done. By now he had become a regular critic of his government.17
Ward opening the Hutt River Bridge, March 1929. New Zealand Herald.
Ward, however, was sick again by 7 September. In order to be near to Parliament he had taken over the ministerial house at 47 Molesworth Street that had once been Seddon’s. Doctors attended him there. By the 15th he felt well enough to drive out to Heretaunga for the day.18 While he was back at his desk on the 17th his only outside function for the rest of the month was a dinner for Sir Robert Stout on the 28th at the Wellington Club. On 1 October Ward made what was to be his last bold bid to improve flagging business confidence, thereby curing unemployment. In what some called a ‘sensational’ statement,19 the Prime Minister requested all unemployed to register, and went on to make the statement: ‘I will undertake to say this: that within the next five weeks there will be no unemployment in New Zealand of men capable of going to work.’ Jobs would be found in railways, land improvement, building, forestry, roading—indeed ‘every class of work the Government has at its disposal’.20 Clearly, Ward had lost touch with the real state of the economy he was meant to be overseeing. While official unemployment stood at nearly 2500 in September, unions had known for some time that the real figure was much higher. Ward’s statement simply encouraged these men to register in droves. Press stories appeared about people collapsing in queues from starvation as they waited to register. By early November the official figures stood at 13,000 unemployed; work on Ward’s schemes had been found for only 4360.
By this time the Prime Minister was in bed, fighting for his life. Vincent found him ‘falling about the passages’ in Parliament Buildings and bundled him back to his office.21 From 3 October 1929 Ward was ‘confined to his room’ with ‘a relapse of influenza’.22 Optimistic statements about his health kept being issued from the Prime Minister’s office. It was barely four and a half years since Massey had died in office after a long and painful illness and Ward’s staff were most anxious to avoid alarming the public again. From 8 to 18 October cheery comments appeared in the papers. Ward was always ‘greatly improved’ or ‘making a good recovery’ or expecting any day to be back in the House. On 18 October he was taken for a drive, but the daily bulletins then ceased for a time. The Prime Minister had had a stroke. Cyril Ward came up from Christchurch. On the 29th Ward signed a codicil to his will in the shakiest of handwriting. It continued the bank guarantees he had given for the Hutt River Shingle Company and the Canadian Knight and Whippet Motor Company ‘as if I were alive’. He had bought both companies in the mid 1920s with proceeds from the sale of some shares in J. G. Ward & Co. for Eileen, Vincent and Pat. With the onset of the Great Depression the new acquisitions were tottering.23
At an Executive Council meeting on 29 October the Governor General was alarmed to hear ‘a very bad account’ of the Prime Minister’s condition; ‘his heart is very bad and they can give it no stimulant. It is evidently touch and go’, he wrote in his diary.24 The Evening Post was told simply that Ward had decided not to return to the House this session, that Forbes seemed to be handling legislation adequately, and the Prime Minister’s services in Parliament were not in immediate demand.25 Ward rallied. Fergusson visited him on the 31st and found him ‘wonderfully better today; but he is very weak’. Next day he wrote in his diary, ‘it looks as if [Ward] will pull through this time’.26 The session drew to a close in the middle of November while Ward was making only a slow recovery. On 26 November Vincent sent a telegram to R. A. Anderson, who had been in indifferent health himself, telling him that ‘Father’ was improving all the time and expected to be going out to Heretaunga shortly.27 Early in December, however, Ward went to hospital for observation. He was discharged on 23 December, going briefly to his office. ‘I went to see the Prime Minister at 11.30’, Fergusson wrote that evening. ‘He seemed much better than when I last saw him, has put on weight & is bright and alert.’ Later that day Ward was driven from Molesworth Street to Heretaunga.28
In the New Year Honours Ward was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG). The origin of the award to him is a little mysterious. He already had the lower level of the order, the KCMG, and a hereditary title as well. The new order did not carry anything more with it than enhanced prestige. How then did Ward come by the honour? It is clear that Ward was very interested in honours, and that he occasionally discussed them with the Governor General.29 But a GCMG, which usually has more than a hint of pending retirement about it when awarded to a serving politician, was probably recommended to the Palace by Ward’s more ambitious colleagues during his illness. There was conjecture in at least one quarter that a peerage was being sought for the Prime Minister.30 This would certainly have resulted in his retirement, and would greatly have flattered its recipient. Ward would have been aware of his colleagues’ hopes, and no doubt prepared to go along with the inquiries. Perhaps to encourage the Governor General to work hard on his behalf, he requested the High Commissioner, Sir James Parr, to seek the award of a damehood for Lady Fergusson.31 Parr, however, had his own games to play. Since his term of office was drawing to a close, he was pressing the government to have his own knighthood upgraded to a GCMG, an award that had been conferred on both Mackenzie and Allen after their terms in London.32 Ward was not prepared to exert himself on Parr’s behalf, and, with the prospect of the peerage remote, and Fergusson soon to depart New Zealand, Ward probably decided to take the GCMG that was under discussion. The award was warmly supported by Ward’s colleagues. If it was intended by them as a hint that he should retire, the Prime Minister failed to take it.
‘The Chiefs’ prolonged illness paralysed the Government. The Otago Daily Times noted on 21 October that parliamentarians found it difficult to extract information from the Government on anything. While routine correspondence was dealt with by Ward’s office, and inquiries passed on to other ministers, no issues of substance seemed able to reach decision in the absence of the Prime Minister. When riots broke out in Samoa at New Year and a New Zealand policeman was killed, the Governor was disgusted to find that the whole Ministry, as well as the secretaries, had melted away from Wellington on holiday leaving only Ward. And he was still in bed. Ward reluctantly summoned a Cabinet for 31 December on the Governor’s advice, having at first toyed with suppressing the news out of Apia. Fergusson regarded Cabinet’s decision to send a ship to the Islands as pusillanimous in the extreme, and his diaries hint at a feeling of relief that he was soon to leave New Zealand and escape the official torpor in Wellington.33
Ward’s nurse, Mary Hatch, and a bevy of specialists, did their best for the Prime Minister. He would be wheeled out into the garden in the summer sunshine for a little while each day. He read the papers and even recorded a ‘talkie’ from his wheelchair in the grounds at Heretaunga. Sir Charles and Lady Fergusson motored out to see him on the afternoon of 6 January 1930, but were not encouraged by his state. ‘He says he is better, but looks to me very ill and quite incapable of talking much business.’34 A few days later Ward decided to go to Rotorua to try the therapeutic mineral waters that had given such comfort to Theresa over the years. He left Wellington in the ministerial railway car on the 21st, arriving at midday next day. In between bathing in the hot pools and regular physiotherapy the old man went for drives in the car which Mrs Eliot Davis kindly put at his disposal. Occasionally an MP, or the mayor of Rotorua, or Eileen would visit, but his secretary, Jeffery, kept guard on his suite at the Princes Gate Hotel. At the end of February Dr Lewis at King George Hospital and Ward’s old friend, Dr J. D. C. Duncan, who had been attending him for the last four months, pronounced Ward fit enough to return to Wellington for a Cabinet meeting. This was held on 4 March, but by the 10th he was back in Rotorua. There were no real signs of improvement, however. Ransom came by to see him on 30 March and Veitch a few weeks later. Neither could report back to colleagues any cause for optimism. The Prime Minister’s heart was weak and he was experiencing fluid retention. His official diary shows a simple entry for 26 April: ‘Prime Minister’s birthday’. Reaching seventy-four and outliving his brother and sister, most of his colleagues from his political heyday, and many of his most faithful supporters in Southland, was no small achievement for someone whose many siblings had been carried away in infancy. But there was no quality left to his life; just staying alive had become a daily battle.
In the garden at Heretaunga, January 1930, making a ‘talkie’. Free Lance Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library.
Ward is taken for an outing on his seventy-fourth birthday, Rotorua, April 1930.
The United Party, too, was in failing health. The unpredictable Wilford, who had spent so much time on trips to England in recent years, resigned his seat in the middle of November 1929 to succeed Parr as High Commissioner. Walter Nash won the by-election in Hutt for the Labour Party. Davy, who had made Ward, now seemed intent on unmaking him. United, he said, was a one-man band, and a sick one at that. There should be more caucuses—which was an unlikely event given the state of the Prime Minister. Jenkins left the United Party in February 1930 and the following month resigned his seat of Parnell as well. United lost that seat to Reform in the by-election. Since Ward’s Government seemed helpless in the face of the enveloping Great Depression there were defections from the party organisation as well. New Zealand was returning with a rush to the more passionate politics of sectionalism.35
In retrospect an observer is astonished that this state of affairs could continue for so long. And yet Ward’s decision to resign in the middle of May, prompted as much by his children’s continuing concern about his health as any pressure from his colleagues, caught people by surprise. A Cabinet meeting was summoned to Rotorua for 10.30 am on Thursday 15 May. At the appointed time, ministers were still nine miles away inspecting a Maori group settlement. When they got to the Princes Gate Hotel, Forbes, who had been senior Minister in Wellington, went in to see Ward. He took some time. Ward informed him that both his medical advisers and his family insisted that he resign from the prime ministership and he proposed to do so. The other ministers then went in as well. They emerged at 12.30 pm. On the way out one of them muttered to the Herald reporter: ‘The secret is out: the Chief is resigning’. A scene of some pathos followed. Wearing his suit, but unable to fit shoes on his swollen feet, Ward was wheeled out on to the verandah for his last round of prime-ministerial photos with his colleagues and staff.36
The last photograph, outside Princes Gate Hotel, Rotorua, 14 May 1930, with Cabinet colleagues and officials. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Ward issued a long, flowery statement in which he claimed to have ‘experienced considerable benefit’ from his sojourn in Rotorua, but accepted the advice of his medical advisers that ‘freedom from work and official worry’ was essential. He was anxious that his ‘indisposition’ should not ‘hamper the efficient administration of public affairs,’ and was resigning ‘with the greatest regret’, having hoped that he would be able to devote his services to the welfare of New Zealand for a longer period. ‘The fates have ordained it otherwise.’
The time has arrived to lay down the reins of office and to look back on practically a lifetime spent in the country’s service. To my Ministerial colleagues I have expressed my deep gratitude for their loyal cooperation. My ill health has rendered the way not easy for them. To the leaders of the other two political parties and to other Parliamentarians I tender my acknowledgement of their uniform courtesy during the time of my illness. Now that the evening of my official life is drawing to its close I have nothing but feelings of the friendliest goodwill to all. May the land we love so well prosper exceedingly in the coming year, secure in its freedom and liberties under the Crown which I fervently trust will always stand as a symbol of the unity of our great British Commonwealth. 37
It was vintage Ward, felicitous, verbose, patriotic, optimistic.
And yet, it was still not quite the end. News of Ward’s resignation, to take effect when the United caucus had picked his successor, shot around the world. It was featured in most English language papers. It was soon revealed that Ward had ‘acceded to the unanimous request of the United Party’ to remain a member of the Cabinet without portfolio.38 The United Party seemed unable to face life without their ‘chief’. The caucus met and selected Forbes in preference to Ransom as leader. Forbes was sworn into office as Prime Minister on 28 May. His new Cabinet listed Ward next in seniority to himself. It contained three new faces, S. G. Smith, A. J. Murdoch and Robert Masters.
By this time Ward was desperately ill in Rotorua. His children were summoned to his bedside. Once more he recovered enough to return to Wellington on 10 June, the twenty-fourth anniversary of Seddon’s death. For the sake of his medical advisers, who found the drive to Heretaunga difficult, he settled into 47 Molesworth Street. Forbes visited him on the 27th, and Vincent reported regularly to the new Prime Minister on Ward’s flickering condition as he hovered between life and death. His pulse would weaken, then revive again. There were periods when he was in a complete coma, his life ebbing to its close in the seclusion of a jealously guarded sickroom.39 Towards the end of the first week in July he was brighter. Just after lunch on 8 July he was well enough to see an old friend from Southland. He fell asleep in the early evening. Eileen, who was living with him, felt he was well enough to leave for an hour or two while she slipped down to the radio station 2YA to fulfil a singing engagement. At midnight, after her return, Ward’s pulse weakened. Vincent and his wife, Pat, Eileen and her husband were all present when the end came about 3 am on Tuesday 8 July 1930.40 Ward died what he had always wanted to be—a Minister of the Crown. It was nearly forty years since he had first been elevated to that status. No other person in New Zealand’s history has served so long as a minister, and it seems unlikely that anyone will beat his record of twenty-three years and four months.
News of Ward’s death came too late to reach the morning papers. But flags were flying half mast over Parliament Buildings by the time people made their way to work, alerting many to the fact that something was amiss. A number of MPs, including Coates, met with the Prime Minister just before 10 am on 8 July and plans were soon in hand for a state funeral. Parliament met at 2.30 pm, despatched a few items of business, and then moved to adjourn for a week to enable everyone to attend Ward’s funeral. The speeches, led by Forbes, agreed on many features of Ward’s personality. It is clear that everyone liked him as a person. Forbes spoke of Ward’s sense of ‘honour’, his ‘high standard of duty’, his extraordinary capacity for hard work, and his constant availability to callers and those in need. Coates was impressed by his ‘cheery optimism’ and his devotion to Empire. Harry Holland shrewdly noted that Ward’s passing broke a link in New Zealand’s political history. He called Ward ‘nature’s gentleman’, speaking warmly of his unfailing courtesy. Michael Joseph Savage said that in all his battles Ward had always had the happy knack of bringing in the personal touch that left no sting behind. These remarks about Ward’s sunny personality were amply endorsed by his old Southland friends and acquaintances who claimed that he had a remarkable memory for faces and never forgot a friend. Of the politicians, it was Sir Apirana Ngata, now the Father of the House, who attempted the best analytical assessment of his late chief. He praised Ward for his ‘brilliant’ political concepts, but added that his stage managing was not as good. Seddon possessed better executive ability, ‘but the great legislation of the past, with which no party had dared to interfere materially, could be traced back to the conception of Sir Joseph Ward’. Ngata, too, remarked on Ward’s courtesy, but added: ‘beneath that courtesy there was a determination never surpassed in the history of this country’.41 On the same day Oakley Browne, who had been one of Ward’s private secretaries for many years, made a similar comment about the ‘great combination’ of Seddon and Ward: ‘Seddon with his rugged, dominant personality, and Ward with his clear-thinking, financial brain; Ward to make the ammunition and Seddon to fire it’.42 The Southland Times noted that it was Ward, more than Seddon, who was ‘really the daring exploiter of needs, the shrewder legislator’. Ward was labelled the ‘political brain’ of the ministry led by Seddon—a judgement that was kind to Ward, and certainly underrated Seddon.43
Outside political circles everyone had kind comments. The Otago Witness mourned the loss of a ‘fluent speaker and charming conversationalist’,44 while Ward’s old adversary, the Dominion, praised his flair for finance and trade, adding, however, that he had ‘failed to fire the popular imagination’ and was not a great leader.45 Even the Protestant Political Association mentioned his friendliness and loyalty to friends, before going on to rejoice that what they described as the Church of Rome’s hold over politics in New Zealand had been greatly reduced by Ward’s passing from high office46
Ward’s fellow Catholics mourned him deeply. In its eulogy the New Zealand Tablet elevated Ward above Grey, Ballance and Seddon as a statesman.47 On the morning of 9 July in one of those chill, drizzly Wellington winter mornings with mist low over the Tinakori Hills, Ward’s casket was removed from 47 Molesworth Street and taken round the corner to St Mary’s Basilica in Hill Street, where Ward had prayed daily for all of his thirty-seven years in Parliament. Requiem Mass was celebrated by Archbishop O’Shea. Archbishop Redwood, ‘unbent beneath the weight of his 91 years … in his scarlet vestments, was a commanding and impressive figure’, as he delivered the panegyric, according to the Herald’s reporter. Mention was made here of Ward’s faith, his benevolence to the church and to the Salvation Army. O’Shea talked of his ‘indefatigible spirit and unquenchable desire to remain in the service of his country’.48
Ward’s funeral leaving 47 Molesworth Street, 9 July 1930. S. C. Smith Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library.
After the mass Ward’s casket lay in the basilica where a steady stream of people came and went during the day. It was then transferred across the road to Parliament Buildings by his colleagues and family. In the late afternoon of the 10th a cortege of 200 cars and two trucks of flowers made its way along Lambton Quay on a circuitous journey to the inter-island ferry, the Maori, that Theresa had launched more than twenty-three years before. When it arrived in Christchurch on the morning of 11 July there were more services before the train took the casket, the family and the ministerial party who acted as pall-bearers, southwards. Schoolchildren had been given the day off, and lined the roads. Large crowds met the train as it paused at stations. By Friday evening the casket had arrived at the Invercargill Basilica where it lay in state until Sunday before being transferred to the Bluff train at the Invercargill Railway Station. The long procession made its way down The Crescent past the offices of J. G. Ward & Co. with the big grain stores in the background bearing his name. On the opposite side of the road stood the elegant post office opened by Ward in 1893 and later to be torn down by official vandalism.
Burial at Bluff Cemetery, 14 July 1930. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Bluff had been preparing for the largest funeral party in its history. High on the hill above the town, among the rocky outcrops, where gelignite had sometimes to be used to open up grave sites, a place was being prepared for Ward next to Theresa and close to his mother.49 The train rolled across the swamps from Invercargill and past the Ocean Beach Freezing Works, reaching Bluff at 2.15 pm on Sunday 13 July. It was greeted with a Maori lament. Then a crowd of over five thousand people climbed the steep gravel road in fine weather to the cemetery. So rough was the road that there were several nervous moments as the casket almost slid from the gun carriage.50 A band played Handel’s Dead March from Saul as eight Bluff watersiders carried the casket to its site. Then, before a throng perched on granite rocks and boulders to get a better view, Ward was laid to rest above the town that figuratively, and almost literally, was his own. Incense rose in the still air and in a few moments the service had concluded. The ‘Last Post’ rang out, followed, after a short interval by the quicker music of the ‘Reveille’. Bagpipes then played ‘Flowers of the Forest’. The long pilgrimage of the body of Sir Joseph Ward had come to an end.51
Prime Minister Forbes and his ministerial colleagues caught the 6.40 pm train For the north, all of them probably unaware of the significance of Harry Holland’s remark a few days earlier, that a political era had passed. It would soon take them with it. The liberal Party was now long dead. The United Ministry’s pulse barely flickered, and there was soon talk of the need to rescue them by coalition with Reform, something Ward had opposed so vigorously.52
At the end of August Ward’s estate was sworn at £337,000. It was announced in the press that Ward had left £1000 to the late Mother Mary Aubert of the Island Bay Home of Compassion which was to go to the institution. The rest was to be distributed among Ward’s children.53 The saga of Ward’s will lasted many more years. The initial instructions were straightforward: Ward’s debts should be paid and money contributed towards a monument to him which had been discussed publicly for some weeks now. There were four bequests, too, of £500 each. Three were for the daughters of his brother, Willie, and one for Lulu Henderson, the daughter of his old friend Walter and his wife, Theresa’s sister. Thereafter, the will became more complex. Basically Ward’s estate was to be sold to return a capital sum. The sum of £20,000 was to be put aside for Cyril, who had inherited the baronetcy. All five of the children then shared equally in what remained. Ward, however, made special provisions in relation to Eileen’s share. Because of her husband’s financial difficulties, her share was to be placed in trust for her and her children. Anticipating that quick sale in depression conditions might not maximise the return from the estate, Ward had given power to the trustees to delay sale. In the meantime Vincent, Gladstone and Pat were to receive annuities of £800 per annum, Eileen £1000 and Cyril £1200. There were other complicated provisions relating to the management of the estate pending its ultimate realisation. Ward seemed to have been intent on managing the affairs of his family beyond the grave.54
The Great Depression played havoc with an estate consisting largely of shares and land. The Public Trustee administering the estate had quickly to find nearly £71,000 in death duties. This sopped up most of the readily available money, and payments to the bank on money which the estate owed fell behind. Whippet cars collapsed, leaving a big debt and by the end of 1932 the estate had accumulated liabilities totalling £70,000.55 In 1933 as a result of pressure from the family, the value of the estate was reduced to £278,780, and then the following year to £277,921. A refund of nearly £4000 in death duties was made. Meantime, the estate had not been producing revenue enough to pay the interim sums provided for in Ward’s will. All of the children, who had become better spenders than earners of money, were crying poor, a line that seems not to have been taken seriously by bank managers with whom they were dealing. The one in real trouble, however, was Eileen.56 In 1934 she petitioned Parliament for a further rebate in death duties, on the grounds that she had been unable to meet expenses incurred while she had been her father’s hostess in the late 1920s. Early in 1935 the request won a favourable recommendation from Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee. Clyde Carr, Labour MP for Timaru, noted the special assistance that members of Ward’s family had had to render the Prime Minister during his last years, and was warm in his praise both of Ward and his family.57
There was one further small reduction in the value of Ward’s estate (to £275,921) and another refund of death duties in 1937. His properties were not finally disposed of until after the Second World War when the once grand villa in Bann Street, Bluff, was finally sold. Ward’s will, coupled with the economic circumstances of the time, had allowed him to live quite some time beyond the grave. The fourth baronet, son of Sir Joseph George Davidson Ward, who was Cyril’s first born, is still alive and well. And New Zealand’s road, rail and communications infrastructure, its health and social services (despite the ravages of modern times) still bear the clear imprint of J. G. Ward. Political attitudes, too, especially New Zealanders’ views of the role of the state, also reflect Ward’s influence. Only the nation’s devotion to Empire that moved him to such excess, has diminished or been transferred over time.
