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Dannevirke's Gallery of History is true to its name
The museum is housed in the town’s old courthouse and is filled with treasures.
Dannevirke Gallery of History and its volunteers are an absolute delight. The museum is housed in the town’s old courthouse and remnants of the courthouse remain throughout the building. One of the galleries is in the office that used to belong to the stipendiary magistrate, for example.
Volunteers Scotty and Jill gave me a brief tour of the main gallery of the museum where most of the medical collections are held, and then left me to my devices for almost two hours as I went through the museum in depth.
An amazing find was the Handyside Medicine Chest, in the previously mentioned stipendiary magistrate’s office. The medicine chest is the largest I have seen in any museum collection around the country, and it is magnificent. It was stocked according to a booklet named Cox's Companion to the Family Medicine Chest by a company in Wellington, and it was purchased by John Stewart Handyside of Akitio in about 1880.
Handyside observed the wrecking of the ship Pleiades, at Akitio Beach in 1899. “Mr. W. Forsbury Handyside saw the ship driven onto the beach, his family helping to succour the shipwrecked crew.” The crew were later taken to Wellington by the SS Himatangi and the captain charged with negligent navigation.
Many of the bottles still have the original kid leather tied over their tops. Those bottles have never been opened and never been used. Others are well used and have had their ingredients replaced. Handyside used the medicines and received new stock from various chemists until he sold his properties and returned to England in 1908.
Dannevirke Gallery of History has scanned the original book used to stock the chest, and produced it into a little bound copy that you can purchase from the museum. They very generously gifted me a copy and I can't wait to delve into all the bottles the medicine chest contains; what's in them, what they were called, what their purported medical uses were. It will be a great avenue of discovery.
Margaret Smith in 1999, now the owner of the medicine chest, entrusted it to the Dannevirke Gallery of History, and it is on display there in its original condition.
Something I have been told as I have visited museums and met with volunteers continues to shock me. Once upon a time, thankfully long before I visited the dental nurse, children would be given a little bit of mercury to play with while their dental work was being done. Volunteer Jill told me yet another anecdote to add to my collection of dental horror stories, about her personal experiences playing with mercury. The museum’s dental display has a pottery container for mercury used in fillings and came from the first school dental clinic in Dannevirke.
A really cool find, that without a label would be absolutely overlooked, was a clock. It was a standard clock, nothing particularly special, until you read the label that accompanies it. This was the Labour Room clock, and the time on the clock was set nationally, and was not allowed to be altered. It was to make sure that when a baby was born, the correct national time was recorded for the baby's birth. The clock came from the local hospital upon its closure and without places like our local museums, these pieces of our health and medical histories would be lost.
The museum’s medical collections are extensive and displayed throughout the galleries. I cannot write about all of them, but one more deserves some attention. As I popped into the office to say goodbye to Scotty and Jill, the museum’s deputy president Nancy arrived. Her first question was, “Have you seen the birthing table?” I responded, horrified, back to her, “Yes, I have, and it was awful.”
Right at the back of the museum, through the old courthouse, out, down some steps, into an extension onto the building is a horrendous metal table used by local women at the old Dannevirke Hospital. The label on the table says that it was unsure whether it was used as a birthing table or for gynaecological surgery and it originally came with stirrups. Regardless of its use it looks absolutely horrifying. On the smallest bright side, the table has two water tanks under it, which were filled with hot water to keep patients warm. So, at least while you were laid out on this horrendous metal table, you were warm.
