Transcript
THE AOTEAROA HISTORY SHOW: Teenagers
MĀNI: On June 20th, 1954, a 15 year old girl was brought to Petone Police Station in the Hutt Valley.
What she said to the Duty Sergeant triggered one of the most famous scandals in New Zealand history.
WILLIAM: Three months later, after a mammoth government investigation, it was summed up like this:
“[The girl] stated that … she had, since the previous Christmas, been a member of what she called a "Milk Bar Gang" which (in her own words) met "mostly for sex purposes"; she had "become tired of the sex life", was worried about the future of its younger members, and desired the police to break up the gang.”
MĀNI: A milk bar was basically a cafe targeting younger customers.
Teens would typically hang out drinking milkshakes and coca cola, listening to music on the jukebox.
But after they heard what had been going on around this particular milk bar, the cops jumped into action.
WILLIAM: 107 charges were laid against 65 teenagers. Six were put on probation, six were put in state care, and 11 were placed under supervision.
When the details of this case were revealed, the newspapers went nuts. The Dominion wrote...
“The police investigations revealed a shocking degree of immoral conduct which spread into sexual orgies perpetrated in several private homes during the absence of parents, and in several second rate Hutt Valley theatres”
MĀNI: Hilda Ross, Minister for the Welfare of Women and Children, put the blame on bad parenting, comic books and sexually charged novels. She said…
“In this national emergency, it is up to us to cut off this abundant supply of filthy literature. The cure is strictness, not laxity”
WILLIAM: Now it was the government’s turn to jump into action. They set up a crack team to investigate: The Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents.
The committee put together a 69 page report which was delivered to basically every household in New Zealand.
MĀNI: It was nicknamed the Mazengarb Report after the chair of the committee, lawyer Oswald Mazengarb.
WILLIAM: ….and it said stuff like this...
“The new pattern of juvenile immorality is uncertain in origin, insidious in growth, and has developed over a wide field...”
“...Adolescents, and adults also, are attracted by comic books that have been denounced ... as anti-educational, and even pernicious, in moral outlook...”
“...The situation is a serious one, and something must be done.”
MĀNI: Today, this might seem... a bit over the top.But moral panics about teenagers were pretty common in the 1950s... Not just in New Zealand, but in Britain, the US and Australia.
WILLIAM: So, in this episode, we’re digging into the history of kiwi teens in the 1950s, and also further back.
INTRO STING
WILLIAM: So, why was everyone so worked up about teens in 1954?
Well… It was an election year, and a crackdown on rowdy teens helped the ruling National Party build support with socially conservative voters.
New Zealand was dominated by the descendants of European migrants who often had very strict ideas about respectable behaviour, especially for young women. Talking about sex was pretty much off limits.
MĀNI: But in the 1940s things were shaken up.
During World War Two, tens of thousands of young soldiers and sailors from the United States passed through Aotearoa on their way to war with Japan.
They flirted with young women, gave them flowers, invited them on dates. They had money to buy cigarettes, fizzy drinks and fancy clothes. They set up bands which played jazz music.
As New Zealand historian Redmer Yska puts it…
“The affluence and sheer zest for life of the jazz-crazy, flashily dressed Americans affected those who came in contact with them ... the youth of Auckland and Wellington glimpsed an alternative to the reserve, formality and introversion of British culture.”
WILLIAM: And the American influence stayed with future generations of young kiwis.
Hollywood and the US music industry embraced teen culture, keen to capitalise on their new spending power. Teens all over the Western world embraced them in return.
MĀNI: In Aotearoa, there was huge demand for US music, books and films. In fact, some of New Zealand's first homegrown rock stars started off playing covers of American music.
There was Johnny Cooper, “The Māori Cowboy”, who crooned American country music as well as his own songs.
WILLIAM: A few years later there was “Whānganui Elvis”, Johnny Devlin - arguably New Zealand’s first ever superstar.
He cut through the stitching in the seams of his shirts so screaming fans could tear them off more easily. Sometimes he went through multiple shirts in one show, winning him the nickname “The Satin Satan”
MĀNI: Kiwi teens who adopted American fashions and music became known as bodgies and widgies. They dressed in denim jeans and raced around on motorbikes.
WILLIAM: All this stuff made much of 1950s New Zealand deeply uneasy.
When another young Elvis impersonator copied the King’s hip thrusting dance moves at an Invercargill restaurant, he was hauled in front of the city council to explain.
The Mayor ordered him never to do it again.
Newspapers and magazines were full of worried editorials that American culture was leading Kiwi teens astray. One said...
“We have to find ways that hold in check a strong instinctive drive that is constantly being stirred up and egged on by sex-suggestion from Hollywood, Berlei, Frank Sinatra and the comic strip”
MĀNI: The Mazengarb report had a simple solution: ban everything!
And the government agreed!
Lots of famous 50s movies about teens like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause were either banned from New Zealand screens - or had their sexual, violent content edited out.
WILLIAM: Same for music - downstairs from this studio is RNZ’s old record archive. A lot of the vinyls have tracks which were physically scratched out to stop them being played on air.
MĀNI: Meanwhile, violent crime novels and comics were fed into government incinerators.
WILLIAM: And look, it’s easy to make fun of prudish politicians and journalists panicking about comic books.
But some of this stuff was graphic even by today's standards.
Here’s a quote from a 1950s comic called Battle Stories set in the Korean War. Maybe skip ahead a few seconds if you’re squeamish...
“The Reds will smell their hair burning as they die, and they’ll feel and hear their skin crackle for a brief second before it turns to ash … and those of them that aren’t barbecued like a side of beef will feel their lungs burst like balloons as the fire eats up the air and their dream of conquest blows apart in the searing blast.”
MĀNI: Wow… OK we get the point
And while there was no evidence teens in the 50s were committing any more crimes than their parents' generation, bodgies were sometimes involved in serious crime.
In 1955, 19-year-old Patrick Black stabbed another young man to death in a drunken brawl at an Auckland Cafe.
Both the court and the media were obsessed with the fact that both the victim and the accused were part of the bodgie culture. The judge described Black as belonging to a “peculiar sect”
WILLIAM: But all this angst about teens wasn’t really anything new. The Auckland Star was complaining about teen girls like this in 1892.
“Karangahape road is becoming a regular beauty pageant in the evenings … Some apparently respectable girls make as much noise as the larrikins of the sterner sex.”
MĀNI: A decade before that The Otago Witness was complaining about young men..
“… smoking in clumps at street corners, spitting on the pavement and insulting females.”
WILLIAM: And the truth is, adults were mostly complaining about a tiny minority of teens.
MĀNI: In 1965 Aotearoa had 42 thousand Boy Scouts, 33 thousand Girl Guides. There were only a few hundred Bodgies and Widgies in the 50s.
Most kids spent their evenings studying, working, or helping out with the family, not getting into knife fights.
WILLIAM: But still, there was something new going on in the 50s, and it had been brewing for nearly a hundred years.
Back in the early 1800s there were very different ideas about how you transitioned from childhood to adulthood.
For example Jacky Marmon first went to sea in 1807 when he was just seven years old. When he visited New Zealand a few years later he described himself as...
“A strapping lad of 12, strongly built, tall beyond my years and having seen as much “life” as a man of thirty … I could sing a good song, spin a fair yarn, and do a reasonable quantity of grog with any man aboard.”
In 19th century Britain, boys like Jacky joined the adult world as soon as they were capable of working.
The situation was a bit different for women. They were usually thought of as children up until they got married.
MĀNI: So what was happening for Māori?
Tāmariki Māori, often received their first tā moko, tattoo in their early to mid teens.
It wasn’t linked to any particular age, it was more a recognition from your elders that you were mature enough to transition to the adult world.
And look, both Pākehā and Māori accepted that teenagers needed more care and consideration than people in their 20s or 30s… But even young teens could be considered ready for marriage, alcohol, work, war, whatever.
WILLIAM: In the late 1800s, attitudes started to change. One place you can see that is in the law.
In 1877, kids under 12 were banned from working in factories. 12 was also the age people could legally consent to sex.
MĀNI: So far so simple. Under 12 you’re legally a child, over 12, you’re legally an adult.
But those age limits were lifted over time.
The age of consent went up to 14 in 1889, and to 16 in 1896.
The drinking age was first set at 16 in 1881, then lifted to 21 in 1910, before dropping back to 18 in the 1990s.
WILLIAM: So around this time, the late 19th to mid 20th century, we saw the creation of a new social and legal category of people. Neither children, nor adults.
It was the birth of the Teenager. Like literally the word “teenager” was first invented in the early 20th century
MĀNI: What was behind this? Well for one thing, the industrial revolution meant there was growing demand for an educated workforce.
From 1877 onward, state education was offered to all boys and girls up to the age of 15, although it was only compulsory till you were 12.
In 1878 there were six-and-a-half thousand students over 13 in school, ten years later that number had tripled to 20 thousand.
WILLIAM: And schools themselves changed. In the mid-1800s most schools taught everyone in the same room no matter how old they were.
But in the late 19th century separate high schools became more common.
MĀNI: High schools became spaces where teenagers created a shared identity independent of other age groups.
WILLIAM: But like most social change, it happened slowly and unevenly.
Like, at one Dunedin primary school in 1909 the principal was confused that pupils who had done well in Year Six were failing in Year Seven...
“On making enquiries, I find eight boys working ten and ten and half hours daily. Some get up at 3:30 [in the morning] to work milk carts. These children are quite listless at school.”
MĀNI: In the 19th and early 20th century, most teens either dropped out of school completely, or only attended occasionally.
Families often relied on their kids to bring home wages or help out on the farm. They couldn’t afford the luxury of highschool.
WILLIAM: The experience for Māori teenagers in the 19th and early 20th century was similar to Pākehā in some ways.
They generally started working as soon as they were physically capable. But for some, the teen years were focused on education in whare wānanga, Māori houses of learning.
MĀNI: These were highly tapu spaces for teaching selected individuals. Each taught a specific skill: Whare pora for weaving, whare mata for bird-snaring and fishing, and whare tātai for astronomy.
WILLIAM: When the missionaries arrived they also set up schools, teaching Māori of all ages to read and write in Te Reo.
Māori quickly set up their own wānanga for reading and writing. By the late 1850s, Māori had some of the highest literacy rates anywhere in the world. Roughly half of Māori adults could read in Te Reo.
MĀNI: But after the New Zealand Wars, things changed dramatically.
Traditional whare wānanga were disestablished.
The government passed new laws focused on assimilating Māori into British culture.
WILLIAM: The policy of assimilation or “racial amalgamation” is a topic we’re going to discuss more in a future episode, but in short Emeritus Professor Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku described it as the...
'Inexorable devaluation of every [Māori] social, economic, religious, cultural or political institution'.
MĀNI: When so-called “Native Schools” were established in 1867. reading, writing and even speaking Te Reo Māori was strongly discouraged all the way up until the late 20th century.
It’s a big part of the reason so few Māori can speak Te Reo today.
Early on, a few elite schools like St Stephens and Te Aute College were set up, in part to prepare high ranking Māori for careers as lawyers or doctors.
But most Native Schools only prepared Māori for working class jobs and marriage.
WILLIAM: Another difference between Māori and Pākehā was social norms around teen sexuality.
For Māori, sex was - traditionally - an acceptable subject for discussion with people of all ages.
And experts like Dr Elizabeth Kerekere and Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku also say that traditional Māori society was accepting of same-sex relationships between rangatahi - and of trans and non-binary gender identities.
MĀNI: One of the most famous Māori love stories is Hinemoa and Tūtānekai.
It’s about a young woman who swims across Lake Rotorua to be with the boy she loves.
WILLIAM: You know that song, Pokarekare ana? It’s based on this story. It was also the subject of Aotearoa’s first ever feature film!
MĀNI: But the version of the story written down by Europeans in the 1800s left out the role of another young man, Tiki.
In a version recorded by the Ngāti Rangiwewehi chief Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke - when Tūtānekai marries Hinemoa, he laments the loss of his relationship with Tiki.
Tiki is described as Tūtānekai’s “hoa takatāpui”, his intimate partner of the same sex.
WILLIAM: So traditionally, Māori accepted sexual diversity but as Dr Kerekere explains, that was suppressed through colonisation.
“As settler numbers and missionary influence increased, the systematic dismantling of Māori language and culture brought with it the British legacy of misogyny and homophobia.”
MĀNI: Of course, these sexual and gender identities didn’t go away. They were just driven underground.
But sometimes history gives us hints of their existence both in Māori and Pākehā society.
Take Resa Gibbs who grew up in late 19th century Nelson. Resa had a close relationship with another young woman who wrote her this letter:
“Oh Resa I used to love you more than any one in the world & to think you near perfection as possible, & I used to sleep with your likeness under my pillow & kiss it last thing at night.”
WILLIAM: So was Resa gay? Maybe, maybe not.
It was actually pretty common for young, 19th century women to send letters like this. Sometimes there was sexual attraction, sometimes it was just a close friendship.
MĀNI: We’re a bit more sure about Resa’s brother, Fred Gibbs.
When Fred was 16 he wrote dismissively about girls in his diary; all his admiration was for young men. He described one as a “fine looking fellow” who gave him “a tremendous impulse”.
WILLIAM: When Fred was writing that, sex between men could be punished with life imprisonment.
Actual convictions were rare in Fred and Resa's day. But that changed in the early 20th century...
Police took to raiding bars and clubs. Many gay, bisexual and trans teens lived in fear.
MĀNI: Lesbian relationships were never technically illegal and usually ignored by the authorities, but not always.
In 1954, just a few days after the Hutt Valley milk bar scandal kicked off, 16-year-old Pauline Parker and her best friend, 15-year-old Juliet Hulme, brutally murdered Juliet’s mother, Honora.
WILLIAM: There was a lot of attention on diary entries where the two talked about reenacting sexual relationships between historical figures.
Parker and Hulme said their relationship wasn’t sexual but it became a big talking point in the newspapers and in court.
MĀNI: The prosecutor called them “dirty minded little girls” while the Mazengarb Report claimed they were “abnormally homosexual in behaviour” and their killing of Hulme’s mother was evidence of a...
“pattern of immorality ... of a kind which was not previously manifest in New Zealand.”
WILLIAM: New Zealand was a conservative place by the 20th century. And social standards were only beginning to change.
For boys, you just need to look at Compulsory Military Training, or CMT.
From 1912 onward boys from 14 to 18 were required to take part in military training… marching with fake guns or broomsticks, taking part in mock battles, even practising shooting.
MĀNI: A lot of boys, like Charles Taylor, enjoyed cadet training. He said...
“We were encamped in Hagley Park and had a wonderful time, the routine was just the same as the regular soldiers.”
WILLIAM: It might have seemed like fun and games, but it was a serious part of our commitment to the British Empire.
Thousands of those cadets went on to fight and die in the World Wars.
CMT was abandoned in the 1930s and 40s thanks to the Great Depression and World War Two, but it was reintroduced from 1949 to 1972.
MĀNI: Most girls also had a pretty conservative upbringing in the first half of the 20th century.
From the 1870s until 1917 teen boys and girls were taught the same stuff at public schools.
But that all changed on the advice of health experts like Truby King and Ferdinand Batchelor who said....
'It is essential that the State recognise the necessity for a … divergence in the education of boys and girls about the age of puberty: after passing the standard usually attained at this age, let the girls' studies be chiefly directed to domestic management, domestic economy, physiology and hygiene'
That meant girls learnt cooking and cleaning to prepare for life as wives and mothers, instead of studying science and history.
WILLIAM: But there was plenty of pushback. One anonymous writer said schools needed to provide a solid education for...
“...The girl who looks over the hedge and longs for the open road that leads to the mountain peaks of knowledge.”
By the 1950s, though, those open roads were starting to beckon a new, post-war generation.
MĀNI: And through to the late 1960s those changing attitudes were boosted by a booming economy.
Wool prices were at an all time high thanks to the Korean War, and Aotearoa was nearing full employment.
WILLIAM: Teens in the 50s and 60s could get good paying jobs which they used to buy new clothes, motorbikes, comic books and movie tickets.
MĀNI: That fueled the desire for more independence. As one former Labour MP put it...
“Children get as much money in their pocket as father and mother, and when they have financial freedom, they want other freedoms too.”
WILLIAM: That’s not to say it was all smooth sailing, especially if you came from a poor family.
Stan Chun remembered working after school until 11pm at a Chinese greengrocer in Wellington in the 1940s and 50s.
“Sacks of potatoes were normally 140 [pounds] in weight, although they later reduced them to 60lb [27.2kgs]. I could carry one of these in each arm off the truck. I always dreaded the sacks bearing three blue lines. These could go beyond 160 [pounds].”
MĀNI: The booming economy led to other changes. For one thing, massive internal migration.
In just 50 years, the Māori population changed from 83% rural to 83% urban... one of the fastest rates of urban migration in world history.
WILLIAM: Māori urban migration is a bigger story than just young people, but for now, we’ll just focus on rangatahi.
MĀNI: Just like their Pākehā counterparts, many Māori teens came to the cities looking for work.
The authorities encouraged young Māori to make the move, hoping they would abandon the Māori world, and embrace the Pākehā world.
WILLIAM: But often, rangatahi ended up split between both cultures.
They might spend some time living and working in the city, hanging out with Pākehā mates in milk bars and dance halls,
Then they’d travel back to help out on the farm - look after children and elders - help with tangihanga and so on.
MĀNI: But as Historian Melissa Matutina Williams points out, bouncing between the Pākehā and Māori worlds could be difficult.
“Speaking English eloquently in public was important, but within the home it became pretentious and a sign that one was becoming too Pākehā-fied. Young people enjoyed eating eels and parāoa takakau (Māori flat bread) at home but were embarrassed to eat it in public and appear too Māori-fied.”
And rangatahi had to deal with overt racism. Some hotels and rental houses were advertised for whites only, some pubs, cinemas and swimming pools refused to serve Māori customers.
WILLIAM: But while racism was widespread, it wasn’t universal. Some young people enjoyed mixing with people of different backgrounds
MĀNI: Pākehā girls were often guests at the Ngāti Pōneke Youth Association, which had been set up for young Māori in Wellington in the 1930s.
The main reason according to one regular was that…
“The Pākehā girls got sick of their ballroom dancing up the road so they came to dance rock n’ roll with the Māori boys.”
WILLIAM: Hanging out at dances, milk bars and workplaces inevitably led to interracial relationships, and that was a big deal in the 1950s and 60s…
But we’ve spent a lot of this episode bashing grown-ups in the 1950s. So for the last few minutes of this episode, let’s put ourselves in their shoes.
This generation had a hard time growing up.
Many spent their childhoods in extreme poverty thanks to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A lot of the men had fought in World War Two, and came back physically and psychologically scarred.
MĀNI: Now, times were even more uncertain.
The year of the Mazengarb report was also the year of the Castle Bravo Test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the United States.
Nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed very likely.
WILLIAM: Kiwi adults craved stability and security, and moral panics over teens were just one symptom of that.
The National Party won the elections of 1949 and 1951 on an anti-communist, law and order platform. They cracked down on unions and reintroduced the death penalty.
MĀNI: Remember Patrick Black, the 19-year-old accused of stabbing another teen in 1955? He was convicted, taken to Mount Eden Prison and hanged.
Later that year another young man was executed, 20-year-old Edward Te Whiu. He was convicted of killing a 75 year old woman in a botched robbery.
WILLIAM: But the pressure for change couldn’t be stopped.
The execution of Edward Te Whiu in particular triggered a strong backlash against the death penalty. In 1961, it was permanently abolished.
MĀNI: The censors did their best to block what they saw as the evil influence of overseas culture, but it kept leaking through.
10 years after the Mazengarb Report, in 1964, the Beatles arrived in Aotearoa. It was a week of complete chaos as thousands of teens flocked to see the fab four in person.
WILLIAM: The counterculture revolution of the 1960s swept in from America. Young people got increasingly politically active and through the last decades of the 20th century their voice got louder.
MĀNI: Pasifika and Māori youth led Ngā Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panthers; movements which fought against racism and inequality.
WILLIAM: Young people were a huge part of the Environmental Movement, Womens Liberation, World Peace, Nuclear Free New Zealand, Anti-Apartheid, Gay Liberation.
MĀNI: Today’s teenagers are leading marches on issues like Climate Change and racial justice.
WILLIAM: And through it all adult anxiety about teens hasn’t gone anywhere either.
MĀNI: That’s all for this episode.
