Christchurch ArchivesSpace

Scope and Contents

Reminiscences of old Canterbury is a photocopied copy of sections of William Ellison Messervy Burke manuscript scrapbook made by Johannes Carl Andersen.

Andersen also copied the original sketches, made an index, and included other, non-Burke material into these Reminiscences. He rewrote much of the scrapbook to produce a sanitized version sometimes at variance with the facts of the original.

Scope and Contents The William Ellison Messervy Burke manuscript is a scrapbook with text written as gossipy personal comment about individuals written in a lively manner. The period covered in depth is 1850s and 1860s during the settlement years, with some later material. Interspersed throughout the text are hundreds of cuttings from books and magazines. Many of the cuttings are portraits and caricatures, not always of the people described, but regarded by Burke as having similar...