¹ Archives New Zealand/Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington Office, New Zealand (hereafter ANZW), H1 45/4/28 venereal disease (hereafter VD) among Maoris 1922–1940, letter from Dr Michael Watt (Director-General of Health) to Dr Gordon Dempster (MOH for Auckland), 1 Aug. 1939. This article is a revised and enhanced version of chapter three in Antje Kampf, Mapping out the venereal wilderness: public health and STD in New Zealand, 1920–1980, Berlin, Lit-Verlag 2007.

² The contemporary term “venereal disease” that is used in this article refers to syphilis and gonorrhoea.

³ ANZW, H1 131/45 (23441) VD general 1942–1957, Dr Thomas Ritchie memorandum, 9 Apr. 1942.

⁴ Studies that look beyond the 1930s are still scarce. See, for example, James H Jones, Bad blood: the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, New York, Free Press, 1993; Karen Jochelson, The colour of disease: syphilis and racism in South Africa, 1880–1950, New York, Palgrave in association with St Antony's College Oxford, 2001; Megan Vaughan, Curing their ills: colonial power and African illness, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991, pp. 129–54; Milton Lewis, Scott Bamber and Michael Waugh (eds), Sex, disease, and society: a comparative history of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, Westport, CT, and London, Greenwood Press, 1997; Ann Marie Hickey, ‘The sexual savage: race science and medicalization of black masculinity’, in Dana Rosenfeld and Christopher A Faircloth (eds), Medicalized masculinities, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2006, pp. 165–82. For a historiographical overview, see Linda Bryder, ‘Sex, race and colonialism: a historiographical review’, Int. Hist. Rev., 1998, 20 (4): 806–22. The issue of racial health and venereal disease was a major component in the early twentieth-century debate. See, for example, Susan Lemar, ‘Control, compulsion and controversy: venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh 1910–1947’, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2001, pp. 52–77; Roger Davidson, Dangerous liaisons: a social history of venereal disease in twentieth-century Scotland, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 2000, pp. 107–8, 142–5; Alison Bashford, Imperial hygiene: a critical history of colonialism, nationalism and public health, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 166–72; Philippa Levine, Prostitution, race and politics: policing venereal disease in the British empire, New York, Routledge, 2003, pp. 125–6, 152–3. In New Zealand, historians have also stressed the importance of eugenicists’ ideas in the early twentieth century. See Helen Smyth, Rocking the cradle: contraception, sex and politics in New Zealand, Wellington, Steele Roberts, 2000, pp. 11–22; Philip J Fleming, ‘Eugenics in New Zealand’, MA thesis, Massey University, 1981, pp. 33–38, 42–59, 60–70. However, neither study has focused on a link between racial health and venereal disease. Sources used in this study have not revealed a widespread or dominant impact of eugenics in the official public health campaigns against venereal disease.

⁵ Jochelson, op. cit., note 4 above; Jenny Hughes, ‘A history of sexually transmitted diseases in Papua New Guinea’, in Lewis, Bamber, Waugh (eds), op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 231–48, on p. 243. For racist health policies in Australia in the early twentieth century, see Mary Ann Jebb, ‘The Lock Hospital experiment’, in B Reece and T Stannage (eds), European-Aboriginal relations in Western Australian history, Nedland, WA, University of Western Australia, Centre for Western Australian History, 1984, pp. 68–87; Megan Vaughan insists in her chapter on syphilis and Africans in Uganda that the discourse on race was ambiguous. See Vaughan, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 144–9.

⁶ Roger Davidson, ‘Venereal disease, public health and social control: the Scottish experience in a comparative perspective’, Dynamis, 1997, 17: 341–68, p. 354. His assessment has been based on a review of claims by Philip J Fleming (‘“Shadow over New Zealand”: the response to venereal disease in New Zealand 1910–1945’, PhD thesis, Massey University, 1989) and by Barbara Brookes (‘Aspects of women's health, 1895–1945’, in Linda Bryder (ed.), A healthy country: essays on the social history of medicine in New Zealand, Wellington, B Williams Books, 1991, pp. 149–64).

⁷ In New Zealand, the first in-depth study on venereal disease in twentieth-century New Zealand mentions Maori on only two pages. Fleming, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 86, 178. Venereal disease and Maori are noted in Derek A Dow, Maori health and government policy, 1840–1940, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 1999, pp. 124, 181, 208. There is more extensive scholarship on the nineteenth century, see, for example, Jean Marie Kehoe, ‘Medicine, sexuality, and imperialism: British medical discourses surrounding venereal disease in New Zealand and Japan: a socio-historical and comparative study’, PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1992, pp. 97–166. On health care policy and Maori, see Dow, op. cit.; Raeburn Lange, May the people live: a history of Maori health development 1900–1918, Auckland University Press, 1999. For a critical overview of the status of scholarship, see Linda Bryder and Derek A Dow, ‘Introduction: Maori health history, past, present and future’, in Health & History, 2001, 3: 3–11.

⁸ Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (hereafter AJHR), 1922, H-31A: 10.

⁹ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, Dr Te Rangi Hiroa to Thomas Valintine (Director-General of Health), 25 Aug. 1922.

¹⁰ W I Cawkwell and K N McNamara, ‘A survey of venereal diseases in the Auckland Province’, Preventive Medicine Dissertation, University of Otago, 1935, p. 36. Similar accounts by doctors are discussed in H B Alexander and C G Hunter, ‘An investigation of venereal disease in Hawke's Bay, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin: with special reference to gonorrhoea in the female’, Preventive Medicine Dissertation, University of Otago, 1935, p. 36.

¹¹ AJHR, 1922, H-31A: 4.

¹² Ibid., p. 10.

¹³ Only in the 1940s, and from the 1960s onwards, were Maori and European rates listed separately, unofficially and on internal clinic reports only.

¹⁴ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to William Findlay (MOH for Wellington), 18 Mar. 1932. On a general lack of governmental health policies for Maori, particularly until the 1930s, see, for example, Lange, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 196, 268.

¹⁵ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Joseph Frengley (Deputy Director-General of Health) to Dr Appleby, 18 Aug. 1922.

¹⁶ David C Thorns and Charles P Sedgwick, Understanding Aotearoa/New Zealand: historical statistics, Palmerston North, Dunmore Press, 1997, p. 54, table 2.9.

¹⁷ Lange, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 42–4.

¹⁸ ANZW, H1 45/- VD general 1922–1935, letter Dr John Mark to Michael Watt, 11 Nov. 1934.

¹⁹ On the incidence, see also Fleming, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 86; Brookes, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 163.

²⁰ Archives New Zealand/Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Auckland Office, New Zealand (hereafter ANZA), Department of Health Auckland District Office (BAAK) A49/66b 25/42 VD general 1939–43, letter Michael Watt to all MOHs circular, ‘Wassermann tests on Maori mothers’, 2 Oct. 1939.

²¹ See Michael King, ‘Between two worlds’, in Geoffrey W Rice (ed.), The Oxford history of New Zealand, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 287. On infant mortality, see Linda Bryder, ‘New Zealand's infant welfare services and Maori, 1907–1960’, in Health & History, 2001, 3: 65–86.

²² ANZW, H1 45/4/28, Michael Watt memorandum, 2 Oct. 1939.

²³ ANZA, BAAK A358/143a 25/42 III VD general 1943–1957, letter Dr William Reid (Auckland Hospital) to Registrar Native Department, 15 May 1945.

²⁴ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Dr Kenneth Davis (MOH for Gisborne) to Michael Watt, 29 Aug. 1939.

²⁵ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 20 Sept. 1939. However, Maori suffered disproportionately more from infectious diseases that could have impacted on the results of Wassermann tests. See ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter A D Nelson to Michael Watt, 8 Apr. 1932.

²⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 20 Sept. 1939.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ ANZA, BAAK A358/143a, Departmental circular to all hospitals, 4 Oct. 1939. ANZA, BAAK A49/66b, Departmental circular, 4 Dec. 1939. Vital statistics for Maori were not systemized before 1913.

²⁹ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Thomas Ritchie to MOHs, 2 Oct. 1939. This policy included the screening of Maori soldiers who came from isolated areas in North Auckland. ANZW, AD1 330/9/1VD general vol. 4 1945–1953, letter Fred Bowerbank (Director-General of Medical Services; he was later made a KBE) to Adjutant-General, 4 July 1945.

³⁰ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to Dr James Foley, 18 Oct. 1939.

³¹ Bradford Haami, Dr Golan Maaka: Māori doctor, North Shore City, Tandem Press, 1995, p. 108.

³² ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Dr Golan Maaka to Michael Watt, 27 Oct. 1939.

³³ Haami, op. cit., note 31 above, p. 110.

³⁴ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, Golan Maaka report, 21 Mar. 1941, p. 8.

³⁵ AJHR, 1940, H-31: 4.

³⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to Arnold Nordmeyer (Minister of Health), 13 Nov. 1941.

³⁷ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to MOHs, 13 Nov. 1941. On the Department's scheme, see also Dow, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 181–3.

³⁸ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to Arnold Nordmeyer, 13 Nov. 1941. Between 1936 and 1945, tuberculosis related deaths climbed for males from third to second place of mortality, for females to number one. D Ian Pool, Te iwi Maori: a New Zealand population, past, present and projected, Auckland University Press, 1991, p. 116, table 6.4.

³⁹ Dow, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 194–5.

⁴⁰ Michael Watt to MOH for Auckland, 26 Apr. 1946, BAAK A358/143a.

⁴¹ ANZW, H1 20362, letter R A Peez (Wairoa Hospital Board) to Kenneth Davis, 22 Oct. 1942.

⁴² ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Carlyle Gilberd (MOH for Whangerei) to Michael Watt, 30 Apr. 1942.

⁴³ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Dr Eric Bridgman to Waikato Hospital, 31 Oct. 1943.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to Arnold Nordmeyer, 13 Nov. 1941. The impact of disputes on treatment provision has also been identified in the earlier smallpox vaccination campaign, see Alison Day, ‘“Chastising its people with scorpions”: Maori and the 1913 smallpox epidemic’, New Zealand Journal of History (hereafter NZJH), 1999, 33 (2): 180–99, on pp. 192–3.

⁴⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Auckland Hospital Board to Michael Watt, 15 Feb. 1940; Departmental circular letter to Medical Superintendents and Public Hospitals, 4 Dec. 1939.

⁴⁷ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 Nov. 1939.

⁴⁸ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 18 Oct. 1943. Historians have described similar difficulties of treatment provision in remote areas for Aborigines and Africans. See Jebb, op. cit., note 5 above, pp. 72–4; Milton J Lewis, The people's health in Australia 1950 to the present, Westport, CT, and London, Praeger, 2003, pp. 237–9; Jochelson, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 162–3, 168. By contrast to New Zealand, both treatment schemes were highly racist, as patients were placed in lock hospitals, and often received no treatment at all.

⁴⁹ ANZW, H1 45/47 (20361) VD reports 1941–1943, letter Nurse Flora Cameron to Michael Watt, 14 Dec. 1942.

⁵⁰ This is described in ANZW, H1 131/45/4, Duncan Cook to Michael Watt, 27 Aug. 1946.

⁵¹ This sensitivity, however, was not applied to all diseases. In tuberculosis cases nurses visited European families.

⁵² ANZW, H1 45/48 VD cases—treatment by district nurses 1941–1943, letter Dr Leith Riddell to Michael Watt, 25 Aug. 1942.

⁵³ ANZW, H1 35/100 (13294) Juvenile Delinquents 1934–1940, letter School Committee to Peter Fraser (Minister of Health), 15 Aug. 1938; letter Peter Fraser to School Committee, 5 Sept. 1938.

⁵⁴ ANZW, H1 35/100 (13294), letter MOH for Christchurch to Elizabeth Gunn, 2 Dec. 1938.

⁵⁵ The Department had provided health care for remote areas through the district nurses scheme since 1909. A Native Nursing Scheme was introduced by 1911. See also Alexandra McKegg, ‘The Maori Health Nursing Scheme: an experiment in autonomous health care’, NZJH, 1992, 26 (2): 145–60.

⁵⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 Nov. 1939. ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Frederick Dawson (MOH for New Plymouth) to Michael Watt, 10 Apr. 1942.

⁵⁷ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Michael Watt to Dr Falconer Brown, 20 May 1941. One of the factors that apparently affected Maori patients more than Europeans was their diet (shellfish). Letter Falconer Brown to Michael Watt, 22 May 1941.

⁵⁸ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Michael Watt to MOHs, 19 Aug. 1941.

⁵⁹ ANZW, H1 45/47 (20361) VD reports 1941–1943, letter Nurse Flora Cameron to Michael Watt, 14 Dec. 1942.

⁶⁰ See also McKegg, op. cit., note 55 above, pp. 155–6.

⁶¹ Elizabeth Paora, ‘Public health and other problems of a Maori health district and suggestions for improvement’, New Zealand Nursing Journal, 1940, 33 (9): 285.

⁶² ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 22 July 1941; ANZW, H1 45/48, letter Wairoa Hospital Board to Michael Watt, 18 Sept. 1942.

⁶³ ANZW, H1 45/48, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 30 Oct. 1942.

⁶⁴ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 Nov. 1939.

⁶⁵ King has referred to the “rural proletariat”. King, op. cit., note 21 above, p. 290.

⁶⁶ Only five doctors invoked the regulation for their patients in a three-month span. Watt to MOHs, 13 Nov. 1941, p. 1, H1 45/4/28.

⁶⁷ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Golan Maaka to Michael Watt, 21 Mar. 1941.

⁶⁸ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 22 July 1941.

⁶⁹ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 26 Sept. 1939.

⁷⁰ The non-compliance issue with Maori and tuberculosis is detailed in Debbie Dunsford, ‘War on disease, tuberculosis in New Zealand during WW2’, unpublished paper given at the New Zealand Historical Association Conference, Dunedin, November 2003.

⁷¹ Mr Haami Ratana, MP (Western Maori District), New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (hereafter NZPD), 1937, 248: 1015.

⁷² Cawkwell and McNamara, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 35–6.

⁷³ ANZW, H1 45/47 (20361), letter Falconer Brown to Michael Watt, 14 Sept. 1945.

⁷⁴ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Inspector of Health to Michael Watt, 12 May 1932. The description of the sentencing is noted in ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Clerk of Court to Dr Thomas McKibbin, 11 Aug. 1932.

⁷⁵ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter T Pargeter to Michael Watt, 12 May 1932.

⁷⁶ This was before the 1940 Health Act Amendment and the 1941 Venereal Diseases Regulation that gave medical officers more power in notification processes of suspected cases.

⁷⁷ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Carlyle Gilberd to Michael Watt, 11 Oct. 1939. Such a list of all blood tests taken from all Northland districts was sent in 1945. ANZA, BAAK A358/143a, letter Hubert Smith (MOH for Wellington) to MOH for Auckland 31 July 1945. The MOH for Palmerston North referred to suggestions by local doctors to use penicillin on Maori defaulters to produce a rapid cure. ANZW, H1 131/45 (23441), letter Duncan Cook to Michael Watt, 21 Mar. 1946. Neither the superintendent of Wanganui Hospital nor the Department were prepared to agree to this, most likely because of the shortage and cost of penicillin.

⁷⁸ ANZW, H1 35/100 (20704) Juvenile delinquents 1940–1941, letter Harold Turbott to Carlyle Gilberd, 22 July1940. For a similar concern, see ANZW, H1 35/100 (13294), letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 July 1940. Clause 84 of the Health Amendment Act of 1940 provided full protection in civil and criminal proceedings. Sources do not reveal whether similar practice was applied to European children, yet it seems highly unlikely. This practice mirrored the handling of anti-typhoid inoculation in the 1930s. Dow, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 192.

⁷⁹ ANZW, H1 131/45 (23441), letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 11 June 1943.

⁸⁰ See also Katharine Sophia Goodfellow, ‘Health for the Maori? Health and the Maori village schools, 1890–1940’, MA thesis, The University of Auckland, 1991, pp. 4–5.

⁸¹ See ANZW, H1 45/4/28. A suggestion to translate the Departmental pamphlet on venereal disease into Maori was equally abandoned. ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 20 Sept. 1939. This trend was possibly also influenced by fear of discrimination. See ANZW, Army Department (AD1) 330/9/1 Venereal disease (VD)—general vol. 2, 1941–1942.

⁸² AJHR, 1928, H-31, p. 36.

⁸³ ANZW, Department of Maori Affairs (MA) 36/3/3 Health and hygiene 1932–1956, Watt memorandum to Native Department, 16 Feb. 1935. The issue of sanitation and the Department is discussed in Dow, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 188–96. On the issue of cultural differences between Europeans and Maori regarding sanitation, see Brookes, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 157–8.

⁸⁴ Cawkwell and McNamara, op. cit., note 10 above, p. 35.

⁸⁵ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter William Findlay to Michael Watt, 27 Apr. 1932.

⁸⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 Nov. 1939. A similar approach by Educationalists to view Africans as a homogeneous group has been detailed by Jochelson, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 168.

⁸⁷ Some councils, for example, refused to talk about unfounded claims of an alleged increase in cases in the Napier area. ANZW, H1 35/100 (13294), letter Taranaki Council to Michael Watt, 17 Aug. 1938. On autonomy and selective use of European medicine and agency, see also McKegg, op. cit., note 55 above, p. 158.

⁸⁸ For statistics, see Pool, op. cit., note 38 above, pp. 153–4.

⁸⁹ See Nancy M Taylor, The New Zealand people at war: the home front, Wellington, Historical Publications Branch, Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1986, vol. 2, p. 500. On the general social and cultural impact of Maori moving increasingly to the cities, see King, op. cit., note 21 above, pp. 289; Pool, op. cit., note 38 above, pp. 121–3.

⁹⁰ ANZA, BAAK A358/143a, letter Thomas Ritchie to Gordon Dempster, 13 Jan. 1944. Jochelson has documented a similar concern about venereal disease with the movements of Africans into towns, see Jochelson, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 166–7.

⁹¹ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Thomas Ritchie to Controller of Manpower Wellington, 18 Apr. 1944. The separate statistics are mentioned in J M Foreman, ‘Work done in the Auckland V. D. Clinic’, Preventive Medicine Dissertation, University of Otago, 1945, unpaginated.

⁹² Some authors have suggested that wartime New Zealand concerns about female sexual delinquency were “highly racialised”. Bronwyn Dalley, Family matters: child welfare in twentieth-century New Zealand, Auckland University Press, 1998, p.119. See also Fleming, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 178. But working-class, urban European females were equally singled out, for example, by “vice squads” and discriminatory comments. This suggests that perceptions were gendered rather than merely racial. See also Kampf, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 206–10.

⁹³ H Black and M Farb, ‘Prevalence and control of venereal disease: with special reference to Wellington city’, Preventive Medical Dissertation, University of Otago, 1943, p. 37.

⁹⁴ ANZA, BAAK A358/143a, letter Dr Bill Thompson (MOH for Auckland) to Thomas Ritchie (Director-General of Health), 25 May 1948.

⁹⁵ AJHR, 1944, H-20: 3. On Maori offences and their racial perception, see Bronwyn Dalley, ‘Moving out of the realm of myth: government child welfare services to Maori, 1925–1972’, NZJH, 1998, 32 (2): 189–208, pp. 196–7.

⁹⁶ H Luxford, quoted in NZPD, 1944, 264: 254. However, Luxford was generally outspoken about female delinquent sexuality irrespective of race.

⁹⁷ Press, 6 July 1943. This was not carried out.

⁹⁸ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, Controller of Manpower to Michael Watt, 27 Mar. 1944.

⁹⁹ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Michael Watt to Controller of Manpower, 18 Apr. 1944.

¹⁰⁰ On the failure of the housing schemes to address Maori needs, see Goodfellow, op. cit., note 80 above, pp. 23, 53–4. The slums are described in W B Bland, Slums of Auckland, Wellington, Progressive Publishing Society, 1942, p. 5.

¹⁰¹ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Michael Watt to Controller of Manpower, 18 Apr. 1944.

¹⁰² Henry Thorne Morton (MP for Waitemata), in NZPD, 1944, 264: 255.

¹⁰³ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Dr Tremewan (MOH for Auckland) to Michael Watt, 18 Apr. 1946.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid.

¹⁰⁵ ANZW, AD1 330/9/8/ VD Maori 1940–1943, letter Fred Bowerbank to J G Coates, 10 Feb. 1943.

¹⁰⁶ The shadow over New Zealand: venereal disease, Christchurch, Progressive Publishing Society, 1942, p. 30. They were quick, however, to state that they did not consider it “typical of the Maori population as a whole”.

¹⁰⁷ Morton, op. cit., note 102 above, p. 255. A European teacher at the Native School near Gisborne exclaimed that “the incidence of venereal disease among them [Maori] is terribly high … Everyone who works among them knows of it”. Quoted in Smyth, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 65.

¹⁰⁸ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Doris Gordon (Director of Maternal Welfare) to Arnold Nordmeyer, 6 May 1947.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid.

¹¹⁰ ANZW, H1 35/100 (13294), letter Gordon Dempster to Michael Watt, 16 July 1940.

¹¹¹ ANZW, H1 68/1/15 Hawke's Bay Hospital—children with vulvo-vaginitis 1936–1938, MOH for Wellington report, 19 Sept. 1936. On the discrimination against Maori nurses, see also McKegg, op. cit., note 55 above, pp. 149–50, 154.

¹¹² ‘Extract medical conference on public health problems in N. Z.’, New Zealand Medical Journal (hereafter NZMJ), 1940, 39 (214): 343. However, it is not clear whether this referred to concern about spread to Europeans or the welfare of the Maori population.

¹¹³ Black and Farb, op. cit., note 93 above, p. 63. By comparison, other nations appear to have been less concerned about private rights. Wassermann tests were already routine in maternity wards in Melbourne in 1910. Scotland adopted prenatal tests in maternity homes increasingly during the 1930s. Davidson, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 78, 161. In Chicago, mass testing was applied to organizations such as the Tribune. Suzanne Poirier, Chicago's war on syphilis 1937–1940: the times, the Trib, and the clap doctor, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1995, pp. 123–4.

¹¹⁴ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Harold Turbott to Kenneth Davis, 31 Aug. 1943.

¹¹⁵ ANZW, H1 131/45/4, letter Kenneth Davis to Michael Watt, 23 Aug. 1943.

¹¹⁶ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to A D Nelson, 6 Apr. 1932. This assessment was still valid in the 1940s despite the new 1941 Venereal Diseases Regulations.

¹¹⁷ On the importance of Maori councils in implanting the Department's health campaign, see also Mason Durie, Whairoa: Maori health development, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 41–4; Lange, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 140–6, 186–8, 189–205, 225–8.

¹¹⁸ ANZA, BAAK A358/143a, letter Secretary to Carlyle Gilberd, 28 May 1945.

¹¹⁹ ANZW, H1 45/4/28, letter Michael Watt to Kenneth Davis, 14 Aug. 1939. On fears of the Department for European population in the early twentieth century, see Geoffrey W Rice, ‘Maori health and Heaton Rhodes as minister of public health, 1912–1915’, NZJH, 2001, 35 (2): 204–20, pp. 210–11.

¹²⁰ ANZA, BAAK A49/66b, letter Michael Watt to MOHs, 9 May 1941 (emphasis added). This is in contrast to the African setting where the intention of the government was to limit the contact between Africans and whites. See Jochelson, op. cit., note 4 above, p.168.

¹²¹ N L Edison ‘Mortality from tuberculosis in the Maori race’, NZMJ, 1943, 42 (229): 110.

¹²² See Dow, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 173.

¹²³ For a similar finding in the debate about Maori infant health care, see Bryder, op. cit., note 21 above, p. 85.