Chemical bottles in the main laboratory and classroom at the Thames School of Mines
Elizabeth Cox, NZHPT
In 1916, bureaucracy snubbed W H Baker, Director of the Thames School of Mines. Responding to his request for a supply of official stamps, the Under-Secretary for Mines wrote that “in view of the very small number of mining students who are now coming up for examination from your school and the large expense of conducting same, I regret that I am unable to see my way to any way increase the latter item”.
Eight years later, a report by the Waihi Inspector of Mines concluded that as fewer than 12 % of the School’s 92 students were taking subjects that could equip them for careers in mining “the School therefore is really a technical rather than a mining school”.
So what type of student did the Thames School of Mines turn out between 1886 and 1954? And why did the Mines Department go on paying the bills when the School’s activities were at best peripheral to its operations?
Mining certainly lay behind the formation of the School in late 1885. The Thames goldfield, opened in 1867 had peaked in 1871, but mining remained crucial to Thames. Everyone wanted to see the town regain its prosperity. In 1885, the Minister of Mines William Larnach, hired Otago University’s colourful Professor of Chemistry, James Gow Black to tour the goldfields lecturing miners in elementary chemistry, geology and assaying. The Government derived much of its revenue from gold duties and stood to gain if the miners found more gold or became more efficient at recovering it.
At Thames, as elsewhere, Black drew large, enthusiastic audiences to his evening lectures. Within days, the locals had obtained Larnach’s permission to retain Black’s assistant, Alexander Montgomery, as director of their new School. The Thames School of Mines was one of about 30 “goldfields schools of mines” formed about this time. Most lasted just a short time, expiring along with their goldfields. Thames was the largest and one of the longest surviving. Local schools of mines associations bought buildings, paid staff and ran the schools’ day-to-day affairs. The Mines Department set general guidelines, paid the Directors’ salaries and subsidised costs.
Classes began at Thames in rented accommodation early in 1886, while workers converted the former Wesleyan Sunday School buildings. The first year’s students took laboratory and practical chemistry, metallurgy, assaying and mechanical drawing. Some just wanted to pick up assaying skills (useful even to bank staff), but many sought the mine manager’s certificates that had been made compulsory by Larnach’s 1886 Mining Act. Early newspaper reports paint a picture of industrious learning in the evening classes.
The school gave a good grounding in mining knowledge since it was located on a working goldfield. Throughout its long history, the School’s Council fought on behalf of “the working man’s privilege”, as it was termed the right to receive practical instruction. Many students did win Mines Department scholarships to Otago University’s School of Mines and later went on to serves as directors of schools of mines or mine managers. But they were a minority.
Early on the Thames School of Mines’ minute book featured complaints that too few students were taking core mining subjects. In 1908, the Scholl’s President, E F Adams, complained that “we find that the youth who have been fairly successful in schools are drifting into small office and Civil Service appointments instead of taking up mining as a profession”. This was hardly surprising. The Thames goldfields enjoyed a few brief revivals, but he trend was downwards for gold production and mining jobs. The 792 miners employed in 1892 had fallen to 159 in 1914. The Civil Service and engineering industries offering better job opportunities were expanding.
Thames struggled to get a technical school, but to no avail. Since the high school curriculum was narrow, the Thames School of Mines acted as a de facto technical college, altering its curriculum to suit demand, Mineralogy was added in 1887, along with free science classes for high school students. Surveying was added in 1891 and mathematics in 1893. All were mining subjects, although maths (like mechanical drawing) had broader applications. Electricity was added in 1902. In 1911, the School offered its first teachers’ science class, to assist local school teachers.
A bigger change came in 1919, when engineering joined the subject list. By then, the Thames goldfield was all but finished, and the School’s Council realised that its only future lay in meeting the needs of the growing foundry and motor vehicle industries, which was them mechanising rapidly. The School lobbied hard to build engineering workshops, but the Mines Department baulked at the cost. Between the Wars, workshop practice, marine engineering, practical engineering and mechanical drawing attracted the best attendances. Even so, the School had to wait until 1939 for its workshop, and then one shared off-site with the high school. In the 1920s, the School briefly offered agriculture as a subject.
Core mining subjects became less important after the early 1900s, reviving briefly during the Depression, when the School administered a relief scheme for workers. The 33 students taking mining in 1898 had fallen to just one a decade later. Attendance at assaying fell from 44 to ten. During the same time, the total roll plunged from 260 to 65, although the roll later revived.
Students fell into two age groups. High school students tool the free Saturday morning elementary science classes and some Friday evening classes. They made up 30 to 50% of total enrolments. The second group was adults, including older men undergoing vocational training. The most sought after certificate and diplomas were the quarryman’s mine manager’s or stationary engine driver’s certificates.
Predictably, most students were male. Girls had taken free Saturday morning classes and women had dominated the special classes run for science teachers, but nine attended regular adult classes. When a woman applied to attend the chemistry classes at the Waihi School of Mines in 1906, the Thames School of Mines Secretary relied that “We have never received any applications from ladies for admission to any of our regular classes… I believe the Council would hesitate before admitting girls to the regular classes but would not hesitate to have a class formed if sufficient candidates offered themselves and gave instruction at a different hour from that of the male candidates. I fancy that the presence of young female candidates would have a tendency to keep the males away”. This ban was later relaxed. The 1918 register shows six women attending the practical wireless class. Thereafter, women attended the school in small numbers studying especially electricity and pharmacy.
Why the Mines Department kept paying for the Thames School of Mines for so long is uncertain. It made half-hearted attempts to transfer the School to the Education Department during World War I and again in the late 1920s, but resisted in the 1930s when a government economy commission tried to close the Thames or the Waihi School. The Department had long known that the Thames School was turning out too few students with mining qualifications to justify its existence on these grounds. It is likely that because the School seldom exceeded its small annual budget the Department felt reluctant to provoke local antagonism by upsetting an arrangement the origin of which were lost in the bureaucratic mists of time. In 1952, the Under-Secretary for Mines commented that “the method of financing the schools has grown like Topsy and is now a puzzle to anyone who cares to understand it”.
By then enrolments no longer justified even this policy of benign neglect. In 1952, the Department decided to close the Thames School of Mines when its long-serving Director, Hugh Crawford, retired in 1954. There was criticism of the decision, but it was muted. Thames’s more ambitious young people could now travel to Auckland or Hamilton for tertiary education, while a healthy job market could absorb the rest. Thames no longer needed its de facto technical college.