We have digitised a rather splendid 1902 publication Tourists’ guide to Canterbury.

I will share some of the interesting ads and pictures from it in a series of posts – there’s lots of information about local businesses and places in 1902.

This advert is for The Christchurch Meat Company. There is a history of this company in The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Canterbury Provincial District], and the following extract from the Australasian 10 June 1899 talks about how The Company treated their workers (very apt for Labour Day):

Workmen are provided with comfortable homes, which they may rent or purchase from the company. There is a recreation hall for the use of themselves and their families, and a lending library, with a good stock of standard works. If all this were done by the Government, it would be blazoned from one end of the world to the other, but as a mere matter of ordinary business it passes unnoticed. It is an object lesson which gives us at a glance, the whole secret of New Zealand’s prosperity.