On December 8th 1942 a fire swept through Seacliff Hospital outside Dunedin. In the inferno 37 women lost their lives. The fire was the worst in New Zealand’s history until the Ballantynes’ fire, but surprisingly is neither well-known or documented.
New Zealand’s Got Talent winner Renee Maurice has set out to change that; she’s devoted the best part of the last 10 years to uncovering not just the details of the tragic fire, but also the lives of the women who were incarcerated at Seacliff. She’s written the musical Seacliff: The Demise of Ward 5, which is set to see it open at Te Papa this weekend, 75 years after the fire. The play was first produced by Renee in Dunedin last year but has been further developed for the Wellington season.
The cast of Seacliff: The Demise of Ward 5 Photo: Supplied
Maurice first learned about the tragic event through her own research into New Zealand’s history. “I began my research when I was 15 and still at high school. I had always been interested in history, and particularly New Zealand history. And when I asked my history teacher at school about it, he knew nothing and that really shocked me. So it urged me on to do even more research and find out more about this horrific event”
The more Maurice uncovered it became apparent just how catastrophic the blaze was, exposing the lax safety and emergency standards of the day, and also giving a window into the stretched resources New Zealand institutions faced in wartime.
“A lot of different factors contributed to it being so horrendous. I think one of the main things was that there were chemicals [present which were] used to clean the ward, resulting in it being more of an inferno. There was a particularly high wind that night, and lack of staffing. I discovered while reading the inquest at Wellington Archives that when the guard came to unlock the door he couldn’t find the right key. It was poorly managed. There were no fire hydrants in any institution at that time, and from what I’ve read this really instigated putting fire alarms and hydrants in these places afterwards.”
“There were only two survivors that day,” says Maurice. “One jumped from a top story window, and another was rescued by a guard who pulled the grating off a window and pulled her out.”
It’s the personal stories of the women incarcerated that provides the central focus for the musical. The tale weaves its way around the central character, Grace Sutton, who came to Seacliff following the murder of her young daughter. It transpires however that Grace Sutton has been brought to Seacliff because her husband “just wanted to get rid of her.”
These tales of women wrongly institutionalised resonate with actor-musician Jo Hodgson, who performs in the musical. “I did a bit research on the Dunedin show, and thought, wow this is a really powerful and moving story that’s been woven around the true event. These women would not necessarily have been in there because they needed to be; they might been suffering from postnatal depression, or going through menopause, or had other traumatic events in their lives.”
“It intrigued me that these women really shouldn’t have been institutionalised,” says Hodgson. “The character I play, Lucille, has been in the institution 17 years. She’s a psychic and has had some tragedy in her life, but is that really a reason to incarcerate somebody? And would we do that now?”
It might seem strange that such tragic subject matter should be the inspiration for a musical, but relatives of the victims have been impressed with the respectful and deferential way the show treats the tragedy. Their reaction has been wholly positive, and might have inspired further action in paying tribute to the victims, and Maurice is proud to have been a part of that.
“This year there’s going to be a memorial in Dunedin for those women affected. For the first time there’s going to be a plaque erected at Anderson’s Bay cemetery where most of the women are buried, and another one at Seacliff itself; that’s somewhat a follow on from the Dunedin production that’s encouraged these families to get together and say to the council that it’s about time something happened. So that’s really inspirational, and I’m so proud to be a part of making that happen.”
Seacliff: The Demise of Ward 5 is at Te Papa Museum, 8th – 9th December.
