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Overview
This trophy was competed for by the Wellington Savage Club and the Orphans' Club between 1949 and 1974. It is inscribed with 'PRESENTED BY PAST CHIEF SAVAGE BARTON GINGER For Annual Bowling Competition Between WELLINGTON SAVAGE & ORPHANS' CLUBS 1949'. The trophy sits on a black base which has small plaques on it recording the competition winner for each year.
The first Savage Club was established in London in 1857, named after the English poet Richard Savage. Affiliated clubs flourished in Australia and New Zealand from the 1880s, and the Wellington Club was established in 1905. Similar to other men’s clubs in New Zealand the Savage Clubs claimed to be non-political and free of religious prejudice. Whereas Gentlemen’s Clubs were aimed at the elite and Workingmen’s Clubs catered for working men, the members of the Savage Clubs were primarily middle-class. For most of their history Savage Clubs were open only to men, although towards the end of the twentieth century most did eventually admit women as members.
Combining fraternity and ceremony, the clubs ‘were a distinctive world of their own, exhibiting a love of ritual and formal procedure, of humour and alcohol, doggerel verse and caricature drawing, song and dance’ (Thomas 1998, 43). Competitions and 'raids' - visits to other clubs - were important club activities, promoting a sense of fraternity within and between clubs.
Savage Clubs were popular throughout the twentieth century, and in many centres Orphans’ Clubs were established for those who couldn’t get into the parent associations because of restricted membership numbers. The Wellington Savage Club continued to meet until the 2000s, but due to dwindling numbers the club was dissolved in 2010.
Further reading