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Sewn on the voyage
This one piece dress is recorded as having being made by Eliza Wrigley during her voyage to New Zealand with her husband Henry on the ‘Clontarf’ in 1858. Immigration guides advised women to equip themselves with fabric and sewing equipment in order to keep themselves busy on the voyage. In his 1849 Handbook for Intending Emigrants to the Southern Settlements of NewZealand, George Earp even recommended that women make half their wardrobe on board.
Made from a silk and wool gauze with a satin check, which has been printed à la disposition, the dress is completely hand-stitched. The bodice, which fastens at the centre front, is lined with fine cotton lawn. The lack of shaping in the bodice suggests that Eliza did not have a pattern to follow and lacked knowledge about how to shape a bodice.
Eliza Wrigley
On arriving in Wellington, Elizabeth and Henry Wrigley established a store specialising in millinery, hosiery and general fancy goods in Cuba Street. The couple imported goods from London, and sold them not just in Wellington but also further afield. In 1864, the same year in which she gave birth to her third child, Eliza travelled to Napier with ‘a choice selection’ of hats and bonnets. Advertising herself as ‘Mrs Wrigley, Milliner, of Wellington’, she set up what we would refer to today as a ‘pop-up shop’ for three weeks. (Advertisement, Hawke's Bay Herald, 17 September 1864, p. 4.)
Eliza was not simply a ‘colonial helpmeet’ operating on the periphery. As Catherine Bishop writes in Women Mean Business: Colonial Business Women in New Zealand (2019), ‘when Eliza suddenly died in 1867, Henry immediately sold up, telling potential buyers that "connections already established is very extensive", underscoring both his wife’s centrality to the family business and her marketing ability’. (Bishop, 126). Henry described the business as ‘large and remunerative’ for those as willing as Eliza to devote their attention to it. (Advertisement, Wellington Independent, 4 April 1867, p. 2.)
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