Overview
Joseph Ward was born in Melbourne to William and Hannah Ward – who were Irish immigrants. The couple had ten children but seven died in infancy. Joseph was the youngest of the three survivors. When he was four, his father, an alcoholic, died from delirium tremens. Hannah Ward had been the family breadwinner for some time already, running a small liquor shop near the goldfields. She married John Barron, but the marriage did not last long, and in 1863, she packed up and took her family to live in New Zealand.
The Wards settled in Bluff, or Campbelltown as it was then called. Hannah Ward Barron became a local entrepreneur, owning a store, then a boarding house, and then a successful hotel.
Joseph Ward was hugely influenced by his mother’s enterprising spirit, shrewd business sense, and burning ambition to succeed in New Zealand. He went to the Campbelltown State School, where he distinguished himself by teaching the other children how to sell toetoe, a decorative native grass, to ship visitors. When he was thirteen, his formal education came to an end, but he continued to expand his general knowledge with reading. He worked briefly for the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department as a message boy, but was sacked for being cheeky to his employer.
After several other jobs, his mother lent him £800. With it he built storage sheds on the waterfront, and became a farm supplies merchant servicing Southland’s growing number of farmers. His political career began when he was elected to the Campbelltown Borough Council in 1878 at the age of just twenty-one. He was elected Mayor in 1881, aged twenty-five, and served until 1886.
In 1883 he married Theresa Dorothea De Smidt, ten years younger than him, and the daughter of his mother’s rival publican. Ward and his wife were to have five children.
Ward was elected to parliament as member for Awarua in 1887. And when John Ballance’s Liberal party took office in 1891 he agreed to become postmaster-general, on condition that he could also spend plenty of time in Southland looking after his business – J.G. Ward and Company. Ward believed in expansionism and free enterprise. When Ballance died in 1893, the new prime minister, Richard Seddon, made him Colonial Treasurer.
Ward found he had less and less time to devote to his business, and he began to get into serious financial difficulty. He resigned his portfolios, but by mid-1897 he realised he had no option but to declare himself bankrupt. He knew this could spell the end of his political career, as electoral law decreed that a member of parliament must resign on being declared bankrupt. However, there was a loophole – there was no law that said a bankrupt could not be elected to parliament. Ward resigned, filed for bankruptcy, then announced his availability to once more fill the positions he had vacated. He was an immensely popular politician and was re-elected to parliament with a bigger majority than ever. Soon after, Bluff also re-elected him mayor.
In November of the same year, he was discharged from bankruptcy, so he took out a large bank loan and set up a new business in Invercargill. He rearranged his finances, and – much to the surprise and delight of his old company’s creditors – paid them all back!
After the December 1899 election, Seddon returned Ward to cabinet with several portfolios, including postmaster-general, and railways. Ward saw these institutions as having enormous power to draw New Zealand’s scattered and varied settlements into a strong, unified nation. He brought in policies to encourage public use of both the postal system and the railways. The North Island main trunk line had been progressing at a snail’s pace, but Ward pushed for its completion and officially opened the last connection in 1908. He was presented with a silver railway spike to commemorate the occasion, and this treasure has since been donated to Te Papa by Ward’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
Ward was acting premier while Seddon was away in 1902, and after Seddon died, Ward was sworn in as prime minister in August 1906. It was a difficult time to govern: his caucus was large and lacked focus, and there was a great deal of union unrest. He resigned as leader in 1912 after his government gained a one-seat majority in the 1911 general election. However, his successor, Thomas MacKenzie was unable to secure the confidence of the House, and William Massey formed an administration.
Ward regained leadership of the Liberals on MacKenzie’s resignation, and in 1915 joined the wartime coalition administration under Massey. He lost his seat straight after the war, and did not manage to regain it in a Tauranga by-election in 1923.
Ward was now suffering from eye trouble, diabetes, and heart disease. But just when it seemed that his political career was over, he was back in the House as leader of the newly formed United Party. By the end of 1928, he was prime minister again. But ill health was crippling him, and life was hard without his wife, Theresa, who had died in 1927. Ward had a series of heart attacks, and was confined to bed. Even so, it was only after pressure from colleagues and family that he finally agreed to resign as prime minister in May 1930. Nearly two months later, he died. He was buried in Bluff next to his wife and near his mother.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).