Colonial Businesswomen in New Plymouth and Beyond

In New Plymouth, if you strolled down Devon Street from Frances Cudlipp’s boarding house on the corner of Liardet Street in the 19th century you would have passed Mary Ross in Devon House (where Ballantynes is now), and storekeeper Elizabeth Ford at the Brougham Street corner – turn down Brougham and you would have found tobacconist Alice Townsend and newsagent Annie Cottier - just five of the many entrepreneurial women in Taranaki.

In this talk Catherine Bishop, author of Women Mean Business (Otago University Press), explores the stories of some of New Zealand’s colonial entrepreneurs – the successful and the outright failures, the heart-warming and the tragic, the everyday and the scandalous.

Talk will be held in the Taranaki Research Centre, Level 2 of Puke Ariki.