The Luck of the Irish - Reverend Rutherford Waddell

In 1888 Reverend Rutherford Waddell, Irish Presbyterian minister of St Andrew’s Church in Dunedin, preached a famous sermon, ‘The Sin of Cheapness,’ that, galvanising a nationwide campaign against sweated labour, led the Liberal government of the 1890s to pass some of the most progressive labour and industrial laws in the world. Waddell also fought for women’s suffrage, temperance, the Sabbath and attacked gambling, anti-Chinese racism and Britain’s role in the Anglo-Boer war. This lecture attempts to explain how Waddell's Irish background shaped his New Zealand career, to identify connections between his faith and his politics, and to explain why the country’s most influential nineteenth century historian, William Pember Reeves, left Waddell out of his founding history of the nation.

Toitū OSM – Auditorium
Capacity 120