walter ernest mallindine + margaret may sanders
Walter was born on 23 January 1891 in Ngaruawahia, near Hamilton in New Zealand and he was the youngest child of William Mallindine and Elizabeth Emma Scammell. The family left the Waikato district about 1910 and settled in the coastal town of Whangerai, 160kms north of Auckland where Walter followed his father into the cabinet making and trade.
In January 1916, Walter was examined for enlistment in the army but was deemed medically unfit due to deafness caused by a measles infection in childhood. He returned to his life in Whangerai and on 27 December 1916, he married Margaret Sanders in Remuera, a suburb of Auckland.
The following year a notice appeared in the Northern Advocate newspaper announcing a new furniture showroom at the well-known ‘economic corner’ in Whangerai operated by Messrs D.W. Jack and Company. The company also leased a large workshop and factory for polishing and upholstery managed by Walter ‘whose practical acquaintance with the furnishing trade extends from design to finished article’.
On 23 July 1917, Walter was once again examined for enlistment but this time he was accepted for enlistment in the New Zealand Medical Corps and sailed from Wellington on 31 December 1917 and arrived in Glasgow in late February. He was posted to the Sling Camp in Wiltshire which was used as the main base camp for New Zealand soldiers during the first world war and then on to the chief depot of the New Zealand Medical Corps at Ewshott in Hampshire. But only one month later, he was admitted to the New Zealand Hospital in Walton on Thames with ‘chronic otitis media’ which is a long-standing, persistently draining perforation of the eardrum.
Walter was classified as unfit on 10 April 1918 and transferred to the discharge depot in Torquay. After three months in England, he set sail on 30 May on board the SS Mokoia and during the voyage, he appeared before a medical board that confirmed he should be discharged as medically unfit. He arrived back in New Zealand on 16 July and was officially discharged on 27 September 1918.
Walter and Margaret welcomed their first child, daughter June Winnifred, on 25 November 1919 followed by son Mervyn Walter on 24 July 1926. Walter returned to work as a cabinet maker, presumably for DW Jack and Company but by the 1930s, the family of four moved south to the coastal town of Tauranga and one of the first records of their residence in the town was an accident report in the New Zealand Herald on 19 December 1934:
A car driven by Mr. W. Mallindine went over a hill in Devonport Road to-day, turning several somersaults. Mr Mallindine escaped serious injury, but his small son, whom he was conveying home from a private hospital, suffered concussion, and was take back to the hospital. The car was damaged.
c. 1963
Along with the move, Walter also made a career change from cabinet maker to a shopkeeper and tobacconist but his business extended into illegal activities and on 18 March 1940, he was arrested after his shop in Spring Street was raided by the police and he was later charged with being the occupier of premises that was being used as a common gaming house. Walter appeared in court the next day and was fined £20.
There are few references to the family after the 1940s but the available Electoral Registers place them in Tauranga until 1949, Waitomo in the mid to late 1950s, and Auckland from the early 1960s to the 1970s. Walter died in Auckland in 1978 followed by Margaret ten years later.
Their daughter June was just 18 years old when she married Kenneth Clyde Curtis in 1937 and they went on to have four children. Son Mervyn Walter married Yvonne Shirley Aroha Smardon in 1951 and they had two children. Yvonne died at the Tauranga Hospital on 7 November 2005 and Mervyn died on 10 May 2014 at the Waipuna Hospice in Tauranga.