Maker: Liz Wilson

Panel number: 25

Petition Sheet Number: 16 

Person honouring: Emily Qualtrough 

Relationship to makers: Great-great-aunt, on both maternal and paternal side

Many Qualtrough women were strong supporters of the suffrage movement. 

Four Qualtrough sisters signed the petition: Annie, and Emily and Elizabeth Cowan (nee Qualtrough) signed Sheet 16 along with their sister-in-law Alice. Sarah (Haddock) nee Qualtrough signed Sheet 378. Emily and Alice also signed the 1892 petition. Annie not only signed Sheet 16, but also Sheet 385. Obviously a determined woman!

James Qualtrough brought his wife Catherine and eight children to New Zealand from the Isle of Man in 1859 on the ship The Mermaid. The children were James (21), Elizabeth Jane (21), William (19), Henry (14), Anne (Annie) (10), Thomas (8), Sarah (6), and Emily (4). 

Emily was a ‘professional nurse’, who never married. She went out on 'private cases’, looking after patients in their own homes, as far apart as Hamilton, Thames and Auckland. She was fair complexioned, blue-eyed, gentle, and smiling, devoted to her church. 'Saintly’ and 'angelic’, she abhorred vulgarity. It distressed Emily to hear people swear. “Why can’t they vent their feelings by saying “Oh, scissors, oh needles, oh pins!” Emily was sad that it seemed the Qualtrough name would die out, but a boy, Malcolm, was born shortly before Emily’s death in 1941 at the age of 86. Her funeral was held in the Pakuranga Methodist church on the day after Malcolm’s baptism. She left a legacy of 100 pounds for the upkeep of the church which in 1977 was moved to the Howick Historic Village.    

Panel materials:  Old damask table napkin from the British Army (my son used such things as rags in the mechanics workshops in the army). Battenberg embroidery – copy of a corner of a tea cloth stitched by 5 generations (including myself) of my mother’s family.  Variation of sheaf stitch, resembling chromosomes, family and DNA. Logo from 'A Quota of Qualtroughs’: The Manx 3 legs emblem; 2 silver ferns fronds, and 'Isle of Man to New Zealand’.