Maker: Silvana Caradoc Evans

Panel number: 279

Petition sheet number: 333

Person honouring: Mrs E. Spencer

Relationship to maker: None

Harriet Spencer’s family experienced losses in the 1918 influenza epidemic.

Harriet Hitchens was born in Wellington in July 1862 to Elizabeth and Joseph.

On 12 July 1882, she married Enoch Spencer, a brickmaker who worked at the Luke Foundry, in Webb St, Wellington

They had six sons and three daughters but sadly four of them died before their parents did. Their son Albert was born in 1891 but died a year later. Ethel, born in 1895, survived only four months. Two sons, Enoch and Ernest died in November 1918 in the post-war flu epidemic.

At the time that Harriet signed the petition she had five living children. The family lived at 61 Wright St, and later in Salisbury Tce, in Wellington’s Mt Cook.

Harriet was a widow when she died in Miramar on 20 March 1939 aged 76. She and Enoch were both buried at Karori cemetery.

Panel materials: Scraps of fabric given to me by Melissa Anderson, a great friend.