Makers: Mairead de Roiste, Deb Maxwell, Polly Stupples and Clare Lukens (School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington)

Panel number: 92

Petition Sheet Number: 96

Person honouring: EM Hocken

Relationship to makers: As a group of female geography academics, we wanted to acknowledge Bessie and her involvement in the Suffrage movement which then paved the way for us to have the careers we currently do.

Elizabeth Hocken, known as Bessie, was born in Auckland in 1848. She was married to Dr Thomas Morland Hocken, who was the Dunedin Surgeon, coroner and Vice-Chancellor of Otago University. They were married in Invercargill in 1883 and had their only child, Gladys, in 1884. 

Bessie supported and aided her husband’s work at a time when women were unable to have their own academic careers. She helped Thomas translate the text of Abel Tasman’s 1642 journey from Dutch to English. In 1882, while in England, Dr Hocken had purchased a transcript of the portion of Tasman’s Journal that relates to the discovery of New Zealand. In early 1894, he hinted to colleagues at the Otago Institute about his forthcoming project: to put the Dutch portion ‘in English dress.’ His unnamed but ‘valuable co-adjutor’ was his wife Bessie, who did the translations while holidaying in the Glenorchy-Kinloch region. Hocken never acknowledged Bessie’s role in this and took the credit for providing the translation himself. It was eventually published in volume 28 of the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, 1895. 

Bessie died in 1933.

Panel materials: Recycled materials or preowned materials. Beads, embroidery thread, stuffing from a repurposed cushion, cotton and scraps of other cloth.