cash under the Charitable Aid acts does not appear (Indigent' Maori did receive 'rations' from the Native Department, and supplies of seed potatoes were sent to communities whose crops had failed.). This meagre record suggests that the Maori share of general facilities would not modify their higher level of need and lower level of provision.
5.16 Though the evidence (recounted below in detail) is unsystematic it all comes from observers who were close to the scene. It leads to three reasonably firm conclusions—first, that levels of Maori health were persistently low and that this condition was punctuated regularly by more serious outbreaks of disease; second, that this situation was closely related to malnutrition, poor living conditions and general poverty; and third, that state action in response to this situation was inadequate and ineffectual. G.T. Wilkinson, reporting on the 1881 census, provided a useful snapshot of the condition of the Maori population at that time. Health was in general good—but by that he meant an absence of particular diseases or epidemics. The rest of his report hardly justifies the use of the word `good'. Mortality was chiefly among the very young or the aged and less among the middle aged, thanks to the decline of drunkenness. 'The sickness which has proved most fatal to Natives in this district has been consumption and disease of the lungs in the elder ones; and simple childhood diseases, accelerated by want of proper care and nourishment, in the
younger ones.' (AJHR 1881 G3).
A chronicle of ill-health
5.17 This section summarises indications of outbreaks of disease, prevalent diseases, and conditions of life affecting health, given in the sources named after each entry. Entries begin with a note of the district in question, where available; the informants are also indicated. Obviously, they were not operating within any uniform set of reporting instructions. Apart from the doctors, their primary concern was not to produce general health information. Information was given incidentally in relation to other concerns—school inspectors paid attention to health matters when attendance suffered and schools had to be closed, and the census enumerators were primarily concerned with the difficulties of enumeration. The native medical officers reported only upon cases they treated in their brief tenures. The absence of such officers after 1888 means that a major source of information is lacking for the greater part of the period. The small number of native schools results, too, in a very partial coverage of the region. It must be assumed that there was a good deal of unreported disease, thanks to the randomness of the sources, and to the fact that most of them were describing conditions in a small local community or making highly general comments on the region as a whole.
1875 Regional
Measles prevalent but more fatalities among Europeans than among Maori
(Puckey, AJHR 1875 GIB)
1876 Coromandel and Thames
Scarlet fever and typhoid (not specific to Maori) at both places with many fatal cases at Thames (Boards of Health report, AJHR 1876 H5)
48