Arthur Carman

Arthur Herbert Carman (2 August 1902 – 28 November 1982) was a New Zealand sports journalist and writer, bookseller, publisher, pacifist, local politician, and local historian.

He was born and died in Wellington, New Zealand.[1] He was born in Paparangi, Johnsonville, and lived in Tawa (originally called Tawa Flat). In 1932 Carman moved to Ranui in Tawa, with his new wife Edith Clark; they lived at No 7 Iti Street, Linden. Arthur had been in the Audit Department but, hankering for a bureaucracy free life, decided to become a Lambton Quay bookseller. They liked the countryside, although Ranui had barely formed metal roads and it was quicker for Edith to push the pram along the rail tracks to Tawa, picking up lumps of coal en route. Arthur caught the morning train to the shop. He started the agitation for a station at Linden to avoid having to pull the emergency cord to alight at Linden.[2]

He was a bookseller and publisher (as Wright and Carman, founded by his father Walter Carman); his Lambton Quay bookshop was a landmark and meeting place for thirty years. Arthur Carman Street in Paparangi is named after him.

He was on several local bodies: the Wellington Hospital Board, the Tawa Borough Council and the Hutt Valley Power and Gas Board. He stood unsuccessfully as an independent for the Wellington City Council in 1941 and 1944, and also for Wellington North in the 1943 general election, his only avenue to debate pacifism legally in wartime New Zealand.[1]

He published sports books as Arthur Carman (The New Zealand Rugby Almanack, The New Zealand Cricket Almanack; both annuals) and local history books as A. H. Carman or Arthur H. Carman. These included The Birth of a City: Wellington 1840-1843 and Tawa Flat and the Old Porirua Road, which went into three editions (1956, 1970, 1982)

He was noted as a Christian pacifist, and spent some months in Mt Crawford prison in Wellington, NZ in 1941, for 'subversion' when he attempted to publicly espouse the Christian pacifist view. His viewpoint had changed from traditional Methodism toward Quakerism following a 1925 visit to the World War I battlefields (he had been touring the United Kingdom as the sole press correspondent travelling with the 'Invincibles' All Black rugby team), although he remained a Methodist local preacher for the whole of his life.

A biography was published in 2011, by Bruce Murray and David Wood: Arthur Carman's Suitcase: The Life and Times of Arthur Herbert Carman.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Grant, David. "Arthur Herbert Carman". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
  2. ↑ Cassells, Ken R. (1988). Tawa: Enterprise and Endeavour. Wellington: Tawa Borough Council. p. 59. ISBN 0-473-00715-0.
  3. ↑ Dando, Kris. "Old suitcase a treasure for Tawa historian". stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
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