72 LISTENER AUGUST 10 2019

B

y the time Jack Woodward

started high school in 1939,

he’d dodged an epidemic

of polio and outbreaks of

diphtheria and typhoid.

He’d beaten scarlet fever,

measles, mumps and

chicken pox and lost much

of his tooth enamel to the slow grind of

the foot-powered drill at the dental clinic in

the local Plunket rooms in Ōhākune. Of his

childhood, he says, “We survived.”

He and his seven siblings had good

luck, good genes and a good GP. Dr Jordan

delivered the babies, operated on mothers

and children and anaesthetised them when

the dentist pulled their teeth. The glasses

that remedied Woodward’s astigmatism

came from the local chemist, as did the

‘THAT WAS THE

WAY IT WAS’

Eighty years ago, fatty foods were actually thought

to be good for you, heavy smoking was the norm and

avoiding serious illness was more about good luck than

good medicine. by DONNA CHISHOLM ● photograph by ADRIAN MALLOCH

WO

OD

WA

RD^

FAM

ILY^

CO

LLE

CTI

ON

80 YEARS

Good luck and good genes:

Jack Woodward, centre, with

his father, Frank, and siblings

Alan, left, and Lou; left to right,

Alistair, Frank jr, Mary, Matthew,

Jack and Rebecca Woodward.

grease-like goo “Blackjack” they used to draw

out pus and splinters, the antiphlogistine

poultices they applied to strains and sprains

and the Buckley’s Canadiol Mixture and

Baxter’s Lung Preserver for coughs. “Baxter’s

was high in alcohol and raspberry and the

kids loved it. We used to call it Baxter’s Lung

Remover.” They wouldn’t get penicillin

until after the war. Woodward reckons he

saved all his serious illnesses – polymyalgia

in 1992, septicaemia in 2002 and non-

Hodgkin lymphoma in 2011 – for an era

when there were cures for them.

By the war years, it was already too late

for most of his teeth. Fluoridation was 20

years away and in Ōhākune in the 1930s

and 40s, they relied on rainwater, anyway.

It spelt dental doom when combined with

the sugary cakes and biscuits that filled the

kitchen tins. “We always had sugar in tea,

and I still do. I thought, I’ve been poisoning

myself for 90 years, it’s too late to stop.”

Pre-war cookbooks even recommended

butter in cakes and puddings, and cakes

filled with cream, as important dietary

sources of vitamins A and D, before Ancel

Keys definitively linked saturated fat with

cardiovascular disease in 1955.

SMOKERS’ DELIGHT

Mr Relph, driving a dray

pulling a two-wheeled cart,

delivered the family’s milk

each day. “He had a quart and

pint dipper and you’d go out

and he’d fill your billy can.”

By 1940, it was delivered in

bottles by Mr Drayton. “The

first one to the bottle would

get the cream.”

“My wife used to talk

about her ‘silly old aunts’.

They were obviously

suffering dementia, but

it wasn’t talked about.”