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latter’s ‘tempestuous mayoralty’ of muddled finances, threats of litigation and injustice to the staff.

Before they plunged into this sea of troubles, Reid and the council made the first move to break the yearly struggle with an overdraft by proposing to raise a loan. The necessary poll resulted in a vote of 352 to 12 in favour of borrowing £7500. Admittedly the clouds of depression were lifting, but this majority was so great that it is probable that for years the ratepayers would have preferred pleasanter civic conditions even at the cost of higher rates. As a result of the poll, Hugo Friedlander completed his third term as mayor by making a very different report from that of nine years before. So much was now being improved; staff salaries raised and an assistant appointed to help Fooks with the library, municipal offices enlarged, East Street footpaths completely asphalted, and ten miles of concrete channelling installed.

If the county warded off disruptive tendencies, the town area conversely was unable to achieve unity. It consisted of the borough and three residential areas, Tinwald, Hampstead and Allenton. These three suburbs were administered under the County Council by road and town boards.

Tinwald was the first to acquire a name. Until 1878 it was called ‘South Ashburton’ and then in that year Robert Wilkin, owner of Grove Farm and other land in the vicinity, named it after his native Tinwald Downs in Scotland. Wilkin had come to Canterbury in 1859 following many years in Australia and immediately made an impression in provincial politics. In 1863 he was asked to become superintendent. He was described at that time as ‘a portly built man . . . getting into the sere of life’ and noted for the extreme brevity of his remarks. ‘He is not without brains, however, as may be inferred from the few remarks he makes from time to time when tortured into utterance’.^[1] Wilkin held Maronan run in partnership with John Carter, a Yorkshireman, who also came to Canterbury in 1859. Carter managed the properties—although he was in England from 1875 to 1878—and Wilkin ran a successful auctioneering business in Christchurch. Both were prominent as breeders of farm animals and racehorses, but the development of a widely known stud at Grove Farm was Carter’s work. He died while still young in 1884.