Joseph Ivess

Joseph Ivess (born Askeaton, County Limerick, Ireland, 8 February 1844; died 5 September 1919 in Christchurch, New Zealand) was a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives.

In 1852 he accompanied his parents to Melbourne, Australia, where he was educated at Barnett's Grammar School, Emerald Hill. His father, John Pope Ivess, was a police sergeant. In 1866, after his marriage to Sarah Ann Reddin, he worked on the staff of the "Bendigo Independent". On his arrival in New Zealand in 1868 he began work as the manager, and perhaps printer, of the "New Zealand Celt" at Hokitika. He remained in and about the West Coast for the next eight years, but after 1875 his base became the Canterbury region, and particularly Ashburton. A photograph of Ivess with his family shows nine children.

He represented the electorate of Wakanui, South Canterbury, in the House of Representatives on two occasions, 1882-1884 and 1885-1887, after that concentrating his activities in the North Island, especially in the Taranaki and Rangitikei areas. He returned for some years to Ashburton around the turn of the century, and from 1903 based himself in the central North Island. He died on 5 September 1919 in Christchurch. A description of Ivess in late 1875 portrayed him as a fine plump man with a well-groomed appearance. He wore a moustache and a little bunch of hair on his under lip, as was customary in some professional men of those days. . . . Always an optimist, it was hard for others to compete with him, and he was certainly a tireless worker, obtaining considerable influence where he worked.

It is hardly surprising that an Irishman emigrating from Melbourne to New Zealand would land at Hokitika. The West Coast goldfields were at that time full of fellow countrymen and shipping routes made that coast a natural landfall. Ivess probably found employment rapidly as the manager of the New Zealand Celt, the Irish Catholic Party's newspaper whose proprietor John Manning was charged with seditious libel for erecting a memorial to the Fenian martyrs of Manchester in the Hokitika Cemetery. It may have been in this heady political atmosphere that the seeds of Ivess's political ambitions were planted and nurtured. By 1870 Ivess had definitely established a printing business at Hokitika in partnership with George Tilbrook, as shown by advertisements in the first issue of the Tomahawk (5 March 1870) and subsequent issues. This heavily satirical weekly and its successor the Lantern must also have encouraged Ivess in his political aspirations, for they relied on criticism of local and national political events for their effect. Even at this early stage in his career Ivess demonstrated a propensity for attracting legal action, being named as a defendant in a libel action in the Tomahawk (16 and 30 April 1870). To be fair, Ivess was not alone among newspapermen in being sued frequently. Conservative libel laws were retained in New Zealand long after they had been redrafted in England and resulted in frequent law-suits of which Ivess attracted his fair share.

The New Zealand people recently honoured the memory of Joseph Ivess by naming the tallest peak in the Victoria Ranges near Inangahua in the South Island "Ivess Peak"

References

* [http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=2I3 Dictionary of New Zealand Biography]