Fascinating find unearthed during building renovations

By ANNE-MARIE EMERSON
The scrap of paper is thin and fragile; the ink writing elaborate and old-fashioned.
It's a wage sheet from the Wanganui Chronicle, dated December 29, 1894, and it was found this week by builders renovating a building on the corner of Taupo Quay and Drews Ave, currently occupied by accounting firm Doyle & Associates.
John Little, from O'Donnell Building, was one of the men working in the building when the wage sheet was found among other old papers in the ceiling space.
Mr Little said such a find was uncommon.
"It's unusual to find something that old and in a condition where you can still read most of it."
Time, and possibly insects or rodents, has damaged many of the papers, which includes hand-written copy from the 1890s for classified adverts selling farm animals.
But the old wage sheet remains mostly intact, and it provides a fascinating insight into the day-to-day running of a newspaper at the end of the 19th century.
Headed up "Wages Sheet", then "The Wanganui Chronicle Coy [Company] Ltd", the sheet has a space for the journalists' names on the left, with columns in the centre for the amount of pounds, shillings and pence each journalist was to be paid.
One of the names on the list is John Ball, who received the most generous wages of the lot at two pounds, 14 shillings and eight pence. In modern money that's around $350.
H Taylor was bottom of the pile with just five shillings and sixpence, a paltry $90.
John Ball was a compositor, reporter and sub-editor before beginning a 20-year stint as Wanganui Chronicle editor in 1905.
The Wanganui Chronicle occupied the Doyle building from around 1895 to 1912, but how the papers ended up in the ceiling remains a mystery.
Mr Little's workmen also found a roll of invoices from General Machinery, another former occupant of the building, dating from the 1970s.
Doyle & Associates has owned and occupied the building since 2004.
Doyle & Associates practice manager John Roestenburg said the company would take good care of the old wage sheet.
"We'll probably frame it and hang it in a prominent place in the office."
* Some of the names on this slip include John Ball, P Beauchamp, E A Brown, A N Hawthorne, T Jones, E Mooney, R P K Simpson, H Taylor, A Whitcombe.
* Do you have any information on these men? Tell the Wanganui Chronicle at news@wanganuichronicle.co.nz or phone (06) 3490728.