When Charles and Elizabeth Duke arrived in Dunedin in 1858, immigration to the province was booming. More than 1,000 people had arrived at Port Chalmers in the previous three months, at a time when the whole population of Dunedin was only about four times that number. The Dukes would spend much of their colonial careers enmeshed with the immigration process. First at Quarantine Island and later at the Caversham Immigration Barracks, they played a key role in looking after new arrivals.
The Dukes were an English couple, enthusiastic Methodists from Carshalton near London. They were married in England in 1855 and had one child by the time they embarked for Otago on the Palmyra. For the first few years Charles was employed on road-making, brick-making and timber-sawing, saving enough to buy a 10-acre section at Sawyers Bay where he built a cottage. In 1863, however, he was appointed to be superintendent of the new quarantine station on an island in Otago harbour.
The quarantine station was an initiative to provide better care for new migrants suspected of harbouring infectious diseases. Previously ships with disease aboard were held offshore and their poor passengers remained stuck on the ships until the medical authorities considered them safe to land. The Quarantine Island station was now set up to provide basic accommodation and proper medical attention ashore. It was quickly put to use when the ships Victory, Mataura and City of Dunedin arrived with smallpox, scarlet fever and fever aboard.
After two years’ service Duke left the island but was back again nine years later when the Christian McAusland and Palmerston arrived with sickness on board. The Dukes had recently been appointed to a post at the Immigration Barracks in Dunedin and Charles was only temporarily stationed back on Quarantine Island. His surviving diary of this time – despite its idiosyncratic spelling – provides a fascinating account of how the quarantined immigrants were treated.
New immigration barracks were opened at Caversham in 1874 and from then until the end of assisted migration in 1888 Charles and Elizabeth Duke worked there. Charles was the depot master and Elizabeth was matron of the barracks while thousands of new settlers passed through. The Dukes played a key role in helping them get orientated for a new life in the colony.
In 1888 they returned to Sawyers Bay. Charles served on the school committee and was a councillor and then Mayor of the West Harbour Borough. Both he and Elizabeth were heavily involved in Methodist church activity and Charles was a lay preacher. In 1908 they moved to Dunedin to live with their son. Charles was a member of the Otago Early Settlers Association and served as its Vice President in his final years. He died in 1913, aged 81, and Elizabeth in 1919, aged 86.
Charles and Elizabeth Duke (née Beck)