Max Mendershausen and his Royal Terrace home

At Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, in the display which looks at the finer side of life in Victorian Dunedin, is a reminder of the days when household servants were employed in the city. Homes with servants often used a bell system to summon assistance. A tug on a pull cord in a room of the house would ring a bell on an indicator board in the servants’ quarters. Each room had its own separate bell so the servant knew in which room their assistance was required. In later electrical versions, like the one on display, a push button replaced the bell pull and shutters replaced bells on the room indicator board (an open shutter indicated which room was calling).

The label for this artefact indicates it came from a house that once stood at 27 Royal Terrace, a house originally owned by Max Mendershausen. Recently I set out to find more about Max Mendershausen and his Royal Terrace home.

Max Mendershausen succeded Dunedin tobacconist Carl Steinhoff, who announced his retirement in November 1871.

When an Otago Daily Times reporter paid a visit to the business in 1875 he found Mr Mendershausen using a mixture of Nelson and American tobacco to produce the first New Zealand-made snuff (powdered tobacco).

The Royal Terrace house, which would be home to Max and his wife Susan Louise Mendershausen for more than a decade, was built about 1878.

While information on the employing of servants at Number 27 is lacking, a long-serving employee of Mendershausen’s shop hit the headlines in 1889 when he committed suicide by shooting himself.

After the death of his wife in 1890, Max Mendershausen left Dunedin. The house was sold to Willam Lawrence Simpson, whose wife periodically advertised for servants in local newspapers in the years immediately preceding the First World War.

Max Mendershausen died in Berlin, Germany, in 1909 in his 86^th year.

Louis Court’s birthday, 2 October 1885.
Louis Court (middle row 2^nd from left) always invited 12 friends to his birthday. In the seven years leading up to his death in 1890 one of his guests died each year and was replaced at the next birthday party by a new guest whose duty it was to propose a toast to the memory of the vacant chair. Max Mendershausen is on the left in the front row.