A swagman’s life

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’ So reads a typical entry in the diary of James Cox, an English-born swagman who spent decades tramping the rural roads of New Zealand’s North Island. Writing almost daily from the early 1880s through to the end of 1918, Cox documented a life of grinding poverty, manual labour, and quiet perseverance - producing one of the most detailed and revealing first-person records of colonial working-class life in the Southern Hemisphere. However, it was not until the 1990s that historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer - published 20 years ago today.

Cox was born in 1846 into a Wiltshire farming family. Working as a clerical assistant in the Swindon office of the Great Western Railway, he became a proficient bookkeeper. In 1880, when his mother sold the farm, he suddenly decided to emigrate to New Zealand, part of a wave of working-class settlers drawn by the promise of work and land in the colonies. 

Over the next four decades, Cox lived a life of physical hardship and financial instability, rarely settling in one place for long - though the flax mills in Manawatu held him for a year or two. Living the life of a swagman, he found sporadic employment in rural labour - roadworks, clearing land, working as a gardener - and frequently relied on charity or relief work. He spent extended periods walking between towns or living in rudimentary shelters on the outskirts of small rural communities such as Carterton and Greytown in the Wairarapa region.

Cox never married and had no known family in New Zealand. He suffered from poor health in later life and lived out his final years in the Carter’s Home for Destitutes in Carterton. He died in July 1925. See National Library of New Zealand and Stuff for more biographical information. Despite his marginalised status, he left behind a remarkable record of his life in the form of a diary - one of the most significant first-person accounts of working-class life in New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cox kept the near-daily diary from at least the early 1880s through to the end of 1918. Spanning thousands of pages, the diary is a considered an extraordinary document of colonial working-class life, chronicling everything from weather and wages to hunger, loneliness, local politics, and fleeting pleasures such as whisky, reading, or conversation. His entries are concise, factual, and repetitive, but they build cumulatively into a stark, honest portrait of precarity, endurance, and reflection on life at the social margins.

Historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer (Auckland University Press, 1 August 1995) which can be previewed at Googlebooks. Fairburn used the diary as a primary source for a wider investigation into the structure of Cox’s life, identity, and thought. Rather than focusing solely on events, Fairburn asked why Cox lived the way he did and how his worldview was shaped by his extreme social isolation. The book is both a social history and a deep psychological and cultural reading of a unique document.

In the 2010s, a project led by the Alexander Turnbull Library and New Zealand historians turned Cox’s diary into a digital and public history initiative. Between 2013 and 2018, excerpts were posted daily on Twitter/X as part of Life 100 Years Ago, with each entry appearing exactly 100 years after its original date. This digital project brought Cox’s voice to a wide audience and positioned his diary as a rare chronicle of World War I-era life away from the battlefield. Here are a few brief extracts from the diary.

14 April 1892

‘Some showers in the night but cleared this morning and was bright and warm all day… I left Pahiatua this morning and walked through Eketahuna and to a roadmakers camp about 6 miles further where I am stopping. I had nothing since breakfast to eat but a bit of bread…’

15 April 1892

‘Good Friday. There was some rain in the night . . . I got my breakfast this morning at the camp and then walked through to Masterton . . . I am terribly footsore this evening . . .’

1902

‘I am no better off than when I came out to the colony ... hope in the coming years I may do better.’

25 April 1914

‘No work today, I loafed all day. It is pay‑day by the County Council. I got mine this afternoon £6.1.6.’

7 November 1914

‘Heard of farmers gathering in a meeting about conscription. Nearly all against it. I reckon they’ll not get it here.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘I walked to Greytown and bought some stores also had two whiskies and bought a bottle 7/- to have a nip where I want.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘The wind is southerly and chilly. I was inside until dinner time. This afternoon I walked to Carterton, changed books at the Library...’

3 August 1915

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’

9 June 1916

‘Saw a lot of aeroplanes up this afternoon passing over Carterton. Hadn’t seen them fly before.’

15 February 1918

‘A strange humming in the night - it wasn’t the wind. Worried me till I realised it was the new telephone wires.’

31 December 1918

‘The end of the year finds me laid up in Carters House and of no more use but certainly much better off than I deserve to be.’