Maurice Bramley

One of Bramley's prolific output of covers for the Horwitz publishing company.

New Zealand born cartoonist Maurice Bramley's childhood residence in Devonport has been listed with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust with report on the property filed by Joan Mckenzie last year. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is a crown entity and national agency entrusted with identifying heritage places and ensuring they survive for appreciation by current and future generations as well as fostering this appreciation through the recording and sharing their stories.

I previously wrote about Maurice Bramley's work here and here.

Daniel Best recently wrote about Bramley's work for Horwitz comics here.

The following excerpt is from Joan Mckenzie's report on 14 Glen Road for The New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Read the report in full here.

Harriet Pegler sold the property to Margaret Eliza Bramley (1876-1914) in 1903. The absence of a recorded mortgage suggests that Margaret may have had financial resources of her own.

Margaret, her husband William Harry Bramley (1875-1948) and their two young sons became the new occupiers. By this time, the number of households in Glen Road had doubled to eight, the breadwinners predominantly in blue-collar occupations - mariner, shipwright, coach fitter, line-engineer. Although the Bramley family occupied the property for two decades, little is known of their life in Auckland. Harry, who gave his occupation as ‘gentleman’ or ‘settler’, became a member of the Auckland Kennel Club, and was elected to the executive of the Stanley Bay Ratepayers’ Association in 1921.

From New Plymouth, the family were part of Taranaki’s Pakeha-settler social network. The couple had married in 1897 at Margaret’s parents’ farm at Tikorangi, an outlying rural settlement founded in 1865 by militia families led by Margaret’s father Captain John Henry Armstrong (c.1834-1915). Armstrong was the son of a Church of Ireland minister and from a family with a long military tradition. A number of Margaret’s uncles were captains in the Taranaki Militia.
 
Harry Bramley had moved to Taranaki in the 1880s after the 1876 death of his father, a Rangiora farmer. Harry’s two sisters had married into prosperous families. Annie (1867?-1956) was a daughter-in-law of a late Superintendent of the Taranaki Province, Henry Robert Richmond (1829-90) of the influential Richmond-Atkinson family. Amy (1869-1947) was a daughter-in-law of a late Australian Premier and Colonial Secretary, Sir Charles Cowper (1807-75).

Retaining the Glen Road home on one-and-a-half lots, Margaret Bramley sold Lot 132 fronting Russell Street in 1906. Margaret died prematurely, in 1914 three years after the birth of the couple’s third child.

Staying on at Glen Road, Harry married Grace Eveline Sallabank (1874-1976) in 1917. Margaret and Harry’s three sons, including the eldest - Maurice (1898-1975), still lived at the house in 1918. Moving to Australia in the mid-1920s.

Gallery of Maurice Bramley Horwitz war comic covers courtesy the Adelaide Comics Centre.