Plunket turns 100

Plunket turns 100

Plunket is born

On 14 May 1907, Dr Frederic Truby King met with a group of influential Dunedin women and inspired them with his vision of a new health regime for infants.

At the time the mortality rate for infants in New Zealand was rising. But Truby King believed he had an answer to this problem: a combination of domestic hygiene, infant nutrition, and education. He inspired the women he met in Dunedin to form a society to 'help the mothers and save the babies'.

How Plunket grew

Within a year, the new society opened the Karitane Home for Babies in Dunedin. The Home cared for infants under the age of two, who were not part of the general health care system at the time.

In 1908 the society took the name 'Plunket', after their patron Lady Victoria Plunket, the wife of the current Governor-General, and herself a mother of eight.

Truby King’s campaign grew and grew. By 1912 there were more than 60 Plunket branches throughout New Zealand, each staffed by a Plunket nurse. By 1935 65% of all non-Māori infants were under the care of a Plunket nurse.

Truby King’s influence was far-reaching: in the late 1910s applicants for marriage licences were given copies of his books The expectant mother and Baby’s first months.

Plunket today

In the 1970s Plunket became more focused on supporting families than dispensing advice. In the early 1990s it began to look for ways to support Māori families, who historically had not been part of the Plunket movement.

100 years on, Plunket still plays an important role in the lives of New Zealand families with more than 90% of parents accessing one of Plunket’s services.

Dr Frederic Truby King

Dr Frederic Truby King (1858-1938) was the driving force behind the Plunket Society. He and his wife Isabella had adopted a baby girl while he was working as the medical superintendent of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, near Dunedin. Concerned about the baby’s progress, Isabella asked her husband to design a better feeding formula.

Truby King threw himself into the task. Not only did he design the formula, he trained one of the Seacliff nurses in infant feeding and sent her to Dunedin to give advice to mothers. After his fellow doctors proved uninterested in his new campaign, he took it to the women of Dunedin.

Truby King was recognised during his lifetime for work for New Zealand children, and when he died in 1938 he became the first private citizen in New Zealand to be given a state funeral.

More information

History of Plunket – Plunket website

Biography of Dr Frederic Truby King – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image

Find Out More