Linwood Cemetery Tour Guide - Christchurch City Libraries

was a Christian and that it was his belief in Jesus Christ which led him to activities
which would leave the land in a more fertile state than that in which he had found it.
Augustus’ wife, Elizabeth, was a daughter of David Wilson Hamilton, one of the
founders of New Brighton, whose grave is at Avonside.
The couple’s youngest son, David Charles Hamilton Florance, 1884 – 1975, a
protege of Lord Rutherford in England, was, later, a professor at Victoria University,
Wellington.
Area 10
Row B
No. 4955
Selig
This grave is in the Jewish section.
Phineas Selig (1856 - 1941), founded the New Zealand referee, a sporting newspaper
which was swallowed up by the Press. The Saturday issue of the Press was, for many
years, known as the Weekly press and referee. Selig was a power in the Press and a
prominent administrator and employer in the newspaper business.
Row J
No. 5099
Kral
Franz Kral (1909 – 1969), a Jewish physician from Vienna, Austria, was himself the
son of a doctor. He graduated with a doctorate from Vienna University in 1934,
specialising in dermatology and publishing scientific papers on his work. He was also
interested in respiratory diseases such as asthma. He escaped from his country shortly
before the Nazis took over. He came to New Zealand in 1938.
Dr. Kral qualified MB. Ch.B at the Otago Medical School in 1941 and, for the next
two years, practised in Kaitangata. From 1943 he was in general practice in Patten
Street, Avonside, with rooms in High Street between Hereford and Cashel Streets. He
was also part-time venereologist at Christchurch Hospital. Rather than sit further New
Zealand examinations so that he might do more hospital work, Dr. Kral stuck to the
job of general practitioner at which he was very successful. He was one of the founder
members of the Canterbury faculty of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
So numerous were Dr. Kral’s patients that they spilled out of his waiting room and
onto the lawn. In a period when telephones and motor cars were much less common
than they are now, people with a phone - and an appointment - would ring the nurse
and ask how long the queue was. When it was quite short, they would get in their
vehicles and come to the surgery.
Dr. Kral had some unusual ideas. He argued that that children should be separated
from their parents at birth, believing that parents fussed too much over their offspring.
He was keen on putting sickly children into the Glenelg Health Camp even when
parents thought that this was indictment on their skills. This pleasant darkish man
Linwood Cemetery Tour Guide
Updated 2013
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