George Hawkes Whitcombe’s life is one of those stories that seems to gather momentum as it goes.
Born in Brittany, educated between France and England, and sent to New Zealand while still a teenager, he began adult life far from the country of his birth. He tried different paths, including a brief spell with the Armed Constabulary, taught French, worked as a bookseller and eventually built a business that would place the Whitcombe name on books, school materials and shopfronts across New Zealand and Australia.
His story also creates one of the clearest family bridges on the Whitcombe Family Network: from his father, Captain Thomas Douglas Whitcombe, through George himself, and on to sons such as Bertie Ernest Hawkes Whitcombe and Alec Noel Hawkes Whitcombe.
A childhood shaped by movement
George Hawkes Whitcombe was born in Brittany, France, around 1854. Contemporary New Zealand records say that he was educated partly in France and partly in England.
That background matters because George was the son of Captain Thomas Douglas Whitcombe, whose own life had already taken the family far beyond England. Thomas had served as an artillery officer and fought in the Greek War of Independence in 1827. Research shared with the Whitcombe Family Network by descendant Michael J. Whitcombe-Tait indicates that, after Thomas’s military career and the injuries he suffered in Greece, the family spent time in the Channel Islands and France.
George therefore grew up in a household shaped by military experience, financial uncertainty, travel and education across borders. Michael’s research also suggests that the children were educated substantially within the family and developed strong French language skills.
Those skills would later become unexpectedly useful.
New Zealand at sixteen
At about the age of sixteen, George travelled to New Zealand.
He first joined his elder brother, Charles Douglas Whitcombe, at New Plymouth. That detail is especially interesting for the Whitcombe Family Network because Charles would become the ancestor of the New Zealand branch that eventually leads to Michael J. Whitcombe-Tait.
George later spent time in Wanganui, where contemporary accounts record that he joined the Armed Constabulary. He saw no fighting, and the episode appears to have been brief, but it provides another reminder that his early life in New Zealand was not a straight path towards publishing.
Eventually he moved to Christchurch.
From French teacher to bookseller
George’s education in France gave him something valuable in his new country: fluency in French.
Later biographical accounts describe him as a French teacher at a private school for girls in Christchurch. It is an appealing link back to his childhood. A family that had moved to France partly through circumstance had given George a skill that helped him establish himself on the other side of the world.
His career then shifted towards bookselling.
George entered business with bookseller John Crerar in Christchurch. The arrangement did not last indefinitely, and after Crerar’s retirement George was looking for the next step.
It came through another Christchurch businessman: printer George Tombs.
The birth of Whitcombe & Tombs
In 1882, George Hawkes Whitcombe and George Tombs joined forces in Christchurch.
The partnership was unusually complementary. Whitcombe brought bookselling experience and commercial ambition. Tombs brought printing expertise. Together they could sell books, print them and, increasingly, publish their own.
The timing was good. New Zealand’s Education Act 1877 had made primary education free, secular and compulsory, creating growing demand for schoolbooks and educational materials. Whitcombe & Tombs became one of the country’s first long-term professional publishers and developed a particularly strong position in educational publishing.
By the late 1880s the firm was expanding rapidly. It opened branches, built large printeries and developed nationwide distribution. A London buying office followed, helping the company source books and materials from Britain for customers thousands of miles away.
What had begun as a Christchurch partnership was becoming a national business.
Books for a growing country
George’s achievement was not simply building a chain of bookshops.
Whitcombe & Tombs became deeply connected to the education and reading habits of New Zealanders. Its publishing list eventually covered geography, reading, arithmetic and many other school subjects, alongside stationery and general books.
The firm’s strength came partly from the way the different parts of the business supported one another. Printing work kept the presses busy. Shops provided direct access to readers. Publishing created products that the company could distribute through its own network.
Over time, the Whitcombe name became familiar not just to people buying books, but to children learning to read and families using books in everyday life.
A formidable businessman
Contemporary accounts remembered George as a forceful businessman.
He was energetic, persistent and commercially ambitious. Te Ara’s later biography of his son Bertie describes George as someone who outmanoeuvred competitors and fought hard in industrial disputes. That gives us a more rounded picture than the simple image of a Victorian bookseller.
He was building a substantial enterprise in a young and competitive economy, and he appears to have done so with considerable determination.
Even the occasional controversy tells us something about the position the business occupied. In 1908, George became involved in a test case over supposedly immoral literature after booksellers were prosecuted for selling certain novels. A subsequent case considered whether the same logic could be applied to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. It was a revealing moment in the wider debate over what booksellers could legally sell and who should decide what readers were allowed to buy.
A family business
George and his wife Mary Hall raised a large family. Later accounts record four daughters and eight sons who reached adulthood.
Many of those sons entered Whitcombe & Tombs.
The eldest, Bertie Ernest Hawkes Whitcombe, would eventually become managing director and lead the firm for more than four decades. Another son, Alec Noel Hawkes Whitcombe, worked in the business before and after his remarkable military service during the First World War and the Allied intervention in northern Russia.
By the 1920s, nearly all the firm’s branches were managed by Whitcombe brothers. What began with George became, quite literally, a family network inside a national company.
The end of George’s chapter
George remained closely involved with the company until the end of his life.
In 1917 he returned to Christchurch after a business trip to the United States. Contemporary reports noted that his health had not been entirely good while he was away, although he appeared improved on his return.
On 13 August 1917 he was taken suddenly ill while at his office and died at his residence later that day.
Newspapers described his death as a shock and emphasised the scale of the business he had helped create.
His son Bertie was recalled to Christchurch and became managing director. The next chapter of Whitcombe & Tombs had begun.
Why George Hawkes Whitcombe belongs in the Hall of Fame
George’s life is compelling because of the distance between where he started and what he ultimately built.
He was born in France to an English family whose circumstances had already been shaped by war and migration. He travelled to New Zealand as a teenager, joined an older brother, tried military service, taught French and moved into bookselling.
From there he helped create a company that became part of New Zealand’s educational and cultural infrastructure.
And perhaps most importantly for the Whitcombe Family Network, George is a connector.
His father links the family to the Greek War of Independence. His brothers connect the family’s migration into New Zealand. His sons connect the name to publishing, business and military service in the 20th century.
Through George, several apparently separate Whitcombe stories become one continuous family story.
Family connections
- Father: Captain Thomas Douglas Whitcombe, soldier and author
- Brother: Charles Douglas Whitcombe, an early member of the New Zealand branch
- Son: Bertie Ernest Hawkes Whitcombe, printer, bookseller and publisher
- Son: Alec Noel Hawkes Whitcombe, soldier and Whitcombe & Tombs manager
Research acknowledgement
This article was developed with family-history research and context generously shared with the Whitcombe Family Network by Michael J. Whitcombe-Tait, a descendant of Captain Thomas Douglas Whitcombe through the New Zealand branch of the family.
Image note
The featured image is an AI-generated historical illustration created to enrich the article and is not a documentary portrait of George Hawkes Whitcombe. The supporting images are historical Whitcombe & Tombs material already held in the Whitcombe Family Network archive.
Sources and further reading
- Alexander Turnbull Library / National Library of New Zealand, George Hawkes Whitcombe, 1854?-1917.
- Evening Post, 15 August 1917, Late Mr. G. H. Whitcombe, Papers Past.
- Dennis McEldowney, Whitcombe, Bertie Ernest Hawkes, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography / Te Ara.
- Elizabeth Caffin, Educational publishing and Whitcombe and Tombs, Te Ara.
- National Library of New Zealand, Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd.