The Karitane Home for Babies

23 October 1907

Special Collections

Dunedin: Otago Witness

Not only was Truby King ‘saving the babies’ in Dunedin through the work of Nurse McKinnon, but he began to use his Karitane holiday home, a few kilometres north of Seacliff, as a place to house malnourished babies and feed them back to health. Many babies were nursed there, following King’s strict regime of four hourly feeds but never at night. By October 1907 there were twenty babies at Karitane, space was at a premium and the nurses were run off their feet. In this photograph, babies are outside breathing in the fresh sea air.