Mary Stamers-Smith: On Probation – Don't mess with Mary
Queenstown’s probation officer for almost 20 years, Mary Stamers-Smith was not only highly respected by the judiciary, but also by her clients.
Her choice of career – social work, may have been a shock and a first for her St Margaret’s Girls College headmistress in Christchurch, but Mary, a deputy head prefect, had read a book inspiring her and there was no stopping her.
Mary started her sociology and psychology studies (BA) in 1964 – the year she saw The Beatles perform in Christchurch Square. “The 60s were great. We were beatniks for the first two years – quite hippy, wearing sloppy jerseys and black tight stockings.” However, that changed in her third year when she was granted a two-year social work traineeship, while still attending lectures down the road. “Then I had to appear at lectures in a formal welfare office skirt.” She had placements with Child Welfare and the Psychological Service for children with learning, social and behavioural difficulties, before the Probation Service – the focus of her career.
Her third year at uni Mary met husband of 54 years, Simon Stamers-Smith, retired Queenstown lawyer and former district councillor. “He took me to a Dr Zhivago movie and on the drive home to Merivale it was snowing so he suggested a walk in Elmwood Park,” says Mary. Ever the romantic, he swept her off her feet.
“Everybody went to London when they graduated and I wanted to stay with Simon, but he said, ‘If we get married without you travelling you’ll be banging pots around the kitchen because you didn’t go’.” She sailed to England with her best friend and her adventures included naively travelling to the former Soviet Union in a Russian ship with the British Communist Party by mistake. Her stop on the flight home, also naively, included three nights in Beirut, where she befriended a Sheik, who took her on tour in his private royal limousine.
In the nine months they were apart she and Simon wrote each other 90 letters, Simon meeting her at the airport, ring in hand. They married two months later.
Mary had been plunged deep into her first probation officer role in Christchurch. “Fresh from a private girls’ school, I was dealing with some pretty horrific cases involving things that were never mentioned back then,” she says. “I learned the hard way.”
Once married she worked as a medical social worker at Dunedin Hospital, where she challenged conservative thinking by older medical professionals, encouraging them to look beyond surgical needs to what was going on at home.
Pregnant with their son, they moved back to Christchurch where their two daughters followed – three kids under three. She still found time to give back to the community on school committees and chairing community organisations, like the St Margaret’s Endowment Fund, which she led for 10 years.
Mary joined women to be reckoned with, politician Ann Hercus and sister in law, journalist Anne Hargreaves managing The Society for Research on Women, which went national. “I wasn’t burning my bras but I thought women were fantastically underrated,” she says.
In her career she became first in NZ to write court probation reports on contract, visiting and interviewing prisoners in the cells at Christchurch Remand Prison amid mass whistles.
Moving to Queenstown in 1985, the Stamers-Smith’s Dalefield home burnt down a month after moving in and a week after the Coronet Peak base building fire. Not a good start, but Mary soon scored a job as sole Queenstown probation officer working out of the old District Courthouse. She did that for 18 years, managing offenders on parole from all over NZ, many of whom just wanted to come to ‘party town’.
It was unnerving at times managing offenders on parole from all over NZ, some who’d committed serious crimes.
“I had an alarm button under my desk and if I pushed it the police would come running from around the corner. I never used it once,” she says. She never felt threatened, always establishing a rapport of trust with the offenders. “Mostly ‘my crims’ were young people who’d themselves been dealt a cruel blow in life. I believe in respecting people whatever their deeds were. People aren’t born evil. They’re subjected to it.”
The respect was mutual. A local heroin addict ended up in her office for nicking poppies from Millbrook and Speargrass Flat gardens. “I said, ‘Look mate, you’re nearly on my territory (Littles Road) and you’ll get a very bad probation report if you come there.’ He said, ‘Geez Mary, the crims would be right onto me if I did anything to you!’”
High honour and praise from Judge Noel Walsh farewelling Mary off to retirement in 2005 made it all worthwhile.
Mary’s helped form, and served on, a myriad of local community organisations, including Queenstown’s Citizens Advice Bureau in 1987 – its first president, and most enjoyably, founding U3A – University of the Third Age locally in 2009 for local retirees eager to learn.
