Arthur Carman

Who is Arthur Carman?

Arthur Herbert Carman was a New Zealand sports journalist and writer, bookseller, publisher, pacifist, local politician, and local historian.

He was born and died in Wellington, New Zealand. He was born in Paparangi, Johnsonville, and lived in Tawa. He was a bookseller and publisher; his Lambton Quay bookshop was a landmark for thirty years. He was on several local bodies: the Wellington Hospital Board, the Tawa Borough Council and the Hutt Valley Power and Gas Board.

He published sports books as Arthur Carman and local history books as A. H. Carman or Arthur H. Carman. These included The Birth of a City: Wellington 1840-1843 and Tawa Flat and the Old Porirua Road, which went into three editions

Arthur was noted as a Christian Pacifist, who spent some months in Mt Crawford prison in Wellington, NZ in 1941, for 'subversion' when he attempted to publicly espouse the Christian Pacifist view. His viewpoint had change from tradition Methodism toward Quakerism following a 1925 visit to the WW1 battlefields, although he remained a Methodist local preacher for the whole of his life.