Joseph Brittan

Joseph Brittan (12 January 1806 – 27 October 1867) was a New Zealand surgeon, newspaper editor, and provincial councillor, was one of the dominant figures in early Christchurch. Born into a middle-class family in southern England, he followed his younger brother Guise Brittan to Christchurch, where he and his wife arrived in February 1852 with four children. Joseph Brittan soon got involved in the usual activities of early settlers and gained prominence in doing so. He had bought 100 acres on 10 July 1851 and took up 50 of this to the east of Christchurch that he converted to farmland. There, he built the family residence, and the suburb of Linwood was subsequently named after Brittan's farm and homestead of Linwood House.

The members of the Brittan family were devout Anglicans (although the Brittan family had been Methodists) and had a close association with the neighbouring Holy Trinity Avonside, where Guise Brittan was a lay reader. William Rolleston became Joseph Brittan's son-in-law in 1865, when he married his only surviving daughter Mary; Rolleston was elected Canterbury's third Superintendent just months after Brittan's death.

Brittan was a member of the Canterbury Provincial Council for just over three years. He served as Provincial Secretary from 1855 to 1857 and was expected to succeed James FitzGerald as the second Superintendent of the Canterbury Province, but was beaten by William Sefton Moorhouse in October 1857. He established the third newspaper in Canterbury, the Canterbury Standard, which existed for 12 years until shortly before Brittan's death. Brittan was a very eloquent speaker, but he had a biting and sarcastic character, and was disliked, and even feared, by some. Later in life, he suffered from gout and frequent headaches, and this together with financial trouble, often made him irritable and impatient. He died at his homestead in October 1867 after a long period of declining health.

Early life Joseph Brittan was born on 12 January 1806 in Bristol, England, into a respectable middle-class family that originated in Bristol. His father was a brewer.

Brittan's daughter's biographer (Rosamund Rolleston, his great-granddaughter) described him as "a man of ability and a polished speaker [his] biting, sarcastic manner made him both feared and disliked", and as "quarrelsome and uncompromising". In his obituary, he was described "as a speaker [who] took very high rank, possessing a force and fluency of expression, a power of lucid statement, and a readiness in debate, which with one or two exceptions have never been equalled in the Council." Brittan Street was named for him and first appeared in street directories in 1892. Linwood House, which fronted onto both Linwood Avenue and Brittan Street, was registered by Heritage New Zealand as a class D heritage building in 1982, and with a change of the classification system later, it later became a Category II listing. Significantly damaged in both the September 2010 and the February 2011 earthquakes, Civil Defence ordered the building's demolition in March 2011, which was carried out later that year.