A Christmas death

While death is always a tragedy, there is something particularly terrible about a death of a beloved family member just before Christmas.
Leonard Naylor was on his way home for Christmas.
It was December 23, 1939, when he got a ride with 23-year-old Leslie Trevor Moore who had a car. They were heading from Gisborne to Tiniroto, a tiny farming and forestry village part way to Wairoa.
The pair had set off just after midnight - very early morning.
It would be more than 24 hours before they were found - by which time Leslie was dead.
Naylor, who was 45, was never able to remember what had happened. They were driving and then they were over 300ft down a bank to the Kaikoura river.
About 7am on Christmas Eve, a truck driver from the Public Works department, Harry Campbell saw Naylor lying on the side of the road badly cut up and unconscious.
He realised Naylor had managed to climb up the bank and went down himself to find the car at the bottom with Leslie in it.
Campbell went for help.
A rescue complete with ropes and a sledge was needed to retrieve Leslie.
His watch was found to have stopped at 4.35.
Neither man was believed to have been drinking.
Moore was a lorry driver himself and only a few weeks before had been fined 2 pounds for speeding
Moore had been born in 1916 the third son of Phillip and Edith Moore.
Naylor never seemed to quite recover, being in trouble for drinking on and off for several years after. He died in 1963 and is buried in Taruheru Cemetery.
Moore, who was single, was buried in Patutahi Cemetery.
Picture by Artem Maltsev.​