An unidentified sheep

William Travers had quite a life, soldier, politician, naturalist but it was as a lawyer that one of the weirdest cases he dealt with came to court.
It all began with a headless sheep.
Michael Shannon and James Whiting were charged with stealing a sheep and both pleaded not guilty.
They went to trial in the Supreme Court in Nelson in January 1860.
Butcher Alexander Scott had gone to Shannon’s home to see Whiting standing over a headless sheep with a knife in his hand.
He commented on it and Whiting told him if he could prove it was his, they would pay him for it. Both men were drunk.
Later the same day he was shown a sheep’s head with the facebrand and earmark the same as one he had recently bought from a man called Fearon.
Another witness said she had seen the same sheep in a river earlier with two dogs that belonged to Whiting and Shannon, barking at the sheep.
Later the head was found in the water.
Constable Edward Mytton said he found the head and took it into custody.
Shannon and Whiting claimed they had come upon the sheep and that it did not have a head when they did.
The problem was there was no evidence that the two men had actually stolen it and seeing as it could not be identified as the exactly same sheep, the two men were found not guilty.
What happened to the sheep is not recorded.
William Thomas Locke Travers was born in January 1819 in Limerick, Ireland.
He was brought up in France and joined the British Foreign Legion. After the Spanish revolution he went to London to study law.
He married Jane Oldham in 1843, then in 1849 they and their two children headed for New Zealand.
Travers began practising law and became a resident magistrate and tried his hand at a political career as a member of the House of Representatives.
It never amounted to much and it was in naturalism that he made a mark, exploring the Nelson region. He found the source of the Waiau River and named several others along with Mt Travers and the Travers range.
He collected as he went, and plant specimens are held in the national museum.
Travers drafted the legislation establishing the Botanic Gardens in Wellington and was a member of the board for 22 years.
His first wife Jane died in 1888, and on 9 April 1891 Travers married Theodosia Leslie Barclay at St Peter's Church, Wellington.
Travers was one of the first shareholders of the Wellington Gas Company, the Wellington City Steam Tramways Company and the Wellington and Manawatū Railway Company.
It turned out to be a horrible irony.
On April 27, 1903 he was getting off a train at the Hutt railway station when he fell, ending up between the platform and the train. He suffered serious head injuries and with a badly broken leg that had to be amputated. He died shortly after aged 84.
Travers is buried in the Bolton Street Cemetery.​