Victoria Howell, by all accounts, was a kind woman who had run a nursing home before her death.
In many ways, it made the extraordinary circumstances of her death, burial, then exhumation and reburial even odder.
Victoria had been born in Riverton on Valentine's Day in 1871. Her father was Captain John Howell of the Fairlight station at Lake Wakatipu and her mother Caroline Brown.
Her closest friend was Florence Hall, a nurse. In the papers of the time Florence was referred to as friend and business partner - but given that they lived together and worked together for many years, a case could be made for a different relationship.
When they moved to the Wairarapa they bought a home and turned it into a nursing home. And for a time everything was fine.
Then in 1906, Victoria took ill. Initially it was thought to be influenza and a nasty case at that. But a consultation with a doctor led to a diagnosis of a cancerous growth in her stomach.
He advised them to go somewhere quiet - and the pair moved to a home at Castlepoint.
Florence nursed her diligently but Victoria died on January 23, 1906.
She was buried in the Archer St cemetery.
Normally that would end the story - but it was only the beginning.
Victoria’s brother questioned why her will would name Florence as her beneficiary and not any members of the family. He was suspicious and made a case for Victoria’s body to be exhumed.
It was done and she was examined. But no growths were found. So what did Victoria die of?
Samples were taken and sent for analysis and suspicion began to fall on Florence. And by the inquest it was clear Victoria had died of zinc poisoning and all eyes turned to Florence again.
Poor Victoria’s body was again exhumed for further tests.
A series of investigations came to astonishing conclusions though. Victoria had been drinking water from a zinc tank, new tanks put in at the home in Castlepoint.
At the inquest it turned out a few other people who used the water at Castlepoint had also been ill, just not to the degree Victoria was.
A government analyst told the inquest the water Victoria was drinking contained four times the amount of zinc as other water.
With all the information to hand a jury at the inquest found that Victoria had died from zinc poisoning - made worse by the fact she was already ill.
The jury also found no other person was responsible for her death.
Victoria was again quietly buried, finally to rest.
Florence sued several newspapers who had all but convicted her before the findings of the inquest and moved on going to Wellington to work.
Victoria had been buried in what is called the old ground at the Masterton cemetery and the whereabouts of her grave is now not known.​

Did you know that Kāpiti Island is actually the tip of a huge mountain?
The island has been occupied on and off since Māori arrived in New Zealand, used by whalers and for a while was the centre of the flax trade.
In 1870 it was identified as a possible nature reserve - although by then much of it had been deforested. Farmers also lived there, leasing the land from the Maori who owned it.
The Kāpiti Island Public Reserve Act 1897 prohibited any further private sales of land on the island, and provided the basis for the island being acquired by the Crown, to be set aside as a nature reserve, with the exception of land still held by original Māori owners or their descendants.
One of its fiercest protectors was Ernest Valentine Sanderson.
We know him now as the founder of New Zealand Forest and Bird.
Sanderson was born in Dunedin on February 8, 1866 the son of Jane Sanderson and William Walter James Spreat before the family moved to Wellington. It was Spreat’s behaviour that initially broke up the family and when they returned to live with him, he attacked Val as he was known and his brother Louis, ending up shot to death which was ruled a justifiable homicide.
Val enlisted for the South African War and served before coming back to a clerking job.
When his father’s estate was finalised he had enough money to start his own business, Magnus, Sanderson and Company. Initially they imported bicycles then moved into cars.
When war was declared he tried to reenlist, lying about his age. He was eventually accepted and served as a quartermaster but only served seven months before becoming ill.
He had married Emily Louisa Cooper in 1904 but by the end of the war he was estranged from her and they divorced.
Sanderson was increasingly concerned about conservation and in 1921 he and the Evening Post newspaper went to the island. The resulting publicity about how badly off the island, with no fences for the reserve area or to protect it from the goats and sheep, was created a groundswell of support for better protection for the island.
“We have robbed the birds of tremendous areas of bush on the mainland. Are we not patriotic enough to give them a last secure resting place on this small island, seven miles by one mile in area, in order that our children and children’s children may see and learn what New Zealand was really like when their daring forefathers first set foot in this land of ours?” he wrote in 1922.*
Sanderson launched the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society and built a membership of supporters and in 1935 renamed it the Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand.
He campaigned against things like soil erosion and the menace to our bush by deer.
He married Nellie Milne in 1934 and set up home in Paekākāriki - from which he could watch Kapiti Island.
Sanderson died on December 29, 1945 and was buried in the Otaki Public Cemetery.
But even if his name is not as remembered anymore - his legacy - the Forest and Bird Protection Society continues.
* From the Forest and Bird website.​

Even with her work in the public eye, Emily Cumming Harris - one of New Zealand’s first professional artists - had a hard time letting go.
When asked to submit a painting for the art union at the Wellington exhibition in 1885, she wrote, 'I grow to love my pictures, and after I have worked & thought about & toiled at a picture for a long time I cannot endure the idea of perhaps some half drunken man, who coming into the Exhibition, pays 10/6 and maybe wins my picture.'
Now her beautiful work resides in the homes of private collectors and museums.
Emily was born to Sarah and Edwin in Plymouth, Devonshire, England on April 18, 1837.
Three years later, the family came to New Zealand reaching New Plymouth.
Her hard working parents had decent jobs, her father was a civil engineer and surveyor and her mother ran a school.
Later they moved to Nelson and Emily went to Australia to study art.
On her return, she and her sister Frances and Ellen ran a small school where they gave lessons in music, dancing and drawing.
Emily kept a diary and described the poverty her family lived in. It was a hard life and while she would have preferred to pursue art full time she was unable to due to needing to make money for her family.
She was able to sell some of her work but it was not enough to live on.
Her works were studies of New Zealand flowers and plants but also birds, still lifes and landscapes.
Emily’s work went into exhibitions including into the Sydney International
Exhibition in 1879 where she won a first degree of merit. In the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 she won first prize and a silver medal for a painted screen and third for a table top.
She was also commended for her work in a London exhibition.
There was a pressure that came with success to exhibit more and sell more which she found difficult.
In 1890 she, along with a Nelson bookseller, published three books, New Zealand flowers, New Zealand ferns, and New Zealand berries (which were published the same year in a single volume, Flowers, ferns, and berries of New Zealand). Each contained 12 lithographs with descriptive text, and some copies were hand-coloured by Harris herself. She also illustrated a children's book, Fairyland in New Zealand, by Sarah Moore (1890).
Emily never married, and continued to work until her death in Nelson on August 5, 1925 after living in poor circumstances for years.
Along with her art, Emily also wrote poetry but very little of her work has survived.
A new book on her work Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris has recently been published.
Emily is buried in Wakapuaka Cemetery.​

Lighthouses are both romantic and tragic places. Often isolated and windswept, they might seem like a dream for those seeking escape from the world—but when something goes wrong, there is no one nearby to help. You just have to cope.
So it was with 12-year-old Donald Young, who found himself thrust into adult responsibilities when tragedy struck the small lighthouse community where he lived. His father was the head keeper on Motuopao Island, a lonely outpost off Cape Maria van Diemen at the northwestern tip of New Zealand’s North Island, just southwest of the spiritually significant Cape Reinga.
The lighthouse had stood there since the 1870s, built to guard against the treacherous seas where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. Alongside it were a few weather-beaten homes for the staff and their families—sturdy structures built to endure constant salt spray, howling winds, and complete isolation.
Living there in 1933 were Donald’s family, Henry and Minnie (Betty) Newson, and Frederick Gage with his wife Mary and their two children. Despite the era—well into the age of radio and steamboats—life on Motuopao remained primitive, reliant on sea-based supplies and good weather. When storms came, there was no leaving. There was only waiting.
On October 14, 1933, Henry Newson, his wife Betty, and Frederick Gage went fishing on the rocks below the lighthouse. It was a common pastime and sometimes a necessity, supplementing food rations. But that day, the sea was in one of its darker moods. Betty noticed the massive wave first and cried out—but it was already too late. The wave crashed over them, sweeping all three into the churning water.
Henry managed to reach Betty and pull her to shore, desperately trying to revive her with assisted breathing—what we’d now call CPR. But it was no use. She was gone. Frederick Gage, too, was lost to the sea. His body never recovered, only his memory held by those left behind.
In the immediate chaos, 12-year-old Donald stepped forward. With the weight of grief all around him, he helped his father maintain the light, care for the surviving families, and manage daily operations until help arrived. Newspapers would later describe him as “doing the work of a man,” a tribute to his courage under unthinkable pressure.
A steamer was dispatched from the mainland to collect Minnie’s body, but the sea refused to return Frederick. Mary Gage and her children had to leave without a chance to say goodbye.
Henry Newson eventually remarried in 1935 and lived until 1975. But Motuopao Island changed forever after that day. The lighthouse, once a symbol of safety, now also stood as a quiet monument to loss.
In 1940, the lighthouse was automated, and the last keepers left. Today, the island is part of a Department of Conservation nature reserve. The light still shines, but no one lives there now—only seabirds, salt air, and the silent stories of those who once called it home.
Minnie was buried in Waikumete Cemetery.​

The killing of a mother by a daughter always seems particularly shocking.
The recent case in Wellington echoes a case in Christchurch 60 years ago.
Nola Lorimer was found guilty of killing Reta Jane Coxhead, her own mother.
On December 1, 1965, Dr D J Lough visited Reta at her home about 10.15am in her St Albans home and found her up, dressed and ready to go out shopping.
Two hours later she was found dead, dressed in the same clothes, lying in a pool of blood at the entrance to the bathroom.
A pane of glass in the back door was broken.
She was found by her daughter Nola. Police were quickly called and found she had been beaten about the head with a large wooden barometer that had been on the wall and was now lying beside her broken.
Another weapon had been used to cut her throat.
There were no signs of burglary in the house.
Reta had lived at the house for a few years. She had a son and daughter.
Police searched the home and surrounding area thoroughly but found nothing.
When Nola was charged with her murder six weeks later, it sent shockwaves through the community.
In a court case, Margaret Mundy who worked for Reta had been in and out of the home twice that morning, the last time about 11.15am.
Nola - a land agent - had been at her work until about 11.45am when she left for the day.
Malcolm Moore who lived opposite Reta saw Nola about 12.50pm in the driveway of her mother’s home saying she was worried about her.
He had been the one to break the glass in the backdoor to get in and they had found Reta.
During questioning by police Nola initially said she had pushed Reta during a dispute and she had fallen and hit her head.
Then she said she panicked, got the barometer and bashed her. But Reta was still breathing so she took a knife, cut her throat and washed it and put it back.
She claimed she adored her mother.
Insanity was raised at her trial, her lawyer outlining her parents unhappy marriage, her own two unhappy marriages and working in a high pressure male dominated industry.
It had been, her lawyer claimed too much for her, and she resorted to pills and alcohol.
Nola would sometimes get angry or be unresponsive and had seen a psychiatrist a couple of years before who had given her medication.
The jury heard that she became frenzied on the day of the murder and did not understand the quality of her actions.
Nola’s daughter Kay also spoke of seeing her mother drink and knew she had used some medication.
A doctor called for the defence believed Nola was suffering psychomotor epilepsy.
Other doctors said they did not believe she was responsible for her actions on the day of the murder.
The jury found her guilty after four and a half hours but added a rider to her verdict that her sentence be less than life.
However the judge had no choice, his only option was to sentence her to life. An appeal to overturn that failed.
A memorial to Reta is at the Canterbury Memorial Gardens and Crematorium.​