As the cold weather gives way to warmer days, a sport of warm days begins.
Cricket is almost as much our sport as rugby and it's been around for hundreds of years. But the first recorded game is from December 20, 1843, and mentioned in the diary of Church Missionary Society leader Henry Williams. His pupils at his mission school in Paihia in the Bay of Plenty were given a day off. They had sat exams the day before and sorely needed some play. Williams himself played, conceding a run to a five year old bowler. It was not until three years later that Charles Darwin wrote about a game during his nine day visit to New Zealand on the HMS Beagle in the Bay of Islands. The first officially recorded cricket match was in Wellington on December 28, 1843 played between two teams just named red and blue. Henry Williams was born on February 11, 1792, to lace manufacturer Thomas and his wife Mary Marsh. At 14, Henry went into the Royal Navy looking to become an officer, but it was harsh hard work and after 10 years seeing active service, he was discharged. Despite trying a job as a drawing master he began to prepare to be a missionary. He married Marianne Coldham on January 20, 1818. Henry then offered his service to the Church Missionary Society and was ordained before leaving for New Zealand arriving in the Bay of Islands in 1823. Their idea was to convert people, especially Māori, but Henry’s first job was to stop the trade for food and arms. He also wanted to devote more time to spiritual teaching and wanted missionaries to learn Māori to better preach. Henry also preached peace, negotiating in intertribal disputes. Increasing numbers of Māori began to be baptised, Henry sent missionaries to other areas, greatly increasing the reach of the CMS. He was trusted by different Māori so when the Treaty was to be signed he explained its provisions. When race relations began to sour, he tried to negotiate peace but the conflict over land became more and more hostile leading to him being accused of betrayal by both times. Henry himself had purchased land and the validity of his claim was challenged and he was forced to defend it, along with his personal integrity but CMS found him an embarrassment and he was dismissed. He became Archdeacon of Waimate in 1844. He died on July 16, 1867 and is buried in the grounds of Holy Trinity Church in Pakaraka. Picture by Matthew McLennan.
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You’re on a walk through the bush in Wellington. You’ve seen a tūī, a kererū and can hear the song of other native birds.
You take a turn on the track and come face to face with a herd of the local wild alpaca. It won’t happen now but there was a time when the Wellington Provincial Council intended for alpaca to roam the hills of Wellington. Alpacas were introduced to New Zealand in the 19th century. There was good evidence that alpacas could thrive here and there was a lot of talk about it. They were highly prized for their wool - however difficult to shear. In 1863, there was notice that 15 were coming to Canterbury and in 1864 news that 12 were supposed to come to Wellington. In the end, 10 were first imported in 1865 by the Wellington Provincial Government who bought them from Charles Ledger in Australia for 15 pounds each but they couldn’t make it work and suffered heavy financial loss because of it. By the end of the year there were problems - the alpaca were suffering from something and there were several theories - including that they suffered from a form of leprosy, or was there something wrong with their teeth which could affect their ability to eat. They ended up selling five of them to William Barnard Rhodes in 1869 They turned out to be easier to look at than to handle, He said at shearing time they were “exceedingly troublesome” especially their spitting with which they displayed “considerable range and accuracy.” That must have been a bit of a shock to shearers used to sheep. The other five apparently went to Auckland but what happened to them no one seems to have recorded. It was not for another 100 years that alpacas and llamas came into New Zealand to be farmed commercially. Rhodes had been born on May 9, 1807, to William and Theodosia Maria in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. He came to New Zealand in 1839 and began acquiring land and at one point was called the richest man in the country. Rhodes died on February 11, 1878 and is buried in Bolton St Cemetery. Photo by Paul Summers. Charles Cameron is not now a name that anyone remembers as the European discoverer of one of the biggest passes in the South Island.
That’s because it’s called Haast Pass after Julius von Haast who was second to see it and got it named after him. In January 1863, gold prospector Charles Cameron, exploring the area found the pass that had been known to Maori for some time. It’s almost certain however that Cameron did not walk completely through the pass. A month later Haast led a party in and ended up being the one the pass was named after. He disputed Cameron’s claim - but in 1881 Cameron’s powder flask - which he had lost on the trip, on Mt Cameron west of the pass, was found and inscribed on it was the date, so his claim was established - but by then the pass was named. Charles Cameron had been born in Morven, Scotland to John and Janet Cameron on September 14, 1820. When he was 20, he and the rest of his family came to New Zealand on the Blenheim on the last day of 1840. There is no way he was the first person through the pass. Ngāi Tahu at the time knew about it. It was used to trade precious greenstone and food. A map had been drawn for the explorer Edward Shortland in 1844. Others also came close but it was Cameron, while he was hunting for gold, who managed it, making him the first European. It was only a few months later that Haast, who was Canterbury’s provincial geologist at the time, who took six weeks on foot to do it along with four others. Haast of course did a geological survey of the area as he walked. By 1880, there was a decent packhorse track but work on a road did not begin until 1929. Cameron himself had married Catherine McKinnon in 1860 in Wellington and they had six children. He lived mostly quietly except for a brush with the law in 1869 when a still was found on his Turakina property. There was no evidence linking him to the actual still, but he was still fined. Up until his death, Cameron kept excellent health - and only a few days before he died had ridden into town for a sports day. He was ill when he got home so went to stay with his son-in-law and daughter where he died on February 12, 1909 in Fordell, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand, at the age of 88, and was buried in Turakina Cemetery. Photo from Te Papa’s collection. There have been some extraordinary scenes in Parliament lately, ripping up bills and a spontaneous haka.
It’s nothing new. Parliament is at least as much theatre as it is actual work. The first physical fight in the House actually took place in the very first Parliament. James Mackay was the politician representing the town of Nelson in 1853. He and William Travers were the only two candidates and so got into Parliament unopposed. He was a supporter of the then acting governor Robert Wynyard who thought Parliament needed royal assent but when everyone else disagreed he tried to end the session and the rest of the house reacted by suspending its own standing orders. Mackay tried to bypass this tactic and disrupted the house until Henry Sewell who became the first Premier and another tried to manhandle him out of the chamber leading to a scuffle. In some newspapers the first session of parliament was seen as a total and most disgraceful failure. Mackay was found guilty of gross and premeditated contempt of the House. But many found that Sewell was the author of the violence. An account of it appears in the New Zealander makes it clear Sewell started it. Mackey entered and went to pick up his umbrella and the chairman of the house requested him to take off his hat. He tipped the hat to him then put it on again. He tried to hand over several papers but they were snatched from him. “Mr. Sewell then rushed upon Mr. Mackay, laid hold of him by the back of the neck with his left hand, and struck him repeatedly in the ribs with the other. Mr. Hart, keeping a respectful distance, cried out Oh! Mr. Sewell! Mr. Sewell! Mr. Sewell ! Oil, do not! do not — Then Mr. Carleton ran up, laid hold of Mr. Mackay by the arms, and finally forced Mr. Sewell awav; but several other members continued to hustle Mr. Mackay. He broke loose from them, and, standing in the middle of the house, flourished his umbrella over head, and defied any of them to turn him out. The Chairman, at the top of his voice, endeavoured to restore order, but with no avail.” Mackay had been born in 1804 in Aberdeen in Scotland to Alexander Mackie and his wife Elspet. He began his working life as a banker in London before coming to New Zealand in 1831 after marrying Ann Charles. He became a farmer in Nelson and became increasingly involved in local affairs. But after his first - and only - term in Parliament he left politics. HIs first wife died in 1860 and he remarried, to Ann Adney Shuckburgh. He spent his later years farming, and though still taking an active interest in local politics, he was reluctant to re-enter public office.[ In 1874 he fell from a loaded cart while working on his farm. The injury to his back grew into a tumour which eventually left him paralyzed. He died on May 29, 1875. Mackay and his first wife were buried at St Andrew's Church in Wakapuaka. The church no longer exists, and the churchyard is now designated an historic site. Who exactly William Frederick Eggers was is still uncertain more than 100 years after his death..
Even his name - William Frederick - or Frederick William Eggers - or McMahon is not sure. Whichever it was, he thought he would get away with robbing the State Coal mine payroll - holding up a car driven by John Coulthard whose two passengers were the manager of the company Isaac James and another employee William Hall. The three men had just come from the Bank of New Zealand in Greymouth on November 17, 1917, with the payroll - in cash - and were heading for Runanga. They had only been driving for a few minutes before they were forced to stop, seeing something in the road that they crashed into. It was a makeshift obstruction made from a ladder and a box. As they began to get out of the car a man rose from a nearby bush and shouted hands up. The man did not give them a chance, he began firing his guns - one in each hand - immediately. He killed Coulthard outright, Hall took a bullet to the spine and James was shot in the thigh, calf and hand but he managed to flee. As it turned out, they weren’t alone. Hidden nearby was Peter and Leonard Manderson - a father and son who had been on a bike ride. As Eggers made off with £3659, Leonard rushed for help. A huge manhunt started and on November 19 a man calling himself Fredrick Eggers McMahon was arrested as he came out of a hotel in Christchurch. He had a bag of money and a gun on him. Living with him at a boarding house was his girlfriend Elizabeth who told police the gun was hers and that McMahon was her surname, that Fredrick was using. He was found guilty at trial and found guilty of one murder - it might have been two since William Hall died of his wounds weeks later. On March 5, 1918 he was hanged. Eggers had been born on December 17, 1886 in South Australia. There are little records about him other than at one point he had been arrested for forgery. By about 1914 he was in New Zealand. It seems he spun a number of tales about himself, including that he had been enlisted (and then deserted), that he was rich and that he had served a detention on Wellington’s Somes Island. A few things are known, he had a military service card on him when he was arrested. He claimed his parents were in Adelaide but they were originally from America and of German extraction. That at least may be true. In records, Henriette Roenfeld had married a Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Eggers in 1850. Henriette was German by birth. Those names could well have been Anglicised to William Frederick Eggers for their son. They did indeed live in Adelaide. But the timing is a little uncertain - Henriette would have been 55 when he was born - and her husband had died years before. He was the last man to be hanged in the South Island. Eggers is buried in Lyttelton Cemetery. John Henry Holmes did not deserve his death or the fuss that accompanied it.
He had been born into a cultured English family on October 20, 1820, to James and Ann. Indeed, his father was court painter to King George IV. Some documents give his name as Henry John Holmes - but he was known as Henry. He would have lived in a strata of society with great benefits, including his education which was at Harrow, a boarding school founded by royalty. He went to Australia about 1853 and married a widow Catherine Martin about 1860 and they went on to have five children. Catherine died in 1872. Some time after he came to New Zealand living in Auckland and working as a scenic artist at the Opera House. By then he was alone. And he liked to drink. On January 24 he was in bed reading - he suffered from insomnia - when he heard the call that there was a fire. The two storey building on Elliott St was a series of workshops, including Holmes’. Delilah Harris, who lived with her family in another of the rooms, knocked repeatedly on their joint wall. She later told an inquest that he did not answer but she heard a man walking about quickly as if trying to get out. The fire was put out, but it had damaged a good part of the building. It was never discovered exactly how the fire started. Holmes was found by the stairwell, nude with his trousers in his hand overcome with smoke inhalation. That would have been tragic enough but he was to be buried as a pauper. It took some theatre friends to raise a collection for him. They gave some money to John Mackinley, who had his workshop in the same building. HIs friends wanted a Christian burial, Mackinley and his group - called Freethinkers - did not. An argument broke out at the cemetery and poor Holmes’ body waited in the nearby hearse. Finally at the gravesite the Freethinkers kept interrupting the reverend brought in for the funeral. It nearly came to a fight with neither side agreeing what religion or school of thought Holmes had belonged to. Despite the two sides, Holmes ended up buried decently but even the newspapers of the time called it a disgrace. Holmes is buried in the Symonds St Cemetery in Auckland. Photo by Maxim Tajer. Have you ever wondered why storms have human names?
It’s because of Clement Lindley Wragge, an English meteorologist. The story goes that Wragge decided storms needed names and he used a variety, including the use of figures from Polynesian mythology, historical figures and, hilariously, politicians he did not like. Wragge was born on September 18, 1852, in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England. His parents died early in his life and he was raised by a grandmother who taught him the rudiments of cosmology and meteorology. After a disrupted education (mostly because he hated boarding school and would run away) he began studying law. At 21, he inherited money and opted to travel to visit Egypt. That travelling led to more travelling, to India, Australia and the United States and Canada. He travelled so much he gave up law and joined a nautical academy, working his way back to Australia. Once there he joined the Surveyor-General's office, surveying the Flinders ranges. He had to learn how to read the weather and set up two weather stations. Wragge married Leonora Edith Florence d'Eresby Thornton on September 13, 1877 and they returned to England where in 1881 he learned of the Scottish Meteorological Society's plans to establish a weather station on Ben Nevis, He offered to make daily ascents and take meteorological observations. This offer was subsequently accepted, with Wragge climbing to the top of the mountain on most days between 1 June and mid October, while his wife took comparable readings near sea level at Fort William. When a Summit Observatory was opened in 1883, Wragge applied for the job of Superintendent, but was unsuccessful. That led to him returning to Australia without his family where he set up more weather stations. The Government was impressed with his work and in 1887 he was appointed Government Meteorologist for Queensland. Within three weeks of his arrival in Brisbane, 18.305 inches (464.9 mm) of rain fell, earning him the nickname "Inclement" Wragge. Wragge began making weather predictions - which earned the displeasure of other meteorologists. He set up more and more weather stations, right across Australia. He had the idea of naming storms - mainly cyclones. He also published an almanack including his predictions and advocated for a national weather service. When his funding from the Government was reduced he resigned and returned to travelling, ending up in New Zealand, living in Dunedin with his de facto wife Louisa Emmeline Horne and lecturing on meteorology. Now most weather organisations use a list of names (rather than particular people) to name storms. He died in Auckland of a stroke on December 10, 1922 and is buried in the Pompallier Cemetery in Birkenhead. When we think of famous New Zealand shipwrecks we think of the Wahine or the Penguin but in fact the biggest loss of life was from the wreck of the Orpheus in February 1863.
Out of the 259 people on board, 189 died. HMS Orpheus was a Royal Navy corvette - the flagship of the Australian squadron. ON January 31, 1863 the Orpheus left Sydney heading for Manukau Harbour, bringing naval supplies and troops to New Zealand. She was running late and a decision was made by Captain Robert Heron Burton to cut through the harbour rather than go around North Cape. The harbour had a series of dangerous sandbars, one of which had shifted and there were updated guides. But when the sailing master intended to follow it he was overruled by Commodore William Farquharson Burnett who was on board. When the ship got too close to the sandbar it got a message from nearby Paratutua Island advising them to turn. By the time the ship paid attention, it was too late and the ship hit the sandbar. She hit with force, and the ship turned, presenting one side to the waves, which hit over and over, shattering windows and bursting hatches until the ship began to take on water. The crew tried to get off but the waves drove them back and many ended up going into the sea. The Wonga Wonga immediately diverted to try to help and pick up survivors. It found crew clinging to the masts which began to break, killing many. A few survivors were found but many were dead. The crew of the Wonga Wonga buried some in sand dunes on shore. Many of the graves remain unmarked. Three sailors, however, who were washed ashore were given a burial near Cornwallis beach and the site carefully marked by a local family, the Kilgours. In the 70’s the site was marked when naval chaplain Father Cronin rededicated them and unveiled a bronze commemorative plaque at the site. This reads: ‘This plaque marks the graves of three unknown sailors of the Queen who lost their lives when H.M.S. Orpheus foundered at the Manukau entrance on February 7th 1863 Unknown friends who recovered the bodies from the sea below laid them to rest in this quiet place.’ Many of those who died were boys aged 12-18 learning how to be able seamen. Although there are a few graves on land, the majority of the bodies were never recovered. Illustration from The Illustrated London News. When we think of prisoners of war we think of the terrible pictures of those liberated from the camps of World War II.
But there were other types of camps and other types of prisoners. Lilian Gladys Tompkins was born on March 10, 1893, in Halcombe in northern Manawatu to Lilian Jane Crabb and her storekeeper father Arthur Henry Tompkins. After a private education she began training as a nurse, completing her training at the New Plymouth Hospital in 1927. Gladys worked in several places in Australia before returning to New Zealand to do her maternity training in Wellington before training as a Plunket nurse in Dunedin. In 1939, Gladys intended to go to India to nurse but during a holiday in the Malay Peninsula with her mother she took a position working for three months in a children’s ward of a hospital in Johor. For a while she worked in the Batu Pahat district. But during the Japanese invasion of the Peninsula she was sent to Johor to the general hospital before being evacuated to Singapore which was considered safe. It fell to the Japanese and Gladys was detained in the Katong Internment camp then marched 8.5 miles to Changi in 1942. Changi was known for its brutal treatment of prisoners, many of whom died of malnutrition, disease and mistreatment. Gladys helped run an improvised hospital for the prisoners. She had been able to take two suitcases of possessions which included her watercolour paints. Among the sparse food supplies Gladys was able to grow papaya which helped supplement her diet. Two years later she was moved to the Sime Road Internment Camp where the conditions were better but the diet was worse. She lost a great deal of weight by the end of her time there in 1945. She and the prisoners were sent to Madras then on to Bangalore to recover before she returned to her family in Hamilton. Gladys returned to nursing at Johor Hospital. It included visiting nearby villages to hand out medicine and food to the starving villagers. She then went to Taiping before retiring in 1950 and went back to Hamilton. She recounted her experiences to a niece and published a book Three Wasted Years. Her watercolours were reproduced in colour. The diary she had carefully kept during her internment and her paintings were donated to the Alexander Turnbull library. Gladys had never married and she died on March 18, 1984, in Hamilton and was cremated at the Hamilton Cemetery. |
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