​Ebenezer Halley literally worked himself to death.
Not many doctors were willing to open a practice in the wilds of New Zealand goldfields, ministering to the roughest of men and travelling on horseback to rude huts or just a tent all over the countryside.
But Ebenezer Halley did. What he saw led him to push for more comfort than the surroundings could offer.
So, in 1861, he set up a cottage hospital in Tuapeka. The first major gold rush in Otago started the same year and with it came a wealth of injuries, along with men falling down and or getting blind drunk.
Thousands had rushed there hoping to make a fortune.
Ebenezer was born on April 25, 1836, to Rev Dr Robert and Rebekah Halley in Middlesex, England. If the name seems familiar it’s because he was the grand nephew to the man who the Halley comet is named after, Edmund Halley.
A doctor for the area was badly needed. There was no chance of anyone seriously ill or injured being taken to Dunedin which was reached by a rough bridle track.
As a doctor, he was called out at all hours and he willingly went, off to find his patient. And travel he did, during snowstorms or at night, up mountains and across rivers.
His original horse Jordan was replaced with a horse as well known as he was, Smuggler, who had been owned by someone who liked to stop at pubs. Whenever Ebenezer went past a pub, Smuggler would stop and take some persuading to keep going.
He had his hands full with patients, from frostbite to broken bones, not to mention stabbings during fights or avalanches and landslides.
It was also a time of bushrangers and bandits. Ebenezer however was considered immune. He had treated everyone at one time or another.
There wasn’t much he wasn’t called upon to do, even extracting teeth regularly.
His dedication to his duty was what he was known for.
While helping someone at the hospital in November 1875, he became infected with septic poisoning. Already exhausted by overwork he became ill himself and died on November 20, 1875 aged 39.
His funeral was huge, so well respected was he, and was by far the largest Tuapeka had ever seen.
He is buried in the Lawrence Cemetery, Clutha District with the words “ Erected by the numerous friends of Ebenezer Halley, MRCS in affectionate remembrance of his many kind acts during a long residence in Tuapeka district.”
Picture by Marcelo Leal.

Even on holiday Sydney Smith would be involved in murder.  It was like he couldn’t help himself.
Fortunately he was on the solving it side rather than the criminal side.
In fact Smith might have helped solve more murders than any other New Zealander.
Whether it was an arm swallowed by a shark, profiling a cat burglar (from his shoes) or determining what weapon was used, Smith did it all.
Smith was born August 4, 1883, in Roxburgh, in Central Otago to James Jackson Smith and Mary Elizabeth Wilkinson.  He went to school there initially before going to Victoria University where he studied before going to Edinburgh University.
He spent a short time in private practice before making a fateful move - to the Edinburgh department of forensic medicine.    It was here in 1913 he worked on his first big case - of two children found in the Hopetoun Quarry.  Despite the bodies having been in water for 18 months, Smith was able to provide information to the police that led to the arrest of their father, Patrick Higgins.
In 1914, he returned to Otago where he was chief medical officer before serving as a major in the New Zealand army during the First World War.  
He took up a post as a medico-legal advisor to the Egyptian government in 1917 and with it a senior lecturer in forensics at the University of Cairo.  One day in 1920 he was sent a single bone found in a trench by a group of workmen.  When he said it was human, police took over the site and found 14 bodies.  It turned out to be two men and two women entrapping prostitutes and killing them.
Smith also began working with forensic ballistics when the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army was shot in the street. Two brothers were arrested and their guns provided to Smith who immediately fired them, proving one had been used.  The technique is now routinely used.
He returned to Edinburgh in 1927 and was hotly sought to give evidence in court cases.
In 1935 he and wife Catherine Goodsir Gelenick went on a world tour intending to spend some time back in New Zealand.
While passing through Australia he was sought by the police.  Two fishermen had captured a shark that had gone on display at a Sydney aquarium where it promptly vomited up a human arm.  Smith was able to tell the police it was not a victim of a shark attack, but of murder, the arm having been cut off after death.  ( The case was so strange it was used as the plot of a TV show.)   Despite there being a suspect, no one was convicted.
During their last world holiday in 1955 - back to New Zealand - a retrial was put off just so he could be there.  
Among his cases was one where he used forensic podiatry to identify the shoes of a cat burglar and the identification of people by superimposing their photos over x-rays of their skulls.
He became Sir Sydney in 1949.  He and Catherine had two children, a son who became a poet and a daughter who followed her father into medicine.
Smith had been a pupil of Joseph Bell - the man Arthur Conan Doyle is supposed to have based Sherlock Holmes on.  
Smith died at his home in Edinburgh in May, 1969 where he is buried.

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The detective
It was Walter Dinnie who brought an organised system of criminal identification to New Zealand.
The experienced London detective was headhunted from England by the New Zealand Government looking for someone to run the police force.
Walter Dinnie was born on December 26, 1850, in Aberdeenshire in Scotland to Robert Dinnie and Celia Hay.  He received a grammar school education where he excelled in athletics and his first job was as a bank clerk before taking a clerking job with the West Riding of Yorkshire constabulary.
It led to him joining the London metropolitan police force earning promotion after promotion until he became a detective before going on to the Criminal Investigation branch.
He achieved fame with a number of high profile cases - including the arrest of international jewel thief William “Harry the valet” Johnson who stole £30,000 from the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland and Charles Wells - a gambler and fraudster who was called the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
Dinnie had begun setting up a fingerprint register in 1901 but in 1903 he was approached by the NZ Government to be the Commissioner of Police.
Dinnie accepted and retired from New Scotland Yard and boarded the SS Ruapehu with his wife Fredericka, their five sons and niece Isabella Smith.
He began putting reforms in place.  One of them was organising fingerprint and mug shot databases.  The mug shots are not like we think today.  Criminals faced the camera and had both their hands in full view - as an extra form of identification.
It included samples of handwriting along with details of known associates and methods of operating.
He put his son, Edmund, who was trained in modern methods, into the new unit and a year later Edmund was in charge.  Edmund also founded the Police Museum.
Both were lauded for their success but it didn’t last.  Walter became the object of attack in the media for corruption in the police force, especially after Dunedin police were found to be burgling the premises they were supposed to be protecting.
It resulted in a royal commission.  It ultimately said the police were not corrupt but confidence in Walter continued to drop after discipline problems and a bungled murder investigation.
Despite the commission finding there was no issue with police, Walter was seen as incompetent.  He attacked back but in 1909 his resignation was announced.  He denied resigning but it was too late.
He moved to Auckland and took up a position as president of the Tokerau District Maori Land Board, despite his lack of experience.  It didn’t last long either, the position ceased to exist in 1914 and Walter settled in Wellington as a private detective.
He died on May 7, 1923.
It now appears that he was hounded from office by a combination of the New Zealand Truth who had opposed someone being brought from England for a New Zealand job and by a member of Parliament and a magistrate who headed the commission.
Whether that is true or just a set of circumstances, Walter brought more modern forensic detective methods to New Zealand.
Walter is buried at Karori Cemetery.​

At 48.5kg, Violet Walrond was a tiny thing - but she was also New Zealand’s first female Olympian.  Not the first to win a medal (that was Yvette Williams) but the first girl to go to the Olympics.
She was also only 14-years-old when selected for the 1920 Antwerp Olympics games. She was 15 by the time the games happened.
Violet Ethel Mary Walrond was born on February 27, 1905, in Auckland to Cecil and Ethel.  
Cecil - usually called Tui - was her swimming coach and her chaperone to the games as she was not allowed to go alone.  
It took a nine week sea journey - delayed several times by bad weather - for them to arrive.
It was the first official New Zealand team (often New Zealand had been with a joint Australian team) and there was no Olympic uniform.  There were only four of them.
The men wore suits and Violet had a cream dress.  They did however have the fern leaf on their hats.
Violet was not even able to leave the hotel room by herself and could not go and watch her teammates.
Violet competed in two events, the 100 metre freestyle and the 300 metre freestyle.  They were held in an outdoor pool in chilly weather.
She was one of the few using the crawl, a new style that she had copied from a Wellington men’s champion.
In the 100 metre she came fifth and in the 300 she came seventh.  
Once the games were over, she set her sights on going to the Paris Olympics in 1924 but it wasn’t to be.
Only three years later, she and her sister Edna - also a competitive swimmer and a top diver - retired on her father’s orders - he didn’t like them in the public eye.
Violet married Harold Robb in 1933 and died 1996 aged 91.  She was cremated at Purewa Cemetery.

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Dr Gilbert Bogle’s death - along with Margaret Chandler - was about sex and drugs and is still a mystery 60 years on.
It was New Year’s Day when his body was spotted near a golf course in Sydney by two men out foraging for golf balls.
Gilbert was on his back, with his clothes laid out on top of him along with a piece of carpet, weirdly neat.
Not far from him was Margaret Chandler whose floral dress was disordered but with three pieces of cardboard covering her.
They had met at a New Year’s Eve party run by Ken Nash.   Gilbert had left his wife at home and Margaret had come with her husband Geoffrey.   The pair had an understanding about sleeping with other people.  Indeed, Geoffrey left the party to see his mistress.
Gilbert and Margaret left the party together and it was the last time they were seen until their bodies were discovered.
Gilbert Stanely Bogle was born January 5, 1924 in Whanganui to Archibald and Bertha.  He attended Whanganui Collegiate, then on to Victoria University.  
Like many men of the right age, he was eligible for war service at the start of World War two but he was allowed to continue working at his laboratory.  
In 1947, he went to England as a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford where he got his doctorate in physics and three years later married Vivienne Mary Rich.  
Back in New Zealand he lectured at the University of Otago but quickly he outgrew it and in 1956 went to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's division of physics at the National Standards Laboratory, Sydney.   He worked with cryogenics and maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) technology.
  And by 1962 he was considered by his boss to be the most brilliant of the staff.   
Then at a Christmas party he met Margaret Chandler, the wife of one of his colleagues. 
They met again at a New Year’s Eve party and, encouraged by Margaret’s husband, he offered her a ride home.  And sometimes before 6am on New Year’s day 1963 they both died on the eastern bank of the Lane Cove River, near Fullers Bridge, Chatswood.
How they had died was a mystery and it was generally believed it was poison or a type of drug overdose.  But what?  Tests revealed nothing toxic.
Margaret’s husband Geoffrey was a suspect as was another lover of Bogle’s, librarian Margaret Fowler.  
Conspiracy theories also abounded, including that Bogle was about to disclose Australian Atomic Energy Commission secrets that led to an assassination.  
But in 2006 a new theory came to light after a documentary maker uncovered evidence that the nearby polluted river may have let out an eruption of hydrogen sulphide gas.  
That doesn’t explain how they came to be covered up.
Margaret Chandler was cremated and Bogle was buried at the Macquarie Park  Cemetery and because no samples were kept, no tests can now be done with today’s advancements.
Unless someone comes forward it will likely never be solved.

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The ice cream man
Getting ice cream to the masses was a mammoth task.  
It wasn’t like today with modern freezers.  You needed milk or cream, sugar and of course to freeze it - which meant ice or snow.  It had to be made in a modified butter churn.  There was no popping down to the supermarket.
So when Wellington hotelier James Osgood advertised - for the first time in New Zealand - that ice cream would be served at his hotel - the Empire - it was a big deal.
Not the least part of which was that ice was being imported into New Zealand from the Lake Wenham Ice Company in Massachusetts.  
On January 27, 1866, Osgood put out the advert that ice cream would be served and that he had Wenham Ice.
It doesn’t say what flavour or how much it was.  But it was new.
Osgood wasn’t a stranger to new.  He is sometimes credited with revolutionising hotel care and stays in New Zealand.
An American, from New York, Osgood had been born in 1829 and on coming to New Zealand had gone into the hotel trade.
He ran the Empire - where the old BNZ centre is now - and later others, opening a family style hotel in the Hutt and also the Metropolitan where he was the host.
The arrival of refrigeration in the 1870’s changed things again, along with ice available commercially.
It still wouldn’t have been something that could easily be made at home.
Ice cream began being advertised around the country - it had to be made fresh daily.
In 1875 a W Marshall, a fruiterer who had a shop on Lambton Quay in Wellington was advertising the manufacture of ice cream on a commercial basis.
Osgood was considered a master of hospitality, twice he was appointed in charge of Parliament’s own restaurant Bellamy’s.
He is also considered one of the founder’s of Wellington’s volunteer fire brigade.
Osgood died October 29, 1876 after a long illness and was buried in the Bolton St Cemetery.  His funeral procession was accompanied by the local fire brigades and the City Rifle Band.
Picture by Lama Roscu.

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Two horses lined up for the Ormond Memorial gold cup race in Hawke’s Bay in 1925.
And it sent the crowd into a frenzy.  One was The Hawk - a Caulfield Stakes winner who had seven wins under his saddle and the other was a bay gelding, Gloaming.   Both were considered stars.
Initially two other horses were supposed to race, but when they were scratched it turned into a match race.
It was a true battle.  Between them the lead changed several times to the roar of the crowd.
But with 200 metres to go Gloaming gained the lead and won by a length.  He was nearly 10-years-old and it would be his last win and race before his retirement.
It brought to the end a racing career to rival other legends - Gloaming had won 57 of his 67 starts.  His name is considered up there with the likes of Phar Lap but not as well known.
Born in Australia at Melton Stud in 1915, he was considered an ordinary looking bay gelding, who had caught the disease strangles.  Which led to the bay colt being sold to G D Greenwood for what amounted to $480 odd and brought to New Zealand.
It wasn’t until Gloaming was three that he first showed the promise that would lead to his extraordinary career.  He was sent back to Australia for the Chelmsford race and after settling at the back of the pack, he flew past them all in the straight to win. By eight lengths. In his debut race.
After a loss in the GG Stead Memorial Stakes, he won the AJC Derby before returning to New Zealand.
It would set the tone for his career, crossing back and forth to Australia.  In 1919, he took on champion mare Desert Gold but it all went wrong.  He became tangled in the barrier strands and missed the start.  Gloaming chased Desert Gold down but couldn’t catch her.
Then six days later they had a rematch and this time Desert Gold got caught up in the strands.  When she made it clear she had to hurdle a fallen horse but it was too late. Gloaming had won.
By the time he faced The Hawk in Hawke’s Bay he was a rising 10-year-old.  His opponent was half his age.  He wasn’t expected to be able to beat The Hawk.
It was his last race.  He was immediately retired to his owner’s property in Teviotdale in North Canterbury.  He died in May 1932 and was buried there.
Gloaming never seemed to reach the heights of fame of other horses whose names are still spoken of, like Carbine or Phar Lap but he still holds a few records today.
His trainer Richard Mason had been born in Wellington in 1853 before becoming a jockey then a trainer.  He had a number of well known horses but Gloaming was special.   Mason died a week after the horse he had trained for so many wins.
His trainer - Richard Mason - who waited to retire until Gloaming did, died only a week after one of his most famous horses.   He is buried in St Peter’s Anglican Churchyard in Christchurch.

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