 Thomas Frederick Moore advertised his services like dentistry openly.
But many in Waipawa knew it was really a front for performing abortions. Moore, who was believed to have come to New Zealand from Victoria, Australia, was supposed to have been a steam engineer before he set up shop in then tiny Central Hawke’s Bay town. He was born on May 25, 1835, in Castle Cary, Somerset England, son of Samuel and Jane Moore. It’s unclear when he came to New Zealand or even if it's true he had been in Australia but he married Elizabeth Maria Brooks who had been born in Nelson. By 1870, he was living in Waipawa and calling himself Professor T F Moore. But what his qualifications were is anyone’s guess. Moore lived in Rose Street, but leased a store in High St, called the Medical Hall, now demolished. At first he advertised photography, then a wholesale chemist then as a doctor. He was mentioned several times in the first southern HB newspaper, the Waipawa Mail. Moore had a certain notoriety. He barricaded his home and was living with Mary Ann Mills and her grandchild there. What had happened between him and Elizabeth - with whom he had at least six children, is uncertain. He lived with Mills for over 20 years. People, in particular women, came and went from his shop. In 1886, he was before the courts for unlawfully pretending to be a doctor, with the word surgery posted outside his home and business. Atarata Ropiha was treated by him at the local pā - he gave her a medicine which turned out to be oil of kupeba, used for the treatment of venereal disease. Ropiha had typhoid. Later that year he was back before the court for assaulting a woman and fined 10 shillings after an argument about a piece of leather. But it was in 1902 that it all came to an end when a young woman came to his store. In October Lottie Ancell, came into Moore’s shop. Ancell said she was unwell and needed to lie down and Mills sent her upstairs. Moore said he found the girl foaming at the mouth and ran for help. Lottie appeared to have died from asphyxia. It seemed a mystery as Lottie had been seen getting off the train earlier in the day, went shopping and appeared quite well. An inquest, however, found she was nearly five months pregnant. And police’s suspicions were aroused when they found an instrument, used for things like causing an abortion, at Moore’s. Moore and Mills were arrested and tried for her murder. The first trial, in Napier, resulted in a hung jury. They said they would have acquitted Mills but were unable to agree on Moore. At a second trial, Moore was found guilty of manslaughter and went on to be sentenced to seven years' hard labour. The Crown withdrew the charge of murder against Mills but promptly charged her with perjury, for lying about Lottie being ill before she came into the shop. She was given 12 months' probation and a fine. She died only a few months later - likely from a stroke. It wasn’t, however, the last time Moore was before the court. After the death of Mills he petitioned the court through the Public Trustee for £100 and interest from her estate. One of Moore’s sons then petitioned the courts for leniency due to his age and failing health and he was released early from jail in 1907 having served nearly four years of his sentence. Moore never returned to Waipawa after he was released, but lived with his son in Pahiatua for the rest of his life until his death on July 14, 1930. He is buried in the Mangatinoka/Pahiatua Cemetery.
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 How much do New Zealanders love their pies? And coffee? And chocolate fish?
Well, while Richard Hudson did not invent any of those things, he is the one the men behind these things being as popular as they are. Richard Hudson was born Daniel Richard Bullock in 1841 in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England to John and Susan Bullock. By the age of nine he had been orphaned. He originally worked in a locomotive and carriage building business before going to sea as a cabin boy. He came to New Zealand in 1865, landing in Lyttelton where he learned to bake under the eye of John Griffin. After a short stint trying his hand in the gold fields he ended up in Dunedin in 1868, where he worked as a pastry cook. He would take his biscuits down to the docks to sell and his reputation spread. He married Mary Ann Riley in 1868 and they had eight children. Several of the children had the surname Hudson-Bullock but in 1874 Bullock was dropped altogether along with his first name. In 1884, he opened the first chocolate manufacturer in Moray Place. After a trip to Europe in 1885, where he saw the technical advances, he brought them back to New Zealand. He launched a biscuit, cake and confectionary bakehouse. He is believed to be the first trader to sell a pie and a cup of coffee for sixpence. Hudson was one of the richest men in Dunedin and Hudson’s had become a household name. Remember Cookie Bear - well that was Hudson’s. The factory was on a block of land bounded by Cumberland and Castle Streets. Hudson was an innovator and a firm advocate of the eight-hour working day. He also banned working on Saturday afternoons. In 1930, Hudson’s merged with Cadbury’s. While it can’t be said definitively that Hudson was behind the chocolate fish - excavation of the old factory unearthed a chocolate fish mould. The first mention of chocolate fish was in the Feilding Star in 1926 when a sweet shop in Whanganui was burgled. Tooth marks were found in the chocolate fish. The little marks seemed to be from children. Hudson died April 10, 1903, aged 61, and was buried in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. He had said he wanted no memorial - so there is no headstone on his grave, however it is surrounded by a beautiful cast iron fence.  When Pipi Katene brutally bludgeoned a man to death in 1941, he was eligible for the death penalty.
But he wasn’t hanged as his conviction came just one month after capital punishment was repealed. Katene was the first man to benefit from a change in Government and social policy when the first Labour government was elected in 1935. The election had already been delayed for a year because of the Great Depression. Disillusioned voters wanted something new. Nothing the old Government had done was shifting the economy forward. It helped that Michael Joseph Savage took over as leader before the election. Capital punishment was abolished in 1941 (with the exceptions being treason and piracy) and by the time Katene was convicted in October 1941 - the new law was a month old. Arthur Harding Parkinson was a shopkeeper in Waitotara, in South Taranaki. In the early hours of August 5, 1941 he was found badly injured with a mallet and an axe lying nearby. He was 78. The store’s safe was open and the money gone. Katene knew Parkinson, knew when he was going to be in the shop alone and knew he kept money in the safe. He lay in wait outside the store that night then went in and asked for cigarettes. When Parkinson turned his back, Katene hit him on the head with a piece of wood. After Parkinson fell to the floor, he hit him several more times. He dragged him into the back then used an axe to make sure he was dead. Katene took the keys from Parkinson’s body and opened the safe. He was arrested in Patea a day later with a lot of money. He told the police he had not worked for several months and had been getting a social security benefit. It took the jury 43 minutes to find him guilty and instead of the hangman’s noose, he was sentenced to 10 years hard labour. Parkinson was born in 1862 in Rangitikei to Charles and Jane Eleanor who had come from England. His first wife Maria Margaret Dunn - who he married in 1884 - died 1886, not long after the birth of their daughter. In 1901 he remarried to Mary Laing with whom he had a son. Parkinson was buried in the Hawera Cemetery with his first wife.  I'm sure you remember it. Most schools had a little dentalclinic set up that you got hauled out of class to go to.
Most of us hated it. So of course we nicknamed it the murder house. It was something that was familiar for generations of New Zealand kids. Well, it's Thomas Anderson Hunter's fault. He was a progressive dentist who was determined to see dentistry advanced after being disillusioned by the number of men who signed up for World War One but needed dental treatment first. About 60 percent! So he wanted to improve the dental health of future New Zealanders and he had an idea. Women would be trained (his theory was they were better with children) to run this service in schools. Thomas Anderson Hunter was born in Dunedin on February 10, 1863 to Scottish parents, engineer Alexander Hunter and Mary Sim. He trained as a dentist under Alfred Boot and was already practising at 17 years old. He and Boot were often travelling dentists, trying to fix the damage done by the more rogue elements of dentistry, going around the South Island. The first sign of his progressive nature was he wanted to properly train young colleagues and raise standards. It would be his lifelong mantra. The first attempt to set up a dental association failed but in 1903 he and others persuaded politician Thomas Kay Sidey who helped champion the Dentists Act that passed in 1904. The Dental Association was set up in 1905 although it took some time to gain traction. Then, as soldiers were being recruited for the First World War, Hunter became horrified at the state of their teeth. As chairman of the association he proposed a civilian corps to do the work needed at cost. It was so successful a full New Zealand Dental Corps was set up and Hunter put in charge of it. He attained the rank of colonel for his work. A close friend of Truby King (who was the founder of Plunket), he saw a dental parallel in the nurses being used. So he put together a proposal to train women as dental nurses. The school dental scheme was founded in 1921 - a world first - with the first dental nursing school opening in Wellington that same year. While it’s not known who started it, the first instance of the reference to the murder house came in about 1964, no doubt started in part because of the weird - and frankly barbaric - looking equipment in those little rooms. He was knighted in 1946 for his work. Hunter married Greta Ewen in 1927, just three years before he retired. He died, aged 95, on December 29, 1958 and was cremated at Karori Cemetery.  Catherine Bell heard a shot ring out on the quiet night of July 25, 1892.
She was expecting her husband Richard home from a Hokonui farmers club meeting when it happened. Worried, she made her way to a small plank bridge that connected their home with the road. There she found Richard, bleeding badly from a shot to the face. She managed to get him to the house but he died three hours later, spitting up blood from the torn vessels in his throat. But who shot him and why? It’s still a mystery. Richard had been born to David Bell and Jane Moore, both from Ireland. Jane with Richard (who was 18) came to New Zealand first in 1875, with their other children and David arriving on later ships. Richard was a ploughman. In 1876 he married Catherine McMaster and together they had six children. With his dying breath he told Catherine, their neighbour 65-year-old John McRae had done it. There had recently been an argument between them over damages done by two cows of Bell’s that had ended up on McRae’s property. Indeed McRae was arrested and charged, but the police investigation was hardly convincing. A number of witnesses seemed to consider another man Patrick Walsh, who worked nearby, was involved. During the investigation a shotgun was found near the gate Bell had just stopped to open in tussocks of grass spattered with blood and flattened as if someone was lying in wait. Shot found at McRae’s house did not match that gun. The police offered a reward for information but no one came forward. McRae protested his innocence many times and after three months the charge was dropped. He died in 1900. A year before being shot, Bell had found a bottle of a brandy bottle on a reserve beside his property but it tasted awful and Bell became unwell, thinking he had been poisoned. Hokonui was known for its moonshine businesses. Rumors abounded that Bell had actually found an illegal whiskey still. Despite the police investigation no one else was ever arrested. Then in 1928 there was a deathbed confession. But even though it was widely reported, it didn’t solve the mystery as the person who made the confession was never named. But it wasn’t John McRae. Richard is buried in the Winton cemetery.  Most people know the myth of how the All Blacks got their name, essentially a corruption of the Daily Mail newspaper saying they played like they were all backs.
But it’s just that, a myth. In fact they were called the All Blacks when they arrived. There are several newspaper articles calling them All Blacks well before the Daily Mail comment. And it’s apparently because of Thomas Rangiwahia Ellison - also known as Tom or Tamati Erihana. Ellison was born at Otakou on the Otago Peninsula on November 11, 1867. His grandfather, also Thomas Ellison, had married Te Ikairaua of Ngāti Moehau and had a son, Raniera Taheke Ellison who went on to marry Nai Weller - the only child of the Edward Weller who had established the Otakou whaling station in 1831. Tom Ellison won a scholarship to Te Aute school where his rugby career began as a forward before moving to the wing. On moving to Wellington he began to play for Poneke and was considered an innovative player. He developed the wing-forward position. He was captain of the first official New Zealand rugby team when it toured Australia in 1893. Before the tour Ellison is said to be the one who proposed to the first annual general meeting of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union that the team's uniform be a black jersey with silver fern monogram, black cap and stockings and white shorts. With a switch to black shorts in 1901, the uniform from which the name All Blacks came from was now complete. In 1902 Ellison published The art of rugby football, one of the game’s first coaching manuals. During the 1888-89 tour of the New Zealand Natives football team they played 107 matches in 54 weeks, 16 of which were spent travelling. Ellison finished the tour as the team's second-highest points scorer with 113 points, including 43 tries. In his whole career he played 117 matches (68 of them first-class games) and scored 160 points, including 51 tries. Outside of sport Ellison was a lawyer, one of the first Māori admitted to the bar. He practised as an interpreter for the Land Courts and as a solicitor. He married Ethel May Howell, on March 22, 1899 and they had three children. In 1904 he was struck down with tuberculosis, and was admitted to the Porirua Lunatic Asylum - which was quite usual for someone suffering from TB. He died on October 2, 1904. The original plan to bury him in the Karori Cemetery was changed when representatives of his parents intercepted the body and his wife and the Public Trustee agreed to bury him in Otakou, Otago where his headstone reads “one of the greatest rugby footballers New Zealand ever possessed.” Pic of The Invincibles from the Te Papa Collection.  Horace Jones lied about his age to go to war - but rather than appear older - he made himself 10 years younger.
Born on February 3, 1868, he was one of 10 children of engineer David Jones and teacher Sarah Ann (nee Garner) in England. The family came to Auckland, New Zealand in 1885. At 22 Horace married his art teacher Anne Dobson and they moved to Sydney where he changed his name to Horace Millicamp Moore-Jones. He began to gain a profile as a portraiture and semi-allegorical artist, operating an art school with his better known wife. But she became ill with tuberculosis and died in 1901 leaving him to raise their child, two-year-old Norma. He remarried in 1905 to Florence Mitchell and they had three more children. He exhibited a few times but then he painted his first piece of war art - a painting of troop ships leaving Auckland for South Africa. The work was presented to the Auckland Art Gallery. The family moved to Auckland in 1908 and he taught art before going to London to enrol in an art school there. While in England, at the start of World War One he decided to enlist in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, but had to falsify his date of birth and dye his hair to look younger. He started in Egypt where to his disappointment he went to the Engineers - he had wanted the infantry. He was among the contingent who went to Gallipoli where he continued to sketch. This came to the attention of his commanders and he was seconded to the ANZAC printing section where he made topological sketches - allowing offensive operations to be planned. His work was sometimes done under fire with shells whistling overhead. In November 1915 a wound to his hand stopped his sketching and he was medically evacuated to England where he began a number of watercolours based on Gallipoli. Moore-Jones was sent back to New Zealand and medically discharged. His paintings were exhibited and during this time he painted the image that was to make him famous - The Man with the Donkey. He painted several versions of it and in 2015 one sold for nearly half a million. He lectured with his exhibitions and any money made went to the newly formed New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association. He offered his works to the Government to remember New Zealand’s effort at Gallipoli but was turned down. The works instead went to the Australian government. During a visit to Hamilton in 1918 he was offered a job as an art teacher at Hamilton High School. He took a room at the Hamilton Hotel. Early in the morning of April 3, 1922 a fire broke out in the hotel. Moore-Jones helped evacuate it then, believing a maid was still inside, went back in to find her. He did not know she had already got out. Despite getting himself out he suffered severe burns and died in hospital. Moore-Jones is buried at Purewa Cemetery in Auckland, along with another victim of the fire. In 2012 a central city street in Hamilton was renamed Sapper Moore-Jones place.  (We want to give you fair warning to stop now if you like, this is a disturbing story.)
Albert McKeeber, who worked in the morgue at Timaru Hospital was the last person to see 12-year-old Valmai Irene Phillips before she disappeared. He might have been a suspect, except that poor Valmai was dead in the morgue when he saw her last at about 1.30am on December 21, 1947. She had died the previous afternoon, although at the time the doctors were not exactly sure how. But when McKeeber returned to the morgue about 3.30am her body was gone and a window was open. What followed was a truly bizarre and disturbing case. Also missing was the other morgue porter, a man whose name was Desmond Robert Perry - or maybe John Rains. A car he had been using was found within half a mile from the hospital, bogged down on a beach during the immediate police search. Valmai was the eldest daughter of a Timaru couple. A post mortem had been planned but without a body her cause of death remained unknown. It had been suspected she had infantile paralysis - or what we now call spinal meningitis. Two days later on December 23, Perry was found in Nelson. He was initially charged with the theft of the car that had been found and immediately put before a court. A day later - after Perry had been interviewed - Valmai’s body was found under bushes off a country road off the Timaru-Mount Cook main highway about 16 miles from Timaru. It had been pointed out by Perry who had been taken there by police. Horribly, Perry was then charged with inferring with the body by removing it from the morgue. During the trial it was alleged Perry may have tried to drug the other porters during the annual Christmas party, although there was no evidence other than the suspicions of the others. He claimed he had left and when he got to his car the body of Valmai was in the boot covered in a sheet. He was unable to start the car so stole another, taking Valmai’s body with him. He then drove to where he hid her body before heading to Nelson. It then came out that the 24-year-old Perry had already twice been committed to mental institutions, once at the age of 14, and escaped from both. His mother and grandmother had both died in mental hospitals. Experts called at the trial said he was not insane. He was however suffering from schizophrenia Perry’s lawyer claimed Perry had not inferred with the body other than removing it, although the Crown contended differently. Perry was found guilty by the jury in two hours and 35 minutes (an hour of which was lunch) and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail. After several months of gruesome headlines, Perry went to jail and seems to have vanished from the records. Valmai was buried in the Timaru Cemetery, having been found, in the end, to have died from pneumonia.  Most Wellingtonians have a memory of the great department store Kirkcaldie and Stains, at the centre of Lambton Quay. For me it was the magical Christmas windows. For others it might have been the legendary sales (which were held twice a year since 1887), having the doorman usher you inside or the ritual of tea in the second floor tea shop. Kirkcaldies closed in 2016 and David Jones took over with a similar type of shop. From tomorrow even that is gone, and with it, a type of store that barely exists anymore. John Kirkcaldie and Robert Stains started the store in 1863. Both men knew parts of the sales industry, Kirkcaldie as a draper and Stains who was a retailer. Kirkcaldie was born in 1838 in Fifeshire, Scotland and apprenticed to a draper before moving first to Dublin then London. In 1861 he emigrated to Australia where he met Englishman Robert Stains in Sydney. They recognised a need for such a store in the fledgling city of Wellington. With £700 of capital (a king's ransom in those days) they opened the first store - although it was in a different spot on Lambton Quay, where the Old Bank Arcade is now. Indeed, part of the shop was built from the timbers of the wrecked ship known as Plimmer’s Ark. The shop moved to the corner of Lambton Quay and Brandon Street in 1868 and reigned over the middle of Wellington’s retail district. It was known for its high quality products and exceptional service. The three storey shop we know today was built in 1909 - 1910 on the site that had held the original store, which even now shows the Italianate style it was known for. Whole generations of families have shopped for years at Kirks as the shop was affectionately known. Its history includes numerous fires (although nothing that destroyed the store), an attempted murder in the tea rooms - we have previously told that story - a Bechstein grand piano on the stairwell - playing for the customers. It has survived wars, depressions and earthquakes. Kirkcaldie married Stains’ cousin Mary Anne Hall and had eight children. Stains himself returned to England where he died in 1912. Kirkcaldie left his chairmanship of the shop in 1918 then as a director in 1919. In September 1920 he and Mary celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in the shop’s famous tearooms. Kirkcaldie died on October 3, 1925, and is buried in Karori Cemetery. Do you have a favourite memory of the beautiful shop? Photo from Te Papa's collection.   Like warriors the world over, they charged into battle on their trusty steeds. Only in this case, the steed was a bicycle, a BSA Mark IV to be precise.
It wasn’t the usual steed or even the usual type of vehicle for troops. But for the 300-odd men of the ANZAC Corps cyclist battalion in World War One, it was their transport over the muddy and treacherous roads of the Western Front. The sturdy bikes carried not only their rider, in full uniform, with a gas mask but also equipment. The corps were created the year before and were intended as light infantry, able to carry out reconnaissance, but the reality of trench warfare made that of little use. Instead they controlled traffic, laid telephone cables and repaired trenches in preparation for the battle. At one point it was estimated they had dug 37km of trenches - all at night. On June 7, 1917, at the Battle of Messines they rode into action. On the day the battle was to begin they were to build a track to allow traditionally mounted troops to ride through wire, shell holes and waterways. It had to be done in less than four hours. So in the middle of the night on June 7, they cycled 13km wearing gas masks before leaving their bikes and heading to the front lines. As the battle began, so did their work on the track, across No Man’s Land and through the German trenches. It was extremely dangerous and they did it under fire. Four Anzac cyclists were killed and 22 others wounded but they completed the track. Later that same year they laid vital telephone cables before the attack on Passchendaele. By the end of the war 708 men had served in the New Zealand section of the Cyclist Corps, of whom 59 had been killed and 259 wounded (51 more than once). Nearly all of those men are buried in France or Belgium. Two on the Roll of Honour made it back to New Zealand but died of their injuries. One was Dudley Edward Harrison, 23, who is buried in Dorie Cemetery (he had been shot in the head) in Rakaia. The other is Edward Wawman, 25, who is buried in the Te Aroha Cemetery in the Waikato. |
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