 It’s not clear exactly who notorious New Zealand prison escapist Isaac Robinson was.
The blond, blue-eyed soldier was supposed to have been born in County Tyrone in Ireland and joined the British Army in 1854. His most distinguishing feature was a brand on his chest - D for deserter - which he got for deserting four years after enlisting in the British Army. For this he got 84 days imprisonment in 1858. Later he attempted to cover it with a tattoo. Even his age is uncertain - some references list him as 25 - others 31. In 1860 he was tried again for being absent without leave and losing his uniform and kit. By that time his superiors had had enough. He was shipped out to Melbourne, Australia with the 40th regiment. He wasn’t having it though and tried to desert again. He was court martialled in 1861. Robinson got into plenty of other trouble, breaking windows, assaulting others and being disorderly. By 1863 he had been shipped to New Zealand and in 1864 he was on trial in Te Awamutu for deserting - and once again losing his kit. Getting rid of his clothes would turn out to be a familiar refrain in his life. He was sentenced to the stockade at Mount Eden and then likely dishonourably discharged and cast out. He got a job in 1865 working for Adam Chisholm on Waiheke Island, supposedly looking after the cattle and horses, but after three days Chisholm tried to pay him off. Robinson took offense at the small amount he was offered and assaulted Chisholm, taking all the money he had, a gun, two pistols and threatened another man. He was caught and sent back to Mt Eden for six years but in January 1866 he escaped by concealing himself among the rocks in the quarry and slipping away while no one was looking. It started a pattern that lasted until he vanished from sight for good. He had been wearing a highly visible prison uniform but knocked down and forcibly stripped a man of his clothing, including a lavender-coloured coat, near Onehunga. Robinson headed for South Auckland where he found work - while everyone was looking for him elsewhere. Days later he was caught by two police officers and sentenced to six more years. It didn’t last long. On October 17 he escaped again. He had been in irons but after a period of good behaviour they were removed and while he was working in the mason’s department he ran off, hiding in the officers’ quarters until he could go over the wall. He took off his coat and turned his prison shirt inside out. He stole another man’s boots and jacket. The boots didn’t fit so he knocked out another man, stealing his boots and trousers. It took until November to corner him again and he went to a Supreme Court trial. This time he got four years for escaping and six for assault on top of his other jail terms, bringing him to a staggering 22 year jail term. His final escape was in March 1872 - he simply walked out, managing to dress himself in warder’s clothes and arming himself with one of the warder’s pistols. The next day he was seen in the Waitakere Ranges by a police detective who took careful aim and fired. Robinson plunged into the bush but has never been seen again. It’s unclear if he was shot and crawled off to die, but there were sightings later in the year that came to nothing. In 1873 a man thought to be him was apparently working in a hotel in Maraetai then possibly being on the Bella Mary bound for Tasmania. Whichever it is, no one now knows where he lies. Photo by Deleece Cook.
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 How often have you heard God Defend New Zealand in your lifetime? Hundreds?
Did you know it’s not even a song? At least not originally. It’s a poem. One written by a man whose name is rarely known now, but whose work is celebrated every time that song is used. Thomas Bracken was the son of Margaret Kiernan and Thomas Bracken, born on December 30, 1841 in Clonee, County Meath in Ireland. His mother died only a few years later and his father in 1852. Thomas was mostly cared for by an aunt before he was shipped off to Australia at the age of 12 to an uncle near Melbourne. He worked at various jobs and began writing poetry. His first volume of poems was published in 1867. In about 1869 he came to New Zealand and took up a job as a warder at the Dunedin prison but soon moved to journalism, finding a job at the Otago Guardian. He and two others started three newspapers including the New Zealand Literary Miscellany, full of political, literary and social issues. In 1881, he won the seat of Dunedin Central and was in Parliament for three years. He married Helen Hester Copley on February 1, 1883 and had a son, Charles. He never stopped writing poetry and published both in New Zealand and Australia, sometimes using a pseudonym Paddy Murphy. He was a passionate advocate for the use of the Māori language, translating many of his poems - including God Defend New Zealand, into Māori. Of all his poetry, it is God Defend New Zealand that survived the longest. The New Zealand Saturday Advertiser ran the poem under the title National Hymn and announced a competition for a musical work to go with it. The winner was a score written by John Joseph Woods - a teacher from Lawrence in Otago. It gained rapid popularity even though it was not official. Bracken gave up his rights to it to Woods. It was not until December 1938 that the National Centennial Council recommended that the government adopt it as the national hymn and the rights to Thomas’s words and Wood’s music were bought. However, the work was not given equal status with 'God save the Queen' as a national anthem until 1977. He was also the first person to use the phrase “God’s own country" in relation to New Zealand. Thomas died in Dunedin of goitre on February 16, 1898. He is buried in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. From Bracken’s poems, To Find The Key: An hour of joy, a day of tears, A lesson in life’s changeful school, A dream of happy fleeting years, A mad plunge in the whirling pool, A sail upon the waves which flow, Unto the hidden mystic sea, Wherein we sink! And then we go, To try the lock and find the key.  Felix Tanner was, if nothing else, a showman.
He knew the value of a good picture and a story, and it was clear he liked the limelight. Born in Berrima, New South Wales on March 23, 1863, as Charles Jackson, he would go on to have quite a few names, including Henri le Strange, Professor Jackson and the Australian Blondin. But he was best known in New Zealand as Captain Felix Tanner. He saw great tightrope walker Charles Blondin - best known for walking across the Niagara Gorge - as a young child So he became a tightrope artist himself as well as a balloonist, parachutist and deep sea diver. His first visit to New Zealand in 1884 included several trapeze acts. He returned to Australia and as a tightrope walker he walked over the famous Kiama Ocean Blow Hole in New South Wales on a wire stretched high up in the air. Then in Melbourne, in 1890, he began a show that would forever leave him called Fasting Felix. He began fasting in public. Weirdly inspired by the story of a man convicted of cannibalism, Tanner wanted to show how you could survive long periods of time just on water. So he charged people to watch him fast. It lasted 40 days and he did it several times that year and many times in later years, especially to raise money. He married the first of his three wives, Sarah Anne Watson (which ended in a divorce) and ended up living in Waihi where he took advantage of the public’s horrible fascination with executions by creating a device for a mock hanging. It plunged him seven feet leaving him dangling in a gruesome display. Later he moved to the Taranaki district where he held regular employment with the New Plymouth Harbour Board as a diver. He drew up plans for an aerial balloon ship that he would take to Auckland but it never got made. He built a model but was unable to come up with what he estimated was £2000 to build it. Tanner was then contracted to find the ship Elingamite which had gone down near the Three Kings Islands with gold on board. He found the wreck, but not the gold. But Tanner’s life would change when a modified dugout canoe came into Taranaki port in 1903 on a world tour. He formed an idea of a new world tour - in a barrel boat which he called the Ark. He designed plans and began building it in his backyard, putting it on display. He managed to launch it but within days vandals bored holes in it and sank it. But Tanner thought a new shape was needed. After moving to Whanganui he began working on Ark no 2. It was launched on April 5, 1904, but despite making it to the entrance to Wellington harbour he beached in Ohau Bay. Now living in Wellington, Tanner created Ark no 3 - 25 feet in length - his biggest yet but while he managed to get it across Cook Strait, a westerly gale all but ruined it and it had to be abandoned. Tanner wasn’t done yet though. The New Zealand International Exhibition of 1906-07 set him to making Ark no 4. He said it was a new type of lifeboat, strong as a barrel and unsinkable. It was built at his home in Arrow Street, Wakefield, 18 miles from Nelson, and had to be taken to the port by truck. At thirty feet long, it weighed over two and a half tons. This went better. It sailed to Lyttleton and later was on display in Timaru where Tanner beached it. He said he would come back and sail it to Sydney but instead sold it. He continued to invent - making good money for a device that prevented the racing of marine engines and then in 1913, a type of crane for getting goods onto a boat. Tanner disappeared from view - some said he went to America - then came a newspaper report on January 2, 1919 of Felix Tanner’s death in San Diego, California. It was just the identity, however, of Tanner who died then. Tanner was still alive, but going by the name of Charles Jackson. Tanner/Jackson died for real in 1943. He had fathered 12 children by three women and committed daring feats. He is buried in the Rookwood General Cemetery in Sydney.  Joseph Sewell was hopping mad.
The 57 year-old farmer from Longford, a short way out of Murchison, had been in a decade-long dispute with his neighbour, Walter Neame, over property. In particular, in 1903, the dispute had come down to what happened to a white-faced heifer that Neame had branded and set loose with four others along a river beach near his farm. He had not seen the cow for two years. Neame saw the creature on Sewell's property but he was told it wasn’t his. Sewell responded by locking up a wire chair device that Neame used to cross the Mangles River. Police tried to calm the situation but there was little they could do. So Neame took the cow, only for Sewell to take it back. On and on it went, until Neame filed an application in court for compensation. On May 1, 1903 the public gallery at the court was packed with Murchison residents. Both Neame and Sewell opted to represent themselves. Sewell accused Neame of lying and warned “I’ll blow the devil to hell and I have enough dynamite to do just that.” He also accused Neame of murdering his wife who had died two years before. Suddenly police realised Sewell had not taken his left hand out of his pocket throughout the hearing. Quickly the magistrate suggested an adjournment for Sewell to go outside and compose himself. Two police officers followed him closely but as they went to pin his arms, Sewell turned and warned them off. He began backing outside pulling out an explosive and said he had 50 more wrapped around him. One of the police officers went to calm him down but the explosives went off. It was reported that Sewell was blown to bits, and the closest police officer, Inspector Edward Wilson received a grave head wound. But no one else died. Wilson’s trousers and beard were blown off, but he eventually recovered. So large was the explosion that the courthouse was moved several inches on its piles. At the inquest, his children said Sewell had become increasingly obsessed and despondent and had access to 150 plugs of gelignite. The finding was that Sewell had suffered a temporary insanity. It had not been the first time Sewell believed he could solve his problems with explosives. He had confronted a solicitor several years earlier over payment in another case showing him he had a package of dynamite. The solicitor had decided he did not need payment that badly. Sewell is buried in the Murchison Cemetery. It is believed to be the world’s first non-military suicide bombing.  Archibald Sillars Hamilton was what he called a ‘practical’ phrenologist.
It’s a job that doesn’t exist anymore given that phrenology is now widely debunked. But back early last century phrenology was the latest craze and Hamilton toured the country giving talks and lectures. The examination of the bumps and ridges of someone’s head to predict their personality or the possibility of criminal behaviour now seems laughable, but Hamilton held public events where he did just that. Hamilton was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, the son of Edward Hamilton and Agnes Hamilton (nee Sillars) who was herself a phrenologist, Scottish reformer and champion for women’s rights to an education. In 1854 Hamilton left for Australia where he was to begin a career as a phrenologist. He often went to executions and in 1860 made death masks of two men hanged for rape and murder at the Maitland Gaol in New South Wales. It wasn’t enough for him though and he offered money if he was allowed to dig up the bodies and remove their heads. He ended up in court and defended himself “just as a geologist needs rocks, a phrenologist needs heads". He was acquitted by the jury. It was in New Zealand he began giving talks and lecturing, attracting plenty to listen to him talk about bumps on people’s heads, the shape of their jaws and whether they had protruding brow ridges. He called himself Professor Hamilton. He took private customers charging them for a description of their character with advice (3 shillings, 6 pence), a written sketch of character (5 shillings), or a detailed character reading with a phrenological chart (10 shillings). In 1866 Richard Burgess, Thomas Kelly and William Levy were hanged in Nelson. The Burgess gang as they were called had embarked on a crimewave, terrifying citizens and ultimately murdering several people. While being held in prison Hamilton spoke to the men, Burgess in particular was keen to have a death mask made of himself, even asking that it be done before he was hanged in case his face was distorted after death. Hamilton attended the executions then made the other two death masks. The masks are in the collection of the Nelson Provincial Museum. Indeed Hamilton gave numerous talks especially about Kelly who he said had a small organ of conscientiousness with his brain being of medium size, rendering him expert in all the arts of deception, totally unreliable and thoroughly obsessed by self. He also said Kelly’s organs of social sympathy were blighted. But it was another Kelly that Hamilton became famous for. In 1880 notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol. While authorities denied it for many years, Kelly was dissected and Hamilton was supposedly given his head. "There is not one head in a thousand of the criminal type so small in caution as his, and there are few heads among the worst which would risk so much for the love of power," Hamilton said. A death mask was also made of him - on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. When Hamilton died in 1884 his collection of 55 human skulls was shipped to the National Museum of Victoria which still has them. Hamilton is buried in the Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney. Pic by Ray Smithers  With the Olympics now over, it's time to remember New Zealand’s very first medal winner, Harry Kerr.
Harry didn’t win a gold or even a silver medal, but on July 14, 1908 he won New Zealand’s very first medal...a bronze….for walking (now called race walking). Henry (called Harry) Edward Kerr was born on January 28, 1879, in Taranaki, the son of Edward and Sarah Kerr (nee Hutchinson), both from Northern Ireland. At 193cm tall, he was a born athlete, a keen rugby player and champion shooter, and did many track and field events. But it would be walking that earned him his medal. New Zealand was not able to field its own team so he and three others went to the Summer Olympics in London in 1908 as part of an Australasian team. He took part in the 3500 metre walk and came in third place, which gave New Zealand its first ever Olympian. Harry had nearly missed the start of the race though, busy chatting to officials under the grandstand while the race was lining up. He later qualified for the final of the 10 mile walk but did not start due to injured feet. He nearly had not gone at all. He had become a professional athlete early in his career and when he sought reinstatement as an amatuer he had to stand down for two years to qualify. He retained his fitness clearing scrub on the family farm near Stratford. Kerr then won national titles over one and three miles in 1911, won the mile again in 1912 and was again Australasian champion over both distances in 1909. Like many men of his generation he enlisted during World War One, joining the New Zealand Medical Corp and served in France. He was slightly wounded but remained with his unit, returning to New Zealand at the end of the war. He returned to walking - at the national championships in 1925 - aged 46 - and won the one and three mile titles. Later he also represented Taranaki at lawn bowls. Harry died on May 17, 1951 aged 72, and is buried in the Inglewood Cemetery with his wife Isabelle. He has a simple headstone that gives no hint of the extraordinary feats he accomplished. He was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1996.  A lot of the time no one ever sees what we do. We value our clients' privacy. Some of what we do changes their lives forever.
So sometimes when something we do leads to change or a happy ending, we love to tell you about it. We wrote about William Lee in an earlier story. He died from his injuries after being pinned to his bed during the Esk Valley flood. We tracked him down to an unmarked grave at Napier’s Park Island Cemetery. But it’s not going to be unmarked for long. The New Zealand Remembrance Army checked our research and confirmed it was him. Now he’s about to get a headstone. A ceremony will be in November and we will update you if you wish to come along. Hawke’s Bay Today reported on it last week - here's the story: He survived the horrors of World War I, only to die as floods and landslips hit Napier. Now the New Zealand Remembrance Army is trying to raise funds for a proper headstone befitting the returned serviceman buried in an unmarked grave in Park Island. There is little information about how William Lee, born in 1870 in Ireland, came to be buried so far from home. In 1915, aged 45, he enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, where he served in the Otago Infantry Regiment with the 12th reinforcements until 1918. He was injured in Egypt and shot in both arms, before being discharged via a medical board and sent back to New Zealand. His next of kin was listed as Henry Lee, a butcher in Whangārei. Despite living in Wellington, Lee was caught in the Hawke’s Bay floods in April 1938, when three days of heavy rain caused significant damage across the East Coast. Napier recorded 274mm of rainfall during this time, 169mm of which fell over a 24-hour period. A historical Niwa catalogue of the event states “scarcely a hill from the north of Gisborne to the south of Napier was free of slips”. “Slipping on hillsides occurred at a spectacular scale. The majority of the slips were shallow and were the culmination of sheet erosion and heavy rainfall.” This caused widespread damage to property and infrastructure, along with flooding, with two men drowning in Gisborne. A newspaper clipping from the time suggests Lee was pinned to his bed by a fallen beam in a house in Northe Rd which was hit by a huge landslip. “His plight was not discovered for some time,” the clipping reads. “The house was moved 20 feet from its foundations and two other houses on the top of the hill were left in very precarious positions.” A few months later, on August 4, Lee died as a result of injuries sustained in the landslip. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Napier’s Park Island cemetery and seemingly forgotten until his case was picked up by the New Zealand Remembrance Army this year. The group was started about three years ago by Simon Strombom, a veteran, to restore service headstones and memorials of returned servicemen and women. “It’s all about remembrance and respect.” While cleaning graves, the group soon realised there were amazing stories behind them and also began raising funds to put in headstones for those buried in unmarked graves. He said Hawke’s Bay had a rich military history, but Lee’s was a particularly “interesting story”. “He joined quite late [in his life]. Something happened while he was [in Egypt] where he was injured quite badly. He came back and was living in a pub in Wellington. He’d gone to Napier for work and been caught up in the 1938 floods and a landslide.” Strombom said Lee was buried without a headstone and forgotten, “just lost in time”. The Remembrance Army has now purchased a gravestone and has been trying to contact any remaining family for a potential unveiling ceremony to be held with the Taradale Services Association this year. “It just takes that heartache away and they can focus on celebrating their relatives,” Strombom said. I’d heard the story many times. My great great grandmother Honour Batten was born at sea.
The story went that she was born onboard ship while my ancestors were coming to New Zealand. One of her middle names was allegedly of the ship’s captain - Malcolm. Great yarn right? Except it's not exactly right. The family has my great grandmother’s (Myrtle) birth certificate and it says Honour was born at sea. So I searched, checking ships’ records but it was quickly clear the story could not be true. It was her grandfather John Treweek who came to New Zealand. He had been born in Tregony, Cornwall in 1814 and married Honour Chapman. They had five children and came to New Zealand in 1841 aboard the Timandra. The ship arrived in New Plymouth and the Treweeks (sometimes spelled Trewick - this will be important later) began to spread first to Whanganui, and then three of the boys headed to Otago, to try mining. John stayed in the Manawatu region and he and Honour had 13 children including James, born in New Plymouth who married Susanna Gould - my Honour’s parents. The Treweek family is large and well-documented. There was no chance Honour was born on a ship coming to New Zealand. So where did the story come from? I turned to a new “extended” family I had recently joined - all of them descendants of Batten’s and related families - and they came through for me. Someone had already done the research! Honour was indeed born at sea…..but on a coastal ship in 1871. James and Susannah were going from Dunedin to New Plymouth. At a guess, they had been visiting family. They were aboard the SS Māori - which travelled a regular route between the North and South islands. And regularly captained by none other than James Malcolm. Honour’s birthday was July 4 - the SS Māori had left Dunedin, July 1 heading for Lyttelton. Arriving July 3 in Timaru then heading to Lyttelton. They arrived on July 5….the day after Honour was born, somewhere between Timaru and Lyttelton. They would have transferred to the SS Taranaki. A list of passengers listed them as Mr and Mrs Trewick and child. Little Honour. So here’s a tip. Members of your extended family might hold clues - or even the solution - to questions if you are searching. Honour and her husband William are buried in the Pahiatua-Mangatainoka Cemetery - although her headstone said she was born in 1872. With special thanks to Janis Brooks who had done the hard work!  In 1901 Wellington was in the grip of a ghost scare.
A ghost was terrorising Brooklyn, scaring residents and ‘haunting’ local areas. It was also seen in areas like Johnsonville and supposedly targeting the land of one of the city’s most famous residents Mr Kirkcaldie (that turned out to be a poor woman in a white dress walking to see her lover). A ghost was said to have appeared in a boarding house window and also in a garden near the tramway's stables. The ghost would pop out at people, causing screaming and yelling but never hurt anyone. On February 27, 1901, the papers reported the ghost had been run to earth. A man and two women were out walking home in Brooklyn when it appeared on the side of Owhiro Road about 11pm. One of the women screamed and had hysterics but the young man gave chase. He ended up catching the ghost which turned out to be another young man from the Brooklyn suburb. The New Zealand Times reported that George Balcombe was charged with being an idle and disorderly person in that he had an article of disguise - which turned out to be a tablecloth. Balcombe was brought before a court magistrate, and the young man who caught him, Joseph Sutherland said he had been heading through Brooklyn after a night at the theatre when he saw the white form. One of his female companions fainted but Sutherland - made of sterner stuff - caught Balcombe with what appeared to be a sheet on his head. Lawyer Thomas Hislop (who became a mayor of Wellington) claimed the 15-year-old Balcombe had done it in a moment of regrettable foolishness and that not all the so called sightings were of his client. The magistrate dismissed the charge but gave Balcombe a telling off. The outcome wasn’t popular with at least one newspaper saying he should have got half a dozen whacks with a cane. George Henry Balcombe was born on May 30, 1886, to Florence and Charles Balcombe. The family later moved, living in Hawke’s Bay and then in the Auckland area. Balcombe married Marguerite Louisa Loader in 1911 and they had a daughter who they called Florence. Balcombe died aged 69, on July 19, 1955 and cremated at Waikumete. Picture by Stefano Pollio.  In 1909 two gold miners - Arthur Sharpe and John Scott made the discovery of a lifetime.
They were working the Ross gold field on the West Coast when they found a gold nugget on September 10. But not just any gold nugget. Described by the Evening Post as as big as a turnip, the Ross nugget weighed 7 pounds and two ounces - over three kilograms today. It was found on the eastern boundary of the goldfield called Bullock Point - often avoided after the death of another gold miner 20 years before, Jack McCarthy who had fallen and broken his neck. Sharpe and Scott had found a few other nuggets - but nothing like the size of what came to be called the Roddy nugget after the Minister of Mines at the time Roderick McKenzie. It was bought from the two men by the mayor of Kumara, James Alexander Murdock, for about £400 - a staggering $70,000 now. In 1911 the nugget was bought by the government to be used as a coronation gift to King George V. Here’s where something goes wrong. The nugget was allegedly melted down and used to gild a tea service. But no one is completely sure. But the Royal Collection Trust which manages the Royals’ collection of valuables have been unable to find either the nugget or the tea service or a record of them. There was also a conspiracy theory linked to it and whether the nugget was planted by the Ross Goldfields Co to boost its share price. Arthur Ernest Sharpe had been born in Ross to James (Jim) and Elizabeth Sharpe (nee Phillips). Jim had been born in Staines, Surrey while Elizabeth was born in Hampshire. Jim himself was a miner and his son followed in his footsteps. Sharpe died on July 15, 1938 and is buried - along with his parents in the Ross Cemetery. John Scott is also in the Ross Cemetery - he died on November 3, 1927 aged 76. |
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