The deadly lightning strike - Grave Story 114

Jack Allison has a dubious distinction in New Zealand history. He is mostly known for being one of the few people who have died in New Zealand after being struck by lightning.
It was reported in most newspapers of the time in 1923.
But even though he came from the tiny Canterbury township of Cust, a place hardly anyone had heard of, and died in such an unusual manner, there was much much more to Jack.
Jack was the son of Edward Allison and Julia (nee Worgan). Edward, a farmer from Lancashire, had come to New Zealand on the ship Blue Jacket in 1866. Edward worked initially as a shearer then in 1870 got a job with a threshing machine and purchased an interest in one. It led to a full plant of machines, which would have made Allison a wealthy businessman at the time.
After his marriage to Julia, they had five children, three daughters and two sons. John Biddle Allison - known as Jack - was their middle child.
Cust, a town around a railway line and station, would have been a rural ideal for a child. But it would also have been hard work.
At the age of 20 he was in the newspapers for a completely different reason. He was awarded a certificate from the Royal Humane Society for saving 11-year-old Alice Morgan from drowning at Kairaki on January 19, 1911.
In March 1917 Jack, like a whole generation of young men, signed up to fight in World War One. He was five foot seven with black hair and brown eyes.
He was sent to Egypt from January 1918 where he served until he contracted malaria and returned to New Zealand in 1919 on the ship Kaikoura.
Then on February 10, 1923 Jack made the newspapers again. He had been standing on a stack (of hay we think) with a fork in his hand when he was struck by lightning.
A sudden storm came from the south-west and there was a huge downpour. But 30 minutes later it had passed and Jack, a single man, was dead.
Jack is buried in the small Cust-West Eyreton cemetery with his father, mother and an infant sister.
Photo by Frankie Lopez.
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