The execution

Crowds lined up between the gaol and King Edward Place as murderer Joseph Burns was brought, in a cage, with a military escort, through the streets to his execution.
Not many executions in New Zealand were done in public. It was more common for them to be done in the yard of a jail with just enough witnesses to make sure it was done.
But Joseph Burns was the first European man to be hanged in the young colony and he had killed three people.
Burns was born in Liverpool, England somewhere between 1806 and 1811 and joined the Navy when he was 20. He arrived in the Bay of Islands aboard the Buffalo in 1840. Not long after the ship was wrecked and Burns took a discharge. He worked for the government for a bit before becoming a ship builder.
Likely an alcoholic, he and Margaret Reardon, who was estranged from her husband, set up house in Mechanics Bay. They had two sons.
Burns then worked for a market garden but was dismissed. Work was hard for him to find but he began working as a farm worker only to be dismissed again and evicted from the farm cottage. He built a shack at Shoal Bay where Burns worked for the local chief Patuone along with the vegetables Margaret grew.
He became increasingly desperate for money. Then on October 22, 1847, he murdered Lieutenant Robert Snow, his wife and daughter with a tomahawk for the £12 in their home. He mutilated the bodies in a way supposed to make it look like it was a Māori attack.
It led to Māori in the area to be suspected but a coroner believed it was a different type of murder.
Margaret left Burns who opted to join the naval steamer Inflexible for a trip to Australia.
When he got back he tried to persuade Margaret to marry him, as a wife could not give evidence against a husband.
When she would not, he attacked her then tried to kill himself. He was arrested and sentenced to transportation.
He asked for Margaret to bring the boys to the prison and then got her to lie for him about two shipmates of his being part of the Snow murders.
He ended up charged and accused Margaret of inciting him to make a fake confession but she owned up, admitting perjury and telling the whole story.
She was convicted of perjury and transported herself.
Burns was found guilty of the murders and only then did he make a full confession.
On June 17, 1848 he was taken from the jail across the harbour to the site where he had killed the Snows and was hanged before the crowd.
Initially he was buried at the Old Auckland Gaol but in 1966 he and other executed murderers were exhumed and reburied in the Symonds St Cemetery.
Photo by Tamara Gore.​