The Hermit of Wellington

One of the most unlikely celebrities in Wellington’s history was a man who didn’t want to see anyone.
Called the Hermit, he lived in a cave on the coast where Island Bay meets Houghton Bay.
And for a moment in time his cave was a tourist destination as people went to gawk at the man in the cave.
Records are a bit patchy about the man himself. Those who visited him often saw him propped up on an elbow, answering questions in a bored tone and refusing money or food.
But there was one question he wouldn’t answer - why he was there. Instead when he got sick of people, he often set fire to some seaweed to smoke them out of his cave.
Those who got to know him said his name was Charles or William Persse and that he was well educated and came from a banking family in the north of Ireland, having become estranged from his relatives.
He is believed to have come to New Zealand in 1878 but why he chose a cave is open to debate even today.
One of the first mentions of him was a newspaper report in 1879 of a police officer who had found him naked and half starved.
He had some kerosene, some water, soap and a piece of ship's sail he used as a bed along with a bible his mother had given him when he was a child.
He told the police he lived off fish, boiled seaweed and moss off the cave walls.
Indeed, he became a fixture in Wellington, he lived in the cave for 17 years, appeared in court on charges like vagrancy and was hospitalised more than once with serious respiratory illnesses.
It was in 1984 that the authorities began talking about extending Queen’s Drive which would drive him out of his cave, which upset locals who saw him as a novel part of the community.
He was hospitalised in August 1898 with bronchitis and it was thought he would survive despite Wellington Hospital superintendent Dr John Ewart initially thinking he might not.
But in September that year he was recovering and was offered assistance by the Benevolent Society and he asked politely to go to Brisbane where he had relatives.
They paid his way although it was later rumoured he went back to Ireland.
His cave was eventually boarded up and then partly destroyed. An oil painting by Petrus Van Der Velden is in the collection of Te Papa.
He appears to have vanished from New Zealand’ memory after that.
John Ewart who treated him devoted 20 years of his life to Wellington Hospital.
Ewart died on August 5, 1939 and is buried in Karori Cemetery.
Painting from Te Papa by Petrus Van Der Velden