The old saying goes fire is a good servant but a bad master.
How the fire started in Louisa Johnson’s house on Murphy St in Wellington in 1877 is unclear. What we do know is that Louisa and her five children died in a blaze that destroyed several buildings in a tragedy in the early colony town.
About 3am fire alarm bells began ringing. The Princess Hotel was completely engulfed in fire as was the house behind. The fire spread quickly and Louisa’s house was quickly in flames.
It’s hard to know now if they could have been saved. They were likely asleep and hopefully overcome long before the fire reached them.
What we do know is that there was no chance to help them. There was no water.
Fire fighters and police were quickly on hand and gallantly put a ladder against an outer wall to try and gain entry to the Johnson home but the fire and smoke was so intense that one of the fire fighters fell from the ladder injuring himself.
It was 45 minutes before water could be brought to the site.
The bodies of the five were removed from the site - the body of the youngest baby in Louisa’s arms. They were Louisa, Henry, Frederick, Frank, Amy and Jessie.
The Captain of the Central Fire station Lewis Moss told the inquest they had immediately connected to a fire hydrant, but once turned on there was no water.
They went to another hydrant on another road but there was no water there either.
Even when they managed to get water, it was a trickle.
An engineer found that copper gauze, used in the pipes to stain the water, had slipped and was partially blocking the pipe.
A coal merchant who lived nearby Edwin Jeffreys, had tried to get into the back door of the house but had been driven back by the flames.
Only a couple of weeks before Thorndon residents had been complaining that they were getting very little water in the evening hours. Later it was discovered water was being turned off at night as too much was being used by local businesses.
Louisa Bolton was born in New Zealand on January 4, 1842 to Frederick and Elizabeth who had come to New Zealand from England.
She had married William Henry Johnson in Wellington in 1864 at St Andrews Church.
William had died the year before the fire leaving Louisa with the children.
Her brother George had told the inquest that Louisa was despondent and often kept a lamp burning at night - a possible cause of the fire.
William had been buried in Bolton St Cemetery - and nearly a year later, Louisa and all their children were buried with him.
Picture by Jen Theodore.​

Very few people in New Zealand would have seen a lion or tiger in 1909 when John James Boyd opened New Zealand’s first zoo.
It should have been a roaring success with people flocking to see the exotic animals.
He had a lion and lioness, a tigress, and breeding pairs of bears and black buck antelopes, together with four macaws, two vultures and two demoiselle cranes which he had bought from a German zoo.
But he had built the zoo in Upper Aramoho in Whanganui.
After poor attendance John decided to move the zoo. And he set it up again in suburban Onehunga in Auckland.
He bought 6½ acres of land near the corner of Symonds Street and Trafalgar Street and on July 6 1911, a newspaper showed photos of the construction of cages and houses.
John also wanted to expand and applied for a licence to import more animals.
He had to meet a number of government regulations for health regulations and began bringing in more animals, like a pair of leopards.
John also included animals from Australia, like wallabies and kangaroos.
And it worked. People poured into the zoo for several years.
But then the complaints from nearby residents began. Smell, noise and hygiene were a problem and they started a petition to close it.
The Onehunga Borough Council began looking into it and considered how to close it down. So John ran for election. And in a twist, his fellow councillors endorsed him for mayor.
Opponents attacked him for abusing his public power and when he was found to have breached the Municipal Corporations Act, he stepped down.
The zoo continued briefly until two lions escaped on two different occasions, one managing to run about Queen St terrifying people.
So John took his animals on tour, around southern Auckland and Waikato.
He ended up being prosecuted for animal cruelty and the zoo finally closed in 1922.
Some of his animals were sold to private buyers and the rest became the basis of the new Auckland zoo.
John had been born in Yorkshire, England, and came to New Zealand in 1876. A builder by trade, he built a lot of cottages in what is now Kilbirnie in Wellington.
He went into the zoo trade once he had retired.
After his zoo closed, John and his family, wife Ann and his children moved back to Wellington where he lived the rest of his life.
He died on January 19, 1928 at his home, called The Anchorage, in Kilbirnie, Wellington and is buried in Karori cemetery.
Photo by Hugo Herrara.​

As bizarre as it sounds, there were New Zealanders who rode camels into war.
The First World War had its own camel company, called cameliers, who operated in the Sinai Desert.
Technically they were part of the horse mounted 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun squadron.
We all know that animals were used in war, horses, dogs and pigeons especially.
But the story of the cameliers is less well known. But it makes sense. Camels do better in a desert environment than horses. At full strength there were 3880 camels in use.
In August 1916, No 15 (New Zealand) Company, Imperial Camel Corps, was formed from men originally intended as reinforcements for the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade.
Once they had received their training - it’s not like riding a horse - the New Zealand cameliers joined the 1st and 2nd battalions at El Mazaar oasis in the Sinai desert.
They joined other imperial camel corps into a single brigade with three camel battalions.
A mere four days later they took part in the Battle of Magdhaba.
They also began long range patrols, protecting the vital strategic asset of the railway and water pipeline.
Once the enemy withdrew from the area the rest of the camel companies were taken off those duties and formed into the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade's fourth ('Anzac') battalion in May 1917.
For the rest of 1917, the New Zealand, Australian and British cameliers fought against the Ottoman Turks, first in Palestine proper, and then from early 1918 in the Jordan Valley.
Despite being brought in for long range patrol the camiliers found themselves in full scale battle.
During the Battle for Hill 2029 the cameliers managed to capture the hill but it brought retribution from the Ottoman Turks who targeted it with heavy artillery fire. Quickly on the heels of this artillery bombardment came a series of ground assaults by Ottoman infantry determined to retake the hilltop.
The 4th Camel Battalion repelled them, holding on until they were told to withdraw.
The action cost the cameliers three of its six officers. Two of them, 2nd lieutenants Charles Thorby and Victor Adolph, were killed in action during the battle; the third, Lieutenant Arthur Crawford, died of his wounds in hospital two months later.
During their whole service, the New Zealand cameliers lost 41 men.
The cameliers were disbanded in 1918.
At the end Colonel T. E. Lawrence – better known as Lawrence of Arabia – convinced the commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby, that the camels would be put to better use by the Arab Army.
One of the British cameliers said while they had often cursed the animals they had become attached to their ugly ungainly mounts.
Ronald Francis MacKenzie was born in Wellington in 1889 to James and Annie - he went to Egypt in 1916 with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and transferred to the cameliers and served in both Egypt and Palestine.
He died in Tauranga on December 25, 1952 and is buried in the Thames Memorial Park.​

How did you find a wife or husband in late 1800’s New Zealand?
There were some societal rules you couldn’t break. Women couldn’t (or shouldn’t) go to a pub, men needed to be introduced and chaperons were a thing.
So what if you could go to someone who could arrange a marriage?
Marriage was as much a business and financial partnership as it was a love match.
And Thomas Brown Hannaford had the answer.
As well as being a debt collector, accountant, inventor, rates collector and land agent, he was a marriage broker.
In February 1867, Hannaford established a registry service, advertising services for people looking for positions but it quickly moved into a matrimonial service agency.
Advertisements ran in national newspapers saying things like farmers looking for a valuable wife, educated widow looking to negotiate, asking for skills like chicken rearing, sewing, making bread and with flowery compliments like capable of spreading sunshine in any home.
He also married those he matched up.
In particular was the desire of farmers who often worked in isolated rural locations, to have a wife. Hannaford claimed he had found 115 suitable wives for such men and by 1890 he claimed 180 couples.
He refused to match up anyone in bad health or was not considered respectable by the time’s standards.
In many ways he was responding to the influx of young women created by a government campaign launched to bring them to New Zealand.
He asked the young men to complete a questionnaire that included, among other things, their income and prospects, something women would likely not consider a match without.
Hannaford was also at pains to advertise privacy and discretion.
James Thomas Browne Hannaford was born in 1823 in Brixham, Devon in England to James Hannaford and Ann Browne.
Initially he worked on the docks then was a clerk to a railway contractor.
He married Ann Jarvis in 1850 and they had several children before divorcing and making his way to New Zealand in 1859.
He worked at various jobs for a while before starting a land agency and debt collection agency which led to the matrimonial agency.
He married again in 1875 to Anne Mary Josephine Bethel. They had several children but tragically most died as infants.
Thomas, as he was called, died on July 15, 1890, and while there are no records, his place of burial was advertised in the papers as the Symonds St Cemetery.​

By the time nursing Sister Alice Clara Searell left Egypt after the Gallipoli campaign she had nursed more than 4000 men.
And not just of their injuries. Disease, like typhoid and venereal disease was also rife.
Alice had been born on January 18, 1883, in Christchurch to Richard Trist and Mary Searell.
She received a private school education at which she did excellently.
In 1908, she passed the preliminary state examination for anatomy and physiology and the next year was one of six nurses trained at Timaru hospital who passed the state examination.
Alice became a district nurse from Southland Hospital.
She offered her services as nurse to the expeditionary force in 1914 and enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service Corp on April 8, 1915 at the age of 32.
She left from Wellington aboard the Rotorua headed for Egypt. She was promoted to sister and on arrival in Alexandria went to the 31st General Hospital in Port Said.
It was hard work, meaning changing dressings all day on terrible gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
In 1916 she boarded hospital ship Braemar Castle to transfer to the Brittanic. She also worked on the ship Devanha before arriving in England in October 1916 before going on to the No.1 New Zealand General Hospital at Brockenhurst (Hampshire) in the south of England.
Alice nursed men from all parts of the war until the hospital closed in March 1919. In her time there she also nursed her own brother, Driver Lewis Trist Searell, who was transferred there in November 1917 after having been gassed.
Alice returned to New Zealand in March 1919 and was awarded the Associate of the Royal Red Cross (ARRC) decoration along with the 1914-1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
She became assistant matron at the King George V Military hospital in Rotorua then acting matron and eventually matron.
Alice went on to become military matron at the Auckland Public Hospital in 1935 before retiring in 1939.
She continued with an active life, a member of the Returned Sisters Club, holding bridge parties and gardening.
Alice died on July 28, 1975 and was cremated to Purewa after a lifetime of service to others.​

The SS Rangitane left Auckland on November 24, 1940, with 14,000 tonnes of cargo worth millions of dollars and 111 passengers.
A Royal Main ship, she was heading to Britain via the Panama Canal through seas made doubly dangerous by the prospect of encountering German ships and submarines.
On board were servicemen and radar technicians - tactically important to the war effort. She also carried butter, pork, mutton and cheese, along with 45 bars of silver
The same day the SS Holmwood was sunk by German raiders but the Rangitane knew nothing about that and as they approached the 300 mile mark three days later the ship was confronted by the German ships Komet and Orion. With them was a support boat Kulmerland.
It was 3.30am when Captain Lionel Upton was called to the bridge - in his pyjamas.
The Rangitane was ordered to stop and not make radio contact with anyone. But it’s Captain Upton who ordered QQQ to be sent - basically code for ‘suspicious’ to be broadcast.
The Germans reacted by jamming the signals and began firing on the Rangitane.
For several moments there was chaos and neither side knew what was going on, but when Upton realised his message had been received he ordered the surrender of the Rangitane.
He quickly ordered documents like code books and key engine parts to be destroyed, determined to limit the German’s prize.
Another code was sent on an emergency transmitter - RRR - raider attack.
In the confusion the Rangitane had its steering damaged by the shelling.
Despite his surrender, the Germans continued firing and Upton wanted to fire upon them but was unable. So he had to order abandon ship.
Sixteen people, eight passengers and eight crew died. The survivors were put on to the German ships.
By this time the Rangitane was on fire and sinking, but the Komet fired again on the failing ship, sending it to the bottom. The German ships couldn’t hang around however, the cool head of Captain Upton meant his radio messages had got through and allied aircraft would be on their way.
The Rangitane was one of the largest passenger ships sunk during World War II.
The crowded conditions of the captured prisoners meant the civilians were to be offloaded, which ended up being on the tiny island of Emirau off New Guinea which they were later rescued from.
The military prisoners were taken back to prisoner of wars camps in Germany.
Upton was later released and returned to England.
Many of the prisoners felt the humane way they were treated was due to Upton’s civilising influence and impeccable behaviour.
Three crew members received British Empire Medals for their selflessness, including stewardess Elizabeth Plumb.
She had been born Elizabeth Ann Orr in Rothbury, Northumberland on August 31, 1882.
Despite being wounded by a shell fragment she reached the passengers and guided them to the boats keeping them calm.
She died in Bexley, Sidcup on June 27, 1960 and was cremated at Greenwich Cemetery.​

In the 1930’s New Zealand had a smuggling problem. But it wasn’t gold, or jewels or even things like alcohol.
It was coins.
New Zealand did not have its own currency before 1933 - the money in circulation was part of the British currency.
But after the New Zealand coins were devalued it led to large scale smuggling of coins.
Several rings were broken up.
In June 1933, the second officer and seventh engineer of the Marama were arrested in Timaru for attempting to export silver using specially fitted belts to hold the coins.
About the same time four men from the Wanganella were arrested in Wellington.
In 1934 the steward on the Monowai was fined £25 for smuggling £132 in silver coin.
There was contention over replacing the coins with a uniquely New Zealand set of currency.
It all led to the Coinage Act 1933 which laid out the weights and compositions of various denominations. New Zealand was the last British dominion to issue its own coinage.
In 1940, Leonard Cornwall Mitchell won a design competition for the penny and half penny for New Zealand.
Leonard had been born in 1901 in Wellington to Charles William Mitchell and Hester (Esther) Watson.
He became an artist studying at the Palmerston North Technical School completing a signwriting apprenticeship and a correspondence course in cartoon and caricature from America.
He was a stamp designer for the Post Office and head artist with the company Filmcraft (later the National Film Unit) in the late 1920’s.
Mitchell designed posters and illustrations for the Tourist and Publicity Department and worked in the art department of W D & H O Wills Tobacco.
He also worked in the 1940s for Coulls Somerville Wilkie which eventually became Whitcoulls.
One of his specialties was reconstructions of historical scenes.
He designed the commemorative centennial half-crown coin in 1940. Later he worked as a commercial artist. He was called the father of New Zealand graphic design.
Mitchell had married Victoria Adelaide Cogswell in 1923. Three of their sons, Leonard (Victor Leonard William) Mitchell, Alan Gordon Mitchell, and Frank Mitchell were also artists.
He died on September 22, 1971 and is buried at Makara Cemetery.
A large number of his works are in the National Archives and Te Papa. Picture from Te Papa.​

In a Dunedin cemetery is a member of an Eastern European royal family who lived his last days in New Zealand.
Prince Alois Konstantin Drucki-Lubecki was born in 1801 in Warsaw, Poland, a descendant of the Norman Prince Ruric who was once invited to govern Russia. His forefathers became Lithuanian princes. His grandfather had married a Polish noblewoman and a cousin was Prince Xavier Drucki-Lubecki, a minister of finance in the Polish government.
Lech Paszkowski in his book, Poles in Australia and Oceania 1790-1940, said Alois was an officer in the Polish National Army and took part in the Polish-Russian War, a failed revolution called the November Uprising seeking to create an independent state. When the movement collapsed he got away, but his estates were forfeited.
He left to live in Germany, then France before going to England.
There he married Laura Duffus in 1836.
With Laura’s brother, the Reverend John Duffus and his family, the group emigrated to Australia where he and his family were the first known settlers in New South Wales.
Unable to get a job, Alois and his new wife opened a school in Parramatta for young ladies.
But as the area became economically depressed, the school failed and Alois became ill.
After his recovery, the couple moved to Sydney then to Melbourne where Alois became a confectioner while Laura continued to teach.
In 1863 with Laura and his two daughters, Alois came to Dunedin where they settled.
The old prince named his Dunedin residence Koldano after the battle he had fought in an engagement with the Russians.
He was often called the talking general, liking to talk about those times. It is believed he became a bank manager in New Zealand.
During the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863, Alois Lubecki contributed to the press campaign on behalf of Poles, writing to New Zealand newspapers.
Unfortunately, he was not to enjoy his life in New Zealand for long, he died on 7 October 1864. His wife lived until 1901 in Nelson and was then buried with Alois in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery.
The Prince’s grave was restored in 2019.​