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.​

Down Wellington’s Lambton Quay people were used to seeing the dapper man accompanied by his little dog.
It was so common that even now, the man, John Plimmer and the dog Fritz, who was his constant companion, are still there at the entrance to the Plimmer steps, life-sized and cast in bronze.
In the colder months it's not uncommon for Fritz to end up yarn bombed, with a wool coat or scarf. And it’s one of the most popular and photographed pieces of street art in the capital.
Plimmer is sometimes called the father of Wellington.
Plimmer was born on June 28, 1812, in what was called Upton-under-Amon in Shropshire, England.
He was the second youngest of 12 children to Isaac Plimmer and his wife Mary.
Initially he was going to be a teacher but instead trained to be a plasterer and master builder.
In 1841 he came to New Zealand on the Gertrude and his first home was a raupo hut.
Local Maori thought he might be a bit nuts when he told them he intended to live in what would become Wellington.
He built his own hut at the top of what would be Ingestre Street and worked as a carpenter and builder and started a brick and lime works.
In 1851 the ship Inconstant wrecked in Wellington, running aground. Plimmer saw an opportunity and bought the hull for £80 which he turned into a wharf which was linked to the shore by a bridge and served as one of the first piers with the interior serving as a warehouse and auction room. It became known as Plimmer’s Ark.
It also served as a bonded customs store, immigration pier and office for the first Wellington harbourmaster. A light mounted at the seaward side of the ship became the first harbour light in Wellington.
Gradually the hull became landlocked as buildings and land were built up around it. It was discovered again in 1990 and is visible now as an archeological dig beneath the Old Bank Arcade.
Plimmer was a member of the Wellington provincial council, the first town board and then the Wellington City Council and organised the Wellington and Manawatu Railway company.
The suburb of Plimmerton is named after him.
Plimmer built the Albert Hotel in 1877 at the south corner of Boulcott and Manners streets and decorated it with carved figureheads of prominent Wellingtonians, including Plimmer himself.
The Albert Hotel was demolished in 1929, and was replaced by the St George hotel.
Plimmer planted an oak tree in his garden in the mid-1800s and it still stands, on the left near the top of the steps.
He had married Mary Rodden in 1833 who died in 1862 and remarried to Janet Anderson He died on January 5, 1905, and is buried in Bolton St Cemetery.​
​Picture from Te Papa's collection.

Long before we became fascinated by the Arthur Allan Thomas case in Pukekawa and who fed the baby, there was another little child left alone with the bodies of his murdered parents.
James Frackleton Holland was an Irish immigrant who was a farmer. He had sold quite a bit of his land for a freezing works and he and wife Hilda Marion - called Marion - lived in a two-storey house near the southwestern side of the Kaiapoi River. They had one son, Cyril.
Marion was his second wife. He had five children with his first wife.
Both James and Marion were found dead in their home on May 12, 1916. Marion’s body was found inside the front door with a rope around her mouth while James was in a shed where he kept the horse trap also with a rope around his neck. Both ropes were cut and there was no suggestion they had been hanged.
James, who was 74, was found in a pool of blood with his right arm dislocated although his cause of death was a blow to the head.
Marion was much younger than James in her early 30s. It was believed she went to his aid and was hit on the head with a bar and died of a fractured skull.
Hilda appeared to have been killed in the yard and dragged into the house.
Her death was reported to police by an insurance agent who visited the house the next day finding the front door open. He knocked and a little boy answered. It was three-year-old Cyril, the couple’s son.
He saw Marion lying in the hallway and went no further.
Police ruled out suicide but could find no trace of a murderer. But the family cat dragged in a piece of blood-stained wrapping into the house and it led to the police finding the iron bar wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Which is odd. Why would the murderer not have taken the weapon with them?
Police were unable to find a motive for the killings.
There were plenty of theories. One was money. Holland drove to Christchurch the day before he died and withdrew over £1000 from a building society. He then cashed the cheque at a bank before taking it to Kaiapoi and put the money in a bank there.
But when he was found he still had £10 in his pocket. Police wondered if someone knew he had taken out the money and would still have it.
There was also a concern there was a sexual motive as Marion’s clothes were disturbed. But she had been dragged into the hallway which would have accounted for it.
It was possible they knew their murderer - no cry for help was heard from their home. A worker on the property though was mostly deaf and could barely speak and unable to help with investigations.
After months of investigations, police came up with nothing. Even offering a reward brought no new information.
Cyril was taken to a relative's house and both James and Marion were buried in the Kaiapoi Public Cemetery.​

Names are funny things. Streets, regions, cities all have names and there is nearly always a story behind them.
And sometimes the story behind the names seems obvious at first glance but in fact there is much more to it.
Take Elizabeth Island in Milford Sound. The largest island in inner Doubtful Sound.
We automatically think of things named Elizabeth are named after our late Queen. Or the first Queen Elizabeth but in reality it was neither.
Elizabeth Island is one of the many places in the Fiordland National Park named by settler, sailor, ship builder, ship captain, sealer, whaler and farmer John Grono.
And it was after his ship the Elizabeth - itself named after his wife Elizabeth Bristowe.
He also named Bligh Sound, again named for one of his ships which was named for infamous Captain William Bligh who was Governor of New South Wales.
Milford Sound was named by Grono after a place in his birthplace.
Grono was born in 1763 in Newport, Wales. Not much is known about his early life but he went into the Navy, aboard the Royal William as an able seaman and in 1798 he went to Australia aboard the HMS Buffalo and transferred to the first Australian ship.
He left that life in 1801 and went into business going into farming and growing wheat.
After losing money he took up sailing again - seal fur hunting in New Zealand.
He gathered several ships and organised the trips, even turning to ship building.
In 1809, his ship the Governor Bligh struck a rock in Foveaux Strait. The ship was able to be saved and he made it back to Sydney with over 10,000 seal skins.
It was the first time the name of the strait had been in print.
Later that year he returned and entered Doubtful Sound where he set up a base on the south coast of Secretary Island which is still called Grono Bay. The highest peak on the island is named Mount Grono.
He also named Milford Sound after Milford Haven in Wales. Nancy Sound and Caswell Sound, and Milford Sound's Cleddau River have also been traced back to him.
Later he made two more trips to New Zealand aboard the Elizabeth before handing his ships over to his son-in-law Alexander Brooks.
Permanently back on dry land he concentrated on ship building.
Grono died on 4 May 1847. Elisabeth had died fourteen months later at age 77. They are buried at the entrance to Ebenezer Church, New South Wales.
Photo over Doubtful Sound near Elizabeth Island from Te Papa’s collection​

​War artists often captured the harsh realities of war in a way that gave a visual shock.
Not only did they show us the images but some were also appointed officially by governments who used them in other ways, to show them landscapes so they could plan, record events or for propaganda purposes.
Nugent Herrmann Welch was born on July 30, 1881 in Akaroa to Joseph and Isabel.
Joseph was surveyor and in 1893 he took a position as a draughtsman in Wellington and moved his family there.
Nugent was interested in art early, copying his father who was an amateur artist.
He passed first and second grade drawing exams and became a clerk in the accounts branch of the Wellington Harbour board but hated it, resigning to become a full time artist.
He worked full time from the family’s Wright Street home in Mount Cook then opened a studio in Boulcott street and began exhibiting.
The first World War came and he enlisted in March 1916 and served with the 2nd Battalion, New Zealand Rifle Brigade on the western front.
In April 1918 Nooge as he was called was appointed divisional war artist with the temporary rank of sergeant. His landscapes often featured ruined buildings and seldom included people, portraying the desolate aftermath of battle.
After his discharge in 1919 he went back to his art, becoming a member of the council of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.
For the National Art Gallery's opening in 1936, he was commissioned to paint a large canvas of Wellington Harbour; it was later displayed at Government House.
Landscapes in particular held his interest, and most of his attention was devoted
to the lower North Island, particularly Wellington's rugged coastline.
Cape Terawhiti was one of his favourite painting locations. Tall and athletic, he regularly tramped for three hours to Oteranga Bay, where he would paint by day (often nude) and spend nights in a cave furnished with wood from the beach.
He most often worked in watercolours.
He received an OBE in 1949 and many of his works at held at Te Papa.
After a fall in 1964 he was forced to give up his studio. He never married and lived in his family home until 1967 when he moved to a rest home with his sister Jessie.
He died in Wellington on July 16, 1970 and his ashes were scattered at Cape Terawhiti.

Dr Margaret Cruickshank was so worn out from her work trying to help those sick during the influenza epidemic, she lost her own life.
She was one of 14 doctors who died trying to save lives during the outbreak.
Margaret Barnet (or Barnett) Cruickshank was born on New Year’s Day, 1873, to farmer George Cruickshank and his wife Margaret.
They lived in Hawksbury - which was later called Waikouaiti - in Otago. Margaret and her twin Christina were about 10 when their mother became gravely ill. Life being hard, the girls alternated going to school - one staying home to care for the five younger kids while the other attended and then that twin taught what they had learned to the other.
Their mother died on June 19, 1883.
Margaret went on to high school where she was joint dux with her sister then she won a New Zealand University Junior Scholarship in 1891. Christina gained an MA and Msc and later became principal of Whanganui Girls College and Margaret went to the University of Otago Medical school.
She became the second woman in New Zealand to complete a medical course and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1897.
Margaret became the assistant to a doctor in Waimate and in 1897 became the first New Zealand woman to register as a doctor and go into general medicine.
With only one break - in which she studied for a year overseas - she worked at that practice and her patients were devoted to her.
She then obtained the degree of doctor of medicine in 1903 and studied in Edinburgh and Dublin.
Her patients in Waimate presented her with a purse with 100 sovereigns and a gold watch for her trip.
Margaret returned in 1914 to a huge workload - many men were away with the First World War and there was much to be done. Along with the practice she organised the local red cross fund and worked at the hospital.
When the influenza epidemic hit she responded with more work. She was the only doctor left in the district and used a bicycle or horse to get to her patients when her driver fell ill. Sometimes she helped by feeding the children, cleaning and milking the patients’ cows.
In November 1918 she caught influenza herself and while she tried to continue working - and did for several days - she was eventually hospitalised and died of pneumonia on November 28, 1918.
The people of Waimate turned out for her funeral - lining the streets to farewell her.
A statue of her was put up - the first time a statue of a woman other than a royal was put up in New Zealand - with the words The Beloved Physician/Faithful unto Death.
She is buried in the Waimate Old Cemetery.​

It’s not often that significant pieces of art go missing in New Zealand but William Trethewey’s sculpture has been missing for over 100 years.
William Thomas Trethewey was born on September 8, 1892 to Jabez Trethewey and his wife Mary. Jabez was a carpenter so William grew up surrounded by wood so it came as little surprise when he left school at 13 and became a wood carver of things like finials, fireplaces and bedheads.
He studied at the Canterbury College School of Art and when he moved to Wellington studied life modelling.
But his interest in anatomy was mostly self-taught studying his own muscles and the works of great sculptures like Rodin and Michelangelo.
It was then he became a monumental mason.
After the end of the First World War he saw new opportunities. He produced other works like a highly realistic statue of a New Zealand soldier, 'The Bomb-Thrower', which he showed in the Canterbury Society of Arts exhibition in 1919 as a model for local war memorials. The work excited great interest and was purchased by the society.
He also carved the war memorial at Kaiapoi, the portrayal of a digger with the details of the kit so exact down to a broken bootlace.
Shortly after the life-sized statue of Margaret Cruickshank, the doctor who died in the influenza epidemic was unveiled in Waimate. William had carved it out of a five tonne piece of marble.
Commissions began to stream in, busts of benefactors and mayors, a sheep shearer for the New Zealand pavilion at the Wembley exhibition as well as detailed plaster work.
In 1928 he won a competition to produce a sculpture of Captain James Cook from a 12 ton piece of Italian marble. The work was unveiled in Victoria Square in 1932.
When the idea came up for a war memorial in Cathedral Square a local artist was suggested. An emblem of peace rather than a depiction of war was wanted.
William’s design was six symbolic figures Youth, Justice, Peace, Valour and Sacrifice around an angel breaking the sword of war. It is considered one of the finest public memorials to this day.
Among his other works was a sculpture of Maui Pomare in Waitara, lions in art deco style and a large figure of Kupe standing on the prow of his canoe. It stood for many years at the Wellington Railway station but was subject to vandalism and is now at Te Papa.
None of his work brought much fame and fortune and after the Second World War there was little call for his art and he began making clocks.
But his first work - the Bomb Thrower was lost and has never been recovered.
William had married Ivy Louisa Harper on July 24, 1914 and they had four children.
He died on May 4, 1956 and is buried at Bromley Cemetery.

New Zealand has many firsts that we can be proud of - including that the first registered nurse in the world was a Kiwi.
Ellen Dougherty was born on September 20, 1844, in Cutters Bay, Port Underwood in Marlborough to whaler Daniel Douherty and his wife Sarah.
When she was about five the family moved to Wellington where Daniel became a harbour pilot.
Life could be rough and isolated and Ellen and her siblings grew up in boats and exploring the bush and becoming accomplished riders. Part of their education came from reading from their father’s library, where Ellen likely learned about Florence Nightingale for the first time.
After her father died in 1857 they moved to a boarding house which her mother ran in Ghuznee St.
It is believed that before nurse training, she worked with Charles Barraud in his Wellington pharmacy, one of the first in the country.
She went into a job at Wellington hospital in 1885 and completed her certificate in nursing in 1887 studying elementary anatomy and physiology.
Ellen became the head of the hospital’s accident ward and ran the surgical ward.
After being passed over for the position of matron, she accepted a job as matron of the Palmerston North hospital but arrived to find money was scarce and there were little supplies. Her very first job was organising sewing bees to get sheets, pillow-cases and bandages.
It was beyond busy. Palmerston North was the centre of construction for the main trunk railway line and she had to set broken limbs, dress wounds, and on occasions amputate an arm or a leg. She also ran the hospital's dispensary so in 1899 was formally registered as a pharmacist.
Then in 1901, New Zealand was the first country to start separate legislation for the registration of nurses. The first person on that list was Ellen.
She retired in 1908 back to Carterton to be near her family. She had never married.
Ellen died on November 3, 1919 and is buried in Clareville Cemetery in Carterton.
With thanks to Julie who nominated this amazing woman for a story.​