 From the Genealogy Investigations staff: Fran, Deb and Cricket, we want to wish all our followers a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Safe travels to those going away and we’ll be back in the New Year with some more stories of unsolved murders, famous people, Kiwi Icons, heroes, weird tales and many more.
Oh, and Cricket hated this so much he promptly tore off the hat and buried it. He's our naughtiest employee!
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In the farthest northern corner of Karori Cemetery lie eight graves whose epitaphs simply read “Known Unto God” died 24.12.1953.
The graves, buried alongside eight whose epitaphs have names, belong to five males and three females – the last remaining unidentified victims of the Tangiwai Rail Disaster - New Zealand’s worst train crash. The crash, which happened at 10.21pm on December 24, 1953, resulted in the deaths of 151 of the 285 passengers and crew aboard the overnight Wellington to Auckland train. The story of the accident is well-known in New Zealand. A lahar from Mount Ruapehu slammed into a rail bridge spanning the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai. When the train, which consisted of a locomotive, nine carriages and two vans, began to cross the weakened bridge it collapsed, hurtling the engine and all five second class carriages into the swollen waters. A few minutes later, a first class carriage, which had been left teetering on the edge, followed. The story of the identification of the victims is less well known. The task was difficult from the start. Firstly, it was not known exactly how many people were on the ill-fated train – let alone who they were. Police had to prepare a passenger list from names suggested by worried friends and family who had contacted authorities. Also, several of the passengers had recently arrived in New Zealand and had no medical or dental records which could be compared to the bodies. Mistakes were inevitable. By December 27, three days after the accident, 114 bodies had been recovered of which 73 were identified. The following day 41 of those yet to be named were taken to the mortuary at Wellington Hospital. Relatives, friends or employers of those still missing viewed the bodies – 10 more were identified that day. On December 31, in a service also attended by the Queen’s husband Prince Phillip, the 21 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave in Karori Cemetery. Searches of the Whangaehu River continued and bodies continued to be found. Over subsequent months, six of the 21 Karori victims were positively identified by relatives from detailed descriptions made before burial. Then in March, it was decided to open the graves so further identification work could be done. A further body, that of a woman, had been recovered from the river in March and this was also interred in the plot, bringing the total to 22. Investigations revealed that two of the victims had been miss-identified. In one of these cases the incorrect body had been given to relatives and when the mistake was discovered this body had to be disinterred and swapped with the one from the mass grave. Of the 22 bodies, 15 were reinterred in the plot at Karori – eight unidentified and seven whose identities were known – seven were returned to relatives and buried again elsewhere. In May, the body of the woman found in March was identified by her father in England and her “Known Unto God” plaque was replaced with her name, Kathleen Florence Hallam. This left seven victims unidentified. Almost a year after the accident, on December 6, 1954, the body of a man was found buried in silt in the Whangaehu River. He was buried in the Karori plot under the name “male 5 unidentified”. A total of 26 named people were never accounted for after the accident. It is likely the eight unidentified bodies are among those named in this list, but, even with DNA testing, there is only a slim chance they would ever be positively identified.  Clarence Edward Schwartfeger didn’t hesitate when he was told someone had broken into the small Pirongia grocer’s shop where he was as assistant on October 6, 1948.
Glass had been heard breaking about 8.15pm and another employee told Schwartfeger, who grabbed his shotgun and headed for the store. He found two desperate men looking for food. He turned on the lights and confronted the two men. For the next 40 minutes he held his nerve, keeping them at gunpoint until police arrived from Te Awamutu, 12km away while the assistant guarded the door. It was a good thing he did. One was James Daniel Pease - often called an incorrigible rogue - who had broken out of prison only a week before and was the subject of a huge manhunt. Pease was no stranger to being on the run. He spent his life escaping. In fact, the reason he was in Auckland prison was for escaping. Pease, originally from England, was a ship’s steward in his lawful moments but was better known as a burglar and car converter. Which is how he escaped. Along with Peter Seaton Young, he nicked a prison truck from the gaol quarry (the keys were in the ignition) and drove it off, right past armed guards. It was found they had already broken into a shed and taken clothing although at trial they both said it was a spur of the moment decision. At one point they managed to drive through a police cordon in another stolen car and the police spent a great deal of time looking in the wrong places. After being caught they appeared in court manacled together and with their shoes taken off them (presumably to make it harder to run) and both got a year's hard labour. Ironically the sentence Pease was serving at the time was for escaping prison. When he appeared in court he told the judge he was suffering from mental depression. Shortly after he began his sentence - in the prison he had previously escaped from - he was sent to an Auckland mental hospital - from which he promptly escaped again by simply walking away. Six days later he was recaptured - in Wellington and ended up in Porirua Mental Hospital. And there the records drop off. Most likely he changed his name when he was released. Schwartfeger had been born to Franz Gottlieb Schwartfeger and Agnes Martha Schwartfager (nee Burnett) in 1905. He died after an accident between his car and a five tonne truck loaded with metal on May 3 1957, at age 51. He was buried with his wife Kathleen Alice in Alexandra Cemetery, Pirongia, Waikato.  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  Cafe Chantant in Dunedin’s famous Octagon was a rough and ready place.
It had a bad reputation and was well known to local police. In the Ross’s Building, the cafe was one of three shops - one untenanted and the other a milliner’s - along with numerous rooms rented to various people. One of them was editor of the Otago Witness, Robert Wilson. The milliner was his wife Sarah Ann’s shop. He and his whole family were in the building the night it caught fire. In the early morning of September 8, 1879, a neighbour noticed the fire and raised the alarm. As many as 50 people were thought to be sleeping in the rooms behind the cafe. The fire started in a second floor sitting room and spread quickly. It destroyed the only stairwell in minutes. The shoddily built structure with narrow hallways hampered efforts to get out or anyone to get in to help. People did try desperately to get out. At least one man, finding himself cut off, jumped about 30 feet to the ground. He was rushed to medical attention but died a short time later. Of Robert Wilson’s family, he, his wife and the children Frederick, Lawrence, Robert Jnr and Sarah all died. Two little girls - Lillie and Louisa survived. Also killed were John Swan, Margaret McCartney, John Taylor and George Augustus Martin. Two other bodies were recovered - but remain unidentified to this day. The fire brigade took far too long to respond and they were heavily criticised at an inquest held soon after. But the inquest jury found the fire was a wilful act by William John Waters but that they did not believe he intended to kill anyone. Nevertheless the coroner sent Williams to trial. Williams - also known by the names Walter Clair and William Woodcock or more likely Woodlock - had moved to Dunedin with his brother’s wife and child. He was charged with arson and with the murder Robert Wilson. At trial at least one witness said they had heard Williams say how easy it would be to set a fire. He had over £5000 in insurance, but despite this it took the trial only 38 minutes to find him not guilty. Much later he received some of the insurance money. Waters died on October 14, 1911 and is buried in the Port Chalmers Cemetery with his wife Maggie. Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel.  The iconic Norfolk pines on Napier’s Marine Parade were the brainchild of mayor George Henry Swan.
He had a vision for Marine Parade after many, many years of problems with the ocean, pounding right up to houses and storms sweeping away anything on the foreshore. Planting began in 1888 and originally there were 82 of the trees which now tower over the parade. The trees, as well as being decorative, had a purpose - they were designed to stop sea spray coming from the ocean. Many also had benches built around them for walkers. The 1931 earthquake changed the foreshore, raising it considerably and altering the development that would be done. Now work would not have to compete with the encroaching sea. The seawall had already been built by the time the earthquake hit but now the land beyond the seawall could be reclaimed. The gardens and rock gardens were the first to be completed and later things like the Soundshell - and much later - in 1954 - the equally iconic statue of Pania. The trees of course survived the earthquake and even now drivers travel beneath the shade of the massive trees. Swan had been born in 1833, in Sunderland, England, and went to Australia in 1854 before settling in New Zealand in 1857. He had initially trained as a chemist but became interested in photography. Arriving in Wellington he became a photographer then moved to Napier where he opened a studio which continued until 1870 when he sold it to his assistant. He then became a large shareholder and managing director of the Hawke’s Bay Brewing company and in 1869, it purchased the White Swan Brewery in Hastings which he ran for many years. He became Mayor of Napier in 1885 and served until 1901 (at the time being the longest serving mayor in New Zealand). As mayor, he started process for the public salt-water swimming baths as well as the changes to Marine Parade. He was also chairman of the Napier Hospital Board, and of the Hawke's Bay United Charitable Aid Board for many years, and a member of the Napier Harbour Board for seventeen years. He represented Napier in the House of Representatives from 1890 to 1893. Swan married actress Frances Stopher in 1884. There is a bust and plaque in the wall of the pool on Marine Parade dedicated to Swan. He died in Whanganui on July 25, 1913 and is buried at the Old Public Cemetery in Whanganui.  Lieutenant Commander William Edward Sanders’ VC citation was brief. “In recognition of his conspicuous gallantry, consummate coolness and skill in command of one of HM ships in action.”
The weird vagueness was deliberate, he was in command of a mystery ship - called a Q-ship. Born in Auckland, February 7, 1883, to Edward Helman Cook Sanders, a bootmaker from London and wife Emma, he was called Billy. He went to Takapuna School and lived on the North Shore, developing a love of swimming and sailing. He took up a seafaring life in 1899 as a cabin boy on the small coastal steamer Kapanui, then the Government steamer Hinemoa, before joining the Auckland-based Craig Line and was the first mate of the Joseph Craig. He was aboard when the ship wrecked in the Hokianga Harbour in 1914. In 1916, he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant and his naval service began with mine-sweeping but he quickly volunteered for the submarine-decoy ships called Q-ships. The German U-boats were wreaking havoc on shipping in the Atlantic and a way was needed to counter it. Q-ships were heavily armed merchant ships, with hidden weaponry, designed to lure submarines into an attack to prevent them going after vulnerable merchant ships. Sanders - a sub-lieutenant at the time - faced down three u-boats while becalmed and without engines or wireless. They managed to sink one and avoid torpedo attacks. Sanders was promoted and given the command of the Prize. She had been captured once and then refitted as a mystery ship. On April 25, 1917, Sanders set sail and five days later the alarms sounded and the men rushed to their stations. A nearby submarine opened fire on the ship. The submarine was under the command of Count Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim. He was suspicious of the ship. Decoy boats - made to look like they were fleeing - left the Prize and were picked up by the Germans. Among them was a Captain Burroughs who later provided a detailed account of the battle. The Prize was badly damaged, her engine room on fire. Sanders was perfectly cool . As it became clear how badly off the Prize was, the submarine edged closer. For 40 minutes everyone was still and silent on the Prize and as it came into range Sanders ordered them into action, opening fire with everything they had. The submarine began to steam away but a shell hit her, apparently sinking her. German survivors were picked up and the Prize headed away. However the sub managed to survive and limped back to Germany. Meanwhile the Prize was repaired and put back to sea with now-Lieutenant Commander Sanders. But by then, the Prize was a prize indeed, being sought by German U-boats. And on August 14, 1917, the Prize was acting as a decoy for a submerged sub it was towing when it was sighted by U93. Sanders attacked but the Uboat ran, returning to stalk the Prize through the night until it fired a torpedo that sank the Prize. Sanders had received his VC shortly before he took the refitted Prize back out. The medal was later given to his father and is now in the Auckland War Memorial Museum. A memorial to Sanders is at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery in Belmont, Auckland. |
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