Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

It’s the end of the month, and that’s quiz time! This month it’s all about numbers.

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Alfred Hanlon defended Minnie Dean in her June 1923 trial. She was the only one of his clients in a murder case who did not escape the noose

The grizzlier side of New Zealand history has been highlighted in this month’s NZHistory.net.nz Today in History calendar. Maybe it’s something to do with mid-winter?

Friday the 13th marked 142 years since the Burgess Gang (led by Richard Burgess), continuing their South Island killing spree, murdered publican Felix Mathieu and his three associates, James Dudley, John Kempthorne and James de Pontius.

On 16 June 1923, Daniel Cooper, the Newlands baby farmer, was executed. Following months of fevered media attention, the jury of the Coopers’ month-long trial had convicted Daniel of murder and cleared his wife Martha of her charges.

18 June 1895 was the first day of the trial of one of New Zealand’s most notorious murderers, the ‘Winton baby-farmer‘ Minnie Dean. She appeared before the jury for three days before her conviction, and became the first – and only – woman to be hanged in New Zealand, less than two months later, on 12 August.

Another sensational trial followed a tragic murder in 1954, when, on 22 June, Pauline Parker and Juliette Hulme killed Pauline’s mother in Victoria Park, Christchurch. This teenage folie à deux has continued to captivate the nation and is one of our more famous murder cases. It has inspired both a play, Michaelanne Forster’s Daughters of Heaven, and a film, Peter Jackson’s Oscar-nominated film Heavenly Creatures.

Jean Sergent-Shadbolt researches, writes and edits for www.NZHistory.net.nz, and is media resource officer for the newly launched www.VietnamWar.govt.nz.

The Wanganui Places entry is launched

On Monday night (16 June) more than 150 citizens of the Wanganui district came along to help us celebrate the launch of our latest Places entry: Wanganui.

It was a record turnout for one of our regional launches – larger than Auckland or Canterbury, and even larger than Timaru, where the locals also did us proud. The next morning Te Ara made the front page of the Wanganui Chronicle and the local radio discussed the entry.

So why did Wanganui respond so magnificently? There are some practical explanations.

• The author, Diana Beaglehole, was born in the Wanganui region and, despite not having lived there since 1959, she has many friends and supporters who came along to see her present the entry.
• We’ve got better at organising these events.
• It was a beautiful night in Wanganui, calm and clear with the fresh snow of Mt Ruapehu glistening on the horizon – no rain or cold to dissuade people from venturing out.

Wanganui town in the 1850s

But the reason may be deeper – Wanganui is a region with a very long and dramatic history.

The river that defines the region was the main highway of Māori society. It’s lined with pa sites, and there are some amazing historic places such as Tamatea’s cave, where generations of Māori have slept as they paddled up or down the river.

Later, the port attracted the Wakefield settlers, but it was a precarious existence. For some 30 years after 1840 the town was the frontier of Māori–Pākehā conflict. The memorial at Pākaitore or Moutoa Gardens to the Battle of Moutoa in 1864, which was fought dramatically on an island in the centre of the river, was New Zealand’s first war memorial.

In the late 19th century, as farming expanded, Wanganui city prospered. The city is dotted with very handsome buildings such as the exquisite Opera House; and it was, until 1936, New Zealand’s fifth-largest city, after the four main centres. Then growth slowed, and in the 1980s and 1990s Wanganui city and district suffered from closures and loss of jobs.

The team that brought you the Wanganui entry

But today there has been a revival – based in part on presenting Wanganui as a region of history and tradition. Our launch was held in the War Memorial Hall, which, as our interactive shows, is one of an impressive centre of heritage buildings and institutions – the museum, the Sarjeant art gallery, the Alexandra Heritage and Research Library.

People turned out on Monday because they treasure their history and their region. They know that understanding their past and telling the stories of Wanganui’s history is central to the region’s future.

Michael Laws, the mayor of Wanganui, was effusive in welcoming the Wanganui entry. We share his hopes that these entries, presented by Diana Beaglehole with a real affection for the district, will awaken other New Zealanders to the richness of Wanganui’s past.

Earthquake damage in Napier, 1931

The magnitude 7.9 earthquake in China should give New Zealanders cause for pause. The high death toll was due to the intensely populated nature of that country and it seems, shoddy building practices. How will a New Zealand city fare when such an earthquake strikes?

When a large quake (say magnitude 7.4) next occurs on the Wellington Fault during daylight hours, predictions are in the order of 500 deaths, 4,000 injuries and a $4 billion repair bill. Most earthquake deaths are from building collapse and this is why fatality guesstimates are higher for daytime quakes – people are in or around big high-rise concrete structures or old brick buildings. At night most are at home in generally more flexible wooden buildings. Building owners can face prosecution if they fail to reinforce at-risk buildings, which are recorded on a register.

How to reconcile the risk? It seems that Wellingtonians (like everyone else in the world) have optimistic bias – they believe that negative events are more likely to happen to other people. In Christchurch the risk is less, but an earthquake of over magnitude 7 hitting the city and causing fatalities and damage is a definite possibility. Our recent earthquake history may not be representative of our impending future. We have had big quakes since 1840, but only one in a populated area (Napier in 1931, with 258 people killed).

The biggest shake is likely to come from the Alpine Fault. Big quakes (called ruptures, as the ground is ruptured along the fault) have occurred on this fault in 1717, 1620, 1450, and 1100. It does not mean that we are overdue – just that as time passes from the last big rupture (1717) the probability of the big one occurring rises.

I spent a few weeks as a field assistant to my brother, a geologist, in 2000 around Fox Glacier. He was studying the layers of sediment that creeks had exposed along the Alpine Fault.

I asked, ‘What would happen if it ruptured now?’

‘They wouldn’t have to bury us.’

So what can you do? Well, I’ve bracketed all the heavy furniture to the walls, so at least the bookshelf shouldn’t topple onto the children. When it hits remember to drop, cover and hold – and don’t believe urban legend emails about the ‘triangle of life‘.

The loveliest loos in the world?

Many readers of this blog arrive here via a search engine. We don’t know who these people are but, thanks to the wonders of technology, we can tell what search terms they used to get here.

Based on the search terms, Signposts is exactly the kind of thing most of our searchers were looking for. But others will probably be a bit disappointed as they were obviously looking for quite a different sort of website.

I thought I’d share some of my fav delightful, lateral and downright hilarious search terms:

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