Missing Men and the Terrace Gaol

Terrace Gaol, Wellington. Crown Studios Ltd :Negatives and prints. Ref: 1/1-032513-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22325355

The Terrace Gaol. Built in the early-mid 1850s and demolished in the 1920s a lot of people today don’t even know that this place existed. 11 men were hanged here (including Daniel Cooper from my previous blog) and several men were buried within the gaol grounds (5 confirmed but potential for up to 9) I’ve read so many things about The Terrace Gaol. It has a fascinating, sometimes morbid history about it. There are so many stories from the drunk, old granny to a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment but was eventually released only to go and blow himself up with dynamite on the slopes of Mt Victoria in Wellington! But I will share some of them in future posts. For this blog I want to focus on and tell you about the men who were buried within the gaol grounds and the lengths I have gone to try and locate where they are buried now. 

The first man to be buried within the precincts of the gaol was Colour-Sergeant James Collins. On the 1st of November 1861 he fatally shot Ensign William Alexander in the Rutland Stockade in Whanganui. He was hanged at the gaol on the 30th of January 1862 He requested to be buried in his military uniform which was done. 

The next was Whaka Mau who was convicted of murdering a pedlar named Kornerop. He hit him in the head from behind with a tomahawk. This took place at Ohau (near Levin) He was hanged at the gaol on the 23rd of March 1869 

The third man was Wi Tamararo. He was accused and found guilty of murder but before the hangman could do his job Wi Tamararo committed suicide on the 29th of September 1869 

The fourth man was Hamiora Pere. He was convicted of treason. He was hanged on the 16th of November 1869 I’ve read that Hamiora Pere and Wi Tamararo were brothers but I haven’t fully looked into this yet. 

The fifth person was Tuhiata who was convicted of murdering Mary Dobie on a road near Opunake, Taranaki. He was hanged on the 29th of December 1880 

Terrace Gaol ca 1897

 All of these men were supposedly buried in the ground within the gaol precincts (see pics of newspaper articles) when the Terrace Gaol was demolished in the 1920s it was said that their remains were reinterred in Karori Cemetery and this is where my curiosity grows. There is no record of them being reinterred into Karori Cemetery. A few newspaper articles say they were reinterred but each article differs slightly when they describe the Terrace Gaol burial ground which makes me wonder why and what really happened to these men’s remains? I’ve combed the Karori Cemetery burial register starting from 1918 – 1927 and found nothing. The registers began in 1891 (which was when the first burial at Karori Cemetery occurred) but prior to this, burials were often registered in church records (but not always) 

For example there is a record of James Collins in the St Pauls register and some have assumed because of this he was actually buried at Bolton Street Cemetery. While this could be true I personally don’t think so. The reason being deaths had to be officially recorded since 1848 however registration could not be enforced upon maori so many of their deaths were not recorded. James Collins was the only pakeha to be buried in the gaol grounds and the only one to have a record in any register. It wasn’t until 1913 that maori deaths had to be recorded. 

At James Collins execution he prayed with Rev.A.Stock (Reverand Arthur Henry Stock) and he was from St Peters church in Wellington. While Rev A Stock seems to have primarily been at St Peters in Wellington both churches are Anglican and St Pauls is known as the “mother” church so I believe it’s possible the record was put in St Pauls register just so that there was a record of it. I could find no burial registers for St Peters church during that time so if it had to be recorded then it makes sense it would be recorded at St Pauls instead. I contacted St Peter’s Church to see if they would know why Rev A Stock would put the entry into St Pauls register instead of St Peters but they couldn’t offer any explanation except to say all things are possible especially with him eventually becoming the Archdeacon. 

I’ve spoken to staff at the Karori Cemetery office who aren’t aware of anything about the men who were supposedly reinterred into Karori Cemetery. I’ve also spoken to committee members from Friends of Karori Cemetery who also don’t have any extra information. I’ve spent some time at Wellington City Archives looking at plot purchases and there is nothing indicating a plot for any of the 5 men. I’ve also been through all the cremation records for that time and again nothing. 

 Terrace Gaol ca 1910

I’ve also spent some time at New Zealand Archives reading through a large amount of paperwork, letters and prison branch registers and still found no mention of any of them. I had someone once tell me that they used to work at archives and everyday they would walk past a huge box of human skeletal remains. Sounds unlikely to me but then the police museum held onto some skeletons for roughly 80years so you never know (if anyone who works or worked at Archives could confirm/deny this please let me know) 

I have wondered if the remains had been returned to family but if anyone wanted to remove or reinter any human remains they had to obtain a licence under section 67 of the Cemeteries Act 1908 and the removal also had to be carried out under the supervision of an inspector appointed in terms of the Health Act 1920 so I think it’s safe to assume that for these remains there should be (or at least should’ve been) some paperwork completed and filed away. I’ve been through some ‘removal of remains’ licences but again found nothing. 

I have a few different theories as to what may have happened to them. One was that since they had been buried (in shallow graves and covered in quicklime) that perhaps there were no remains left to bury. The quicklime may have just disintegrated everything so there was nothing left to reinter. After all they had all been buried for roughly 45-65 years. I checked this theory out by contacting a specialist doctor whose scientific work focuses on archaeo-anthropology and forensic sciences. This person is expert in their field and had completed a lot of field work with pig carcasses and co-written several papers. After letting them know about the ground conditions and area (easy enough to find with information around the demolition of the gaol readily available in Archives NZ) they said that they would expect the quicklime would’ve quite likely preserved the skeletal remains remarkably well. Drat. This was not the answer I was expecting. But at least I know now there is a high chance that there actually was some remains to be reinterred. 

Terrace Gaol during demolition ca 1927

I got in contact with a local author and something of a ‘brain’ when it comes to historical jails in the Wellington region. They knew about the men but hadn’t done much (if any) research around what happened to them while the gaol was being demolished. They had however worked at NZ Archives and gave me some helpful information on where I might find the information I’m looking for. I had a look but again no luck. 

A friend shared an interesting article with me that was written by a local history specialist at Wellington Libraries. The Killing Field by Gabor Toth, Salient, 23rd September 1996 What interested me most was something written at the very end of the article:

However the existence of the gaol and the number of executed prisoners which once lay there, led B.L.Ballard (Controller General of NZ Prisons 1925-1949) to note that “one wonders how many of these unsung creatures will rise from the site of the old Terrace Gaol” 

I spoke to the author who like me wasn’t sure if Ballard was literally meaning that remains were still there or whether he just meant it in a spiritual sense. 

Another theory that I had was that quite simply they actually weren’t reinterred. They are still there. While this theory seems to explain a lot (mainly lack of information and documentation) there is one big flaw. If you look closely at the two images (previous one above and two below) of the gaol you can see a lot of it was actually dug out to make the area flat. Using historical maps and plan drawings I was able to figure out a rough area of where the burial ground was. That area was definitely dug out. If they were in fact shallow graves then the remains would no longer be there. Even if they weren’t shallow I would’ve expected the remains to have been unearthed during recent building work. 

Terrace Gaol during demolition ca 1927

Gaol gone completely

In the 1960s a new building was put on top (or very close) to the burial ground area. In 2020 that building was then demolished and a newer building put in its place. These buildings would’ve again meant digging into the earth and pouring foundations. As far as I can see no remains were found in the 1960s I made contact with people who work in the building now and was told that the people working on the site in 2020 were made aware that they might find remains of bodies. They didn’t. However they did find two wells, because of this discovery an archaeologist was called in. I find it very interesting that they were told they might find remains of bodies. Why were they told this if the bodies were supposed to have been reinterred? 

Naturally I had to get in contact with the archaeologist. She told me that all she found out was that the hanged men were moved to Karori Cemetery in ca 1925-27 Her main focus was on one of the two wells that had been discovered. 

A tribute to the Gaol and one of the two wells that was discovered

Because of the sites history I knew that an archaeological authority should’ve been done prior to work being started on the site. I haven’t been able to get my hands on this (yet) but I did get a report from Heritage NZ It was listed as being a report for the terrace gaol area but barely even mentioned it or the land it was on. Annoyingly it mainly spoke of the Mt Cook Gaol area (which was nearby but certainly not part of the Terrace Gaol) 

A few weeks ago I came across an article and a voice recording by Maurice Shadbolt (a NZ writer and occasional playwright) He wrote an award winning historical novel called Season of the Jew. It is set in mid-nineteenth NZ and is a semi-fictionalized account of the battles between some iwi and government forces. These conflicts are what led Wi Tamararo and Hamiora Pere to be arrested and tried for treason. Wi Tamararo committed suicide and Hamiora Pere was hanged (the only person in New Zealand to be hanged for treason) The voice recording is as follows: 

It could not have begun smaller. It began in fact with one obscure life, one forgotten human being; it began with a patch of waste ground, at the back door of the wellington cottage where I lived for three years in the 1950s, that cottage sat hard up against a fragment of wall, which was all that remained of the old terrace prison. Soon after moving into the cottage I became aware that the patch of waste ground had a history. It was where those executed in the prison yard had afterwards been buried. Another year or two on and I learned from a note in the wellington newspaper that among those interred in that patch of waste ground was a young maori named Hamiora Pere. He’d been hung of all things for High Treason. 

I also checked out Maurice Shadbolts book Season of the Jew from my local library and at the back it has some further information. It says: 

Hamiora Pere, after execution for high treason in November 1869, was buried within the precincts of the now demolished Terrace prison in Wellington; his bones have not been rattled in more than a century. Neither his name nor his trial is mentioned in formal histories of New Zealand; His unmarked grave, under weeds in a pocket of urban waste ground, once neighboured the residence of this narrator, who would thus like to imagine the story haunted into existence. 

I had already figured out a rough area of where the burial ground was (is?) but Maurice I think seemed to believe it was in a different area, some 90 odd meters away from where I thought it was. The area that I thought it to be was right next to the main entrance of the gaol. A detailed map of the Terrace Gaol says this is where it is. I’m assuming the headstones (again each newspaper article differs; one says the headstones were foundation stones, two say wooden boards or tablets and another says wooden crosses) and burial ground was deliberately designed to be there to help deter criminals as they entered and left the gaol. I went to the area that I assumed Maurice believed was the burial ground and I have to admit it seemed a much more likely place for the remains to be buried. So perhaps that is another possibility. They were in fact buried within the gaol grounds but not where the maps say they were buried. The area that I believe Maurice thought they were buried has in fact been untouched since the demolition of the gaol so that would explain why their remains haven’t been unearthed during any building work. I went to the Alexander Turnbull Library and flicked through Maurice’s research notes for when he was writing his book but the only mention of Hamiora Peres burial was the Wellington newspaper article that he had come across and mentioned in his voice recording (it is actually the article printed by the Dominion newspaper that I have pictured below) 

The newspaper articles that I have mentioned all differ in small ways but add a lot of intrigue for me. The first printed by of all papers the Woodville Examiner dated the 17th of April 1893 (so well before the demolition of the gaol) says the headstones are ‘little wooden boards with initial letters and figures on them’ It also says there was five of those graves (which I find to be accurate as five men had been hanged at The Terrace Gaol by this time) 

The second article was printed by the Wairarapa Daily Times on the 21st of Feb in 1899 this article also mentions five or six little wooden tablets. Each with initials and a date (execution dates) 

The third one was printed in the Dominion newspaper dated the 7th of August 1925 this article says the foundation-stones of the old building has the scrawled initials and dates of the men executed. It also mentions how the skeletons of these men we unearthed during recent excavations and are buried in the cemetery. Note it doesn’t say which cemetery but in 1925 Karori Cemetery was the main cemetery in Wellington. Bolton Street Cemetery closed in the 1890s 

The fourth (and final) article was printed in the Evening Post on the 26th of February 1927 This article mentions five small black-paint crosses. 

By this time the demolition of the gaol was basically completed and the article from 1925 said the remains had already been removed as well so it’s unusual that all of a sudden there are crosses instead of wooden tablets or foundation stones. I’m leaning more towards what the first two articles say (wooden tablets/boards) as those articles were printed while the Gaol was still in operation. 

I have one other theory as to what may have happened. As I was trawling through the many documents at Archives NZ I came across some interesting documents and letters from the excavation contractors. They were asking for more money to purchase more fill. As the Gaol was being demolished they were also filling in the gully on the western side destroying the gaol gardens that had been tended to by prisoners. The company had underestimated how much fill they would need. If they were short on money might it have just been easier to toss the men’s remains down the gully with the other products of demolition? It certainly wouldn’t have cost them anything then, although to be fair I think it would’ve been the prison department that were in charge of paying for and removing the remains but hard to say with any certainty. That could explain the lack of paperwork around the removal of the men’s remains and why no one has been able to find them. 

I met with a friend in Wellington a few weeks ago who shares a similar fascination with darker history. He knows about the research I’ve been doing and all the dead ends I’ve hit. He said ‘It’s like they’ve been completely erased’ they sure have.... and it’s driving me mad!