Mythical Message from Rangitoto

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 128, 20 August 1927, Page 1

Mythical Message from Rangitoto

ELABORATE HOAX CROWD WAITS AT WHARF When a prisoner is killed while working in a prison-gang, to what compensation is his widow entitled? This question was the subject of an earnest debate in an Auckland business establishment yesterday afternoon. It arose from the false report that two prisoners had been killed on Rangitoto, and was just another sequel to the deception. 'J'HE Prisons Department, police, St. John Ambulance, and three newspapers, were among the immediate victims of the hoax. Twenty men serving various sentences are kept at work on Rangitoto, forming a road round the island, and when the Mount Eden Gaol was informed, by telephone, of a serious accident, no cause for incredulity was seen, and the authorities were much perturbed. AMBULANCE VANS ARRIVE The St. John Ambulance was asked to arrange for the reception of the dead and injured at the wharf, and did so with its usual promptitude. Three ambulances and a mortuary van lined up near the Admiralty steps, and Harbour Board officials roped off part of the wharf to keep back the crowd which quickly assembled. Mount Victoria signal station had reported to the gaol, stating that two were dead and four injured, and that a launch had taken a doctor from Devonport. That much, learned from the Prisons Department, was reported in THE SUN, but an evening contemporary even had the dead in the morgue and the injured in hospital. PATIENT CROWD Under wretched conditions the crowd was betraying wonderful patience, and drenching showers could not weaken its tenacity. It had been assumed that a naval launch from Devonport had gone out to Rangitoto, and the press of people wore an air of tense anticipation when first one naval cutter, then another, nosed in to the steps. From one o’clock until 3.45 p.m. the number of watchers remained undiminished. Inside the roped enclosure were police, ambulance men, news paper men, and Mr. J. Dickenson, governor of the Mount Eden gaol, who observed during the wait that it was a most unfortunate affair. The tension was relaxed very suddenly toward 4 o’clock, when a launch specially despatched to Rangitoto returned with the news that all was in order at the island. In one respect the deception teaches a lesson—it throws light on the need for telephone or wireless communication with Rangitoto, where there is not only the prison gang, but also the Harbour Board quarry, the largest in New Zealand, where there is an abiding risk of serious accident.