AFTER 31 YEARS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 342, 1 May 1928, Page 1

AFTER 31 YEARS

POLICE OFFICER RETIRES SERGEANT F. A. WATERMAN After keeping order in parts of Auckland for 31 years. PoliceSergeant F. A. Waterman, of Ponsonby, has retired on superannuation. He was the man who sot the machinery of the law working after the Ponsonby murder for which Denis Gunn was hanged. Mr. Waterman was born in Brockham. Surrey, and he came out to New Zealand with his father, who was an early settler in Oxford, Xorth Canterbury. After assisting his father in business, Mr. Waterman came to Auckland in 1597 and joined the police at the age of 114 years. There was no elaborate system of training for recruits in those days. Mr. Waterman was sworn in at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and that evening he was on night duty in “plain clothes.” For 10 years between 1901 and 1911. he was stationed at the Mercer district, which then extended from the Thames Gulf to Port Waikato. In 1911 he was made a sergeant and transferred to Xewton, where he remained until 1917, in which year he was placed in charge of Ponsonby. He was actually gazetted senior-sergeant in 1919. but he refused promotion because it meant moving from Auckland. Dislike of publicity prevented Mr. Waterman from giving a story of his adventures. He was once a member of a posse of 30 constables who made a big “sly grog” round up in the King Country, which yielded about 60 cases for the court.