Whelm Stocks amid Scaffold Stood in Queen Street

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 17

Whelm Stocks amid Scaffold Stood in Queen Street

\ Early History of N.Z. Contains \ s Records of Public Executions ... j \ Citizens Who Broke Law Were \ \ Sometimes Placed in the Stocks! \ \ ... A Warrant That Served a \ Double Purpose ... j

(Written for THE SUN by E. 11. S. Miller.)

S dawn stole out I fj of the East, j I Hauraki Gulf j 1 little group of men strode up Queen Street. They carried hammers, 6 a„- 3 and mallets, while behind them rumbled a wagon, loaded high with timber. presently they came to a halt in an open space beside a wooden building. There the wagon was unloaded, pipes were relit, and. while the timber was ported and stacked, the empty vehicle

with its plodding team moved once more toward the waterfront. Inside the building and behind a stout cell door, securely locked, sat a young man. He dreaded the coming day, yet welcomed it as a respite from long sleepless hours of dark ness. His was the deep brown skin bf the full-blooded Maori, and the tall clean-cut figure in robe of rich blue

the title “Wheat Sheaf Inn," and the gaol beside which the workmen laboured. By and by people began to appear in increasing numbers, emerging from the houses, congregating by the inn opposite the gaol, arriving from outer parts of the settlement on horseback and in carts. It was a typical morning scene in early Auckland: yet something unusual was afoot. There was at atmosphere of expectancy, almost excitement. Men and women met and spoke quickly, discussing a subject of common interest. So it was that the pioneers awaited Auckland’s first execution, to take

fjRLY AUCKLAXD, from a sketch at the Old. Colonists' Museum. In the ‘'"foreground stood the old Court House, in front of which were erected ‘■’ e *tocfcj. The Blue Bell Inn stood immediately opposite and, in a diagonal direction, there was another hostelry.

Proclaimed him an ordained leader M men. From beyond the tiny window came t°unds of sudden activity—the ring of -.anuners and the rasp of a saw. • akatu, the Maori, shivered uncon‘°Uably, though it was not cold that ®orning of March T, 1542. Minutes passed and the work of the carpenters went on steadily. The r m * >er was being fashToned into a augh platform, and, as plank after w an Waa nailed into position, the were joined by a smith in at era Pron and with tongs and th^iT 81 " ay bad now broken, and ( . 6 disclosed a rambling, meagro th oro straggling from hill to lonnrt° Ur ' Flankin S the roughlya h Street were a few buildings, ° u *s or two, a shanty rejoicing in

place a few hours later on the grisly structure beside the gaol. In the late forenoon it stood, gaunt and complete, on a site destined to become the intersection of Queen and Victoria Streets. The gaol occupied the actual southwest corner section —the gallows was beyond the slope of the hill, and nearer the centre of the roadway. A public execution. Little wonder that all Auckland was agog; that au important sale of land, timed for midday, was postponed until the afternoon at the unanimous request of its patrons; that shrewd anticipators of the event were already moving to vantage points on the slopes that were to _ become known as Albert Street on the western side and Albert Park to the ea For the stark details of the justice e. meted out that day let us turn to the

record of a contemporary journalist, written in tlie peculiarly brief and dispassionate style that distinguishes old time newspaper reports and contrasts so strangely with a tragic subject. “Makatu, the scion and hope of a race of chieftains in these islands, suffered the extreme penalty of the law on Monday last for a series of murders committed on Robertson’s Island. . . . “After his condemnation, an opinion was generally entertained that he would be removed for execution to the scene of the murders. The Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, decided this course to be inexpedient. . . . “The prisoner, a fine young man, whose stature was upwards of six fejt, was brought from the condemned cell soon after 12 o’clock, to the press room. Here the precept was read to him and interpreted by Mr. Moraunt. He was dressed in a blue blanket, of native manufacture, and exhibited the peculiarly dignified demeanour and appearance for which the native chiefs are so particularly distinguished. “He had been attended at an early hour by the Rev. Mr. Churton who. at Makatu’s own request, had administered to him the rites of baptism under the name of William King, according to the forms of the Church of England.

“It must be satisfactory to the jury who were empannelled in this important case to know that the unfortunate prisoner was penitent; that he prayed fervently and sincerely to God that his sins might be forgiven; that he died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and acknowledged the justice of his sentence. “The sheriff, on this momentous occasion, performed his onerous duties with the utmost firmness and propriety. Credit is also due to Mr. McElwain, Mr. Kane, the chief constable, and his assistants. “Soon after 12 o’clock the bell of the gaol was tolled at minute time A strong military guard had been drawn up in front of the gaol, where the scaffold was erected. A large

square was left clear, on the four sides of which were assembled about 1,000 spectators. The prisoner, on being cast off, died almost instantly. There were a few Maoris present. “Thus perished Makatu, a great chieftain of the aborigines.”

To the Aucklander -who knows his city as a modern place of prosaic orderliness, the history of a public execution in the heart of the settlement must read like a misplaced tale from Old Tyburn. Yet the founders of Auckland, grim, hardened settlers, in a rugged, unpolished land, knew full well the necessity of stern ex- ■ ample and were quite untroubled by the delicacy of feeling that would

have whitened the cheeks of their unborn progeny. Detailed records of early days are surprisingly obscure and meagre, but we know that not one but several executions were carried out in public at various places, providing horrid entertainment for at least two-thirds of the entire population. And on each occasion carpenters and smiths, recruited from their every-day tasks, became, for the time being, sombre labourers in the cause of pioneer law and order.

Stroll into the farthest gallery of the Old Colonists’ Museum, and you will find living proof of the happening on that March day. It lies in a glass case —the warrant for the execution of Makatu, whose name lives because he instituted in New Zealand the custom of dying before an audience.

He, poor wretch, was not accorded the honour of a special warrant. In the days of pen, ink and parchment, these documents entailed laborious preparation, so it was deemed sufficient to amend the existing orders. Burns was executed on the North Shore, and the warrant instructed the sheriff to “convey him to the site where the house of Mr. Snow stood

Look a little closer, and between the written lines of the warrant you will see sundry alterations and additions, marked, apparently, in pencil or a singularly light-hued ink. Innocent though they appear, these little inscriptions sealed the doom of one Joseph Burns, who was the second criminal to follow the footsteps of Makatu, and whose body writhed horribly on a rope before the intrigued eyes of a multitude on Juno 17, 1842.

on the north shore of the harbour of Auckland,” and hang him by the neck till he was dead. *n s * Strangely enough, about seven years after Makatu had walked proudly to meet his Maker, Charles Dickens wrote to “The Times,” condemning most vigorously the practice of holding executions in public. He had attended one for purposes of investigation, and returned convinced that they roused all that was base and lowest in man. His expostulations met with a chilly reception, for such death scenes delighted the hoi polloi and ruffled not the serenity of their betters.

Incidentally, hanging in scaffold style was introduced at the execution of the Fourth Earl of Ferrers in 1760, the first man to be hanged by a “drop.” Prior to that enlightened age, a condemned person was literally strangled to death by being hoisted from the ground and, as often as not, it became the duty of the executioner to hasten the end by seizing his victim’s legs and applying his own weight. Then, again, there w-as the gentle practice of gibbeting—hanging a wrongdoer in chains at the scene of liis crime, and leaving his body as a warning to his fellows.

ground before the gaol, his feet encased in wooden stocks. Yes, gentle Aucklander, your forefathers witnessed just such an oldtime sight, deeming it right, proper and in full accord with the law of the day. For several years the stocks remained in front of the gaol. None can tell the number of times they were used, because the records, if they exist, are mislaid, but the stocks, were part and parcel of Auckland's local system of justice. In common with the public scaffold, stocks were introduced by the early settlers simply because such things were part of the civilisation to which they were accustomed —the conditions they had left behind when they sailed South from England. It is true that imprisonment in public stocks was abolished in the Homeland in 1837, but at the time the first pioneers sailed for New Zealand, such punishments were still familiar. Stocks and pillories, the two being distinguished because, in the case of the former, the feet instead of the head and hands were secured in the wooden frames, came into official use in England with the passing of the Statute of the Pillory in 1266 for "the punishment of forestallers, users of false weights, perjurers and forgers.” In some cases a number of stocks and pillories were embodied in an open structure rather like a modern bandstand. Here malcontents were dealt with en masse and a. greater variety of entertainment was provided for the public. In other cases stocks w r ere mounted on a lorry and towed about the town with the object of further increasing the humiliation of the chief actors. After 1637 stocks and pillcries were a popular punishment for offending journalists and pamphleteers; witness the famous pillorying of Daniel Defoe in 1703 for his plea for toleration—“ The Shortest Way with Dissenters.” Stocks were last used in England on June 22, 1830, when the perjury of one Peter Bossy cost him many weary hours with feet firmly secured. The practice existed in France until 1840 and in U.S.A. until 1839. So we see that there was ample precedent and reasonable justification for the existence of stocks in Queen Street, and the hanging of men before a thousand pairs of Auckland eyes. Yet, such facts blend queerly with the city’s youthful history, and prove that here, too, were bad old days.

About the time when the drop system of hanging came into vogue someone thought of the idea of fastening a bulgy little metal ring in the rope at the point where it formed a noose at the side of the victim’s neck. The effect of this was to dislocate the upper cervical vertebrae, producing compression or rupture of the spinal cord. That system exists today, except that a large and speciallyspliced knot sometimes replaces the ring. It is considered that scientific modern hanging produces instantaneous death. Dickens was the first of many objectors to public executions, and in 1868 their views were accepted in England. Yet New Zealand had forestalled the humanitarians of the Homeland, for on June 3, 1858, the Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals was passed by the Colonial Parliament. It ordered that: “From and after this Act coming into operation, in any district of New Zealand, sentence of death passed on any person by the Supreme Court of the Colony shall be carried into execution within the walls or enclosed yard of some gaol, or within some other enclosed space.” The Act passed through both Houses with but little debate, though one doubter was inclined to “wait and see what the wiser heads at Home thought about it.” Now let us return to early Auckland and the scene of the first hanging, where a smaller device for public punishment escaped our previous survey. Once more we are in bleak little Queen Street, standing beside the Wheat Sheaf Inn. Between tankards of heavy colonial beer, a few settlers are gazing curiously across the roadway at a man who sits on the