More than 100 police and up to 40 relief workers shifted an estimated 2000 tons of rock and soil before Phyllis Symons' body was found in spoils of excavations for the construction of Mt Victoria Tunnel. Photo: With Confidence and Pride – Policing the Wellington Region 1840-1892, edited by Sherwood Young
This article contains descriptions of events and death that some people may find disturbing.
As Wellington welcomes the warm summer weather, locals and tourists alike are taking to the capital's beaches to soak up the sun.
But if the bright colours and fun of the beach is not to your liking you might consider a tour of the locations of some of the darkest moments in the capital's history.
Starting at the city's most popular sunspot, Oriental Bay, a six-kilometre walk can take the morbidly fascinated to the locations of some of Wellington's most grisly murders, shocking executions and the tell-tale marks of suffering that lie just below the surface of the city's welcoming landscape.
Murder in Oriental Bay
In 1849 John Ellis - a young shipkeeper employed on the 532-ton barque General Palmer - disappeared while the ship was anchored just off Oriental Bay.
Police were sceptical of crewman William Good's explanation that Ellis had "gone on a spree" with an unknown woman and shortly after Good fled the ship.
Ellis's battered body was later found unceremoniously stuffed into a barrel aboard the General Palmer.
He had been shot, bludgeoned with a hammer and his throat was cut.
Police caught up with Good near Castlepoint, Wairarapa and he was found to be in possession of a bloodstained towel, a cap, a waistcoat, a black silk handkerchief and a shirt which appeared to have been taken from Ellis's bundle.
After an 11-day march back to Wellington's Mt Cook Gaol, a more thorough search also found money sewn into Good's trousers.
It is thought the money was Good's only motivation for the slaying.
Hundreds flock to witness hanging
Good was tried, found guilty and sentenced to hang outside the prison overlooking what is now the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park.
Good would be the second person to be publicly hanged outside the grounds of the prison that in June 1867 the Wanganui Chronicle derided as being fit to bear an inscription from Dante's Inferno "abandon all hope, ye who enter here" above its narrow portals.
Hundreds flocked to the execution of Henare Maroro outside the gates of Mt Cook Gaol, overlooking the current site of the the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, in 1849. Photo: Supplied / National Library: Ref 1/1-020192-G
The first execution at the site was that of Henare Maroro, who confessed to murdering the foreman of a gang of labourers, John Branks and his three children, with an axe in their cottage on the Old Porirua Road on the night of 22 March 1849.
Newspaper reports described a huge crowd gathered outside the prison to witness Maroro's hanging less than a month after the crime.
"Soon after seven o'clock on Thursday morning groups of persons began to assemble in front of the scaffold, and the numbers increased until, as the fatal hour approached, there were about five hundred persons present, a considerable portion of whom were Maories [sic], and, of these, the greater number were women: we regret to be obliged to add that several white women were also among the spectators," wrote The Spectator newspaper in 1849.
Mt Cook Gaol was derided by the Wanganui Chronicle in 1867 as being fit to bear the inscription from Dante's Inferno above its portals "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Photo: Supplied / Alexander Turnbull Library, F. J. Denton Collection. Ref: 1/2-019606-F: Photograph by Frank J. Denton
'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'
The jail which housed the hanged men in their final days was built atop Mt Cook on what is now the grounds of Wellington High School and the Massey University Wellington Campus.
The looming edifice dominated the hillside - providing an ominous warning for anyone who would seek to transgress the laws of King and Crown.
Mt Cook Gaol looms above Tasman Street from the current site of Wellington High School and Massey University's Wellington campus. Photo: Supplied / National Library collection, Tiaki Reference Number: 1/2-066816-G
Designed to replicate London's Pentonville Prison - and completed in 1842 - the prison never matched the size or the progressive ideals of the original.
While Pentonville boasted 520 cells - each including central heating and a flush toilet - Mt Cook Gaol quickly descended into over-crowding and squalor.
The original design aspired to hold up to 382 prisoners in 288 cells with a 1,8m fence enclosing gardens, segregated workshops and three exercise yards.
However Wellington's prison was opened with a mere 16 cells constructed.
In 1843, there were 39 inmates confined with as many as four prisoners crammed into single cells measuring only seven feet by five feet (2.1m by 1.5m).
The Wellington Independent described the state of conditions in 1846 when a member of the Settlers Association visited the prison.
"None of the eight cells have either light nor ventilation. The room stinks so abominably, that when it is opening in the morning, the amount of carbonic acid gas mingled with the most abominable effluvia, which escapes at the door, nearly knocks the turnkey down" wrote the Wellington Independent in 1846.
Inmates were put to work labouring on public works and in the nearby brickworks. The evidence of their labours can be seen in the distinctive arrow marked bricks in the wall that still lines Tasman Street just below the prison's former site.
The nation's bloodiest decade at the gallows
The wall joins up with the buildings of the old Wellington police station, which still stands at the corner of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park.
The Execution of Criminals Act 1858 outlawed the "barbarous practice" of hanging convicted murderers in public but the public's thirst for the ultimate punishment had far from waned.
Behind the police station's walls Colour-Sergeant James Collins would be hanged for the shooting of Ensign William Alexander dead at Rutland Stockade, Wanganui.
Collins' only excuse for the killing was Alexander had hounded and abused him until he snapped.
The execution would begin the country's bloodiest decade at the gallows with more than 21 people executed.
The hangman returned to Wellington for the final execution of the period when Hamiora Peri was hanged after beng found guilty of treason for his part in attacks headed by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, the founder of the Ringatū religion.
He was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the Terrace Gaol - the present site of Te Aro School on the uphill side of The Terrace.
Despite the public being barred from the spectacle the Wellington Independent newspaper was unsparing in detailing Peri's death.
"The drop fell with a crash. The body of the unfortunate wretch rose a little with the recoil of the elastic rope; turned gently to the right and left once or twice, and then ceased to swing.
"Immediately after the drop the shoulders were slowly drawn up, and the head fell towards the right side. The convulsive twitchings of the upper part of-the body, which were very slight, lasted about two minutes, and then the body remained perfectly stationary," wrote the Wellington Independent in November 1869.
Hamiora Peri was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds of the Terrace Jail, at the present site of Te Aro School, in 1869. Photo: Supplied / National Library Tiaki Reference Number: 1/1-032512-F
Mt View Asylum
Behind the gates of the nearby Government House another wall constructed by inmates of the Mt Cook Gaol also points towards suffering nestled in the heart of the city.
The Convict's Wall within the house grounds stands as the last visible remnant of the Mt View Lunatic Asylum.
Built to ease the pressure of the Karori Asylum, Mt View opened in 1873.
The Evening Post gushed about the recuperative potential of the new facility shortly before its completion.
"Inside all is clean and light and airy, with nothing of the prison or madhouse look; and to the unfortunates who have for so many years been cooped up in the close, dark, musty, dry-rotted dens of the Karori house the new building will appear as an enchanted place," wrote the Evening Post in January 1873.
Originally planned to house 28 male and 28 female patients the addition of extra wards meant that by 1905 the facility kept nearly 250 patients within its 46-hectare grounds.
By the time it was demolished in 1910, more than 3100 patients had been admitted to the building.
That year, The Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals Arthur Crosby wrote that the asylum's "homelike character" and expansive gardens meant the institution had "found many friends among its inmates" but in the same statement Crosby also noted 513 patient deaths occurring within 36 years of the asylum's operation.
The Kilbirnie sensation - The murder of Phyllis Symons
Just around the corner motorists beeping their horns while driving through the Mt Victoria tunnel may not even be aware they might be paying homage to another young murder victim.
Seventeen-year-old Phyllis Avis Symons had fallen pregnant to 29-year-old widower George Errol Coats - who she had met after bringing cups of tea to a relief work party Coats was briefly employed in at Aro Valley.
She disappeared near the end of June 1931, and Wellington Detective Bill Murray became suspicious of Coats after reports he had been seen at the earthworks in Hataitai where spoil from the excavation of the tunnel was being dumped. Later a worker at the site said Coats had asked him to leave a shovel out so he could bury a dog.
Phyllis Symons, 17, became pregnant to widower George Coats, 30, who would be found guilty of murdering Symons and burying her body in spoil from the excavations of Mt Victoria Tunnel in 1931. Photo: With Confidence and Pride – Policing the Wellington Region 1840-1892, edited by Sherwood Young
More than 100 police and up to 40 relief workers shifted an estimated 2000 tons of rock and soil before Symons' body was found.
The Northern Advocate reported large crowds packing the hearings of Coats murder trial and across the country newspapers breathlessly relayed each witnesses testimony in details dubbed 'The Kilbirnie Sensation'.
George Errol Coats (third from left) was hanged for the murder of Phyllis Symons, 17, in Wellington's Mt Crawford Prison in 1931. Photo: Supplied / Published in With Confidence and Pride – Policing the Wellington Region 1840-1892
Coats was found guilty of Symons' murder and sentenced to hang in the grounds of the Mt Crawford Prison above the suburb of Miramar.
The tradition of tooting horns while driving through the tunnel may have begun as a tribute to Ms Symons' memory, or to ward off her undoubtedly restless spirit, while others surmised that the practise was a hangover of workmen ringing bells as they entered the dark space to warn others of their presence.
George Coats would be one of four people hanged within the walls of Mt Crawford Prison above the suburb of Miramar before the Labour government converted all death sentences to life in prison in 1935 and the death penalty for murder was formally abolished in 1941.
Another eight people would die at the gallows in Auckland's Mt Eden prison when the National government reintroduced capital punishment for a seven year stint in the 1950s.
Capital punishment for murder was abolished a second time when 10 National MPs crossed the floor to vote alongside Labour MPs in a conscience vote which was won 41 votes to 30 in favour of abolition in 1961.
