Barbara Mulligan has been given tours of Wellington's Karori and Bolton Street cemeteries for more than a decade. Photo: RNZ / Kate Green
The first man to die in a duel and a headstone proclaiming "murder" are two of the stops on a tour of Bolton Street Cemetery, on the theme of 19th century crime and punishment.
Part of the Wellington Heritage Festival, it weaves through epitaphs making claims of murder and misery about their inhabitants, ranging from convicts to the people who put them behind bars.
Tour guide Barbara Mulligan has been leading groups through Wellington cemeteries for more than a decade.
She began her forays into Karori Cemetery walking her dog, and soon became fascinated by the stories behind the graves.
"That's why I started taking people on tours," she said. "There was one I kept walking past."
That was the grave of Jack Riddell, which bore the intriguing inscription: "Accidentally killed whilst skylarking."
Mulligan did some research; Riddell, it turned out, had fallen three storeys out of a pub window while fooling around with his colleagues, likely after a few drinks.
But today's tour of Bolton Cemetery would focus on friends and felons of the judicial system, she explained.
"Initially I thought it was going to be about a lot of judges and lawyers, and then as I started researching, I found there weren't all that many judges, because they all died elsewhere, or they're buried in parts of the cemetery which are really hard to get at.
"Essentially it's become a very quick look at some individuals and their role within the judicial, legal systems in the early days of settlement in New Zealand."
The Urban Motorway runs right through the middle of the cemetery, installed in the late 1960s, and necessitating the moving of more than 3000 sets of remains. Photo: RNZ / Kate Green
Bolton Street is the country's oldest public cemetery, first appearing on maps about 1840. It was the centre of a public debate in the late 1960s, when the council's new urban plan drew a motorway right through its centre.
"The cemetery had been closed to new burial plots since 1891," Mulligan said, "so it was a long time afterwards, but they basically took out a third of the cemetery to put the motorway through.
"And so all the graves that fell within that excavation area had to be disinterred, exhumed, and the remains put into a memorial vault."
People were upset about it at the time, she said, but it went ahead anyway.
One of the first stops on the tour was that memorial vault, lying beneath the Early Setters Memorial Lawn and containing some 3700 sets of remains exhumed from the motorway's path.
Barbara Mulligan says she was inspired by the stories behind the gravestones and began researching their stories. Photo: RNZ / Kate Green
Next up were graves of the controversial Wakefields, the family at the forefront of the New Zealand Company, which established the cities of Wellington, Nelson, Whanganui, New Plymouth, Christchurch and Dunedin.
A little further on was that of lawyer William Brewer, the first and possibly only person in New Zealand to be killed in a duel, shot by his colleague Hugh Ross, in 1844.
An article in the Wellington Spectator from the time reads: "The quarrel originated in some legal difference which arose in the County Court. Upon the first exchange of shots Mr Brewer was seriously wounded; he was immediately conveyed to a friend's house."
"During the first few days it was hoped that his life was safe, but appearances afterwards became unfavourable, and on Monday last, Mr Brewer breathed his last."
Mulligan put it a little more plainly: "One of those shots was fired in the air, and was harmless. The other, however, lodged itself in the groin... where it remained, even though [local doctor] Mr Isaac Featherston dug around trying to get it out."
Brewer died a few days later, a result of gangrene from the aforementioned "digging around", and duelling was eventually outlawed with the introduction of the Crimes Act in 1961.
The unusual headstone of Thomas Hawkings, proclaiming him the victim of murder. Photo: RNZ / Kate Green
The headstone of Thomas Hawkings nearby bore an inscription Mulligan said she had not seen elsewhere: "Born April 15, 1839. Murdered May 31, 1889."
"It's very unusual to have a gravestone with 'murdered' on it," she said. "And that's certainly the only one I know of, either here or in Karori Cemetery."
Shot multiple times from behind with a shotgun and then stabbed repeatedly, Thomas Hawkings was found dead on the road home to his Homebush Farm, near the area now known as Khandallah, in 1882.
The case was covered in great detail by the press at the time, Mulligan said, and an Italian man by the name of Louis Chemis was put on trial, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged.
But police were accused of bungling the case, and after eight years in jail, Chemis was reprieved - only to die by suicide 18 months later.
The group hears about the controversial history of the Wakefield brothers, their graves just one of the stops on the tour. Photo: RNZ / Kate Green
Tour participants spoke enthusiastically of their experience after its conclusion.
"It was really cool," one said. "It touched on a lot of New Zealand history that I wasn't necessarily aware of. I think maybe a good opportunity for a bit of extra learning, having picked up a few extra facts here."
Another participant, a lawyer, said she'd seen the tour advertised in one of the law newsletters sent around. "I was like, 'Woah, what a fascinating and fun thing to do, and the other thing I studied was New Zealand history, so personal interest."
And a third said: "The bit that was probably entertaining the most was how things were so dramatic back then - everything is [usually] a rose-tinted glasses view of the past, and actually, they were probably more scandalous back then than they are now."
The final crime and punishment tour is set to take place on Thursday afternoon.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
