www.waikatotimes.co.nz
MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2011
7
Battle at Rangiriri took heavy toll
The fighting at
Meremere in November
1863 had convinced
Rewi Maniapoto that
head-on clashes against
the better-armed British
would prove tragic for
Waikato Maori, but
some of his allies were
not so sure. The Maori
forces had been forced
to abandon Meremere,
and they fell back to
Rangiriri . . .
General Duncan Cameron’s victory at
Meremere in early November 1863 had
convinced Rewi Maniapoto that further
head-on clashes against the better-armed
British army would prove tragic for
Waikato Maori, but some of his allies were
not so sure.
The Maori forces had been forced to
abandon Meremere under a sustained land
artillery and gunboat barrage before an
infantry assault, which left at least a dozen
defenders dead and many more wounded.
A senior Waikato leader, Wharepu,
wanted to fall back to Rangiriri, where he
had designed an extensive set of earthworks across a narrow stretch of land
between the Waikato River and Lake
Waikare. The earthworks replaced the
traditional Maori pa palisades of heavy
poles and consisted of deep bunkers to
shelter from artillery. There were deep
rifle trenches and very little above ground
other than heavy earth walls, which could
absorb a huge amount shelling. There were
escape trenches and underground stores of
food and ammunition.
But Rewi wanted to make a stand away
from the Waikato River, out of range of the
deadly gunboats.
Unlike the British Army, there was no
one in overall command of the Maori
forces and, by tradition, individual leaders
could make their own tactical decisions.
Rewi and the Maori King Tawhiao
remained with the garrison at Rangiriri, to
further observe the British manoeuvres
Within the last few decades the issue of
how our society cares for its children has
come regularly to the forefront of public
debate. High-profile cases of violent child
deaths have focused this concern and
engendered some impassioned responses.
Media reports commonly frame such
incidents as being a modern problem – a
symptom of an increasingly secular or
permissive society and rapid social decline.
However, an exploration into historical
court records reveals that parents were
charged with the murders of children with
surprising regularity throughout the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
When the body of a newborn baby boy
was found buried in a shallow grave
behind the pigpen at Cambridge’s Masonic
Hotel in 1882, the grisly discovery held
little mystery. For those in the Cambridge
community such a finding represented a
clear and recognisable series of events: that
of the secret birth, murder and
concealment of an illegitimate infant. Local
police immediately arrested Sarah
Johnson, who shared the domestic
servants’ quarters on the upper floor of the
Hotel. Sarah’s fellow servants testified at a
Cambridge Police Court hearing that they
believed Sarah had ‘‘got into trouble’’ with
local tailor Tom Cleaver. They also insisted
that the night before the discovery they
had heard a baby cry. Later, Sarah herself
admitted that after having given birth in
silence in the tiny shared room, she had
taken the child into the garden ‘‘to do away
with it’’. Such events demonstrate that the
safety and wellbeing of children could no
more be assured in the past than it can be
today.
Contributed by Debra Powell, who is
researching and writing her PhD thesis in
history at Waikato University on the topic of
child homicide. She is the recipient of a Top
Achiever Doctoral Scholarship.
A landmark: Silverdale House in Sheridan Street, Hamilton.
and command systems, but they had only
about 500 fighting men with them. The
remainder of about 700 men had fallen
back to Paterangi, farther south.
By this time, Cameron had about 1400
men under his command, but half were
held in reserve.
He led 860 infantrymen, marines and
gunners against Rangiriri in late
November.
The assault opened at 3pm with 90
minutes of heavy shelling. The land forces
used the new breech-loading Armstrong
gun, which fired exploding shells from a
rifled barrel, giving much improved
accuracy over the conventional smoothbore cannon.
Wharepu, like other Maori leaders, was
an astute observer, and he set the Maori
King’s flag to the rear of the earthworks,
knowing the British gunners would use it
as a range marker, so most of the shells
landed behind the bunkers.
Cameron attacked the pa at 4.45pm, with
gunboats on the river shelling
fortifications, and land troops assaulting
from the north, supported by artillery fire.
Four companies of the 65th Regiment, a
detachment of Royal Engineers and the
14th Regiment attacked the first line of
defenders and a party of artillerymen,
under Captain Henry Mercer, charged the
central redoubt with swords and revolvers.
The Maori defenders held their ground
but, by the end of the day, they were almost
surrounded.
There had been fierce close-quarter
engagements, and the defenders took a
heavy toll of the British, including Mercer,
who had been killed.
Wharepu, who had insisted on defending
Rangiriri, had also been mortally wounded
and was quietly evacuated during the
night, along with King Tawhiao and about
300 men. They had lost about 40 men and
women killed or mortally wounded and 183
remained behind to surrender Rangiriri to
the British.
Some have suggested the white flag they
flew was to negotiate a peaceful settlement
to avoid further casualties and give their
leaders more time to escape, but the
British took it for a surrender flag. Either
way, they were taken to Kawau Island and
held on a warship for several months
before escaping back to the Waikato.
The reasons for the Ngati Maniapoto
withdrawal from Rangiriri are complex
and not well understood today, but they did
not include a lack of willingness to fight in
defence of their homelands.
The earthworks had sustained little
damage from the heavy barrage but the
exploding shells had killed, wounded and
demoralised many defenders. There was a
growing realisation that set-piece battles
against a more numerous and better-armed
foe could end only in complete defeat. They
had to attend gardens and bird snares to
ensure there were sufficient food stores for
the next winter. They were also exhausted
and many of their leaders and more
experienced fighters had been killed.
King Tawhiao and Rewi Maniapoto had,
by the fall of Rangiriri, concluded that a
negotiated peace with the British was their
only hope of survival and of retaining
enough of their lands to live on. They were,
however, determined to be in a strong
negotiating position before they agreed to
peace talks.
The British lost 39 men and 92 wounded
in the battle and most of the dead lie in a
small cemetery in the Rangiriri township.
Cameron was knighted for the success,
although the conflict in Waikato was far
from over and many more from both sides
would die before it ended.
Sports pundit Murray Deaker found
himself in hot water the other week for
employing the pejorative term for AfricanAmericans. Deaker’s offhand remark,
describing a sheep farmer as someone who
‘‘worked like a nigger’’ has seen him fall
foul of the Race Relations Commissioner.
The word is today reserved exclusively for
rappers, hip-hop ‘‘artists’’ and characters
in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Things were different in the 1870s and
1880s. The Waikato Times of that era is
littered with the word, primarily in the
context of theatrical review. Perhaps the
worst was the spiteful diatribe of an 1882
correspondent covering a variety show in
Kihikihi. This writer – who had himself
been unsuccessful in an effort to join the
theatrical company he was reviewing –
deliberately blurred the line between the
race politics of the colony and theatrical
stereotypes of the American South,
complaining of a programme that
‘‘consisted of a nigger farce, songs, etc., a
stump speech by a nigger, a hornpipe by
another nigger (full-blooded in this
instance) and some ‘local hits’. . .’’
Other Times reviewers of the day were
more sympathetic to local minstrel shows,
reflecting the general acceptance of racial
caricatures in popular entertainment. A
charity performance for the Whatawhata
Cricket Club in 1879 was, for example,
praised for its inclusion of ‘‘that rather
well-known nigger song and dance, ‘The
River Darkies’.’’ Three years later, the
Whatawhata Variety Troupe was reported
to have produced a ‘‘negro farce’’ that was
‘‘chiefly notable for the acting of Mr
Salmon, who was a genuine nigger’’.
The Times reprinted song lyrics, book
extracts and advertisements using the
word. While there is no denying the
inherent racism of the expression, such
usage also reflected a genuine cultural
interest in the plight of former slaves.
Lewis O’Neill
1847-1908
The O’Neill family grave is
surrounded by a red-brick wall,
unique in Hamilton East
Cemetery.
Lewis O’Neill’s obituary in the
Waikato Times makes him seem
as dry as his beliefs: O’Neill was a
staunch member of the New
Zealand Order of Independent
Rechabites, a total-abstinence
benefit society. His grave in the
Hamilton East Cemetery is an
austere enclosure, interesting for
its red brick but nonetheless
severe, plain and unadorned. His
obituary states he was
‘‘distinguished by his singular
uprightness of character’’.
O’Neill was born in Auckland,
the son of a doctor. After a stint
gold-mining in the Thames
district where, as an original
shareholder of the Great
Caledonian Mine, he was one of
the first to strike gold, O’Neill
studied law in London. He
returned in 1875, was admitted as
a barrister and solicitor and came
to Hamilton later that year, where
he established a practice first
with Madden and later with F A
Whitaker.
O’Neill had a ‘‘retiring
disposition’’ and took little part in
public affairs, though he did chair
a committee of Hamilton West
residents to discuss the
introduction of compulsory
education in 1878 and, in 1879, was
elected lieutenant of the newly
formed Hamilton Light Infantry
Volunteers.
He married Irish-born
Marguerite Kirby in 1877 and they
had four children, including twin
daughters. Marguerite is credited
with being the first woman to vote
for a parliamentary candidate,
having asked returning officer
Captain McPherson to put his
watch forward so she could vote
ahead of time – this being in 1893,
when women first had the right to
vote.
She died in 1926 at 77. She was
also of ‘‘a retiring disposition’’,
according to The Times, but
known as very kind and held in
high respect. Their son Lewis
Allen O’Neill, who died in 1922 at
38 as the result of a motor
accident, is in the same enclosure
with his parents, his grave
marked with a standard military
headstone.
In memory: Lewis O’Neill’s unadorned grave in the Hamilton East
Cemetery is surrounded by an austere red-brick walled enclosure.
Photo: SUPPLIED
Kennedy Bay
In many ways, the story of Hamilton’s
housing is one set in the mid-20th century.
Nevertheless, the city has some notable
19th-century houses that add variety to our
streets and embody the history of the
European settlement of Kirikiriroa.
Nestled within a mid-1960s suburban
setting is Silverdale House, in Sheridan
Street, which dates to 1888. The house was
built by Charles Alfred Tyrell Davis on
land that had been part of Captain Henry
Steele’s 1864 land grant. By 1890, Davis was
farming some 300 acres (121 hectares). In
the same year, he married Marie Gaudin,
daughter of Fred Gaudin, the proprietor of
the Waikato Hotel in Hamilton East. The
Waikato Times reported in December 1879
that Miss Gaudin was one of Hamilton
West School’s prize-winning pupils.
In 1892, the Davises added a 11⁄2-storey
gabled wing. The size and elegance of the
house attests to the Davises’ taste and
social standing, just as the use of the farm
to test methods of butter fat sampling in
1896 suggests Charles’s success as a farmer.
That success was to be shortlived.
Charles died following a riding accident in
March 1898, leaving a widow but no
children. Marie managed the farm alone
until her marriage to Robert Nixon in 1904.
Three children and seven years later, the
Nixons sold the property, which continued
to be farmed until the area was subdivided
in 1964. From the early 1970s until the
1990s, Silverdale House was the Landmark
Christian Home for Girls, run by Misses
Green and Mules. Today the house
provides student rental accommodation
and is in excellent condition for its age.
Although its name is recorded as the
Landmark Home by both the Hamilton
City Council and the New Zealand Historic
Places Trust, it should rightly be called
Silverdale House in memory of the Davis
and Nixon families.
Kennedy Bay, on the Coromandel Peninsula, was named after John
Kennedy, a former crew member of HMS Buffalo and the first Pakeha to
settle in the bay.
The original Maori name for the bay is Harataunga, which translates as
the Bonding of the People. The bay was gifted by the Ngati Rakautauri
leader Tairinga to Ngati Tamatera for their assistance in defeating an
invading war party in pre-European times.
Sources include Places Names of New Zealand (Reed) and New Zealand
Encyclopedia (Bateman).