Brian Rudman: Black sheep gives street-name row a new twist

If you thought the battle for naming rights of that little dog-leg of a street in Parnell I wrote about last week couldn't get any more bizarre, you were wrong.

Two great-grandchildren of pioneering shipbuilder Henry Niccol have told me they are opposed to his name being used.

Henry Niccol Place, you may recall, overtook Harold Goodman Place as frontrunner in the race in February when new Action Hobson councillors Richard Simpson and Christine Caughey came up with Niccol's name.

This overruled the local community board support for the late Mr Goodman, a former Citizen and Ratepayers deputy mayor.

Much was the wailing and gnashing of Tory teeth that followed the surprise demotion of their man.

Mr Simpson argued that it was nothing personal. It was just that Niccol, whose shipbuilding yard had been on the very site of the nameless road in the 1840s, was a more appropriate person to memorialise.

Game over? Not quite. There is still an obstacle to surmount before the street sign goes up.

As Niccol's name had not previously emerged, council rules ordained that yet another round of consultations with "affected parties" had to take place.

Enter Peter Smythe, 86, of Tauranga. Mr Smythe, a retired journo and one-time press officer to Prime Minister Sir Keith Holyoake, read last week's column and decided that as direct descendants, he and his sister were surely "affected parties" and therefore entitled to a say. He wrote, and I promised to pass on his concerns. So here goes.

"My sister is happy to go along with me and we would like to support the Goodman name."

Why? Well for starters, Henry Niccol, who moved his shipbuilding activities across to Devonport to build ferries, already has Niccol Ave, just up from Narrow Neck Beach, named after him.

Given NZ Post's - and, presumably, the emergency services' - dislike of name duplications, this is a reasonable point. But not one, you would have thought, a family member from the opposing camp might bring up.

So what's the real reason? Now it gets a tad personal.

"There's a particular reason why it should never be called Henry Niccol, why I would be unhappy, and that's because Niccol's son, my grandfather, was also called Henry Niccol, and he was a womaniser and a scoundrel who deserted my grandmother and my mother and her two sisters, leaving them destitute and forced to return to the mother's family."

The abandoned grandmother's father, as it so happens, was none other than Philip Aaron Philips, proprietor of an "all-sorts" shop in Queen St, a prominent member of the Jewish community and first mayor, in 1871, of the newly formed Auckland City Council.

Mr Philips was not only mayor. After three years as an elected official, he resigned to become town clerk, a role he held for 25 years until being eased out with a golden handshake of six months' wages.

But it's not this story, as told in the history books, that's been passed down.

What Mr Smythe heard from his mother is how her mother and the three children returned home to suffer "the reverse of anti-semitism - Philips was angry with his daughter for marrying a Christian".

Ah, families.

Unfair as it might be to the memory of Henry Niccol the elder, you can see why Niccol jnr's name is still mud, and why the descendants prefer Harold Goodman as the new street name.

But if I was in the Goodman camp, I wouldn't crack open the champagne yet. There is a slight hitch with this name, too. That's if duplications are frowned upon.

Another caller tells me that 25 or so years ago the property development firm that Mr Goodman acted as accountant to wanted to reward him for his sterling services by naming a street in one of its developments after him.

I have been unable to confirm this with city officials, but my caller says Goodman Place off Church St in Penrose was that street.

Given that Waipapa Place was ruled out because posties might confuse it with Otara's Waipapa Cres, one could argue that both Goodman and Henry Niccol are now goners, too.

What to do? If it helps, there doesn't seem to be a Twenty One St anywhere in Auckland.