From wanted poster to pioneer justice

IMPOSING: The Victoria Hotel in Featherston, pictured in the 1870s.PHOTO/JAMES BRAGGE

JAMES Bragge was one of Wellington's most renowned early photographers, best remembered in Wairarapa for a remarkable set of images he compiled while on two separate journeys through the region in the 1870s. Photographs from these trips were combined and were popular items in early Wairarapa. Many of the glass plates from these extraordinary images are stored at Te Papa, while the photography historian Bill Main produced a book based on them and Bragge's journey to Wairarapa.

Cobblestones Museum in Greytown has held a successful exhibit of his prints to mark the opening of their new display area and is looking to mount a further one. The curatorial staff contacted the Wairarapa Archive with an unusual question regarding a poster they could make out in one of the prints. On the walls of the Victoria Hotel in Featherston they could make out a poster offering a reward of 100 for a murder, but they could not make out any details. They wondered if there was a Wairarapa murder at the time that would explain the notice?

The Victoria Hotel was opened on October 1, 1869 by Frederick Walter Hodder, son of Walter Hodder who had previously owned the Golden Fleece Hotel at Pakuratahi, on the other side of the Rimutaka Hill road. He advertised that he had fitted the house up with the best fittings and would sell nothing but the best brands on the market.

The business may not have been as profitable as Hodder hoped as he was offering if for sale or lease by late 1873. It may have been that he was consuming too much of his own products - his cause of death in 1901 was gout and alcoholism.

In July 1874 Frederick Faber announced he had taken the hotel over, and had added a large new wing. Like Hodder he advertised he kept good quality wines, beers and spirits, and said he had spacious and well-ventilated stables attached to the hotel.

The hotel was destroyed in a serious fire on October 2, 1879, 10 years and one day after it first opened its doors. Faber rebuilt after the fire but he moved away, and was running the Empire Hotel in Hawera when he died in 1886. The Victoria Hotel had a variety of operators. It hit the headlines in 1892 when police strenuously opposed E J Searle being granted a license but he was successful. He changed the name to the Club Hotel, and it once again burned to the ground on June 1, 1894. The fire wiped Searle out - he was bankrupted - and the hotel was never rebuilt.

And the reward poster?

Bragge's photograph was obviously taken between 1874 and 1879, while Faber was still leasing the hotel. There were no Wairarapa murders during that time, but there was a famous murder in the north of New Zealand, and the Government offered a reward for the capture of the suspect.

Edward Packer was working on Thomas Cleghorn's farm in Epsom, Auckland in 1876, alongside Taurangaka Winiata, also known as Henry Wynyard, of Ngati Mahuta of Waikato and Ngati Ruanui of Taranaki. Winiata had worked for Cleghorn for many years and was a trusted employee, and was also friendly with Packer, who lived in an outbuilding on the farm.

Packer noticed some of his money had gone missing and questioned Winiata, who offered him a small amount to keep quiet about it. Packer threatened to report the theft to the police and Winiata seems to have determined to exact revenge on Packer. He entered his hut early one morning and attacked him with a billhook, killing him, and then hiding the body behind a stack of timber.

It was immediately realised that Winiata was the prime suspect and the police quickly learned he had been sighted heading towards Orakei, but he managed to hide in the forests around the pa and ultimately was able to find his way to the Paparata Range and then onto his Waikato homeland where he was able to hide away safely.

The Government was outraged and offered a 100 reward for his capture, later lifting that to 500, but it was not until late June 1882, after the Victoria Hotel had burnt down for the first time, that Winiata was apprehended, by a man described as the "half-caste Barlow", at a native village near Te Kuiti in the heart of the King Country where Winiata had taken refuge.

Barlow had suspected the man he knew as Taurangaka was the wanted man and set out to catch him and claim the reward, with a stash of chloroform and brandy. The apprehension was difficult - Winiata had friends with him and was armed, but following a fight and with the assistance of his wife, Barlow managed to tie Winiata up and carry him off through a swamp to Kihikihi, where he handed him over to members of the Armed Constabulary.

His trial was held within weeks, and by July 15 he was found guilty by the all-white jury and sentenced to death. He claimed at trial, and continued to claim until his death that he was innocent of the crime, and had run away because he was certain he would be blamed.

Winiata was executed by hanging at Mount Eden jail on July 21. The NZ Herald reported that the execution had been badly botched, the drop not causing instant death, and that Winiata had instead died of strangulation.