Nineteen-year-old Claude arrived in Wellington from London in on the Shaw, Savill and Albion Co’s S.S. Doric on 1st May 1893. Claude was the tenth of twelve siblings. He was raised in Hampstead, London, where is father was a stock broker. Claude was one of thirty travelling in first class on the Doric. There were thirty in second class and thirty-four in steerage. Claude had presumably come out for an adventure, or to make his own fortune.
The next available record for Claude is his death notice. He died on 1st January 1895, aged twenty-two. The Karori Burial Register records that he died at Wellington Hospital. There was no funeral notice and he was buried on 2nd January.
Claude did not leave a will and so the Public Trust administered his estate. They recorded his profession as ‘gentleman’ and his property in New Zealand consisted of £13 9 cash in the Post Office Savings Bank, and effects valued at £5.
What is interesting is that Claude’s parents were early Otago immigrants. Frederick Louis Mieville married Fanny Stokes Richardson at the Court House in Dunedin in 1854. Their first six children were born in New Zealand before they returned to England some time before 1869. Fanny’s brother George Frederick Richardson became a member for parliament representing the Mautara electorate 1884-1893. As such, he had a Wellington home and therefore would have likely been a friend to his nephew young Claude and organised this very fine headstone on behalf of his parents. George Richardson died in 1909 and is also buried at Karori Cemetery.
The origins of the Mieville name are Swiss. Frederick’s father Amedee had emigrated from Switzerland to England where he married Margaretta Green in Worcester in 1825. He was later a member of the Royal Exchange.
Plot: *Ch Eng/E/12
By Julia Kennedy
