“There has probably never been a greater superintendent of the Wellington Hospital than Dr Ewart” (Evening Post, 5 August 1939).
This story was inspired by a Genealogy Investigations story on the Hermit)
Dr Ewart was superintendent from 1889 to 1909. He was an outstanding surgeon and performed some of the greatest operations of his day. Much of his work was written of in the “Lancet”. He was also remembered for the charm of his manner and unremitting attentiveness to patients.
He was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland in 1858, the son of a farmer. He and trained at Edinburgh University. The family emigrated to Nelson in 1885 and he joined them in 1887. He married Grace Brandon (daughter of Richard & Lucy Bra in 1889 and their children were David Ewart (died as a baby), Dr Ian Brandon Ewart, Lucy Brandon Ewart and Edith Mary Brandon Ewart. Miss Jessie Ewart who was matron of the Invercargill Hospital for twenty years was his sister, and his brother William a doctor.
In 1930, Dr Ewart was invited to the opening of the Ewart Tuberculosis Hospital at Wellington Hospital. It cost £26,800 and could accommodate 65 patients. Dr Ewart referred to the growth of the hospital during his time as superintendent – there was only accommodation for 80 patients and now there were 600 patients. In those days there were no specialists and there was no laboratory and so he was also the pathologist. The outpatient waiting room was also the operating theatre.
Dr Ewart died in 1939 and his estate was worth £24,822.
Interred in this plot Ch Eng/Q/80 are David Ewart (1905), Grace Ewart (1923), Lucy Brandon (1926), John Ewart (1939), Edith Mary Brandon Ewart (1985)
This grave is the burial plot of Mary Anne Swainson. She was born in 1833 near Hull in the English Midlands and arrived in New Zealand in 1856. In 1859 she married George Swainson, a surveyor, who unfortunately became alcoholic and died in 1870.
In 1869, to provide some family income, Mary opened a school for girls on the corner of Woodward Street and The Terrace. In 1878, as by now school education was becoming government funded, she opened a new school for day girls and boarders in Fitzherbert Terrace, Thorndon, where the garden for the blind is today . She created a very family-orientated, friendly supportive environment, she had excellent staff including the cities leading music teacher, and she had a very close relationship with Old St Pauls and the Diocese. The new railway connections to the Wairarapa and the Manawatu in the 1880s allowed wealthy landowners and farmers to send their daughters to board at the school and the school thrived.
Mary died in 1897 and her daughter took over running the school. In 1920 the Diocese of Wellington acquired the school. It was renamed the Samuel Marsden Collegiate School and in 1926 it was moved to its current site in Karori. Samuel Marsden remains one of the city’s leading secondary schools with excellent grounds and facilities.
Mary Swainson was commemorated in 1898 in Old St Paul’s by a large stained-glass window in the north wall depicting Christ Blessing the Children, and an elegant oak litany desk, still in daily use, both funded by public subscription.
Lambro was born in 1878 to Andrew and Mary (nee Jackson) Parris. According to Lambro’s obituary, he commenced work on wharves in 1885. He was a foundation member of the Wellington Waterside Workers’ Union. He learnt boxing from Professor Bloom but did not continue boxing as long in the sport as he wished. This was because in 1910 he began to lose his eyesight.
Fundraising activities were held in order to send Lambro to London for treatment and also acknowledging he was the only support of his widowed mother. A benefit concert and dance was held in St Peter’s Schoolroom on Ghuznee Street. “Dancing allowed only in shoes”. The Harbour Board contributed £10 10s, the Mayor £1 1s. By January 1911, he set sail for England and while there he married Elizabeth [Nellie] Anthony.
In May a subscription list was started to raise more funds so that he might extend his stay. The treatment did not work and he returned to New Zealand with his new bride in August.
Life must have been very hard for the Parris family. In 1916 Nellie was convicted of stealing a gold broach and £2 while working as a char woman. The broach was recovered but not the money. It was acknowledged that her husband was blind and she had two little children to support.
Lambro and Nellie were parents to Bill, the New Zealand welterweight boxing champion in 1934 and 1936, and Lionel, a well-known lightweight boxer. They also had a daughter, Linda. Despite being blind, Lambro continued his interest in sports and originated the Tartan Boxing Club in 1932, of which he was its secretary.
Lambro died in 1937 aged 58 and was cremated. His ashes are in the columbarium behind the chapel. Nellie died in 1985 aged 98 and was cremated at Karori.
“Look Before You Leap” . This was the title of a newspaper article reporting on Mary’s marriage in 1882.
Andrew Parris married Mary Jackson at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington in 1875. They were aged 26 and 15 respectively. Andrew was born in Greece and worked as a fisherman. Within two weeks of marriage, Mary applied for a protection order against her husband on the ground of repeated acts of cruelty. The judge advised her to take more pains to please her husband, and cautioned Andrew not to strike his wife again.
In 1876 Andrew was charged with using threatening language towards Mary. She claimed that he said to her in the street that he would cut her throat. Two witnesses provided an alibi for Andrew and the case was dismissed.
In May 1882 Mary again applied for a protection order and for custody of her child. She had been living away from Andrew for four months. The implication was that she wanted to leaver her husband because she was lonely living at Wellington Heads. The judge refused the application and recommended she be more obedient to her husband in future. The newspaper wrote “A case occurred in Wellington last week which shows that all women do not employ the necessary foresight before they bind themselves for good and all to fates of their husbands” and “The intellectual conversation of her piscatorial husband was no off-set for the loss of the pomps and vanities of this wicked, though pleasant world”.(Globe 4 May 1882).
In 1887 Andrew was living at Paremata with a woman called Eliza Cruse who died in childbirth. She had said that he always treated her kindly.
According to the 1901 divorce proceedings, Andrew left Mary in about 1881. Two witnesses said that Andrew had lived in adultery with May Amos. Mary remarried the same year as her divorce to Edmund Rich Brown. Edmund was a labourer living in Elizabeth Street. He died in 1906. Mary died in 1930 aged 70.
Mary Brown (nee Jackson) is buried in Ch Eng/X/128 with her husband Edmund Andrew Parris is buried in Ch Eng 2/C/153
Peter Fraser was born in 1884 in the far north Scottish Highlands. He left school early and worked to help support his family, but unemployment forced him to go to London. In 1910 further unemployment led him to come to NZ. He found work on the Auckland wharves and became active in union politics.
In 1916 he became involved in the establishment of the Labour Party. He spent a year in jail for sedition after speaking out against conscription during the First World Was. In 1918 he was elected as member for Wellington Central and immersed himself in politics. In 1935 the first Labour Government lead by Savage was elected with a large majority, and Fraser became a senior Cabinet Minister. He famously introduced universal secondary schooling, free maternity care, free pharmaceuticals, and subsidised doctor’s visits.
In 1940 he became the Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. He actively participated in the Allied conduct of the Second World War and became a close confidant of both Churchill and Roosevelt. After the war he played a key role in the setting up of the United Nations.
Peter Fraser was aloof, highly intelligent, read extensively, and worked 18 hours a day every day. His closest friend was his wife Janet. She died in 1945 and this seems to have taken the energy out of him. Labour lost the 1949 election and he died soon after in 1950 at age 66.
His biographer, historian Dr Michael Bassett, rates him as the most able and best Prime Minister NZ had in the 20th century. A small poster with the words ‘Tomorrow comes the song’, the title of Bassetts book, sat on his desk.
Sir Ernest Marsden was born in Manchester, England in 1889. He excelled at school and joined the Physics Department of Manchester University where he became involved in assisting Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger undertake a series of extraordinary experiments which revealed to Rutherford the structure of the atom.
In his early 20’s Rutherford proposed he take a senior physics post at Victoria University Wellington. Marsden came to NZ and stayed here for the rest of his life. He quickly became involved in university management and then on to become a senior manager in government of the education systems and the science system.
He made a substantial contribution to science and education over many decades, and the significant Marsden Fund, the premier fund for long term science research, is named after him.
Ernest was married twice – first to Margaret Sutcliffe in 1913. They had two children. Margaret died in 1956 and her ashes are in the columbarium at Karori Cemetery, fronting the main drive. Ernest married Joyce Chote in 1958. Ernest died in 1970 and Joyce in 1990. Their ashes are together in the lawn section by the Seaforth Terrace gate, plot Ch Eng/A/673.
Ernest Marsden. Photo courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library.
Chris first takes our notice for running a brothel in Mulgrave Street in April 1894 and by so doing, his “bad characters” residents rowed and disturbed the divine service at St Paul’s Church next door. The house was owned by Chris and his older brother William.
Chris was subsequently charged for “keeping a common bawdy house”. The frequenters of the house “being the lowest characters in town”. Accused spent his time fetching beer for them. He was found guilty and imprisoned for three months.
In October the same year, the court ordered the Lockyer house be demolished as it was considered a danger to the public. Sarah Marsh wrote in protest to the Evening Post: “I believe it is the only entailed property under the old English law of entail there is in the city …. It was left to them by their father, a very decent, respectable, hard-working old man. The place is, I know, in very bad condition, and I believe, frequented by queer characters …. They are old and will not bother this very respectable world for very long, but I do think if the Hermit is allowed his cave, and the fishermen their huts, the Lockyers should certainly be allowed their own freehold den”.
By 5th November, the house was down and the timbers auctioned off by order of the City Council.
On 13th November, Chris’ brother William died aged 73. He had been living with the Barnes family in Haining Street who had taken him when the house was demolished. It was said he died from grief “at seeing the roof which had sheltered him for nigh on fifty years, laid low”. He was buried in Karori Cemetery.
In 1895 Chris was charged with vagrancy. He was described as an aged and exceedingly feeble man who was found sleeping under an old sack on his now empty property “… and here the wretched old creature next to God’s house, and in the midst of a well-to-do and populous quarter, eked out a miserable existence that even a dog would have turned his nose at…..The law is harsh at times” wrote the Wairarapa Times.
His subsequent charges were 1896 “an incorrigible rogue”, 1897 for being “a rogue and a vagabond”, 1898 for being an “incorrigible vagabond”, 1899 for “vagrancy at Johnsonville”. He then disappears from newspaper records.
Chris died in 1904, aged 75, and is buried in what is presumed to be a pauper’s plot, in the Church of England section at Karori.
Assumed Lockyer dwelling to the north of Old Saint Paul’s. Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library
Chris Lockyer’s unmarked plot in Church of England section. Photo courtesy of FIndaGrave.
William was born in Croydon, England and trained in the building trade. He was said to have made the wheels for Queen Victoria’s first train carriage.
In 1860 he married Sarah Richards and they emigrated with their family to Wellington in 1874.
He purchased a building business in Cuba Street and also worked as an undertaker. Funerals were priced from £1 10s, Adults from £5. In 1885 his business advertised it had joined the telephone exchange. In 1886 he presented the Pacific Lodge of Druids, of which he was a member, with an altar. James Flyger joined him in business in 1887 and in the same year they commissioned a new hearse from Mr J H Hutchens, Courtney Place:
“The body stands upon a strong carriage of the old English type. The roof rests upon six Corinthian pillars, and is surmounted by heavy cornices and fretwork edges, and seven Corinthian cases in lieu of plumes. There are plate glass sides to the hearse, decorated by silk curtains inside”. (Evening Post 17 Aug 1887).
William died at Wellington hospital, aged 60, in 1895. Cause of death was heart disease.
In 1904, his widow Sarah took on the licence of the Te Aro hotel on the corner of Dixon and Willis Streets. It had nineteen rooms. In 1905 the hotel was burgled by William Clifford and £1 10s from the cash register, £2 10s worth of liquor and £3 5s worth of clothing belonging to a border was stolen.
Sarah died in Auckland aged 75 in 1911 and is interred in this plot with William.
James Flyger continued the undertakers business and died in 1918. He is buried in Bolton Street Cemetery.
The Rev Coffey, the vicar of St Mark’s Church from 1876 to 1907, was a fervent letter writer, and Wellington City Archives have digitised a number of his concerned citizen letters.
This one dated September 1892 addressed to the Cemetery Committee finishes with:
“I also desire to call attention to the unintentional slight put on “the Cross” by causing one to be erected as a finial over the urinal in Karori Cemetery. Could not this be removed as it is not a place there”.
He writes again in May 1893:
“I also asked Mr Williston to remove the cross finial which is placed over the urinal at Karori Cemetery. This should not have been places there – unless it was intended to mock and denigrate the sacred symbol. I am sure this was not intended by the designer”
We don’t know how his correspondence was replied to, as there are no records of “conveniences” at Karori until 1922. Hopefully the offending finials were removed, as Rev Coffey lies on the main road fronting the Church of England section, and wouldn’t want to offend his view.
As we are about to embark on Wellington Heritage Week, we thought to fitting to pay tribute to George Wiltshire, designer of the Friends’ H.Q: The Shelter.
If you like this story, then you will definitely enjoy our first tour on Monday: “Nation Builders”. Tickets are still available. Please visit the Events page on our website to book: https://friendsofkaroricemetery.co.nz/events/
And now for George. He was born in Surrey in 1846. He attended grammar school and then trained as a Civil Engineer in London. George worked in various places in England between 1865 and 1870 before coming to New Zealand and undertaking survey work in the goldfields. Eventually he settled in Wellington and joined the City Council working under the City Surveyor Mr Marchant at a time when the Wainuiomata Waterworks was being undertaken with a pipeline connection to Wellington. He was then was promoted to Assistant Surveyor. In 1875 he married Caroline Hansen, a Norwegian immigrant. Together they had four children.
In 1888 George was promoted to City Surveyor with a salary of £275. One of his first actions was to set the new city Destructor in operation. The first step was to set up collection of household refuse. Imagine the novelty! Also in 1888, William Ferguson (Harbour Engineer) suggested that the City Destructor be augmented for cremations also. This would avoid the “mass of putridity” which existed at the Bolton Street cemetery. It would be another 17 years until our Crematorium opened at Karori.
In July 1891, George along with William Ferguson decided from the 23 designs for the new public library.
In August the same year, the first burial took place at Karori Cemetery. No further burials would take place for another six months. In the meantime, George designed and tendered a “shelter house” for the Cemetery in anticipation of the mourners yet to come. It was designed in the Gothic revival style, in a Greek Cross plan as an open sided structure. The builder was Samuel Hemingway. In 1892 the walls and door were added to ensure it provided true shelter from the forbidding Wellington weather. Occasionally parts of funeral services were held in the Shelter to limit mourners to exposure to the elements at graveside.
In 1897 the Evening Post reported “an annual growl is made by the City Surveyor (Mr. G. Wiltshire) as to the paucity of funds placed at his disposal for keeping the streets of the city in that state of repair required by citizens” (2 June 1897).
In 1902 George retired from his role at WCC and was presented with a “gold-mounted malacca cane, a pair of field glasses, a case of pipes and a pair of gold sleeve links”. He remarked that the present of a walking stick was a tolerable hint, and that he was sorry he had to take the hint and the stick. He then set up in practice for himself in offices in Brandon Street.
The following year he was elected a City Councillor for the Wellington Ward.
George died suddenly in 1905 whilst transacting some business at the office of Messrs Meek and Von Haast, solicitors. One of his sons was present. A doctor was called but nothing could be done. An inquest determined that he had died of “aortic disease”. At his passing, WCC acknowledges his efforts “his zeal and attention to detail, and his technical knowledge of the work, as well as his extensive experience under the Council, rendered him of great value to the city” (NZ Time 11 August 1908).
George leaves us quite a legacy with his contribution to the formation of our early city, and one that we are proud to celebrate.
Image courtesy of Auckland City LibrariesThe Shelter. Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library.Wiltshire plot, Church of England section
