HIDEOUT REVEALED
Joseph Pawelka puzzle partially solved
One of Palmerston North’s strangest true stories is that of Joseph Pawelka.
A petty thief and arsonist, he’s famous for the most audacious prison break in New Zealand police history, 107 years ago.
Even today, there’s speculation. Where did he go? Who helped him?
This week, for the first time, former Manawatu¯ District councillor John Salmon has revealed a previously unknown part of this puzzle.
His great-grandfather, William Abbott Weekes, was a friend of the young Pawelka and believed in his innocence.
Salmon remembers his mother, Ina Weekes Salmon, telling him Pawelka stories she’d heard firsthand from William, her grandfather.
The memories were passed down through the family, as closely entwined with their lives as their own milestones.
William Abbott Weekes was born in Bridstowe, Devonshire, England, and emigrated to New Zealand aboard the cargo vessel Wild Duck.
On landing in 1866, ‘‘he jumped ship and went by the name of George Bickle so he wouldn’t be caught’’, says Salmon.
After working in the South Island, William, alias George, settled in Palmerston North. With a partner, he constructed the first formed road in The Square. He later established a home on 40 acres at Maxwells Line, Awapuni.
Just before marrying Elizabeth May Johns, of Feilding, William decided to change back to his real name. ‘‘She was very surprised to find, a couple of days before the wedding, that she would be Mrs Weekes, not Mrs Bickle.’’
The couple’s comfortable homestead filled with children – 15 sons and one daughter.
Nearby were the Maxwells Line abattoirs, where some of William’s sons worked occasionally. Here, they met fellow worker Joseph Pawelka, 21, blue-eyed and of medium height, the son of Moravian immigrants, from a province of old Austria. In 1908 he had been hospitalised with typhoid fever and had three ribs and part of a lung removed.
His parents and siblings lived in Kimbolton – he was a welcome visitor in the Weekes home.
One day, Pawelka gave William a present, a handsome oak mantel clock. It stayed in the family for years – today, passed on to a relative, it’s still in perfect working order.
‘‘The family story is that it was a wedding present, but it couldn’t have been for William. He was married before Pawelka was born,’’ says Salmon.
‘‘We have no idea if Joseph bought it, stole it, or whatever. Maybe he said: ‘If anyone asks, just say it was a wedding gift’ or something like that.’’
In 1910, Pawelka’s life started to unravel. He’d married Lizzie Wilson, of Ashhurst, but she left him after two months, already pregnant. Depressed, he tried to drown himself. Lizzie asked for police protection, saying she was afraid of her husband and that he had a gun.
Pawelka turned his firearm in. His house was searched. Stolen furniture was found and he was arrested, charged with theft and remanded in custody. But Pawelka escaped from the lockup.
Two days later, he was recaptured at Awahuri and taken to Wellington’s Terrace Gaol, then later to the police cells in Lambton Quay. Pawelka escaped from there too and headed home.
On April 5, 1910, fires broke out at the Boys’ High School and two shops in Palmerston North.
Pawelka got the blame for these and other fires and petty thefts. Soon police, youths and civilian ‘‘scouts’’ were scouring the borough for him. Two men were accidentally shot and killed in the general mayhem: Sergeant John Mcguire and Pahiatua volunteer searcher Michael Quirke.
William Weekes got into a public argument with a man named Herbert Vaughan. He objected to Vaughan’s harsh remarks about Pawelka, things got nasty and Vaughan hit Weekes, causing the older man to pick up a stone and throw it at him, grazing his head.
The men ended up in court and
NZ Truth reported it all on April 30, calling 60-year-old Weekes an ‘‘aggressive elderly Pawelka-ite’’. He was fined a total of £4 5/-.
In mid-april, Pawelka was finally caught, charged with theft, arson and escaping, and sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment, again in the Terrace Gaol. The public protested at this excessive punishment. Joseph Pawelka had become a folk hero.
On August 27, 1911, he broke out of jail for the last time and vanished.
This is where the Weekes family re-enters the story.
John Salmon says, according to his mother, at some stage Pawelka was holed up for three weeks at Awapuni, in the family pigsty, which had a windowless concrete enclosure: ‘‘Imagine the filth and the smell.’’
The upside: no-one would ever have thought to look for him there. Hopefully, he crept into the house at nights, to bathe and sleep.
Whatever the details, the legend says Pawelka was spirited away to Kimbolton where family and the community kept him hidden and arranged for his passage to Canada.
It’s even said his mother wrote the date of departure in her prayer book: February 16, 1912. The ship was apparently the Makura, headed for Vancouver via Suva.
Eventually things settled down in Manawatu¯ .
Lizzie Pawelka had a daughter, Iris, the child Joseph never saw, and died under an assumed name in 1945.
William Abbott Weekes had a happy 100th birthday party, with family and friends, and lived another two years until 1943.
In 1982, the farm was sold out of the Weekes family.
Meanwhile, the old oak mantel clock ticks on. ‘‘If it could talk...’’ muses John Salmon.