What happened next?
Readers reveal the stories behind the stories.
Sometimes, a story can leave us wondering, ‘‘what happened next?’’ This week, Memory Lane readers share their intriguing footnotes to some recent stories.
The Royal Hotel Fire: ‘‘City of Blazes’’, January 20, 2018
In 1909, English waiter Edgar Hupe, 27, set fire to the Royal Hotel on Rangitikei St in Palmerston North via a carelessly tossed match and served five years in jail for arson. After that, his trail seemed cold – had Hupe changed his name, left the country? But the story got a response from history enthusiast Roger Reeves.
After genealogical digging, Reeves found the ‘‘what happened next’’ story.
‘‘Hupe seems to have become a respectable citizen, marrying in Taranaki, going overseas in World War I and then settling for a time in Riverlea, halfway between Eltham and Opunake,’’ he explains. ‘‘He ran the local store and was involved in various activities. Part of the difficulty in following him comes from the use of various given names, but he seems to be mainly referred to in later years as either Edgar or EA Hupe.’’
Hupe’s 1882 birth was registered in England’s West Derby district.
As Reeves followed Hupe’s post-prison life, he found that in 1915 he married Mary Ann Power, daughter of Michael Power, a justice of the peace, and his wife Rose.
In May 1917 Hupe enlisted with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, ‘‘but apparently didn’t get beyond the training camps in England before being discharged as medically unfit (hernia)’’.
Back in New Zealand, he was formally discharged on April 17, 1918.
As a returned soldier, Reeves continues, Edgar obtained a grant of land at Huatoki, New Plymouth, in the returned soldiers’ land ballots of December 1920.
‘‘He died on November 1932, aged 50.’’ Both Edgar and Mary Ann (d 1974) were buried in Te Henui Cemetery, New Plymouth.
Edgar Hupe had, remarkably, refused to let his past define the rest of his life.
‘‘Jail Escaper’s Hideout Revealed’’, March 3, 2018
This story about Joseph Pawelka, thief and serial jail-jumper, who vanished in 1912, inspired Bettie Beech to share a memoir, written by a cousin of her late husband Denis Beech about the turbulent time Pawelka was on the run.
The family story was penned by Johnny Gregory, who was, like Denis, a grandson of John and Maria Mathews of ‘‘River View’’, their home at Mangahao on the Makomako Rd leading to the Pahiatua Track.
Johnny lived with his grandparents, and wrote: ‘‘I can dimly remember waking at daylight on a cold foggy winter morning when a posse of horsemen arrived at River View and announced that Pawelka was hiding in some of the buildings on the farm.’’
In the hayshed, the policemen prodded the hay with pitchforks, but found nothing except an elderly local bricklayer who, worse for wear on the night before, had bedded down there.
As the police had a cup of tea at the house, ‘‘my grandmother noticed a young hairdresser named Michael Quirke among the special [volunteer] constables’’.
‘‘She knew this young fellow quite well and berated him for being mixed up in the thing at all, that he would have been better to have stayed in Pahiatua and looked after his business, instead of tearing around the country with the police playing cowboys and Indians, and that if he wasn’t careful he ran the risk of being shot by some of the amateur sleuths in the party. She was very angry with him... He only laughed, and said: ‘Ma, it’s a manhunt and I must be in’. The next night after a reported sighting of Pawelka at Ashhurst, Quirke was shot dead outside the Ashhurst Hotel by one of the police’’, who mistook him for Pawelka in the dark.
Pawelka was rumoured to have boarded a ship to Canada. But a few years later, ‘‘Dick Mathews, [another cousin of Denis Beech’s] who was serving in the New Zealand artillery, waiting at Armentieres for the first battle of the Somme, observed an Australian battalion of infantry pass through their lines on the way to the front’’. Dick apparently recognised one of those soldiers as Pawelka.
‘‘Bricks Tumble and a Chimney Falls’’, March 10, 2018
This story about the earthquake that caused severe damage in the Wairarapa and rocked Palmerston North on June 24, 1942, brought back an early childhood memory for Cushla Scrivens.
Scrivens, former editor of the Manawatu¯ Journal of History, recalls: ‘‘I was nearly 3. We lived in Martinborough [where her father was working in a wartime essential service as a teacher].
‘‘I slept through the earthquake, but I remember him shovelling [the smashed jars of] mum’s preserves out of the pantry into the wheelbarrow the next morning. And he took me to Carterton to show me how all the concrete plaster fronts had fallen off the shops.
‘‘Dad was very lucky. He was a tall man and he slept with his feet out of the end of the bed.
‘‘It must have been a chilly night and he was curled up. The wardrobe fell on the end of the bed. It didn’t have a glass front and my parents were unscathed.’’
Millar and Giorgi: ‘‘A Gentlemen’s Outfitter’’, February 3, 2018
Peter Millar’s story of his grandfather Maurice Millar, who with Arthur Giorgi founded Palmerston North’s iconic menswear store (1902 to 1988) on The Square, struck a chord with reader ‘‘Cheryl’’ of Taranaki. She inherited a now-vintage suit made by the firm.
‘‘I’m assuming it was my papa’s, given the button fly and braces,’’ she wrote. ‘‘It is three-piece wool lined with some heavy-type cotton material – must have been so hot to wear. It says Palmerston North and Hastings on the label, so must have been after the expansion’’, to the Hastings store, in 1906.
‘‘It is in great order and still gets used. My dad wore it for a retro-inspired significant birthday a few years back.’’