Days of future past

the 2002 film about serial imposter Frank Abagnale, Jr., arguably ranks amongst Steven Spielberg’s best work. It has recently been turned into a stage musical.

Nineteenth century New Zealand had its own equivalent to Abagnale.

When George Whitworth Rodgers arrived Te Arai at the end of May, 1883 he claimed to have come from Tauhoa, where he had been working as an Anglican clergyman.

Rodgers’ ‘‘ . . . deportment and his fluency, and his vast amount of Biblical research’’ were enough to persuade church elders that he was a bona fide man of God, despite an absence of written authority or introduction from the local Bishop.

He purported to be a student from Edinburgh, where ‘‘he nearly got his diploma’’. Presumably, he affected a charming Scottish brogue.

All doors were open to him. Rodgers ‘‘ . . . enjoyed himself amazingly, visiting a chosen few, and was the admiration of the young ladies’’.

He conducted the church service at Te Arai and on the following Sunday at Mangawai. On both occasions he was offered ‘‘the collection’’, which he accepted ‘‘on behalf of the Home Mission’’. Thereafter he continued on to Kaiwaka and Wairoa, preaching as he went, accepting free board and whatever charitable donations parishioners felt they could part with.

A few months later Rodgers transformed himself into Cecil Johnston, ‘‘a medical student just arrived by the Manapouri’’, late of the ‘‘St. Giles Prisoner’s Aid Society, London’’.

Deploring the immorality of Auckland, he told the Reverend Tebbs of St. Matthew’s Church, that he had ‘‘felt ‘a call’ to evangelise the poor heathens of New Guinea’’.

As either ‘‘Dr Johnston’’ or ‘‘Dr Rodgers’’, the charlatan began practising medicine in Mercury Bay, charging fees for consultancy.

He established a committee to ‘‘provide a guarantee fund for him to stay’’. He delivered a baby.

When he took a job in the moulding department at the Auckland Timber Company it was a means to an end. Stealing and later pawning surgical equipment, he was finally caught. Sentenced to three months, with hard labour, the

observed that ‘‘a course in practical geology’’ had been added to the Rodgers’ curriculum.