The lost ‘poor persons’ of Terrace End Cemetery
In Terrace End Cemetery, near the front and centre, there is a tranquil green space with trees and a park bench where people can sit and reflect. There are a few scattered headstones and some memorial plaques on the curb. This is the oldest part of the cemetery and it is called Public Reserve Number 1.
Terrace End was not the first location of a cemetery in Palmerston North. The first cemetery was established in 1871 on Cuba St, approximately where the Central Energy Trust Arena is now.
It quickly became clear the ground was too wet so a new location was chosen. About 12 burials were relocated and reinterred in 1875 in the new Terrace End site.
One of those reinterred, in what is now Public Reserve Number 1, was Charles Adam MacKenzie who died in June 1872.
His refurbished headstone marks the only identified grave of a person whose remains are known to have been removed from Cuba St in 1875. The names of the other reinterred burials have been lost.
In this space, there is a darker history showing the burial practices of the late Victorian British settlers and their treatment of ‘’poor persons’’, as they were described in the legislation.
Although there are only a handful of headstones, the number of recorded burials in Public Reserve Number 1 is 1844. However, the total is certainly nearer 2000 as early records were poorly kept.
Because the area was not surveyed into numbered plots, the exact location of the graves without markers cannot be established.
This area became specifically for the internment of “poor persons’’, stillborn babies or babies who died shortly after birth.
One burial record tragically states: “Jay son of Ethel, 17.4.1911, 4 days, single girl, no money, buried free.’’
However many of the ‘’poor persons’’ buried in Public Reserve Number 1 are older babies, children and young adults.
Children like 14-year-old Ernest Codling, who drowned in the Manawatū River after being thrown from a horse. In the records, he is detailed simply as ‘‘Codling 26/10/1890’’.
Many of the young adults buried in the reserve were labourers, farm workers or domestic servants who could not afford to buy plots or were immigrants with no family.
At the turn of the 20th century, workplace accidents were common. On October
5, 1895, Arnold Edward
Farland, 19, was killed in Pohangina when he was struck in the head with a tree branch that he was felling.
In February 1896, 22-year old James Moran died when his arm became trapped in machinery at a hemp mill. Domestic servant Mary Jane Brown, 22, died on September 4, 1900 in Ōtaki Hospital, suggesting just how far afield some deceased were transported.
One of the “poor persons’’ crammed into this space is my own fourth great-grandfather and Norwegian settler, Thosten Larsen.
Thosten died in his 50s of heart disease on November 18, 1890 – far from his central Hawke’s Bay home. He was likely in Palmerston North, seeking work with his son Edward.
His family have lovely plots in small cemeteries in Makaretu and Ashley Clinton. Sadly, the cost and logistics of taking Thosten home would have made that impossible, and he is somewhere in Public Reserve Number 1.
Some of those buried in the reserve were remembered by family in later years. George Ernest Davey, 19, drowned in Awapuni Lake on January 14, 1894. He got into trouble while swimming with his brothers William and Samuel.
He was buried somewhere in Public Reserve Number 1. When William died in 1943, he chose to be buried in the reserve in a clearly marked plot.
Along with the names of William and later his wife, the family commemorated the death of George by adding his name to the headstone. This is one of the few headstones located in the reserve.
The people crammed into Public Reserve Number 1 came from all over the district. Deceased from Ashhurst, Pohangina, Longburn, Woodville, were brought to be buried here.
However, not all citizens believed it was right to treat those who could not afford burials in this way.
In the Manawatū Standard of January 5, 1901, former Palmerston North Cemetery caretaker Nils Person explained: “I say fearlessly that it is scandalous of any management to allow the dead to be huddled together without any reasonable trace of their whereabouts whatever, as has been the case here from the very first in the original part of the Palmerston cemetery.”
Smaller, closeknit communities with familial ties had different views of the care of their citizens.
Ashhurst lobbied for several years for its own cemetery, where the town could inter all people in surveyed, numbered plots.
Nils Person offered his services to help lay out the cemetery. He poetically explained: ‘’As we all aim for the one noble and grand goal, Eternal bliss, so let us blend together our mortal remains in death, so that the poor as well as the rich may swell in mother earth on one common level.’’
On August 8, 1901, George Scott was the first person to be buried in the new Ashhurst cemetery.
When Kelvin Grove Cemetery opened in 1927, the Public Reserves were no longer used for people who could not afford burials.
However, stillborn babies and babies who died shortly after death continued to be buried in Public Reserve Number 1 until 1960. Some of those babies are remembered with memorials on the curb of the reserve.
In the future, perhaps the city council could mark the resting place of the 2000 people buried in Public Reserve Number 1, so that they are no longer lost ‘‘poor persons’’.