1906: Capture of Lionel Terry
The escape and capture of Lionel Terry was a big story in 1906.
‘‘Lionel Terry, who escaped from the Sunnyside Mental Hospital on Saturday, was recognised at Sheffield yesterday, and was captured by Constable Dillon, early in the evening, after a great struggle,’’ The Press reported on September 26, 1906.
‘‘A man answering Terry’s description had passed through West Melton the previous day, and indications point to the fact that the escapee was making his way over to the West Coast.’’
The Press reminded readers of the background a day earlier:
‘‘Terry was the central figure in a shooting affair in Haining Street, Wellington, almost exactly a year ago, when an old Chinaman named Joe Kum Yung received two bullet wounds and was killed.
‘‘Terry violently objected to the admission of Asiatics into English countries, and wrote a book, entitled ‘The Shadow’, in which he set out his views, and appealed to the nation to rid itself of the foreign evil. It was in order to call attention to the Yellow Peril and to his book that he picked out a Chinaman in Wellington, followed him, and deliberately shot him.
‘‘Terry gave himself up to the police, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to one of imprisonment for life, and as he was considered to be insane he was removed from the gaol to the Sunnyside Mental Hospital.’’
He was moved to the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum near Dunedin a year later, but escaped again, and was shifted to Lyttelton Gaol. The Press reported in 1908 that ‘‘people living in the neighbourhood of Lyttelton Gaol have been disturbed almost every night by a series of wild yells and screams’’ and that ‘‘the cause of the trouble is Lionel Terry’’.
He was taken to Sunnyside again, and then back to Seacliff, where he died in 1952, aged 79.
160 Years is a series marking the launch of The
Press newspaper in Christchurch on May 25, 1861.