The dead tell tales

Historian Lyn Williams revisits a Raglan tragedy.

Tom surfaced. Tom was exhausted. He said he gave himself up for lost, just floating as the waves washed over him.

The others were clinging to the upturned boat. Gertrude wrote that Ernie grabbed Willie, Arthur grabbed little Winnie (the youngest) and each held on by one hand to the boat. Gertrude herself ‘‘was only saved by a hairbreadth’’. Tom was pulled nearly dead into Dick Philps’ boat and taken to Gilmour’s boarding house. There, after being treated with brandy, bottles of hot water and continual rubbing, he was brought round.

Minnie’s body was recovered the next day, ‘‘happily not disfigured’’. She was the daughter of Charles Laver, an Auckland contractor. Travel being what it was, he arrived too late for the funeral – it was deemed necessary for Minnie to be buried promptly. Edith’s body was not found.

Tom wrote: ‘‘It has cast a gloom over us all, and the holidays [if such they may be called], will pass like years of pain . . . . All is now blasted by this fearful blow . . . . Edith was always a quiet, unobtrusive child, and as she lived, she died.’’

Winifred (Winnie) survived that incident, but 11 years later she suffered a bizarre accident. On February 16, 1892, she was up a tree trying to catch a chook when the branch she was standing on broke. She fell and was impaled through her abdomen by a branch. Dr Kenny of Hamilton found that the branch had entered her peritoneal cavity, ‘‘setting up dangerous peritonitis’’. The 14-yearold died two weeks later. She was buried in Raglan Cemetery marked with the headstone in memory of her sister Edith and Minnie Laver.

Edith and Winifred were granddaughters of Rev James and Mary Ann Wallis, missionaries in Raglan from 1835. To commemorate the 180th anniversary of the missionaries’ arrival, the Union Church at Raglan is planning a special service near the end of April.