Days of future past
Today the legal system accommodates the appeals of Stewart Murray Wilson, the socalled ‘Beast of Blenheim’, convicted in October of historic sex crimes.
In earlier eras the treatment meted out to defilers of children was less forgiving.
In July of 1880 William Hollman Curnow, aged 45, and described as a ‘‘respectable looking man’’, appeared before the Supreme Court charged with the rape of nine year old Mary Elizabeth Ferguson. A gold miner from Thames, Curnow was recently returned from Australia when he commenced living with the Ferguson family on the Manukau harbour. He offered to take Mary back with him to Thames to further her schooling. Her father suspected no darker motive.
On the first night of the trip, Curnow took two rooms in a hotel on Auckland’s Victoria St, one for himself and one for Mary.
In the middle of the night, he ventured from his own bed to that of the child’s. Having taken the steamer to Thames in the morning, the same indecency occurred the following evening at the Wharf Hotel, Grahamstown.
On the third evening Curnow got drunk. Arriving at the house of Mrs Richards in the wee hours, he aroused suspicion. Mary was crying and obviously distraught. Mrs Richards, not believing that he was her father, took the child in but dismissed the defiler. The police were contacted. A medical examination proved Mary’s story beyond doubt.
Curnow pleaded not guilty. He attempted to argue that his victim’s race was relevant to his crime, stating ‘‘the child was a half-caste . . . and had been very early corrupted by commerce with other half caste and Maori children’’.
The jury deliberated for a mere half hour. Expressing his fear that such crimes were ‘‘too common in this colony’’, the judge sentenced Curnow to ten years imprisonment and that he be ‘‘twice privately whipped, receiving at each whipping twenty five strokes with the instrument commonly called the cat-o’-nine-tails’’.
The administration of this punishment made headlines. Whoever was charged was the responsibility did so with righteous vigour. Curnow’s injuries were such that he had to be assisted to the prison hospital.