1840s: Bad Boy Adventures in New Zealand
June 25, 2019
By AHNZ
Jerningham Wakefield (1820-1879) born 199 years ago on this day in history, 25 June, 1820.
His mother did not survive the birth, leaving Edward Gibbon Wakefield the surviving parent. So he never really stood much chance at a happy life.
By the age of 7, JW visited his father who was locked up for attempted abduction of a schoolgirl heiress to a wealthy silk baron. The controlling father, EGW, used JW as a secretary before dispatching him to help colonise New Zealand in 1839.
So, JW’s early 20s were spent being the party boy of the colony. For 4 years he wouldn’t go home. Instead; nude hotpooling in Taupo, singing haka and waiatas, and debauching scores of women. Uncle William couldn’t check JW but in 1844 Governor Fitzroy publicly insulted and reprimanded the young man. JW returned to England immediately.
Back home, the rebellious son continues his bad ‘colonial habits’ in London society. For a time, being his own man was still a prospect. JW had published Adventures in New Zealand which was a popular smash filled with details especially useful to New Zealand Company political endeavours. I scoured JW’s sketchy London Journal written of these times and it amounts to this:
‘Adventures in London of a man-about-town while he publishes his Nz diary, hobnobs about in society, descends into bankruptcy, and then skedaddles back to NZ’.
No intimate diary taking us into JW’s confidence, just scatter-shot notes sufficient for himself. I found none of the insights I’d hoped would illuminate JW’s relationship with EGW or the redemption that publishing Adventures could have brought him.
1849, EGW sends JW again to New Zealand, perhaps against his will. This time with the Godleys to make Christchurch ready for the pilgrims.
When national politics gets off the ground, JW is one of the first Members of the 1st Parliament as is his father. Now in his 30s he’s the epitome of ‘Failure to Launch’, he never made good in life and depends on addiction to the bottle to sustain him. His political position wasn’t won by him but given to him by the string-pullers who simply used JW as the hacky sack he was groomed to be.
For another term in 1871, old JW was rolled out again to make up the numbers. There’s no way he won his Christchuch seat fair and square or by his own talents. In Parliament, JW would be locked inside the committee room to keep him under control and sober. Just a walking, slurring, vote for Vogal/Fox in the House who was led along to do as he was told when the Division Bell rang. That’s all they needed and all he was to them.
This Vogal/Fox Ministry fell to Stafford when JW was able to be turned. Stafford’s whip lowered a bottle of whiskey down the chimney to JW (in his cage, adjoining the corridors of power) and struck a deal. Paralytic at the time, the drunk voted with Stafford who would become New Zealand’s next Premier (Prime Minister.)
Stafford’s first marriage had been to Jerningham’s cousin, Emily. She was born during the time when their fathers, EGW and William, were locked up for the kidnapping. So she didn’t have a good supportive family either and dies without children. We could say that Stafford had exploited both Wakefields.
Jerningham failed to keep his seat in the 1875 election so for about 3 years he dwindled, discarded. In early 1879, 58yo, JW dies at the Old Men’s Home in Ashburton. Perhaps too poor to join the family plot in Bolton Street, Wellington, JR shares a headstone in Ashburton with some 200 other names.
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Image ref. Edward Jerningham Wakefield, Alexander Turnbull Library; Tidied up by AHNZ, June 2019
Image ref. Hacky Sack, a modern version of what Jerningham was to powerbrokers of his day
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