1841: Auckland’s First Gaol

April 16, 2023

By AHNZ

Tonight in New Zealand history, 16 April 1842, Sheriff James Coates and his Head Gaoler George McElwain made a special journey to work by lantern light specifically to contemplate the “Feculent Hovel” they presided over: Auckland’s first jailhouse. As with everything the Government touches things had already gone to hell and they were only just getting started. Governor Hobson had officially taken up residence in Auckland barely 1 year before after selecting it as the new Colonial capital the month before that.

So, it had only taken 12 months for unclean and unventilated Auckland Gaol to be bursting full with violent and deranged inmates. Coates recorded that  “the number of prisoners confined in so small a space renders it inoperative…On Wednesday next I anticipate the introduction of 20-25 debtors, where I am to place them I cannot possibly imagine.” Ref. Derby and Tie (2017)

The Anarchist History explanation for why the Crown Colony of New Zealand were so bad at ‘Corrections’ is that few other in the Empire did either.  The traditional way of solving a People Problem like crime was to Transport convicts to the other side of the world to places like Jamaica (where Sheriff Coates was born, actually) or the or Virginia in the American Colonies. After the American Revolution closed off that pipeline the British ‘crook’  was flushed off to places like Botany Bay, Rottnest Island, and Van Diemen’s Land; Australia. It was a growing social problem because the Industrial Revolution had urbanised the population which created a new, large, concentrated criminal element that never existed in the agrarian villages of Merrie England. Why learn how to solve your problems when you can exile them? But how can you exile your problems to the other side of the world when you ARE already living on the other side of the world? This is, I think, what led to the Victorian Colonials massive priority in building nuthouses to exile the people they identified as ‘mad’ but could not kill. 

Sheriff James Coates of New Zealand was not the first man in his office to confront such squalor. Sheriff John Howard of Bedfordshire had responded to the same squalor in the 1770s but unlike so many other sheriffs he did something about it and devoted life to prison reform. New Zealand founded its own Howard League For Penal Reform in the 1920s in Christchurch. Lawyer Peter Williams, QC, called himself the Howard League for Penal Reform, Auckland, until his death after which Labour Party handler Mike Williams picked up that title as one of his lobbyist hats he wears. James Coates’ devotion to the problem consisted of writing a letter to his superior, passing the problem on, so it could be absorbed and ignored by the bureaucratic machine.

“The No. 1 cell, the size of a modest modern-day bathroom, held 14 prisoners. They were not all able to lie down, so a hammock had been strung beneath the low ceiling, further reducing the minimal ventilation.” – Feculent Hovel: Auckland’s first gaol 1841-1865, Mark Derby and Warwick Tie, Counterfutures (2017)

“Prisons had not been invented yet in mid-1700s Britain and their romantic ideals sad it wasn’t OK to punish or hang the growing numbers of criminal offenders. So, Transportation was the answer and away the convicts were sent to places like Virginia. After the American colonies revolted in the 1760s Britain had to re-divert the plumbing again and use locations in Australia starting with Botany Bay.” – 2015: Section 501 Transportation, AHNZ

“Victorian’s tendency to declare people who didn’t think like themselves mad and lock them away. New Zealand had lunatic asylums long before much of the needed infrastructure you’d expect to have been top priority. Tells you something about them.” – 1863: Butlerian Jihad on Victorian Schooling, AHNZ

“Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum was the first mental asylum to be built in Christchurch. It lasted from 1863 to 1999. As you can see it was huge and a huge priority. An even greater priority project and on greater scale than building Christchurch Cathedral itself.” – AHNZ, Facebook (2021)

“The Courthouse and gaol were then at the junction of Victoria and Queen-street, on the west side; the hill in front was all fern and scrub. Willie Hobson, tho Governor”) son, and mysolf often went down and gob Mr. McElwain, the gaoler, to let us in to see Maketu, a young Maori, who was convicted of murdering…He had amused himself by covering the walls of the cell with drawings of canoes, men, and horses. He was the first man hanged in Auckland, and buried in the gaol yard. In front of the Courthouse there were a pair of stocks. It was a common sight to see one or two men sitting with their feet in them.” – Kaumatua, New Zealand Herald (1897,) Papers Past

“Only one year after the gaol was built, it was overcrowded with 14 men in a damp, rat-infested cell measuring 11 feet x 11 feet. The courthouse opened in February 1842 but the building was poorly constructed: it leaked after a few years, had broken windows, and hay on the floor, but was not closed down until 1864.  A new gaol facility was built in Mt Eden in 1856 and the last of the prisoners left Queen Street site in 1865.” – Auckland Museum

The location of Auckland’s first jail was the corner of Queen and Victoria streets. It backed on to tidal mudflats and scrub which became future slumlands before being ultimately transformed about half a century later by Arthur Myers into today’s Myer’s Park. Ref. 1910: Grafton Bridge

Back then, before reclamation projects, the jail was situated on an undesirable damp valley not 200 meters from shore. The open sewer it backed onto, the Ligar Canal, made inmates sick and even overflowed and flooded them from time to time. Such was demand that inmates were already being pumped into it before ever it had a roof! It must already have been brimming full on 7 March, 1842, when young Maori murderer Maketu Wharetotara was hanged; New Zealand’s first execution. His body, like many to come, was buried in the prison yard. His execution was performed on site just along from the public gallows (see image, top.)

By the 1970s the site had become the location of the Air New Zealand booking office and a descriptive plaque then marked the site of the old stocks and gaol. Ref. Auckland Libraries card index, 1970s

In the 1980s buildings on that site came down to make way for the then National Bank Centre that is now an ANZ branch (image, left.) Archaeologists had a chance to take a look but according to this post from Auckland Museum nothing of great interest was found of the jail days. There aren’t even any skeletons under the bank now.

Auckland’s Gaol was replaced by Mt Eden Prison which was an improvement but also another chapter in New Zealand’s poor record of prison history.

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Image ref. Edward Bartley, Weekly Graphic, New Zealand Herald (c.1850,) Auckland Libraries; Colorised by AHNZ (2023)

Image ref. ANZ, 205 Queen Street. Mark Scowen, ascarchitects.co.nz

See also. 2007: Otago Correctional Facility, AHNZ

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