1866: Mangatapu Murders
June 11, 2019
By AHNZ
Today in history: 12 June..
The 1866 Mangatapu Murders have been a controversial subject since they happened. Usually I’d venture an opinion about what really happened but it all seems too circumstantial and endlessly trawled over that my enthusiasm isn’t rising to it.
“Now a Christchurch author controversially says his research indicates the Supreme Court jury got it wrong.”
Well, if they did, it seems to be a case of making a show of police and judicial power rather than justice. A ‘noble lie’ object lesson to demonstrate to the young colony that law and order were firmly in place. Perhaps new Premier Stafford, of Nelson, the jurisdiction in which the convicted were executed, had been enjoying Plato’s Republic?
That’s the line of thought that tempts me to look at John Rosanowski’s new book. If true, the conspiracy seems to have been brewing for at least a month before the murders because the newspapers reported that, “Several robberies have been committed here, and it is feared that many desperate characters have come over from Sydney.”
‘Reviewer’ Martin Johnson offers¹ this…
“The Burgess gang, all Londoners, were New Zealand’s version of Australian bush ranger Ned Kelly.”
Well that’s history for dumb people isn’t it?
Kelly was part of a family molested by police until he cracked and fought back like the plot of some Charles Bronson film. The Burgess lot swept in to New Zealand like the evil zombie Pirates of the Caribbean (after Geoffrey Rush gets the captaincy in the first film.) But for them there’s no Jack Sparrow, and Will Turner/George Dobson gets strangled in his very first scene…
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Note: The Mangatapu Murders occured on 12 and 13 June 1866. The culprits had already killed, George Dobson their first victim on 28 May 1866
Note: John Rosanowski visited and commented on Anarchist History of NZ a few times. I wondered if he was related to my old classics teacher but he didn’t want to say.
1 Two innocent men wrongly executed for notorious Maungatapu murders, author claims; NZ Herald (2017)
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