1875: Jackson Bay

Historians are fortunate for a brief break in the government of the Continuous Ministry which Julius Vogel usually headed. George Grey left his retirement on Kawau Island and succeeded in becoming Prime Minister for a spell to derail the misguided Vogel Boomers. It was during this time, in 1879, that at Royal Commission conducted hearings and wrote a damning report full of details about the Jackson Bay debacle. Whereas the Mangatapu Murderers were hanged, the Jackson Three escaped unpunished. However, they probably had to expend some political capital to achieve that result!

As a record of human foolishness, “of petty jealousies and back-biting of a small and isolated settlement, there is little to equal it in New Zealand historical documents” Ref. p1180, NZH (1971) Entire script is online at Papers Past. James Bonar defends himself, saying that immigrants were pouring into New Zealand and he was simply trying to facilitate the influx. It is recognised that the ‘settlers’ were “only a lot of paupers” or “certificated scum” as John Hall said in the House. Not only did they not speak English, the groups didn’t speak the same language as one another. At least the polyglot of Babylon had a tower to keep their feet dry!

“They arrived with hope, fuelled by the promises of the government’s advertising pamphlet. They left, often destitute, their efforts thwarted more by an unpredictable and unreliable bureaucracy than anything the terrain or climate threw at them.” – Barbara Scrivens, Polish History NZ

“Many of the settlers from Poland, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Scandinavia and other places, had left hostile homelands looking for a better life.” – Marjorie Cook, Grey Star (28/12/2004)

“Their dreams and aspirations turned into nightmares. They would have had no idea they would be dropped far from civilisation and would need to contend with the most atrocious of rainforest environments. They quickly discovered the government of the time was not following through on promises of payment and had pretty much abandoned them to their own devices. Poverty stricken and ill-equipped for the task of building a settlement in a sandfly swamp, some resorted to dressing in sugar bags, starvation was common, and health care did not exist. Settlers drowned in the sea and rivers, died at birth or giving birth, or were felled by all manner of disasters and illnesses.” – ibid

“Italians were recruited around Leghorn by resident Englishman John Glyn, a restaurant manager and theatrical agent there. He signed up 230 sculptors, locksmiths, cabmen, porters, clerks, waiters, telegraphists and organ grinders under false pretenses..” – p102 McGill (1982)

“..the Government communicated with me relative to sending some Italians, who had, I believe, been several months in the Immigration Barracks in Wellington, unable to find employment. When first communicated with, I replied that I did not consider the Italians would make suitable settlers in a new bush settlement such as this, but the Government decided to send three of the Italians themselves to the Bay to report on the settlement to their countrymen.” – James Bonar, Jackson’s Bay Royal Commission, AJHR (1879)

“Further particulars are in a letter. Negotiations were opened by myself, shortly after being elected Superintendent, at a time when a large number of immigrants were pouring into the colony, and the Government considered it desirable to establish settlements as outlets for influx of population. ” – ibid

“…800 Venetian families on his hands after another settlement scheme had fallen through. He offered them to the New Zealand Government as ‘skilful agriculturalists’…Government sent them to Jackson’s Bay..to grow grapes and mulberry trees in a swampy, sodden forest.” – McGill (1982)

The Jackson Three threw the migrants under the bus in the 1879 report which was most unfair. A kinder way of saying it from the report was that “Exceptionally bad seasons have been experienced, and a class of men not adapted for the class of settlement was sent in the first instance.” The immigrants did resemble the Hoopleheads in 1870s Deadwood (2004) or the Europeans on the wagon train to Oregon in 1883 (2001) and came from a Europe in crisis. Rather than offer empathy, or even sympathy, our politicians exploited the miserable for what they could get out of them.

The local public believed in the immigration scams and Vogel’s Ministry had to keep up the pretense throughout the election year of 1875 by pumping people and money to Jackson Bay. The desperate Europeans believed what they had been told by their local agents that New Zealand wanted them and they could do well here even though our economic ship was really sinking. Think of the poor Italian artisans (eg telegraphists, locksmiths) and service industry professionals (eg waiters, cab drivers) who were scammed into coming only to be sent into government hard labour camps in the wilderness. Then, the Jackson Three denigrated the poor sods by saying they were “a burden upon the country” and “not fitted for the hard work required.”

The Jackson Bay Debacle actually out-lasted the Province that created it. James Bonar’s Westland, despite complicity in Central Government’s voodoo economic plan, was abolished by Vogel having only existed between 1873 and 1876. The Jackson Bay Gulag started in 1875 and was abandoned after 1880.

The Dreamers’ idea was that the first intake would know how to pioneer and lead those to follow yet this was never implemented. Nor was the requirement of a sawmill or wharf which might have created an economic basis for the ‘town’ rather than a Commisar Macfarlane’s penal colony. However, even this dream was up against the reality of an economic depression in the timber trade. And, perhaps, anti-competitive behavior from Hokitika that did not want their own business or communications to Australia compromised. Westland had created the Jackson Bay colony to dispose of unwanted guests not to share their cake. The would-be settlers wanted a church, instead they got a gaol.

Toward the end the victims were catching on to the scam. In 1876 Polish migrants on Shakespeare were quarantined at Somes Island (Wellington) apparently for disease. However, at this point don’t we know the government well enough yet to suspect it was because they didn’t know where else to put the “influx?”  Next these Poles were sent to Hokitika but transferred to James Bonar’s Waipara without even a chance to set foot on New Zealand soil. A witness said “women and children were crying and wishing to go on shore” but were not allowed. A few lies later about where they were going (‘just another part of the province’) and what they were going to get (’50 acres of land waiting for each of you’) they were off. But, upon arrival, they finally met someone in New Zealand who would tell them the truth- their fellow countrymen who had preceded them! The earlier intake “spoke to us, and said there was no doctor, and that they could not do more than pay for their provisions. […] It was impossible to live there […] those who were working there gave it a bad name – that everything was very dear, and that they must live like wild beasts. […] When we got there we saw that it was not good for us. We expected to see a town or a village, and, on account of not seeing one, we got frightened.” The Shakespeare Poles turned the ship around and got out of there. Ref. Ofsoski Family History, West Coast Times (1876,) Papers Past

Government history doesn’t tell stories about government failures which, of course, leaves a very large part of our history untold. Most of the Jackson Bay history comes across in a sanitised tone of hard-working ancestors who did it tough etc etc with “difficulties” etc etc. In fact it was a horror show of human misery and the fruits of the unethical Jackson Three. Because of the Grey Ministry’s Royal Commission we know about this one. However, there are plenty of other episodes of the Provinces buckling under the weight that Vogel carelessly flooded the country with when it could least afford to bare it. For history and justice these stories from all over New Zealand need to be told too.

The Government History of Jackson’s Bay (a confusion of Aristotelian Causes) is something like: ‘The Government decided to start a settlement at the Bay but it didn’t work out..‘ The true history is that the government decided to fix a surplus-people problem they had created by disposing of people into the wilderness and in this it succeeded just fine.

At some point we must learn, as I hope the Anarchist History of New Zealand is showing, that we must find another way to live that doesn’t include The State.

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Image ref. Monument, Kathryn Bennie (2020)

However the Jackson Three, the men behind the travesty, also ripped off and devastated or indirectly killed

Ref. The Other New Zealanders, David McGill (1982)

Ref. New Zealand’s Heritage (1971)

Ref. Consultants/bureaucrats evidently made bank out of Jackson’s Bay too. Crown Lands Department – Jackson’s Bay settlement, Archives NZ