1892: The Doctor of No Town

August 5, 2022

By AHNZ

Today in history, Friday 5 August, 1892, Dr John Henry Grattan died in a converted chicken coup aged 48 in accordance with his wishes. He had been an essential public figure and the doctor of No Town and the surrounding area. This Grey Valley town thrived for a generation or so while the gold lasted but by the turn of the century it was well on the way to being another West Coast Ghost Town.

No Town had its own band, pubs, hotels, shops, houses, courthouse. It had a cordial manufacturing plant and a brewery, and a mapped out set of streets and houses. Ref. F.E. Sewell (1880,) National Library of New Zealand.

There was a church imported from Auckland and floated up they Grey river to be constructed at No Town which would have been visible in this photo (left) in the past. The building was saved and preserved at Shantytown. We have a photo of the old school and according to a No Town local I met the land is still owned by the Ministry of Education. What’s left now is the cemetery (image, left) on the hill on the other side of No Town Creek (Twelve Mile Creek) from where the township once stood.

Doctor Grattan served on that school board. He even ran for Grey County Council for his Riding one time but received no votes¹. He healed the miners when they were sick, amputated their limbs when they were damaged beyond repair, and he brought the children of his district into the world by helping mothers in their home birth delivery. Gratten was a “gentleman and an intellectual,” well-lettered and essential to the thriving of his chosen community for 25 years. However, Henry had been groomed for much greater things before being expelled from Ireland in his youth. Why?

Grattan’s family were Irish ruling class. His father a chemist and the nephew of the great Irish independence patriot Henry Grattan. He grew up at the mansion estate with his cousins who would grow up to be powerful Irish political elites.  He was educated at Dublin University, a physician, surrounded with references and named-things in honor of his famous grand-uncle. The pressure must have been great and in those days the family name was everything. Henry did something wrong. Drink? Women?

“The significant number of suicides and drink related crimes among Remittance Men suggests a tough existence for which their privileged backgrounds had not prepared them . Drink, whether an existing addiction or a new-found solution to their predicament, was the cause of many a downfall. New Zealand’s Remittance Men, as their counterparts in other British colonies, ‘represented the utter failure of elite masculinity to function in the modern world’” – ‘Whither Shall I Send My Son?’: Remittance Men in New Zealand, Helen Leggatt (2018,) University of Canterbury

“Unfortunately, Dr Grattan had a drinking problem which was to degrade him until he was found dead in a converted fowlhouse – his home!…Gillin had frequently pleaded with him to stay with them or go to hopsital, his reply was always the same: ‘No thank you; word will go back home (to Ireland) that death occured at the Doctor’s own home at No Town so that my family will assume that I had a home of my own.’ He wanted to spare them the knowledge of his poverty, for, as he said: ‘I’ve disgraced them enough; let them be spared of this final one.'” – p183, Women of Westland (1998)

“Once more it falls to my lot to have to record the unexpected death of an old and respected resident, John Henry Grattan, though more widly known as Dr Grattan, who passed away about 6pm on Friday evening after a lingering illness at his residence, in the presence of Messrs Gillin and Clifford. Deceased came to No Town from Reefton more than 20 years ago and he remained In the district since. He took a lively interest In all its affairs and his usefulness as a medical man, and his many acts of kindness, raised him in the estimation of all the people to an eminent degree ; but, like many others who have gone to their long home, the full extent of his usefulness was not realised until his decease. He will be greatly missed. After his death, the body was taken to Mr McCatthy’s Union Hotel,…” – Grey River Argus (1892,) Papers Past

No Town’s first doctor, The Doctor of No Town, once had a clinic of his own down Brunner Parade which was the No Town’s main street. He had an assistant, Mr Hudson, back in the rich days of No Town. His rooms were lost in the fire of 1888 which must have come as a blow to the now-middle aged man who had hitched his fortunes to a declining town.

Though still sharp of wits, active, and appreciated, the doctor now had a growing stigma of being a drunk. His stooped figure and battered doctor’s bag contrasts with the image of Dr Gordon or Dr Denning from The New Adventures of Black Beauty. Grattan walked rough country to help his patients while the televised versions rode marvelous horses (preferably black) and upholstered traps on well-made roads. Gratten wasn’t the TV version he was the real thing: Complete with toxic shame he carried to his grave (image above, right.)

In my opinion 1892 is the year No Town was struck its death blow. Another fire in February that year destroyed the Union Hotel. It’s book of history was destroyed before completion in the previous decade. The hotel fire that destroyed a long line of No Town buildings in 1892 was a major wound for a town that was now running on its last fumes of gold. The fire probably deprived Grattan of his own accommodations and may have even started there. So, he moved on to adapt an old fowl house for accommodation and face the West Coast winter. In sickness, he did not survive it and died 5 August, 1892.

Jeremiah McCarthy made the calculation to start the Union Hotel up again rather than abandon No Town. Like his fellow Irishman doctor, he had hitched his fortunes to the ebbing township and would go down and it went down too. However, No Town was on its way out and its once cheeky name became a prophecy. By the turn of the century, certainly by the 1920s, it was a ghost town. The old town site has since been dredged over for gold. According to the local I met all sorts of china and artifacts came out of the ground of historical interest but were quietly dumped as not to interfere with the mining operation.

“John Flynn… was the unofficial mayor of Red Jacks and was highly thought of. Unfortunately his house burnt down around 83 and was a total loss Including contents and a manuscript for a book he was writing.” – Tony Ring, West Coast South Island History, Facebook (2016)

“..the scene devastated by the raging element, which had a most depressing effect and utterly destroyed the beauty of No Town…The buildings burned were all in a line on one side of what was called the square, and were composed of Mr M’Carthy’s Union Hotel and cottage, Frankpitt’s store, Gillen’s store and butchers shop, and swelling house. All the goods in both Frankpitt and Gillen’s stores were saved, but the fire got hold of the Union Hotel with such rapidity and fierceness that Mr M’Carthy lost everything, including liquors, provisions, bedding, wardrobe, and a billiard table, which is a severe loss Irrespective of his commodious hotel. The remaining portion of the township had a very narrow escape, and would have shared the fate of what was destroyed but for willing hands who have done their best to save It by means of wet blankets, and throwing water on them carried in buckets from No Town creek. The greatest sympathy is felt for those who have lost their property.” – Grey River Argus (Feb 1892,) Papers Past

“Mr J. McCarthy, of No Town, who was burnt out recently, and uninsured, does not intend to succumb to his misfortune — and it was a heavy one to him. He intends to rise or fall with No Town, having bought out Mr Clifford’s public house, where he will corry on business iv future. As Mr M’Oarchy is deservedly popular, no doubt his many old friends will rally round him if it is only out of sympathy for the very bad stroke of hard luck he met with lately. It is to be hoped that Mr McCarthy’s enterprise and faith in the district will be rewarded.” – Grey River Argus (March 1892,) Papers Past

“Jeremiah McCarthys Cordial Manufacturing business at Notown.ca.1870. The stump is the “retail outlet”. The manufacturing occurred in the building behind the stump..” – West Coast History

New Zealand was a popular destination for what are called Remittance Men and Doctor Grattan was one of these in as much as he was exiled by family. He was probably funded initially to help him depart the old country and potentially had a stipend in the early years. Or not. If it had been kept up he may not have died in poverty but that is the drunken fate of very many Remittance Men. With his talents he could have instead been a great New Zealand leader, a statesman. Or an Imperial one. Instead he restricted himself to a cut-down version of himself and devoted himself to No Town. He had no issue and was aligned to a town on which the sun was setting. That compromise, being a dead end, seems to have been one half of a pact with himself that he could live a useful life while at the same time ensuring that it would all come to nothing as not to disturb his Family of Origin back home.

Many Remittance Men ended up a suicide. Grattan found a way to live his individual life that was not suicidal to himself as an organism but he did ensure the suicide his continuity in every other respect. His line would die, he had no children. His efforts to administrate and build and organise would be wasted, No Town was a forlorn hope, a lost cause. The toxic shame traumatising him from his family abroad kept him small so he found a way to be the biggest small man exiled to the back of beyond that his Inner Critic would permit. Whatever spark of Gratten-blood rebelled against this Inner Critic and demanded ambition and freedom was poisoned by alcohol. In the end he died sick and cold in a modified chook house deliberately in order to pacify his idea of a distant family’s hold on him from a lifetime ago.

The fact Grattan is not in an unmarked pauper’s grave is a tribute to the better side to his spirit. Others appreciated him despite his protracted version of a suicide. The Gillins organised his fine headstone by collecting money around the district and others have recorded his story for AHNZ to be able to gather together again 130ys after his last day at No Town.

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1 Grey River Argus (1878,) Papers Past

Image Ref. No Town graveyard, Grattan’s grave AHNZ (2022)

Image Ref. The New Adventures of Black Beauty, IMDb

Image ref. Jeremiah McCarthy’s Cordial Manufacturing business at Notown. c.1870, West Coast History, Facebook (2019)

Ref. Notown.1870s, West Coast History, Facebook (2015)

Ref. Photos of Notown, West Coast History, Facebook (2017)

Note: No Town Cemetary or No Town Graveyard? I can’t make up my mind. It was attached to a church, therefore: graveyard. But the church is gone now so does it become a cemetery?

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