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The First Warden of the Te Aroha Mining District HARRY KENRICK: THE FIRST WARDEN OF THE TE AROHA MINING DISTRICT Philip Hart Te Aroha Mining District Working Papers No. 52 Revised on February 16, 2021 Historical Research Unit Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences The University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 Hamilton, New Zealand ISSN: 2463-6266 © 2016 Philip Hart Contact: [email protected] 1 HARRY KENRICK: THE FIRST WARDEN OF THE TE AROHA MINING DISTRICT Abstract: Because of his improvident father, Harry Kenrick left England for the Victorian goldfields before moving to the South Island of New Zealand. In 1865, he settled in the West Coast to begin a lifetime career of working for the government. In addition to his official duties, he was involved in mining and assisted to develop the district, becoming involved in disputes that foreshadowed his experiences at Thames. Appointed as resident magistrate for Poverty Bay in 1877, his work was praised, as it had been on the West Coast, but two years later he was abruptly moved to Thames to become both magistrate and warden after the forced resignation of his predecessor, William Fraser. The latter’s career is examined, as is how his clique hated Kenrick for replacing him; but most residents welcomed a man whose decisions were seen as fair and just. Fraser retained support amongst many in the community, becoming mayor and then a member of parliament, but continued to snipe at Kenrick, supported by a small number of malcontents, who made his life difficult. In his determination to make his subordinates perform their duties satisfactorily, Kenrick provoked conflict with Hugh McIlhone, Inspector of Miners’ Rights, and James Monteith McLaren, Inspector of Mines. They were supported by two prominent Thames residents, Louis Ehrenfried, a brewer and local government politician, and George Nathaniel Brassey, a solicitor, who spent years trying to undermine Kenrick for their own personal advantage. In 1880 and 1885, two petitions to remove him failed miserably, as his reputation both locally and with the government and its officials had risen steadily. Kenrick improved mining regulations and enforced them fairly, as even some who lost cases accepted. At Te Aroha, after some initial criticisms he became popular because of his efforts to be fair to all who came before him in court and his assistance both to mining and to the development of the district. His efforts to assist Maori made him popular with them as well, and when he died, prematurely, he was deeply mourned by both Maori and Pakeha. INTRODUCTION 2 As both mining warden and resident magistrate, Harry Kenrick was one of the most important officials in Hauraki. As would be expected, despite his attempts to be fair to all parties not all his decisions would please everyone, but in his case the partisans of his predecessor made his life unnecessarily stressful. That after his premature death he was widely mourned was a tribute both to his success and to his personality. HIS LIFE BEFORE BEING POSTED TO THAMES Harry Kenrick was born in or about 1834 (civil registration did not start until 1837), in Southwark, Surrey, to Richard Kyffyn Kenrick, of Nant-y-clwyd Hall (otherwise Nantclwyd or Nant Clwyd), in the vale of Nangollen, Denbighshire, North Wales, and Mary Robinson Bromley, of Deptford, in Kent.1 He was reputedly ‘well-educated’.2 His father experienced considerable financial difficulties, ‘owing to gambling debts and extravagance’, and bailiffs were ‘frequent visitors sometimes received with firearms, or again with friendly chaff, when a stream, the boundary between two counties, protected the object of their search’. Subsequently, he fled Wales to live in a series of English hotels.3 Family tradition believes that he lost £100,000 by betting on a losing horse in the Derby,4 a belief supported by his being committed to a debtor’s prison in London in 1830, six years after inheriting his father’s estate, with debts amounting to £113,000.5 Five years later he was committed to prison again for miscellaneous debts of £16,266 5s 4d, and was not discharged as a bankrupt and released from prison until 1843.6 While he was in the debtors’ prison, according to a contemporary scandal sheet he (with the assistance of 1 http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/woore.html; Death Certificate of Harry Kenrick, 31 July 1886, 1886/3468, BDM; family tree devised by Robert Harry Kenrick Christie, n.d., Malcolm Christie Collection; Grey River Argus, 9 December 1871, p. 2; Te Aroha News, 21 March 1932, p. 5. 2 D.N. Hawkins, Beyond the Waimakariri: A regional history (Christchurch, 1957), p. 178. 3 Recorded on family tree devised by Robert Harry Kenrick Christie, n.d., Malcolm Christie Collection. 4 David Bowman to Philip Hart, 24 August 2017, email. 5 The Times, 17 May 1843, p. 8; extracts provided by David Bowman. 6 Queen’s Bench Prison, Southwark, London, Census of England, 1841, ancestry.co.uk; London Gazette, 25 April 1843, p. 1384; Margaret Blount to Philip Hart, 7 October 2011, email; David Bowman to Philip Hart, 8 November 2011, 24 August 2017, emails. 3 another ‘outrageous villain’, fleeced ‘hundreds and hundreds of uninitiated young men’.7 As for his private life, he had ‘exercised more discretion in his amour with the turnkey’s daughter’.8 In 1842, his father sold Nant-y-clwyd Hall (raising £57,000 to meet some of his debts), and in September 1852 the family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, on the ‘Thomas Lowrie’ and went straight to the Bendigo diggings.9 It seems that Kenrick’s mother returned to London in January 1853 and that her husband returned in July 1855. That their marriage was in tatters was revealed, by 1857, by Richard successfully suing a man for committing ‘criminal conversation’, meaning adultery, with his wife. Richard would die, three years later, of cirrhosis of the liver; in reaction to his behaviour, the next two generations avoided strong drink.10 Kenrick lived his life in deliberate contrast to his father’s in every way. Kenrick had ‘some success’ as a gold miner in Victoria, and his ‘eventful’ life there ‘included participation in the Eureka Stockade affair’.11 His descendants believed he was a friend of Peter Lalor, the main leader of the rebellious miners,12 meaning that he supported those fighting the government. ‘After varied experiences in the pursuit of the precious metal for about three years, he resolved upon leaving Australia and returned to England’,13 presumably with his parents, for his father would prosecute his wife for adultery in 1857 and die in London in 1860, where his mother remarried six years later.14 7 ‘The Queen’s Bench Prison’, The New Satirist, 21 November 1841, p. 4; extract provided by David Bowman. 8 ‘The Queen’s Prison’, The New Satirist, 3 July 1842, p. 215; extract provided by David Bowman. 9 http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/woore.html; Hawkins, p. 178; ‘Unassisted Shipping’, Victoria Index, Public Record Office, Victoria, information provided in Robert Ashley to , 18 June 2005, email; Margaret Blount to Philip Hart, 22 May 2008, email; David Bowman to Philip Hart, 24 August 2017, email. 10 David Bowman to Philip Hart, 24 August 2017, email. 11 Thames Advertiser, 2 August 1886, p. 2; Hawkins, p. 178. 12 Evelyn Walker to Mollie Christie, November 1990, Malcolm Christie Papers. 13 Te Aroha News, 21 August 1886, Supplement, p. 3. 14 http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/woore.html; Mary Blount to Philip Hart, 5 October 2011, 7 October 2011, emails; Reynolds Newspaper, 8 February 1857, cited in http://www.wbcollyer.org/. 4 After two years in England, Kenrick arrived on the ‘Westminster’ in Canterbury, New Zealand, in January 1858, and immediately enquired, with other passengers, about milling timber at Rangiora.15 With one partner, he acquired the Rangiora sawmill in 1859, and with another partner moved it to Oxford to be the first sawmill working the Harewood Forest (later East Oxford) from April 1860 onwards.16 They had already purchased 390 acres of bush.17 His partner handled the office work, Kenrick the mill; all the cutting rights to the Harewood Forest were in his name.18 In 1891, one of the first mill workers recalled working in Kenrick’s mill: When I arrived in Oxford the first mill was getting ready to start. The wages were 7/- a day, which we sometimes got, but the price of necessities was 50 per cent above present rates. I have a keen recollection of a venerable and respected resident bringing us our weekly supply of mutton in a dray drawn by ‘Whiskey,” a bullock who has long since gone the way of all beef. We paid for the mutton 7d a pound. Bread you could either bake or go without, while other stores had to be procured either from Rangiora or from West Oxford, where there was a sort of store where the prices were double what they are now, and the quality worse.19 According to an obituary, ‘in the end the speculation turned out unprofitable’.20 Their selling unseasoned timber for telegraph poles made officials ‘loath to deal with them again’.21 In March 1863 Kenrick ended his partnership,22 and transferred his interest to a brother (another Richard Kyffen Kenrick),23 a carter who had arrived from Australia in 1862 and had been transporting logs for him; ‘a racing and gambling man’, Richard went 15 Death Certificate of Harry Kenrick, 31 July 1886, 1886/3468, BDM; D.N. Hawkins, Rangiora: The passing years and people in a Canterbury country town (Rangiora, 1983), p. 91. 16 Advertisement, Lyttleton Times, 18 April 1869, p.
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