This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content. You can search the text using Ctrl-F, and you can also play the audio by clicking on a desired timestamp.
Yeah. So this is a bit of an update on some research that began in 2004 and is still going, Um, and it was in connection with a radio programme, Um, with Radio New Zealand. So I want to acknowledge, um, Prue Laine, who was an original collaborator on that research. And also, I acknowledge the support from the ministry and the Start Research Centre at Victoria University, where I've been based, Um, for a bit of the time this year, in June 1914, His Majesty's Theatre in hosted a fundraising show for the technical [00:00:30] college bill as grand, polite, Vaud and not entertainment, The evening kicked off with the Jesters Quintet and the comedian Mr Fred Groom Bridge singing his screamingly funny comic songs. Then Professor Mackay the Hypnotist, mental telepathy and ventriloquist presented the big hypnotic show. First up, Professor Mackay and his pal Bill performed their big ventri turn. Then the professor gave a demonstration of the fun making possibilities of hypnotism, supplemented by an interesting exposition of mental [00:01:00] telepathy. Newspaper reports tell us that the professor's subjects were as clay in the hands of a potter and their comical antics, while under the influence kept the audience in continuous laughter. Professor Mackay's real name was Albert Godfrey. I'm not sure, actually, if he was Mackay or Mackay. And while he used hypnosis to entertain on the stage, his day job involved using it to treat functional and nervous disorders from his Ville home several months after the concert. One of those seeking treatment [00:01:30] was Professor Ma uh Mackay's namesake. Charles Mackay, the mayor of the mayor, had been referred by his GP and sought help for homosexual tendencies and began a course of treatment. Presumably, this was private to the two men and very few, if any, others. But it became more widely known six years later, following a sensational shooting on a Saturday afternoon in May 1920. The first reference in the newspapers was the following Monday and a story with a curious headline. [00:02:00] A painful sensation. Young man seriously wounded, Mr CE Mackay under arrest. The young man was Walter Darcy Criswell, a 24 year old returned soldier and writer from Canterbury, visiting his family as well as being Wanganui, then longest serving mayor. Charles Mackay was a 44 year old lawyer and father of three daughters Mickey shot Chris while the two men were arguing in Mackay's office on the right hand side up upper level [00:02:30] of this photo and Cresswell was taken to hospital. And that's about all people knew for several weeks while they waited to see if Cresswell would recover. Very little was reported in the newspapers after Mackay's lawyer requested the papers not publish statements of the affair obtained from outside individuals. Papers beyond whanganui weren't so circumspect. The Poverty Bay Herald described the shooting as the greatest and most painful sensation Whanganui has experienced for some considerable time. But to this day, it's unclear exactly [00:03:00] what did happen in Mackay's office. Once Crewe's condition improved, Mackay's attempted murder charge was confirmed and a trial date was set at the trial. Crewe's version of the events leading up to the shooting emerged in the form of a bedside statement. Unusually, this wasn't signed by Chris Wall, but it was signed by Mackie, and that endorsement at the bottom from Mackie reads. I have read the above statement, and as far as it relates to my own acts and deeds, I admit the statement to be substantially true. [00:03:30] Now, This three page statement describes how Chris will arrived in town on the Monday before the shooting. That day he had dinner with his cousin and Mackay at a local hotel. The three men dined again three days later, and Mackay invited Creswell to visit the sergeant gallery the next afternoon. And here's the Sergeant Gallery in Queens Park, built with a bequest from Henry, a local farmer. The Sergeant Gallery opened in September 1919, and so the construction of such a grand gallery in a provincial centre during [00:04:00] the Great War was a sign of prosperity and status. As the fifth largest town in New Zealand, Mackay was a driving force behind the construction of the gallery, which probably explains why he had a key when he visited with Creswell. No doubt the two men admired the copy of the wrestlers, described by one gay writer as one of New Zealand's top three Homo erotic sculptures. Here it is being admired by the playwright Ronald Nelson. Chris Statement explains what happened next, revealing his role as a provocateur and blackmailer. [00:04:30] So, Chris Will said in a statement. When we left the art gallery, we went to Mr Mackay's office in Ridgeway Street and while there I discovered a certain disgusting feature of Mr Mackay's character. I purposely encouraged him to display his qualities and his nature, which I expected. He also showed me several photographs of nude women on making that discovery. I told him that I had let him on on purpose to make sure of his dirty intentions. And I told him also amongst a lot of other candid things, that he must resign the ty at once. He then pleaded for [00:05:00] mercy and asked me to think over it for the night and come and see him next morning and let him know my decision Now. It's unclear exactly what Chris will did to lead Mackay on what the certain disgusting feature of Mr Mackay's character was and how this was revealed. But the photos of naked women became clear when I visited Berlin in 2007 and met Carl Hein Steinle, who in the right in this photo who's a curator with the museum, the only museum dedicated to the research and publication of homosexual life. Steiner had seen [00:05:30] similar references as a typical way of finding out if someone is gay. The photos could also be used to arouse the other man, which makes sense if he's having, for example, sex for money. Like male prostitutes who may not have identified as homosexual. The Crewe statement brings us to the big mystery hanging over the whole story. How did someone who wasn't even from come to be blackmailing the mayor as I'll explain? My research has shed some light on this, but to continue Crewe's account of what happened in Mackay's office as agreed [00:06:00] Mackey and Chriswell me again. The next day at Mackay's office, Mackay told Chriswell that he was suffering from a complaint, which made it impossible to for him to control his passions and said that his doctor could satisfy Chris Will. In that respect, he rang his doctor, but every time he on two or three occasions. But each time the doctor was out, the pair continued to argue. Before Mackay agreed to write a letter, resigning as mayor in a month, According to Chriswell, he was following Mackay through the door into an adjoining office. So where that where that wall would have been just round about where I'm standing there, [00:06:30] Uh, when Mickey turned around and shot Chris will before placing the gun in the young man's hand to make his surprise, Cresswell got up and pointed the gun at him. So we're looking the other way now in that in that office, Mickey then ran out of the office, and Chris will find he couldn't open the door, threw a chair out of the window and then yelled out at the people on the street below. Mickey then reappeared, asked Chris Will to shoot him. But Chris will fired off the remaining bullets in the gun, and then Chris will then ran out of the office onto that landing there [00:07:00] and ended up on the stairs towards the street as people from outside were coming up about where I am. In that photo, Mackay gave himself up and was held in custody until the trial, which was 12 days later and in the Magistrates Court. Mackay gave no evidence beyond pleading guilty. The court heard statements from Chriswell and the eye witnesses who saw the shooting from the street. The next day was a sentencing hearing in the Supreme Court before the chief justice, Sir Robert Stout. In this trial, we do hear from Mackay via his lawyer's submissions to reduce the sentence. [00:07:30] And these are the submissions that underline my argument for describing Mackay as this country's first homosexual. Mackay's lawyer told the court that his client had been suffering for a number of years from homosexual monomania and that he made efforts to cure himself by consulting doctors and meta physicians. Statements from these experts were produced for the chief justice but not made public at the time. One statement from the GP explained that Mackay came to him six years earlier with reference to homosexual monomania, and he advised him to obtain suggested [00:08:00] treatment and believed he acted on that advice. The second statement is from a G Mackay, the professor I mentioned earlier now calling himself a meta physician. This statement tells us more about what the suggested treatment involved. This is to certify that Mr CE Mackay in August 1914, acting on the advice of his medical advisor, came to see me about treating him for obsessions of homosexual nature. He was in a very worried and depressed frame of mind and said if I could not help him, life would [00:08:30] be impossible. He had treatment intermittently until the end of November 1914. He then stopped the treatment because, he said, the homosexual ideas were gone and he felt quite all right again. In my opinion, intermittent treatments should have been kept up for 12 to 18 months, then the cure would have been permanent. I have treated other cases of homosexual desire with success. The two chief causes of relapse are alcoholism and neurasthenia. For the last two months, we know Mr CE. Mackay has been had great mental strain and worry, and I'm sure if this had not [00:09:00] been so, this trouble would never have come to pass. So there's three words in these statements that help us decode them monomania, meta, physician and neurasthenia. So today, monomania is a general term for just an obsession in psychiatry. It used to mean, uh, describe a form of insanity or mental illness featuring a single pattern of repetitive and intrusive thoughts or actions. So homosexual monomania would have been, I think, seen as a disorder where a person has a person has a tendency [00:09:30] towards homosexuality or, more specifically, what was then called the crime against nature, sodomy or buggery. A meta physician these days is still regarded as an expert in metaphysics, the branch branch of philosophy dealing with the first principles of things here. I think we're dealing with a different, now obsolete definition for a person who practises metaphysical healing. This can refer to a Christian science term for the use of non physical means to cure physical illness. But at the same time, it's important to remember that when Mackay sought his treatment, mental disease [00:10:00] was seen as having a somatic basis being very based in in your body rather than Freudian ideas and things that came later. So what sort of treatments could have been offered by meta physicians? Thanks to papers past the the National Library's website, we can get an idea from looking at advertisements placed by meta physicians, which appear from the late 18 nineties through to the 19 thirties. Among the therapies offered by metaphysics are spiritualism, magnetic suggestion, medical clearance, hypnotic therapeutics and psychometry. [00:10:30] So if we look a bit more closely at Albert Mackay's advertisements in in September 1914 around the time Mackay sought his treatment, we know that Albert Mackay used suggestive therapeutics to treat all functional and nervous disorders. Now, homosexuality isn't among the cases listed but it may have been covered by bad habits of all kinds. And by the following year, in 1915, he added anaemia and asthma to the list. But just as hypnosis is still used, for example, to help people [00:11:00] stop smoking, I suspect that in 1914 it was used, perhaps with auto suggestion techniques to help or to attempt to cure homosexuality. 1916 Albert Mackey starts calling himself a meta physician and relocates to street, which, if you're familiar with it's the Harley Street of Wanganui. His granddaughter remembers him wanting to be a doctor but not being able to afford the training because he had, um, a large number of Children. Despite this, there is evidence he was taken seriously as a health expert. We need to look [00:11:30] a bit more closely at the conditions listed by Albert Mackay in his advertising in the court statement as a cause of homosexual relapse. It's this word neuroth. This is another obsolete term, referring to a bewilderingly broad array of physical and mental symptoms attributed to nervous exhaustion. Bearing this in mind, it's significant that Mackay's lawyer told the court it was a matter of common knowledge that the accused had been suffering considerable mental strain over the last three or five months and that, to a considerable extent, had unhinged his mind. [00:12:00] So the argument is reminiscent of the con, uh, the temporary insanity and provocation defences in a murder trial that we're more familiar with today. The provocation defence has been controversially deployed in cases where a homosexual man has been murdered, and the defendant, through his lawyer, argues that he was provoked by the victims sexual advances and that this justifies a manslaughter sentence or an acquittal. In Mackay's case, there's a curious twist here. You've got the man who inflicted the violence, arguing that his own homosexuality made him temporarily insane, leading him to attempt [00:12:30] to murder the other man. But in 1920 the defence didn't impress the chief justice, who said the attempt on Crewe's life was not an impulsive act. As the placing of the revolver in the young man's hand showed. While accepting the fact of Mackay's sad affliction, Stout said he would have to impose a heavy sentence with the hope that Mackay would try to redeem himself and in the years to come be found clothed in his right mind. He then sentenced Mackay to 15 years hard labour. And so Mackay began a remarkable tour [00:13:00] of North Island prisons. But before we look at that, let's just look a bit more closely at the events leading up to the shooting and why Mackay was under such pressure. Here he is on the top right hand side of this photo, um, at Cook's Gardens, reading the address of Welcome to the Prince of Wales. So that's Edward the eighth, the one who abdicated. Uh, he visited just before the shooting and was still in New Zealand when it happened. Mackay was at the centre of numerous rows trigger triggered by arrangements for the visit. These [00:13:30] arguments lead to death threats against Mackay, and he was apparently carrying a gun at the time of the prince's visit. So how did Mackay's unpopularity in Wanganui connect with Darcy Crewe? Well, we know a bit more about this because of Chris subsequent career as a well known if ambiguous figure in New Zealand literature. The year after the shooting, he returned to England, where he had been studying architecture before the Great War. Now he wanted to write and had a remarkably resilient belief in his ability as a poet. Then, as now, the critics [00:14:00] disagreed. Writing in 2008, John Newton argued that Crewe's efforts can fairly be described as Creswell was deluded in his self belief as a poet, and nothing that he wrote subsequently would alter this impression of his verse. Chris's prose writing was more highly regarded, but none of his works are in print, and his writing hasn't appeared in Anthology since the 19 sixties. After he was shot by Mackey, Chris Will won praise as a wholesome minded young man for his efforts to unmask Mackay's pursuit of what truth called perverted [00:14:30] and putrid pleasures. When it became known that Chris Wool was like Mackay homosexual, the story took a different turn. In addition to the still unexplained circumstances of how and why Cresswell was enlisted to blackmail Mackay, there's also the question posed by the writer Peter Wells. Why would one homosexual man blackmail another Crewe's relationship with Frank Sarge, another homosexual writer, gives us a better idea. In the 19 thirties, Cresswell lived in Auckland and told [00:15:00] Sarge about the shooting Sarge and had been involved in another blackmail court case and also hidden his homosexuality, he told Bill Mitchell, who was a retired school principal, about the shooting. Mitchell, who was from, started researching the story and continued after Sarge's death in 1982. Mitchell wrote up his research, and this is, uh, an unpublished manuscript deposited with the Auckland University and Turnbull libraries. As part of his research, Mitchell wrote to Helen Shaw, the writer, poet and editor [00:15:30] whose collection of Crewe's letters was published in 1971. Helen Shaw had also been researching the shooting and found Crewe's own admittedly second hand explanation for why he blackmailed Mackay. Now among the many corresponds that Helen Shaw contacted was Crewes Christ College classmate Charles Carrington, who wrote to Shore in About in 1965 about what apparently called the adventure. And this is what he wrote. All I recall of the motive is that Darcy had a young friend [00:16:00] and he's gotten brackets and quotes Ronnie question Mark, who had fallen into the clutches of the mayor who quote had a bad influence on him. Darcy threatened the mayor if he would not break his association with this. Ronnie Darcy would expose him. The mayor, then asked Darcy to his private office for a discussion, shot him with a revolver and tried to frame it as a suicide. Now this is Bill Mitchell with Phoebe Me and Frank Sarge's house, actually, so that's Bill there. Neither Shaw nor Mitchell apparently made any progress in finding out more about Crystal's friend, who may have been [00:16:30] called Ronnie. Similarly, the identity of the cousin who had dinner with Chris and the mayor and possibly introduced the two men has remained hidden. What's now apparent is that the cousin and the person that Chris Carrington mentioned could be the same person. Not knowing about this possibility explains why both Mitchell and Shaw drew a blank when they were trying to explain Chris's motive for blackmailing Mackay. I also drew a blank when I tried to identify Chris Relations, who no longer live in. The breakthrough came when a researcher [00:17:00] loaned me a scrapbook belonging to Crewe's aunt, Eleanor Mary Cresswell, published in 1994 by one of her grandsons, together with copies of handwritten notes, photos and ephemera from the scrapbook. This included family background information, providing the missing link to the Crewe and opening up a new perspective on the 1920 shooting. So this book, with its crude photocopied Grandma's Scrapbook label, suggests a endearing mison of cosy, homespun reminiscences. Instead, [00:17:30] it's a haunting portrait of a woman's profound and raw grief over the loss of her son, Jack in the Great War. It also recounts a bitter row with one daughter who was called disliked by her mother as much as another son, who was called William Free, was loved and admired. There's a letter in the scrapbook in 1944 which was two years before Eleanor died and a decade after the death of her husband. And she evokes the names, the name of her in laws to convey her aversion to her daughter. [00:18:00] Nala is her father's daughter. A Crewe Free is my loved son, Jack was my loved boy, too. Very much like free. True, kind, gentle has sympathy and understanding not so much for the pound shilling and pence as the Crest walls, which was first with them. The very name I dislike, how I have been hurt by more than one Cresswell. So who were these? Chris? So much for the pound shilling and pence despised by Eleanor. They came to New Zealand from England on the famed first four ships brought by the Canterbury Association [00:18:30] to found Christchurch. Darcy's great grandparents arrived on the ST George Seymour together with their four Children. Their eldest son married and had 14 Children, and the two oldest were Darcy's uncle, Charles Marshall Creswell and Darcy's father, Walter Joseph Criswell. Charles Criswell married Eleanor Mary Slate, who kept the scrapbook. So the Cresswell family link with Wanganui begins in 18 91 and Crewe's grandfather became manager of the newly established Wanganui Freezing Works in Castle Cliff. [00:19:00] Three years later, his son, Charles Cresswell, started at the works and became secretary and later manager, staying with the company until it closed over 30 years later, Charles Creswell involvement with public life would have brought him into contact with Mackie, who was also the family lawyer. Now it might have been Charles Cresswell, who introduced Darcy Crest to Mackay in 1920 But I think it was more likely to have been one of his five Children. Presumably one of these is the cousin referred to in Darcy Crewe's statement. So assuming it wasn't either of the daughters, it could have been one of the surviving [00:19:30] sons, Roland Marshall and William Free, who were around 29 and 21 respectively, in 1920. And this was the third son, Jack Tennyson Creswell, who died in the Battle of Passchendaele on the 12th of October 1917. Now, like so many of those who died in that futile attempt to take the Bellevue Spur, his body was never found. Another Creswell cousin, Gordon Hallam, died in the same battle, and Roland, like his cousin Darcy, had served overseas, and both were wounded. Now [00:20:00] Roland was known as Ronald by his family, and his Army file is under that name. What if Roland slash Ronald Cresswell was the Ronnie mentioned in Carrington's letter? Having lost one son in the Great War? Maybe the crest was feared losing another. Or were they resentful of Mackay as an able bodied man who'd enlisted but avoided military service and not lost any Children to the war? Until more information emerges, there can only be speculation, but Eleanor Crewe's scrapbook hints at a family traumatised by the Great [00:20:30] War. From 1918 through to just days before her death. In 1946 Eleanor wrote to her son Jack on the anniversary of his death and his birthday, pasting the notes in the scrapbook whether or not the Cresswell family had a motive. Darcy Crewe's attempt to blackmail Mackay aligned with anger and directed at the mayor. So here he is. This isn't long, actually, before the shooting, this is the trotting club, and he was the president, and this is him here in the centre of that photo. [00:21:00] So in 1920 Mackay was still recovering from an accident the previous year when he was run over by a milk cart when he successfully sued the car driver who was a lot poorer than he was. Mackay was criticised by The Chronicle. The criticism intensified from February 1920 when was confirmed as being part of the itinerary for the visit of the Prince of Wales. Now securing the only concert in New Zealand for the prince should have been a coup for Mackay. But quickly things unravelled after he engaged out of town musical soloists. There was a storm of angry letters to the papers [00:21:30] asking why Gan's own performers weren't good enough for the for royalty. Then there was another row when temperance groups objected to the Claret Cup to be served at the Supper for young people at the Sergeant Gallery after the Civic concert. But these rows paled alongside the argument between Mackay and the branch of the returned Soldiers Association. Unhappy with its role in planning the visit, the RS a asked to be able to mount its own concert in the opera House. This was agreed to, but the quarrel flared up again because of a row between Mackay and the president of the RS a, [00:22:00] um Nelson Gordon Woods, which is this chap here. When Mackay refused to apologise to Woods for comments made at a council meeting held in committee, the RS A banned him from its concert, then withdrew permission for the RS A to use the opera house, prompting the RS A to meet the government ministers organising the royal visit. When Mackay wrote to the paper defending his actions, the RS a reply in return contained a threat. We had hoped that it would not be necessary to refer to this, and we do not [00:22:30] wish to publicly discuss this question aspect of the question before the prince comes to or while he is in new Zealand. We hold him as the representative of the King, for whom so many of our members have thought it an honour to have suffered and bled and too great veneration to say or do anything which would cause trouble while he was with us. Mr. Mackay knows very well what we refer to and if we are made to publicly explain further at this juncture on his head, will be it. We are quite prepared to make an make an affidavit regarding certain matters which are, in our opinion, unfit for attending [00:23:00] our entertainment. And we will, after placing it before the proper quarter, deposit that affidavit with the court and hand copies to the local papers to be published after the prince's departure from New Zealand in order that the people of the town may judge whether or not we acted with due cause. I wonder what that affidavit said. The affidavit has never come to light, but apparently contained the faithful record of a mayoral utterance made in our presence and hearing concerning the prince and a motor car supplemented by an extract from the local press reporting a somewhat similar reference concerning [00:23:30] His Majesty the King now that may be true, but I think it really reads like a veiled threat to me and I and I. I can't help but wonder if they were perhaps talking in code about perhaps what they knew about Mackay when this appeared in the papers. Mackay was in Auckland for the prince's arrival. After his return, a railway strike was called and the whole visit was put on hold and the visit was cancelled. Then it was on again, but three days later than initially scheduled. But tragically, the visit was a disaster and exposed to international [00:24:00] ridicule. One account, published in papers in Perth, Tasmania and Melbourne, had the headline Blunder of Party Jealousy, and here's just a little excerpt about one of the concerts. The concept of it by the returned soldiers at the opera house drew a crowded house but was not an artistic success. A scene was set resembling an oasis in the desert. Several performers dressed as Arabs sang old ballads such as The Better and Love song, introduced personalities and made jokes about beer. There was also some poor dancing. The concert was not an oasis, [00:24:30] it resembled rather the desert itself that and it got worse. There was a there was a power cut during the civic concert, and the prince spent barely any time at the supper, after which the crowd stole the food and looted the silverware belonging to the and the prince, whose benefit this was all for, wasn't impressed. Now, as Gavin McClean's history of the governor's general has noted, the prince thought Gan's Imperial Hotel was a miserable little hole, [00:25:00] and he loathed the two ghastly concerts in a civic supper party. In a marquee where there were more than 3000 people as well as no electric light, the hotel boilers burst before dinner. So no baths and a very nasty dinner, he wrote in a letter. But worse still, for Mackay, the row with the soldiers intensified after the prince's visit, and the RS, a allegations of Mackay's disloyal utterances and contemptible conduct were published, and he was also under fire from requesting invitations to events welcoming the prince in Dunedin and Christchurch. And during the shooting trial, [00:25:30] Mackay's lawyer mentioned that the mayor had arrived in his office in a distressed state after reading something in the paper apparently related to these rows now There aren't many letters in support of May uh, Mackay over the period leading up to the shooting. But there was one that suggested that there might be more than you think to the, um, soldiers complaints, this letter writer wrote, When the whole business is analysed, there is very little in it, but I guess the returned Soldiers Association is being used as a tool to assist in the lowering of Mr Mackay in the eyes of the rate payers for political purposes. There are certain [00:26:00] people in this town who have a personal grudge against Mr Mackay and never fail to ventilate some imaginary grievance in order to show him up now. Mackay was also criticised for failing to serve in the Great War. And though he did enlist, he didn't serve or train, arguing that he was unable to get someone to take over his business. And here he is with the counsellors that he was with in 1919. So this is the group that were cos this is the council at the time of the shooting. Yet there was also more general criticism of Mackay's performance as mayor. Letter [00:26:30] writers argued that loans, rates increases and neglected town amenities were evidence that was being mismanaged. These anonymous corresponds called for a change in borough management, maintaining that sound business. Brains are wanted by the man sitting in the mayoral chair. So I think it's interesting, then that the man chosen to replace Mackay as mayor was a businessman, Thomas Boswell Williams, who was also one of Mackay's very vocal opponents. Williams was also mayor from 1913 to 1915, following Mackay's resignation after a row with the borough engineer, which was to do with the town's [00:27:00] power supply so related to this. There's another explanation to do with Wanganui Power Supply now, as I've mentioned during the Civic Concert for the Prince, His Majesty's Theatre was plunged into darkness when the electric lights failed, and what had happened was that the power plant, which was originally built to supply electricity for the trams, couldn't cope with the initial demand over time, they added, on businesses and things and other users as well as the trams. When the plant failed again later in 1920 was without power and electric trams. For three months now, Mackay was advocating hydro [00:27:30] power. From late 1919, he'd been pushing for an engineering investigation of the river as a source of electricity. But there were strong advocates for other solutions. After the 1920 shooting, Mackay's river proposal was quietly shelved and instead an alternative to Hydro. A new power station opened in 1924. Even if the row over how to resolve the power supply crisis doesn't explain why Mackay was blackmailed, it does point to one reason why it would have suited some people for him to be out of the picture. Perhaps, [00:28:00] as Mitchell, Shaw and others were forced to conclude the circumstances surrounding crystals, blackmail of Mackay will remain obscure rather than one explanation. Perhaps it was like a perfect storm, a convergence of elements of the various motives. But after the trial, a veil of silence descended over with with just a few brief newspaper references to the shooting. In July 1920 an article in The New Zealand Times and in other papers reported that Crewe had recovered and was about to leave. The article [00:28:30] said that additional information was secured by Cresswell consequent on his discoveries in connection with the first case, and though no information under this detail has been published, it is understood that certain people have shaken the dust of off their feet. Now that's a reference from Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse 14 and whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. This refers to people leaving and discussed at heathen practises. So it's interesting to note the next verse, which [00:29:00] many people in 1920 would have known. Very I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah and the day of Judgement than for that city. Now I haven't been able to find out much more about this, but it ties in with some persistent references in the oral history record that others beside Mackay were involved in the same immoral practises. If this is the case, it could be an additional motivation for the silence of after the trial. But more than this, the people in the town took definite steps to eliminate Mackay's name from the record. [00:29:30] So as part of the anti German feeling following the Great War, German names were changed around New Zealand and in Wanganui in 1920 the Borough Council decided to rename Crow Road and ST John's Hell. And so that became Oakland Avenue. And at the same meeting, the council has decided to rename Mackay Street in east after the Governor General Lord Jello. So where is it? It's Yeah, it was Mackay Street there, and it became, um Jello. So this is the where the homestead belonging to his in-laws and all these names are associated with the family, [00:30:00] the Duncans and the foundation Stone for the, um, sergeant Gallery was also targeted. This is the dedication of the stone by the Governor General. And there's Mackay sitting to the right of the mayoral chair here and the Governor General. And this is the stone. There were two stones unveiled that day. This one and this one. This is the one that was targeted by the town. Um, here's what it looks like now. Although it looks like the name is not there, it actually is. It's just the paint's disappeared. So at some stage, [00:30:30] I don't know when it happened, but Mackay's name and title was sanded off the marble. Uh, but the name was restored in 1985 as I'll explain later, Isabelle Mackay um, filed for divorce initially on the grounds of sodomy and adultery. The sodomy ground was withdrawn, and the divorce was confirmed by the chief justice, Sir Robert Stout, in September 1920. Now Isabelle Mackay changed her name and also the name of the three daughters. So they all became known as Duncans Mackay's In-laws were a distinguished Wanganui European settler family, and their status [00:31:00] was a factor, I think, in the town's reaction following the shooting, I spoke to a retired newspaper editor who said to me that when he arrived in in 1968 the first thing he can remember being told was, Whatever you do, don't tangle with the families of the Hunt or the Duncans. Any story involving these families would need to be approved by the board of the newspaper, and that's in 1968. In 1965 Helen Shaw wrote to the council asking for information about the shooting. The town clerk's reply ended with this suggestion, as [00:31:30] the incident was not a very savoury one in the history of this city and also as members of the family of the late Mr Mackay are still residing in. I would suggest that you either tone down the matter in your writings or omit the incident altogether. After the shooting, Mackay declared himself bankrupt and was struck off as a lawyer. Writing from prison in 19 December 1920 he summed up his own position as to myself, I should tell you that since I last wrote, I've been divorced, made bankrupt and struck off the roles so that I will leave jail without a penny, a family or a profession. [00:32:00] It is a bit hard, but it can't be helped. Of course, I shall leave New Zealand as soon as I get out and try my luck elsewhere. Now we know quite a bit about Mackay's time in prison because his file has survived. It's battered state testimony to Mackay's seven transfers to five of the 10 prisons he could have been in at that time. So here's where we went. So from he went to Mount Eden back to for a few weeks to wind up his business, then back to Mount Eden for two weeks, Uh, for two years. He was then transferred [00:32:30] to Reformatory for nearly a year and a half then spent a year in New Plymouth Prison before being transferred to prison by UM Lake for about 10 months. He then returned to Mount Eden for 11 months before he left for London via Australia. Now there's a wealth of detail in the prison file, including 19 letters from Mackay censored but retained in the file. And these give a fascinating, uh, quite unique insight into prison life through the eyes of a well educated man. Now, fortunately for him, the prison system in the twenties [00:33:00] was in a very liberal phase, under the direction of a man called Charles Matthews, who believed that men are punished by being sent to prison. They are not punished while in prison and that the opportunity should be made available for rehabilitation. So Mackay was quick to take advantage of this, And so we find them learning Esperanto, the universal language and within a short space of time, he's taking the class. He was sending French translations to the consulate in Auckland, and he had permission to receive The Times of London. With the racing and the court stories cut out. Looking [00:33:30] at the prison file, it's very clear that many members of Mackay's family stood by him visiting, writing and advocating on his behalf. So it's not too surprising that his older sister was involved in his early release from prison in August 1926. The probation licence is missing from the file, but the release was apparently conditional on Mackay leaving the country the very same day as he got out of Mount Eden, accompanied by his sister, who agreed to set him up in a new career in London. The release was apparently secret, as it didn't appear in the media for a month. But when it did, it was on the front [00:34:00] of truth, which was outraged that the whole matter seems to have been closely hushed up now. The early release of two other prisoners around the same time was also controversial, and there was extensive coverage of all three cases in truth and other papers, all alleging that the prisoners had had some sort of preferential treatment. The outrage led to the justice minister to order the Prisons Board, which was the forerunner of the parole board, to write a report into the release of the three prisoners. Now, Mackay's release coincided with a period of tension between the board and the prisons department [00:34:30] staff. And I wonder if the release of Mackay and the other two prisoners was leaked to the media by police or prison staff to get back at the board. The board's report was released a few days before Christmas in 1926 out, and it outlined the facts of Mackay's case and the reasons for the board's decision. The board also referred to a written statement made by Chris two years after he was wounded, so that would have been in 1922. Now, I haven't been able to find any more information about this, so I don't know if it relates to that additional information that that New Zealand Times [00:35:00] story mentioned. And so Mackey's story moves to London. His new career, uh, new business, which was apparently an advertising agency, failed, and he lost his money. Now there's very little information about what he was doing in London, But there are some tantalising glimpses. An enthusiastic follower of the Russian Ballet's 1928 season, Mackay drafted Scenarios and sent them to There are references in a memoir by Hector, who was a gay expat writer who Mackay had mentored as a writer who apparently left New Zealand because of [00:35:30] the shooting. In early 1927 Mackay signed the visitors book at New Zealand House and True New Zealand Fashion. The next person to sign the book was the prosecutor in the 1920 shooting case. And so the story appeared in truth, which concluded that it would be thought that any man with a grain of common decency would only be too glad to remain in restful obscurity for the remaining span of life. But this was not to be because of the sensational circumstances of Mackay's death in Berlin Front page news Around the world, Mackay was [00:36:00] killed in the street fighting known as or bloody May. This began after the Communist Party organised demonstrations on the first of May in defiance of a government ban. When the police dispersed the crowds, violence erupted. The violence escalated and became concentrated in two working class neighbourhoods of Berlin, Neko and we. By the third of May. Both areas affected by the violence were sealed off by police, who introduced a traffic and lights span with a strict curfew. Trains didn't stop and residents were told to shut their windows and keep indoors. [00:36:30] Within the areas, protesters used paving stones, trees and concrete advertising billboards to build barricades. Innocent bystanders were caught up in the violence, and among the dead on the third day were two women shot after they stepped onto their balcony. In No, the Berlin correspondent for the Sunday Express hired Mackay as a stringer so that he could cover the riots in both areas. Mackay was also working as an English language teacher, and he ignored warnings from his teaching colleagues before he joined Delma on the evening [00:37:00] of the third of May. After they visited both areas, the two went back to Lma's flat for supper, and then Delma sent Mackay back down to to check on what was happening. He was shot in the stomach, probably by a police sniper in an apartment 110 metres away. He was dead before help arrived. He was the last of more than 30 people killed in the riots and the only person not from those two neighbourhoods. No police were killed or shot, leading some journalists to speculate on whether the protesters even had any guns. Widespread criticism of the police intensified after Mackay was [00:37:30] killed. And unlike the other victims, he was well educated, professional and a foreigner. After Mackay's death, Delma challenged police accounts of what happened, and his comments were widely reported overseas. This was very embarrassing for the Prussian government, particularly when the British Embassy asked for an explanation. The police investigation concluded that Mackay was warned not to go into the danger zone and that this, together with his lack of knowledge of German, meant he was responsible for his own death. Now. Elma's memoir, which was written many years later, describes [00:38:00] what he found and, uh, when he eventually found Mackey the morning after the shooting. And there's a visual record of what saw and the investigation file in a Berlin archive. At last, I found him stretched out on a marble slab in the mortuary of the district infirmary. There he lay, his mouth gaping, open his smashed spectacles at the foot of the slab with his papers. His whisp, wispy, greying hair was ruffled and sticky. His show, his shoes pointed stiffly skywards, showing the holes in their souls on the slabs behind his, I counted [00:38:30] seven Germans, the other victims of the quiet night five days later, on May the eighth, at half past 10 in the morning, Mackay's funeral was held at the Mate Cemetery in Schoenberg. At least one New Zealander was there. Tom Sullivan, a champion. Osman who was a professional coach with the Berlin club. Now, today, this headstone is no longer in the cemetery, and and it's unclear exactly where the grave is. In 1970 the grave was the was taken over by the city of Berlin, and it closed completely in 2005. [00:39:00] The graveyard's been reduced in size several times, and the German practise of reusing graves after 25 years makes it difficult to identify where the plot would have been. Mickey was living, uh, one street away from Christopher Isherwood, who famously said Berlin meant boys. We don't know whether the Boys of Berlin were a factor in Mackay's decision to move to Berlin, but we do know that the Germans called him and praising his sense of adventure as a globetrotter. So to conclude, [00:39:30] what do all these fragments of evidence add up to? I think they helped give shape to the life and times of a figure who was eliminated from the historical record they under. They also underscore and highlight the historical significance of Mackay's public declaration of his homosexuality. Now, back when I began researching the story, I was very keen not to label Mackay as a homosexual, guided by the idea that people should be seen in the context of their own times. But over time, I've come to see the significance of the use of his use of the term homosexual in the 1920 [00:40:00] trial coined in Germany in 18 69 the word homosexual was first used in Britain in the 18 nineties, but wasn't commonly referred to here until later in the 19 twenties. In 18 95 homosexuality was famously associated with the trial of Oscar Wilde. Alleged homosexual conduct in the Army of Wilhelm in Germany was at the centre of the affair from 19 07 to 19 09. Now, both of these scandals have been described by a historian called James Stately as labelling events that dramatically [00:40:30] accelerated the emergence of the modern homosexual identity by stimulating and structuring public perceptions of sexual normalcy and abnormalcy. The shooting in Whanganui in 1920 is new Zealand's labelling event and heralded the arrival of the homosexual as a concept and as an identity in this country. Before this case, references to homosexuality were very rare in New Zealand newspapers. All of the identified reports before the Mackay case relate either to the Wild case or the Eber affair in Germany. [00:41:00] So the references to the sensation appear to be the first indigenous use of the term and are apparently among the first references in Australian newspapers. This, I believe, points to the reason for the enduring interest in the story as it's become easier to talk about that horrible crime not to be named among Christians. There have been more narratives about Mackay's fall from Grace. The earlier work by Helen Shaw and Bill Mitchell was never published. Since then, we've had William Broughton's essays in The Dictionary of New Zealand biography, References [00:41:30] by Michael King and his biography of Frank Sarge and the Penguin History of New Zealand and Phil Parkinson's seminal article in Pink Triangle magazine in 1985. Nicky's Story has inspired other, more imaginative retellings, featuring in two plays and fiction, including Morris 2003 novel The Scornful Moon So next time you're in, go and have a look at the stone at the Sergeant Gallery. At first glance, nothing seems amiss with the marble stone beside the entrance to the Sergeant Art Gallery, unveiled by [00:42:00] the governor general on the 20th of September 1917, Mackay's name and title are cut into the stone together with the names of others involved with building the gallery. Run your fingers over the stone and you'll discover a concave depression around Mackay's name and title, a tangible reminder of the earlier removal. The missing elements on the stone apparently went unnoticed until the late 19 seventies, when they became the focal point of a protest by the gay rights group. During one gay pride week, members of the group laid a wreath in the shape of a pink triangle, [00:42:30] the international symbol of gay rights and pride beneath the stone. Apparently, the protest angered the then Mayor Ron Russell, who'd been considering restoring the name. And it wasn't until 1985 during the term of the next mayor, Doug Toney, that the name was restored. But by defacing the stone, the city fathers and mothers had inadvertently given the gay rights group something to protest against creating a foothold in homosexual history. The foundation stone had become a load stone, a physical [00:43:00] link back to the time when the homosexual arrived in New Zealand.
This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content.
Tags