Thank you, I have just come back from a very lovely lunch with my H2R recruitment consultant, Sharyn Saxby.
And on the way, I came across this sign about Edward Wakefield one of New Zealand’s “Founding Fathers”:
Here’s a picture of Ed:
The signs are located on a unassuming concrete wall, at 90 The Terrace, Wellington:
One of New Zealand’s historical rogues and bastards, Ed Wakefield wasn’t above kidnapping and abducting to secure his financial future. As the Encyclopedia of New Zealand claims:
The driving force in Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s life was his appetite for power and influence. As a child he was brought up under ‘extreme habits of liberty’. This lax environment fostered a love and an aptitude for bending the will of others through obstinacy, charm and fast talking.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w4/wakefield-edward-gibbon
And later…
In 1816 Wakefield eloped with a 16-year-old heiress and ward of chancery, Eliza Anne Frances Pattle. They were married on 27 July 1816 in Edinburgh, and again in London probably on 10 August. With his formidable powers of persuasion Wakefield talked his way out of trouble and ended up with the most generous settlement the chancery ever made to a ward’s husband (£1,500 to £2,000 yearly), and a job promotion (secretary to the under secretary of the legation in Turin). Eliza and Edward Gibbon Wakefield had two children: Susan Priscilla, known as Nina, born in 1817, and Edward Jerningham, known as Jerningham, born in 1820.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w4/wakefield-edward-gibbon
But yet, still
Wakefield, in 1826, abducted a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Ellen Turner, the daughter of William Turner, a rich Macclesfield manufacturer and county sheriff. Wakefield wanted the girl as his wife so that her father would be obliged to help him enter political life. The girl, whom Wakefield had never met, was first lured away from school by a false message saying her mother was dangerously ill. She was subsequently deceived by Wakefield into marrying him, with the story that her father had desperate money troubles and that the marriage was the only means of solving them. Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Ellen Turner were said to have married at Gretna Green, Scotland, on 8 March 1826. Having fled the country after the ceremony, Wakefield was apprehended in Calais by agents of the frantic parents. In August he, along with his fellow conspirators, his brother William, his step-mother, and a servant, Édouard Thévenot, were indicted at the Lancaster assizes. Their trial in March 1827 caused a public sensation. Only the brothers, however, were sentenced. On 14 May each received a three year prison term. A special act of Parliament annulled the marriage, which had not been consummated.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w4/wakefield-edward-gibbon
Read about him in the above links. He did some good things too. Wakefield, together with a guy called Godley, founded Christchurch and Nelson
All in all, he must have had an interesting life, and it was a privilege bumping into the site of his demise back in 1862