Bay Harbour: October 18, 2023

Bay Harbour News Wednesday October 18 2023
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TREASURES FROM THE PAST
Policing and prison escapades
ON OCTOBER 9, 1846 an
ordinance establishing an armed
constabulary force was enacted
by the Lieutenant-Governor of
New Zealand, William Hobson.
Less than four years later, in
May 1850, His Excellency Governor
of New Zealand George
Grey appointed the head of the
Canterbury Association John
Godley as Resident Magistrate
of Lyttelton, who then deputised
the town’s first police officers
Peter Cameron and J. Sheed.
This initial Canterbury police
force dealt with the growing
drunk and disorderly behaviour
among its founding population
of around 100 European and 100
Māori workers, all labouring in
the employ of the association
to build the port town infrastructure,
to welcome the first of
the Canterbury pilgrims due to
arrive later that year.
On the arrival of the first four
ships from December 1850, the
town’s population swelled by
several hundred mostly English
immigrants living in the crowded
immigration barracks, along
with a growing number of sailors
frequenting the port town and its
hospitality establishments.
With this growth in population
came a growth in disputes
and criminal activity, such as
burglaries and assaults, and in
early 1851 Godley appointed the
association’s secretary James
Edward Fitzgerald as Waitaha
Canterbury’s first Sub-Inspector
of Police. A rather active colonist
recently arrived on the Charlotte
Jane, Fitzgerald also founded
the Lyttelton Times in January
1851. In between his journalistic
activities James joined his fellow
police constables in patrolling
the streets of Ōhinehou Lyttelton
and keeping the peace. He would
go on to be elected the first
Superintendent of Canterbury in
1852, and then Lyttelton’s MP in
the 1st New Zealand Parliament.
In 1851 the port town also
received its first police lock-up
with the construction of a rudimentary
‘V-frame’ detention
facility. However, its fragility was
soon exposed when a group of
inmates, in a daring escapade,
kicked through the floorboards
and literally lifted the hut up
from the inside and walked off
towards the wharves.
While the escapee prison cell
was intercepted by the town’s
constables, this incident underscored
the need for a more robust
penal infrastructure. Charles
Crawford, a former whaler who
had arrived in Waitaha Canterbury
around 1844, constructed
a small three-cell gaol out of clay
bricks to replace the V-frame.
Subsequently, a two-storey stone
police office was erected on
Oxford St by William Chaney,
who later contributed to the
construction of the Christchurch
Cathedral.
The following year, 1852, the
town authorities embarked
on building the formidable
Lyttelton Gaol on Oxford St by
the police office. Designed by
architect Benjamin Woolfield
Mountford, who would go on to
draft the Christchurch Museum
and Christ Church Cathedral,
the gaol was built using the
labour of the very convicts it
intended to detain. In July of that
year the growing settlement of
Christchurch laid the foundations
for its first lockup, followed
by the opening of the first cells at
Lyttelton Gaol, which was eventually
to house up to 300 inmates
when completed, including 29
cells for women, although its full
construction would take another
decade of hard labour.
As the port town grew so did
its policing requirements, and in
the mid-1860s local businessman
John Kenner built the house at
3 Coleridge Tce in west Lyttelton,
which was then leased to the
Lyttelton police from 1867 to
1870, complete with its iconic
blue light out front and a stone
holding cell at the rear of the
dwelling.
In 1880, after 30 years of
service, the old Police Office on
Oxford St was demolished to
Thought to be John Henry Wyatt in police uniform c. late
1800s. Te Ūaka The Lyttelton Museum ref. 8651.1
https://www.teuaka.org.nz/online-collection/1128835
Above – Eight men of the Lyttelton police. Te Ūaka The
Lyttelton Museum ref. 9745.1 https://www.teuaka.org.nz/
online-collection/1129937
make way for extensions to the
Lyttelton Gaol. In its place, a
new police station was built in a
Victorian Italianate architectural
style on Sumner Rd near the
corner of Oxford St.
The Lyttelton Police Station
commenced operations in
1882, with a cell block added
at the rear in the 1920s, and
faithfully served the community
of Ōhinehou Lyttelton for
almost 130 years.
The February 22, 2011
Canterbury earthquake seriously
damaged the old station
building, which was declared
unsalvageable later that year. The
eventual demolition, beginning
in January 2014, marked the end
of a policing era in Ōhinehou
Lyttelton for what had been until
then Aotearoa New Zealand’s
oldest operating police station.
The Lyttelton Police Station, 1882-2011.
PHOTO: PHILLIP CAPPER
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