1 The year is 1892, and the good people of Taranaki are being plagued by a spate of highway robberies. A man dressed thus is leaping out from the undergrowth, a sword in his belt, a pistol in his hand, from his lips the cry` Stand and deliver! Um, excuse me. I just need the lantern back to finish the introduction. Sorry. Thank you. He's known as the Taranaki Highwayman, and he's leading people on one of the most inept crime capers the country has ever seen. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) New Zealand has past filled with people who thought, 'She'll be right.' When more often than not, it wasn't. Join me as we celebrate these true stories of the history that history tried to forget. (WHIMSICAL MUSIC) Copyright Able 2017. When it comes to incompetent criminals and bizarre punishments, New Zealanders wrote the book. To help me tell these true tales of extraordinary New Zealand criminals, I've got some ordinary New Zealanders, and there's not a lawbreaker amongst them. Least I don't think there is. To be honest, I never actually asked them, when I recruited them to help me tell the novel story that is... Who doesn't love a great crime story? But many our criminal stories are less crime thrillers and more comic capers. The Taranaki Highwayman, for example, had just begun his escapades when this happened. Stand and deliver! But sir, I'm just a poor workingman! I don't have any money. You may go, sir. For I do not interfere with poor workingmen. Pretty soon, everyone he confronts claims to be a poor workingman. Ugh. Even the women. The Highwayman is fast becoming` (THUD!) ...something of a folk hero. Ow! I'm OK. He's OK. Even though he's incompetent, the police simply can't catch him. With that mask on, nobody knows what he looks like. So it's not as if they can put his face on a wanted poster. Unlike these criminals. This rogues' gallery is actually a collection of New Zealand mugshots. The police began taking them in 1886. But with no trained professionals, they used commercial photographers or enthusiastic amateurs, resulting in some rather casual photographs. This charming portrait, for example, is actually a mugshot. Now, one of the interesting things about early mugshots is the inclusion of people's hands. Before the advent of fingerprinting, hands were photographed so people could be recognised by deformities, such as missing fingers or scars. But there is one hand that police are having terrible trouble identifying. (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC) Christchurch, 1866. And a few hours ago, Arthur Howard plunged into the exceedingly boisterous surf here at Sumner Beach. He has not returned. All that's left of Arthur Howard is a small pile of clothes on the beach and a very sad wife at home. As the days pass and there's no sign of Arthur, Mrs Howard takes some comfort in the fact that her husband, a lowly railway worker, had his life insured for close to half a million of today's dollars. Suspicious? So were the insurance companies that Arthur had policies with ` all three of them. And they refused to pay unless someone can prove that Howard is actually dead. So this ad is printed, offering a reward for a body or the first portion thereof. Following that, a man reported to be wearing a bad wig and blue goggles just happens to discover a hand. Which just happens to be wearing Arthur Howard's ring. The mystery is solved. The case is closed. Or is it? Something smells fishy. (SNIFFS) And it's not just the hand. 10 medical experts called in to examine it find that it was unlikely to be Howard's hand. Firstly, because they didn't think fish had the ability to sever a hand with a saw; and secondly, because it was, in fact, the hand of a woman. (WOMAN SCREAMS) How curious! (CLEARS THROAT) Oh! So now there are two mysteries. What has become of Arthur Howard? And whose hand is this? The first of the perplexing mysteries is solved by the police fairly quickly. Howard was discovered in Masterton, hiding under a bad wig. Here's his mugshot. You could say his fate was in his own hands, both of which are accounted for. He was recognised by the undisguisable fact he had no right thumb and is convicted of fraud. As for Mrs Howard, she kept her hands clean. There isn't enough evidence to find her guilty of anything. And the severed hand? Well, police dug up grave after grave to see if they could find its owner. But she was never discovered. The mystery remains... unsolved. Some mysteries, though, are solved only too easily. In the prohibition era of the 1920s, American gangsters were fighting with tommy guns over who controlled the booze business. In New Zealand, our crimes were a little simpler. As were our criminals. It's 1926, and Francis Lough hatches a cunning plan to claim �300 insurance on his car. He needs the money to pay the �280 he still owes on it. So, with his assistance, his car travels from the top of Northland's Piroa Falls all the way to the bottom of Northland's Piroa Falls, where it comes to a rest with a splash and a hiss, dashed to pieces. 'Great,' thought Lough, 'now I can claim the insurance.' Unfortunately for him, his first mistake was not factoring in the �40 he was gonna be charged to have his car removed from the bottom of the waterfall. That left him short of cash. His second mistake was telling everyone he knew what it was he was going to do. That saw him charged with fraud. But his third, and probably his biggest mistake, was that two days before he pushed his car off the waterfall, his insurance policy lapsed. (GROANS) Proving that honesty would've been the best policy. Actually, just having a policy would've been a good policy. Stand and deliver! With the Taranaki Highwayman still on the loose, the good people of the province are taking measures to protect themselves from being accosted. This means that the only person making crime pay is the ironmonger, who's doing a roaring trade in guns. (GUNSHOT, HORSE WHINNIES, PEOPLE SCREAM) Sorry! No one was safe. Especially from each other. But will having the countryside chock-full of armed locals all taking pot-shots at themselves be enough to deter the Taranaki Highwayman? (POIGNANT MUSIC) Hi, Holly. Come on through, please. Just press the button every time you hear a beep. BEEP! Surprise, Mummy! Surprise, Mummy. (CHUCKLES) You are everything to us, to our family, eh? Yep. And how does it make you feel that Mummy's ear's broken? Sad. (SNIFFLES) It's the simple things you don't hear and the little things that you miss out on, like hearing our children. Right. (CHUCKLES) (CHUCKLES) Right. Something as little as a free hearing check can make a big difference. Stand and deliver! English literature is full of romanticised stories of highway robbers, so-called knights of the road. Not to be outdone, in New Zealand in the 1890s, one such character set out to write himself into the history books. It's late in the evening on the 11th of February 1893 here at the White Hart Hotel in New Plymouth, and the Taranaki Highwayman is about to take his crime spree up a notch by striking terror into the hearts of the drinkers. Stand to, or I'll fire. (LAUGHTER) Well, maybe not terror. It's yet another bungled robbery by a man who's been keeping Taranaki entertained for 18 months. But you have to give the mysterious character credit. I mean, look at the effort he's gone to. He's got a blue merino mask, he has these little epaulettes that appear to be made out of the bottom of someone's bedspread; and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it does suggest to me that somewhere near here, a tiny horse is missing its tail. Regardless, the Taranaki police are furious. The entire country is mocking then for their inability to capture a man widely considered to be the country's most incompetent criminal. (JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS, LAUGHTER) And if there's something that police don't like, it's being mocked. You only need to ask the woman who lives here. Expelled from Otahuhu College for using the word 'fornication' in a poem, she was a taunter of police, a queen of chaos... and one of the country's most fascinating women. A little of your favourite? Oh, thanks, Radar! This is Anna Hoffman. And that's Mabel. Hi, Mabel. (GOAT BLEATS) And this is David Hartnell, friend and confidant of Anna. David, she was a colourful character. Oh, she certainly was. When Anna left this mortal coil ` thank you ` the mould was broken. I mean, I'm not one to gossip, as you know, but we go back so far, I have to think in black and white. How much did she want to create her own story? To create this, sort of, legend, I guess. Truth was the newspaper of the day, and if you appeared in Truth, oh, heavens above. And that was her goal ` she wanted to appear in Truth as many times as she could. At night-time, Billy, and Anna and a couple of their friends would go down to Grafton Gully, and they would light candles, and they would pretend to have a seance. But, of course, she would let Truth newspaper know. Of course it was blazoned the next week ` you know, they were digging up graves, they were doing` and they loved every moment of it. She had so many parking tickets, she wallpapered her wall. She had a policeman's helmet that she planted a marijuana plant in. And then the policeman came to get it back, and she gave it to him and never heard anything of it again. (LAUGHS) She was put in jail for the first woman smoking marijuana or something or other. The story evolved over the years and always changed with Anna. She never let a good story stand in the way of any facts or figures ` it doesn't matter. She said to me one day, 'Of course I was involved in the Bassett Road murders.' And I said, 'Darling, you were in Sydney at the time!' 'Oh was I,' she said. But that didn't stop her writing about it. She was out` totally outrageous. Now` Now, Billy Farnell, a mate of Anna's, went up north and bought a monkey from a circus. They put it in a cage ` this is a true story ` they put it in a cage, and they drove down Queen St with the monkey in the cage. And the circus man said, 'Don't let the monkey out until he gets to know you.' So, they pulled up outside Milne & Choyce. Now, Milne & Choyce in those days had a revolving door. So, Billy took the monkey out, put it on the shoulder with Anna, walked into the department store; the monkey got spooked with the revolving door, Billy screamed ` as Billy would do ` let the monkey go, it shot up the post in the hanky department, he told me, and then he decided to piss on everybody as they went past. Well you thought that King Kong had got into the store. Milne & Choyce managing directors were down and everything. But that was what they did. (LAUGHS) Because you can't own a monkey any more. Well, no, you can't. You can't indeed. What a pity! Indeed it is. But it's fair to say that New Zealand has had colourful characters on both sides of the law. Take Murchison's renegade ruler, Captain George Fairweather Moonlight. That's his actual name. We can tell that he's a nice guy, because look how much his dog loves him. Moonlight was a successful gold prospector when he arrived in Murchison in the 1860s. But he found the place a little lawless, so he appoints himself the town's unofficial mayor and sheriff and, dressed as an American cowboy, begins dispensing frontier justice. (WESTERN-MOVIE MUSIC) He tells anyone rough, drunk or dodgy to be out of town by sundown or else face 24 hours in jail. Which is odd because Murchison doesn't actually have a jail. But Moonlight does have a sack. Two sacks, actually, sewn together with a prisoner tucked inside. But don't let his nimble needlework on those he nicked fool you ` Captain Moonlight isn't a monster; he does feed the prisoners all the rancid buttermilk they can drink. (GAGS) I recommend the amount of rancid buttermilk one should drink is none, because you're going to be in the sack for quite a long time, and conditions are only going to get worse. This may seem a little farfetched, but it actually happened. And Captain Moonlight's innovative approach to imprisonment... (SCREAMS) ...was positively humane compared to some of New Zealand's earlier efforts. It's the 1830s, and this sea chest currently functions as Kororareka's prison. They simply bored some air holes in it and locked people inside. And this was one of their more civilised punishments. These are the men of the Kororareka Association of Vigilantes. There's a name that inspires confidence in a just and fair society. But with no official British law in place, they have configured their own laws and punishments. MEN: Hear, Hear! They're firm, but not entirely fair, believing that even the worst law is better than no law at all. MEN: Hear, Hear! Hey, you owe me 5 shillings! Eek! (FAST-PACED COUNTRY MUSIC) They decided that if anyone owed you money, you could horsewhip them ` not once, but every time you saw them until they paid. (MUSIC CONTINUES) (MEN SHOUT) They also punished people they considered criminals by stripping them of their clothes, smothering them in hot tar` (SCREAMS) ...and covering them in raupo fluff. Because, I guess, feathers are expensive. Tarring and fluffing ` there is a great Kiwi innovation. Get out of here. Come one. Then, accompanied by the band, they march the culprit to the beach, row them across the river, and tell them in no uncertain terms never to return. What about my 5 shillings? And if you think this is all hilarious hijinks, bear in mind that covering someone in boiling tar often caused severe burns. And then there's the sticky and excruciating task of removing the tar and fluff. While it wasn't a deadly punishment, it invariably left the victim bloody, raw and humiliated. But what about people's rights? Get a lawyer, you say? Not so easy. Because the first act of the Kororareka Association of Vigilantes, and some would say its most sensible, was to ban all lawyers from the district. Fortunately, this is not the case in New Plymouth, because the Taranaki Highwayman is about to need a very good lawyer. (MARCHING BAND MUSIC) 1 It's July the 20th 1893. For the last 18 months, The Taranaki Highwayman has been holding people up quite unsuccessfully. But now he's sticking up pubs. That's not going well either. Excuse me. Do you have the time? Nearly 11 o'clock. It's nearly 11 o'clock. In a few moments the highwayman will come through that door. And tomorrow's Taranaki Herald, of which I happen to have an advance copy, sums up what happens next with a wonderful series of pithy sub-headlines. READS: Highwayman bails up Criterion Hotel, tackled by Mr Harold Thompson; man overpowered. (PUNCHING, HIGHWAYMAN SHOUTS) But clearly, not as overpowered as Mr Thompson may have liked. (GUNSHOT, MAN SCREAMS) Because Mr Thompson is wounded, shot through the handkerchief. And this is the very handkerchief through which Harold Thompson was shot. Even folded in three, it actually offered Thompson quite a lot of protection, because he was only wounded, as you can see if you look closely the gunpowder residue. And here in the corner the HT, fittingly embroidered in a blood-red thread. I mean, seriously, how great is New Zealand? You can go overseas to fancy museums and see papal robes and the crowns of kings and suits of armour; but here in Taranaki, the hanky through which Harold Thompson was shot by the Taranaki Highwayman ` magnificent. Anyway, with Harold Thompson wounded they subdue the villain, they rip off his mask and reveal... (CROWD GASPS) ...Robert Wallath?! Wow. No one can really believe it, can they, Elspeth? No, they certainly couldn't, Radar. Was there any indication that this God-fearing young man might well be the Taranaki Highwayman? Well, he was a pretty quiet and unassuming member of New Plymouth society, but he did have a bit of a love for Highwaymen novels. Right. So in many ways, you could say he was led astray by literature. That's right. It's quite the dashing outfit, though, really, isn't it. It is. It's rather lovely. And I guess the irony of it is it's such a great outfit that the only, sort of, known photograph of him has him actually in his outfit. We have no idea what he actually looked like. There's no photographs of his face. He became quite a` a heart-throb. He went from the prison in New Plymouth, went up to Auckland, where he was sentenced, and women from all over town came in to see him and get a glimpse of this well-known hero of sorts. What about Harold Thompson? You know, he's there, the guy who, sort of, leapt and wrestled him to the ground. He came to a bit of a sticky end himself? He did. So, Harold was the son of the local police inspector, so probably had a bit to live up to. And he eventually, after this, he was a local hero. And, uh, he became a lawyer in New Plymouth, but later on in life, he was convicted of fraud and never practised as a lawyer again. The irony. Exactly. But I guess the big question now is, what happened to Robert Wallath? Well, they arrested him. And he promptly escaped, climbing over a wall that was said to be unclimbable, simply because he could. One of the things that makes me most proud to be a New Zealander is prison escapes. Because according to Department of Corrections statistics, the most common method of escape from a New Zealand prison is classified simply as walking away. No ropes, no tunnels, no helicopters ` just a whole lot of people going, 'Nah, I'm not really into this' and walking away! How great is New Zealand? (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC) My favourite prison escape occurred here in Arrowtown during the gold rush of the 1860s. At the time, their prison was a log. And they simply chained people to it. Imagine the cost savings! One night they arrested a troublesome Irish miner. They shackled him to the log, and everyone went home. (IRISH JIG MUSIC) The next morning, both the miner and the log were gone. Frantic locals and law-enforcement officials immediately instigated a search. They found him a short time later in the nearest pub, having a beer... Still chained to the log. I have no idea whether they charged him with escape or simply theft of a prison. Which isn't as uncommon as it sounds. (IRISH JIG MUSIC CONTINUES) New Plymouth's first prison was just a wooden shack with no floor. At one stage, five incarcerated prisoners simply lifted it up from the inside, and scuttled off with it like a turtle. Then they simply tipped it over a bank and walked away. At Dunedin prison in the 1850s, jailer Johnnie Barr would let prisoners out for the day, with the strict warning that if they were not back by 8 o'clock, they would be locked out and they would not get any dinner. And as for this wonderful photograph? Well, I don't really have anything to say about that. Because I really have no idea what it means. But for the Taranaki Highwayman, his escape was a lot like his robberies ` a total shambles. He got about 100m before trying to cross a creek, whereupon he got cramp and passed out. Robert Herman Wallath, I sentence you to eight years' imprisonment. (GAVEL SLAMS) People are outraged. Eight years for 18 months of bungled robberies?! 'Why,' they say, 'that's far too long!' So the good folk of Taranaki begin a letter-writing campaign demanding Wallath's immediate release. And eventually the government says, 'Yep! That seems fair enough.' (ALL CHEER) And they let him go. The faith of his community was repaid. He never committed another crime. In fact, he joined the Salvation Army ` clearly had a thing for uniforms ` and eventually he died in 1950, a much-loved philanthropist. Stand and deliver! Robert Wallath, the Taranaki Highwayman, once said, 'Through reading stories such as Dick Turpin and other gentlemen of the road, 'there seems to be cast over me a sort of romantic glamour, 'and I became endowed with a marvellous power.' Wallath was clearly just another young man led astray by literature. (LAUGHTER) But the reason I love Robert Wallath is that he had the audacity to be known as the Taranaki Highwayman in a period of time when Taranaki didn't even have any highways, barely had functioning footpaths. In fact, he should have been known as the Taranaki Footpath Guy or the Mud Track Marauder. But it's a great story, and it would be a crime not to celebrate it. So ladies and gentlemen, a toast to The Taranaki Highwayman! ALL: The Taranaki Highwayman! (ALL CHEER, GLASSES CLINK)