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Genealogy Investigations, Wellington (2026)

29/05/2026

The delinquents
In the 1950’s the nation’s parents were up in arms. In contention were the actions of the nation’s youth, labeled delinquents and the outrage turned into a huge inquiry.
At the bottom of the outrage was a milk bar in Lower Hutt and a 15-year-old girl. On June 20, 1954, just after she had been reported missing by her mother and stepfather, the girl turned up at a police station talking about milk bar gangs and s*x.
It led to a roundup of youths at milk bars - epitomised by Elbe’s Milk Bar in High St, Lower Hutt - and police laid 80 charges against a group of 60 youths and girls.
The outcry led to a government commission often called the Mazengarb Report but its name was Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents.
Milk Bar gangs - often now considered the forerunner to motorcycle gangs - were part of the start of counter culture - youths who no longer wanted the lifestyle of their conservative and traditional upbringings.
It didn’t help that only days after the girl’s report was made, two girls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme murdered Pauline’s mother Honorah, in Victoria Park, Christchurch.
Lawyer Oswald Chettle Mazengarb was to head the inquiry and started immediately.
If the parents of the nation were looking to find something like alcohol or drugs or movies to be the basis of the delinquency, they were in for a shock.
The report blamed juvenile delinquency on inadequate parental supervision and advocated a return to Christianity and traditional values. Excessive wages paid to teenagers, a decline in the quality of family life, and the influence of American films, comics and other literature also came under attack.
A copy of the report - all 69 pages - was sent to every home in New Zealand.
While it did not change the behaviour of the youth of the day, it did have far reaching effects on our laws.
It provided the basis for new legislation that introduced stricter censorship and restrictions on giving contraceptive advice to young people.
Mazengarb was born in Melbourne on May 31, 1890 to Alfred Valentine and his wife Elizabeth Mary. His father, originally a phrenologist, became a pastor and the family moved to New Zealand.
He worked for a newspaper briefly before enrolling in university where he got a Bachelor of Arts then went on to study law.
He was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1914 and went into partnership with another lawyer.
He made a speciality out of car injury cases and was considered the expert in those cases.
He married Margaret Campbell in Invercargill on 6 April 1920 and they had three daughters.
After he wrote the Mazengarb report he helped with the drafting of three new laws, the Indecent Publications Amendment Act 1954, the Child Welfare Amendment Act (No 2) 1954 and the Police Offences Amendment Act 1954, which made it an offence to sell contraceptives to children under 16 years of age.
He died at Wellington on 27 November 1963 and was cremated at Karori Cemetery.
New Zealand stories from our history: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

22/05/2026

The Search for Beauty
In the 1930’s Paramount Studios launched a competition called the Search for Beauty. The idea was publicity for a movie to be released and was the one of the first starring roles for a 17-year-old Ida Lupino who would go on to be a prominent actress and film maker.
The real life Search for Beauty meant Paramount sent studio press agents around the world to find the world’s most perfect physical specimens.
And it came to New Zealand.
Two New Zealanders were chosen and both appeared in one of the opening sequences for the movie.
One was Wellington’s Joyce Neilson. The other was Colin Edward Livingstone Tapley.
Tapley had been born in Dunedin in 1909, to Harold Livingstone Tapley, a New Zealand early Reform politician and Jean Brodie Burt.
Colin went to England early where he joined the Royal Air Force, taking part in Admiral Richard Byrd’s Antarctic expedition before returning to New Zealand.
In 1933, he took part in the Search for Beauty competition.
From around the world 30 were chosen and taken to Hollywood including Colin.
He ended up with a bit contract with Paramount and began sharing a flat with Eldred Tidbury - one of the South African winners in Search for Beauty who went on to be known as Donald Gray.
Colin was rejected as the lead for the film Ain’t No Sin with Mae West but then appeared in 31 films for Paramount and a couple for MGM.
He was in Double Door, Murder at the Vanities, Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Becky Sharpe - a pioneer colour film where he wore a splendid military uniform.
In 1940, however he went to Canada and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Airforce and was offered a role as an instructor which landed him in England during the War, becoming an RAF controller.
He came back to New Zealand after demobilisation and tried to start a launch service in Wanaka but returned to England to restart his film career.
In 1949 he was in “Samson and Delilah.”
His biggest claim to fame would be in 'The Dambusters (1954) with Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd. He played a scientist who developed Barnes Wallis's weapon.
Between 1954 and 1958 he worked with his friend Donald Gray in the Danziger TV series 'The Vise' as Inspector Parker.
Colin retired in 1983 to his country cottage in Gloucestershire and died on December 1, 1995. He had married Patricia Marjorie Lyon in 1943.
Colin is cremated and his ashes added to his son Martin’s burial plot (who had died aged 3) in Wanaka Cemetery.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

15/05/2026

A nursing pioneer
Annie Alice Crisp’s name is not now well known - but her legacy has been part of New Zealand history.
Born to William and Alice Crisp in 1854 in Warwickshire she began her nursing training at Queen’s Hospital in Birmingham then became head nurse at Boyal United Hospital in Bath before joining the nursing section of the British Army.
She was sent out with the troops to Zululand landing at Durban, and went on to the Field Hospital at Fort Anuiel, Newcastle, living in a small mud hut or ambulance waggon. Several hundred sick and wounded soldiers were treated in this hospital.
After being there three or four months, she proceeded with a convoy of sick to Pietermaritzburg, and returned home from there after an absence of 12 months.
She was then selected to accompany the troops to Egypt, and landed at Ismailia, where a Field Hospital was established for the wounded from the front.
She served as a nurse in the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Egyptian wars and then in the Sudan and South Africa.
Crisp received the Egypt Medal and the Khedive’s Star for her work in those campaigns.
While she was overseas her father became unwell and her parents decided to move to New Zealand.
She joined them and settled in Auckland.
Not being the sort to do little, she quickly established New Zealand’s first school of nursing and went on to be appointed the superintendent of Auckland Hospital in 1883.
Before the school nursing, while an honourable profession, has not been well regulated.
Hospitals had training programmes but dedicated schools came about later.
It was in 1902, the world’s first state-registered nurses had their names entered in the new register. Topping the list was Ellen Dougherty of Palmerston North. The law to register nurses has come in the year before.
In 1884 Crisp received the Royal Red Cross which had been established the year before by Queen Victoria to recognise special devotion and competency in nursing duties with our army, navy or military hospital and was given to women until 1976. It was sometimes called the Victoria Cross for women.
She married Dr John Bond in 1988 and they moved to the United States in 1890 where he worked on the British exhibit at the Chicago’s World Fair before the couple moved to Canada.
In 1909 she founded a children’s hospital in Winnipeg, Canada.
It was here she died on June 11, 1953 and buried in the St John’s Cathedral cemetery.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

15/05/2026

A quick follow-up to last week’s post about the genealogy project we did for the producers making a book, a podcast and a documentary about Te Pahi — the first influential Māori leader to cross the Tasman.

The documentary version has now been released on Radio New Zealand and for anyone interested, we wanted to share it with you all.

We both knew the story was extraordinary while we were researching it, but seeing it brought to life on screen was something else entirely, even if it is odd seeing yourself on screen.
This was beautifully shot and a powerful emotional story.

Huge credit to Eugene Bingham and the team for the way they told it.

You can watch it here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/video/te-pahi

08/05/2026

The 220-year-old mystery
Every so often a project comes along that reminds us exactly why we do this work. Usually our clients are private and we never get to tell the sometimes astonishing stories behind them. But this one was different.
Last year, we were approached by award winning journalist Eugene Bingham with a question: Could we find the living descendants of a man executed in the early 1800s?
It came about because he was researching Māori chief Te Pahi who went to Sydney in 1805 and intervened in the trial of four men charged over stealing pork in Australia. All four were to be executed.
He saved two but the other two were killed.
Time has a way of swallowing people whole — records fade, names shift, families scatter.
But that’s the thing about genealogy. If you follow the threads carefully enough, they usually lead somewhere.
So we started pulling.
What followed was months of digging through archives, cross-referencing records, chasing small clues that turned into bigger ones.
And little bit by little bit we found them.
Not just names on a page, but real, living descendants.
It’s now a book, The Chief and the Empire, a documentary and a five-part podcast.
It’s a very New Zealand story and a part of our history that deserved to be told.
And it’s a reminder that history isn’t as distant as it feels — and that sometimes, the past is just waiting for someone to come looking.
And yes… we’re pretty proud to have played a small part in that.
For once we are giving you a link not to our stories but to Eugene’s: https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/360996229/chief-and-empire-220-year-old-mystery-flips-early-new-zealand-history-its-head

01/05/2026

The Grand National winner
The 17-hand brown gelding was supposed to be a hunter - jumping rather than racing. But he would go on to win one of the hardest horse races in the world.
Moifaa was born in Takapau, New Zealand. A big strong horse, he was described by judges as having the head and shoulders of a camel.
Put into training he promptly won 9 of his 13 races. Owned initially by Alfred and Emily Ellingham, he was bought by Hawke’s Bay business man Spencer Gollan, a noted sportsman.
Gollan had seen him jumping fences in a paddock (it made Moifaa hard to catch, he would simply jump out of the paddock).
Gollen was known for sending horses to England. He was a friend of the Prince of Wales and had a desire to win The Grand National which the Prince had won in 1900.
His plan was to send Moifaa so the horse would be his winner.
It’s here that a myth began - one born out of coincidence but stuck to Moifaa’s name ever since.
Moifaa and three other horses boarded a steamship to England on the same day that the SS Thermopylae left Melbourne carrying two other horses, Chesney and Kiora.
While Moifaa’s ship arrived safely, the ship carrying Chesney and Kiora struck a reef near Table Bay in the Cape of Good Hope. Chesney was freed but Kiora was believed to have drowned. But Kiora got free too and swam to a shallow reef where he was found hours later. He was eventually taken on to England.
Moifaa, meanwhile, was adjusting slowly. He was unplaced in his first three races and was then entered in the Grand National in 1904.
The huge fences played to Moifaa’s strengths, he was a jumper.
Horses fell at fences as the race got underway. Moifaa however was eager, pulling hard and at the fifth fence, the jockey Arthur Burch let him go. That was all the big horse needed and he got to the front and stayed there. He jumped the last two fences perfectly and won by eight lengths.
The press got hold of the story of the shipwrecked horse and believed it was Moifaa - however it was really Kiora - who was in the same Grand National race.
The gelding so impressed King Edward who was watching arranged to buy the horse.
The next year Moifaa was set to run in the King’s Colours and after his jockey was injured he was put into the hands of Bill Dolley - but Moifaa fell at the Bechers and was unable to continue.
Despite this he was still a huge favourite with the King who lent him out as a hunter.
When the King died in 1910, Moifaa followed the gun carriage that carried the coffin though the streets of London, with the King's boots reversed in the stirrups and the saddle empty.
Gollan was born in Napier to Donald and Frederica on February 22, 1860 and excelled in rowing and golf - he twice won the New Zealand Amateur championship.
Blind in one eye, Gollan was in London when he was hit by a bus and died on January 27, 1934. He is buried in the All Saints Graveyard in Oxfordshire.
Where Moifaa ended up is not recorded.
See how much we love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

24/04/2026

A terrible first
On any ANZAC Day there are too many lost to name them all. We stand silent for a moment today to remember all who gave themselves for the rest of us.
In any war there are terrible firsts. In World War One, it’s William Arthur Ham - the first New Zealander to die in combat.
William had been born on April 14, 1892 in Ireland - to William and Hester. In 1903 they boarded the Athenic to come to New Zealand after his father sought a warmer climate for his health.
Initially his father worked at a sawmill. Then for years the Hams ran the general store at Ngatimoti where William went to Orinoco School before working first as a farm hand then as a labourer for the Waimea County Council survey team.
He was also a member of the 12th (Nelson and Marlborough) Regiment of the Territorial Force.
He enlisted on August 15, 1914, and sailed as part of the NZ Expeditionary Force - ironically on the Athenic which had been converted to the troop ship.
In theory, William is not the first death - others had died from disease or in accidents or while serving in overseas armies.
But he is believed to be the first in combat.
Initially headed for France, they were diverted to Egypt and to a camp outside of Cairo.
It was about 3am on February 3, 1915 when the 62nd Punjabis came under attack from Turkish fire and found several pontoons full of Turkish soldiers heading across the canal towards them.
They kept them from coming further but later that day William’s company came under enemy gunfire. It would be called the Battle of the Suez Canal.
It was during this that a chance bullet struck his rifle, ricocheted off and hit him in the neck breaking his spine.
He was taken to Egypt’s Ismailia Hospital where he died two days later on February 5.
His whole company turned out to farewell him and he was buried with full military honours.
He was the first of over 18,000 lost in that war.
His battalion commander called him splendid, happy and cool and as quiet and capable.
His father died just a month after William of pneumonia.
The family had already lost extended family members from Ireland and England to the war - so after William they must have been terrified when his brother Thomas also joined up. He survived that war, only to die in 1942 in World War Two while fighting in the Pacific.
Hester had remarried to Cyril Bartlett in 1916 who also enlisted, dying in Belgium the next year.
William’s sister in law Violet recorded the terrible impact his death had on the family as part of a documentary. It is preserved at Nga Taonga Sound and Vision.
William was buried in the Ismailia War Memorial Cemetery.
The stories of heros: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

17/04/2026

A mountain death
Mt Ruapehu is beautiful and deadly.
Not just for the possibility of eruption or lahar - but for the sometimes treacherous weather conditions. Fine one moment, foggy or stormy the next.
It was this that caught William Napier Bingham out on a day climb up the mountain.
He had started out with others in March 1913. The mountain loomed over them, initially in brilliant sunlight and topped with pure white snow.
An intelligent young man, Bingham (usually called Napier) had come from Ohakune where he began a job as a chemist only a week before.
Napier was born to William and Marion Bingham in New South Wales in Australia in 1892.
He joined a group who were going on the climb to the camp with the intention of returning in the evening.
But as they - in small groups - started out - the weather began to turn, fog rolling down from the summit.
Rather than clearing as it sometimes did in sunlight - it thickened and most of the parties opted to stop and descend again.
Madeline Coche was part of a small group that opted to turn back but lost their way and spent the night on the mountain, beginning their descent again the next morning. It had been a horrible night. Despite having matches they were unable to light a fire and had little food or water.
She told the inquest that she saw Napier try to get over two large rocks near the creek but did not think she could make it so forced her way through bush.
When she came out she saw Napier’s hat and stick in the water but had heard nothing.
She continued to follow the creek down and it was later everyone realised he had not returned.
Search parties were sent out, with experienced Ohakune residents turning out to look for Napier.
He was eventually found - dead in a pool about half a mile from where Madeline had last seen him.
He had a head injury with a nasty gash on his forehead.
The inquest was told he was in a very rough and isolated part of the mountain and it took several days to bring his body down.
The coroner found his death accidental after falling and recommended that a fog bell be put on the mountain to warn other hikers.
Napier is buried at the Mangatera Cemetery in Dannevirke.
Stories of our history: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

10/04/2026

Who remembers getting free milk at school?
Did you know it started in Lower Hutt at Randwick School and was initially an anonymous benefactor who started it just in the one school before it caught the notice of a Prime Minister who rolled it out across the country?
The ambitious plan started nationally in 1937 and ran until 1967.
Randwick School was still young itself, in 1929 when the principal Mr A E Werry became worried about malnourished and hungry children coming to school.
It was the local mayor Alexander Fowler Roberts who offered to pay £600 a year for three years for milk to be given to the pupils. That’s a huge sum worth now about $80,000.
He did it on the condition that his contribution was anonymous.
Shortly after the scheme came to the attention of Walter Nash who was the Lower Hutt Labour MP.
A study was even done on the children to see if it helped. A newspaper at the time reported that at the start the children were weighed and examined - and at the end of six months - and through the winter months - most had gained weight and were in better health.
It was such a success it prompted the Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage and the first Labour Government to roll it out nationwide.
For a short while during the war kids were also given apples.
It led to a school job that was prized, that of milk monitor.
The National Government in 1967 put an end to it because of the cost.
It was not known for some time that the man who came up with the money was Alexander Roberts.
Born in Dunedin in September 1882, he was educated in Edinburgh and Cambridge he worked at a stock and station agency later becoming a director.
During World War One he was an embarkation officer in Wellington.
Roberts became a commissioner of the British Empire Exhibition in London - later receiving knighthood for his service.
He went on to sit on the Lower Hutt Borough Council and became mayor in 1929 sitting until 1931 when he did not stand again.
He returned to serve as an embarkation officer again during the Second World War.
He had married Hannah Ruby Farquhar in 1907 and they had three sons.
Roberts died in Calvary Hospital in Wellington on March 19, 1961 and was cremated at Karori Cemetery.
With thanks to the Hutt City Libraries and Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.
The stories of our past: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

03/04/2026

The ANZAC flagpole
We usually end our stories with where someone is buried but this time we are going to start with it.
No one really knows where Norman Frederick Hastings is buried. He was one of the many Allied Soldiers who died as part of the Gallipoli campaign where he was wounded and later died and was likely interred as one of the many soldiers during the chaos.
Norman was born in Auckland on July 18, 1879, to Frederick and F***y Hastings but they moved to Wellington where he was raised in Brooklyn. It was there he went into the Wellington City Rifles in the 1890s.
He enlisted in the 34 Company Army Service Corps in 1900 and was shipped to South Africa to take part in the Second Anglo-Boer War where he gained the rank of sergeant and was wounded in action twice.
On coming back to New Zealand he enlisted in the Karori Defence Rifle Club and married Hilda May Barr.
He became a commissioned officer in 1909 and then posted to A Squadron, 6th (Manawatu) Mounted rifles then passed the promotion to captain.
He began work for the New Zealand Railways Department as an engineering fitter and foreman.
With the declaration of World War One, New Zealand established the Expeditionary force and the Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment was formed. Norman joined the unit and headed to Egypt in 1914.
In April 1915, Norman was one of the many who went to the Gallipoli Peninsula and in May he arrived at Anzac Bay where his regiment occupied Walker’s Ridge. He was known for his strong leadership as his regiment held the perimeter.
For weeks they fought at different points around the area.
Hastings assumed command of the 6th Squadron after its commander, Major Charles Dick, was wounded in the assault on Destroyer Hill, which opened the way to Table Top and allowed the New Zealand Infantry Brigade to seize Rhododendron Ridge in preparation for the attack on Chunuk Bair.
Promoted in the field to major, Hastings commanded the 6th Squadron on Chunuk Bair on 8 and 9 August as the New Zealanders attempted to hold their position.
He was wounded when a bomb exploded shattering his leg but there was delay in his evacuation.
He was put into the care of the 16th Casualty Clearing Station, but it had to be abandoned when it came under fire. It’s not clear exactly when he died but it’s likely during that evacuation.
Like a lot of men, he would have been buried although without a record he was initially listed as missing in action. He was later declared as having probably died of his wound received in combat. His likely burial place, in the Embarkation Pier Cemetery, was later marked with a special memorial by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
But there is another memorial to him.
The New Zealand Railways Department put up the kauri and Australian hardwood memorial flagpole dedicated to the ANZAC corps at the Petone Railway Station. Constructed in 1926 it was put up in time for the inaugural ANZAC Day commemorations.
The Railways Department has always commemorated those employees who went to war including with plaques at the Wellington Railway Station and the flagpole which still stands in Petone.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

Genealogy Investigations

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15/05/2026

15/05/2026

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01/05/2026

24/04/2026

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