The Whanganui region, dominated by the river of the same name, has a long history of ahikāroa and kaitiakitanga by tangata whenua. For iwi and hapū, Te Awa o Whanganui, the Whanganui River, is a living being that physically and spiritually nurtures the land and people between Tongariro Maunga and the sea. For centuries it was a major food resource and transport route. In 2017 the fundamental importance of the river was recognised in law when it was declared a legal person, Te Awa Tupua.
The three siblings Hinengākau, Tamaūpoko and Tūpoho are the guardian tūpuna of the river; Hinengākau is associated with the upper reaches, Tamaūpoko the middle and Tūpoho its lower reaches. The river’s catchment area is the rohe of Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi (the collective peoples of the Whanganui district) named after the ancestor Haunui-a Pāpārangi, who was descended from the very early tupuna Ruatipua. Haunui-a Pāpārangi’s descendants settled with Ngā Paerangi, the original inhabitants of the lower Whanganui River area.
The site of present-day Whanganui is the ancestral home of Ngāti Tūpoho, Ngāti Tūmango and Ngā Paerangi hapū, and the location of a number of pā and kainga, including Pakaitore, Pukenamu and Patupūhou; the latter two were large sandhills utilised strategically as fortified positions. The last battle at Patupūhou - now the location of Cooks Gardens - was between taua (war parties) from Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Te Ātiawa. Today Pukenamu (Queen’s Park) is occupied by the Sarjeant Gallery. Pākaitore was a seasonal fishing, trading and gathering place on the river bank; the land retains this name and is otherwise known as Motua Gardens. Pūtiki Wharanui a Tamatea Pokai Whenua (shortened to Pūtiki-wharanui or Pūtiki) fishing pā was established centuries ago on the lower river’s southern bank, near the future site of the Cobham (State Highway 3) bridge in Whanganui. It was defended from attacks by various northern taua in the early nineteenth century during the period known as the musket wars. By the late 1830s Pūtiki-wharanui was the matapihi, ‘the developing window for Whanganui iwi on the wider world … a point of contact with visiting Europeans’.
Pākehā Arrivals
The first Pākehā that Whanganui Māori met were traders, Jack Rowe in 1831 and John Nicol 1834; they were followed by missionary Henry Williams in 1839. Contact with Pākehā at this time was very limited compared to other places in the motu, yet Whanganui was drawn into two history-making events in 1840; the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the New Zealand Company’s acquisition of land for Pākehā settlement. Nine Whanganui rangatira signed Te Tiriti at Pākaitore on 23 May 1840, and five signed at Waikanae in Kāpiti on 31 May. Pākaitore was also the location where a deed of sale was agreed on 28 May between Whanganui iwi and hāpu and British colonising firm the New Zealand Company. Whether ‘ethical and informed consent’ was given by iwi and hapū to either document is highly debatable but they nevertheless opened the way for the organised Pākehā settlement of the region, which commenced in February 1841.
Early Settlement
There was much discontent among iwi and hāpu over the land sale. The early years of Māori and Pākehā co-existence were marked with conflict. Martial law was imposed, British soldiers were stationed in Whanganui in 1846-47 and battles were fought between Crown forces and taua.
Peace was forged in 1848 and the Crown repurchased Whanganui in order to validate the dubious New Zealand Company transaction. Among Māori the hope was, in the words of the Waitangi Tribunal, that ‘Pākehā would live on their land, would trade with them, would set up schools and hospitals, and [would] satisfy their curiosity about the new, modern ways that the settlers brought with them’, whereas for Pākehā, the transaction was ‘an absolute transfer of property from one to another’ with no sense of partnership. This fundamental difference laid the foundations for future conflict, locally and further afield.
Conflict
The 1850s were relatively peaceful. The Pākehā population of the town grew from 170 in 1848 to 1,324 in 1858. The peace ended in the 1860s as Whanganui Māori, along with iwi and hāpu throughout the central North Island - many of whom were followers of the Kīngitanga and the Pai Mārire faith - challenged the government. A number of battles were fought north of Whanganui town between 1864 and 1869. Some Whanganui Māori fought on the Crown side and protected the town. Fighting ceased in 1869 and the last British regiment left Whanganui in 1870, ending its 23-year history as a garrison town.
The Building
Whanganui grew fast over the next few decades and the town and port was second in the lower North Island only to Wellington in significance. In 1901 estate agent, auctioneer (and later in life, honorary curator of the Sarjeant Gallery) Charles Duigan received a permit to build a two-storey shop and offices on Ridgway Street. Designed by prolific local builder-turned-architect Andrew McFarlane, who was responsible for numerous residential and commercial buildings in the region, and constructed by John Sims, the building was complete by April 1902. Duigan’s firm occupied part of the ground floor, with auction rooms on the first floor, and he secured the Waitotara County Council and the Wanganui Hospital Board as tenants on ten year leases. The hospital board moved to a new purpose-built premises in 1915 and their offices were occupied by the New Zealand State Coal Department; the county council remained in the building until 1953. Other tenants included solicitors, accountants and a valuer. One of the tenants was lawyer and mayor of Whanganui Charles Mackay, whose tenure ended in history-making circumstances.
Charles Ewing Mackay (1875-1929)
Born in Nelson in 1875, Charles Ewing Mackay spent his teenage years in Wellington when his father was headmaster of Wellington College. A top scholar, Mackay attended Canterbury College on a junior scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1895 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1900. He moved to Whanganui in 1901, attracted by the town’s economic prosperity, its status as a rural service centre bolstered by a growing manufacturing sector. Early the following year he founded a legal practice but a few months later joined an existing firm. In 1904 he and Isobel Duncan, daughter of a prominent local family, were married; they went on to have 4 children.
Mackay first became involved in local politics when he successfully stood for the Mataongaonga Road Board in 1904. This was a springboard to greater things: he became a Whanganui Borough Councillor in 1905 and Mayor aged 31 in 1906. Mackay had a ‘bold, energetic mayoral style’ and achieved a great deal during his two-stage tenure (1906-1913 and 1915-1920), such as the introduction of electric trams (the first town outside the main centres) and major improvements to infrastructure including construction of the Dublin Street bridge. He lobbied to make Whanganui a city, which was realised in 1924. Most notably, Mackay was a key player in the construction of the Sarjeant Gallery and the instigator of its innovative pictorialist art photography collection.
Mackay was a progressive, decisive and at times combative politician who gained enemies alongside supporters. Following the outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918) he was criticised as a shirker for arguing that married men should not enlist in the armed forces and after some pressure, joined up in 1916 to much media attention. However, Mackay never trained or served, citing business and family reasons, and was publicly criticised by his detractors. Things came to a head in May 1920 during a visit to Whanganui by the Prince of Wales.
Mackay chaired the royal visit committee which organised public events, including a civic concert and supper party. The local branch of the Returned Soldiers’ Association (RSA) felt excluded by Mackay and organised its own concert at the council-owned Opera House. After Mackay made offensive remarks about the RSA president during a council meeting he was banned from the concert, and in retaliation withdrew permission to use the Opera House. In a letter to the Wanganui Chronicle, the RSA argued that Mackay had ‘disqualified himself from taking the lead among returned soldiers when the Prince is present’ and was ‘unfit’ to attend the RSA concert.
The royal visit was a disaster. Power was cut during the civic concert, food and silverware was stolen from the supper after a large crowd rushed at the tables, and a disdainful Prince of Wales described Whanganui as ‘a miserable hole’. The town was mocked by local and Australian newspapers. Mackay and the RSA continued to exchange blows and one commentator claimed the latter was ‘being used as a tool to assist in the lowering of Mr Mackay in the eyes of ratepayers for a political purpose’. This comment proved prescient.
Mackay’s Downfall
A week after the royal tour, Mackay met a young returned solider called D’Arcy Cresswell, who later gained a reputation as a man of letters. He was in Whanganui visiting relatives. The two struck up a friendship, dining twice that week. Mackay took Cresswell on a private tour of the Sarjeant Gallery, which he had keys to. On permanent display was a marble copy of an ancient Greek statue ‘The Wrestlers’, described by Mackay’s biographer Paul Diamond as, ‘famous among homosexual men, who have admired the entwined naked bodies for their homoerotic beauty’. The men would undoubtedly have paused at the gallery’s most prominent collection item.
After touring the gallery, they went to Mackay’s legal office in Duigan’s Buildings. Cresswell proceeded to blackmail Mackay:
‘....while there I discovered a certain disgusting feature in Mr MacKay’s character, I purposefully encouraged him to display his qualities in his nature which I expected.... I told him that I had led 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 Mayorality [sic] at once.’
Cresswell forced Mackay to write a letter which was posted to Cresswell’s cousin. They met again at the office the next morning, Saturday 15 May 1920. Mackay pleaded with Cresswell not to force his resignation and threatened suicide, saying he was ‘suffering from a complaint which made it impossible for him to control his passions’.
After much back and forth, Mackay signed another letter promising to resign. As they went to leave the office, Mackay shot Cresswell in the chest and shoved the gun in his hand to make it look like suicide. A wounded Cresswell tossed a chair through the window onto the street below as a call for help. Hearing this, Mackay ran at Cresswell, pleading to be shot, but Cresswell fired clear and staggered out of the office onto the landing. There he met Colin Cameron and Sydney Sykes, who heard the ruckus from the street and came inside to investigate.
Cresswell survived and later that day, Mackay was charged with attempted murder, despite claiming the gun had fired by accident. He subsequently pleaded guilty at his trial on 27 May. During sentencing, the defence lawyer William Treadwell disclosed Mackay’s secret, that he was homosexual – this was the ‘disgusting feature’ that Cresswell threatened to expose. Six years earlier Mackay had sought medical treatment and what would today be called conversion therapy for his so-called ‘homo-sexual monomania’. In an attempt to mitigate the sentence, Treadwell argued (in line with current thinking) that it was an illness which affected Mackay’s mental capacity and decision-making. Chief Justice Sir Robert Stout believed Treadwell’s illness argument but did not accept it as a mitigating factor and harshly sentenced Mackay to 15 years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
Homosexuality
Historian Justin McNab has noted that ‘although Mackay had ended up in court because he shot someone, his homosexuality seemed equally on trial’. Same sex attraction had been accepted in te ao Māori. It was only with the coming of the Christian missionaries in the early nineteenth century, the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840 and the subsequent adoption of English laws, that consensual sexual acts between men became both illegal and socially prohibited. While Mackay was never charged with any of these so-called crimes against morality, his case ‘named and publicised homosexuality in New Zealand to an unprecedented extent’. His story was reported in newspapers throughout the country, with Truth describing him as ‘another Oscar Wilde, morally unclean; a pursuer of PERVERTED AND PUTRID ‘PLEASURES’’, in reference to the famous Irish playwright who was convicted of gross indecency (that is, homosexual acts) and jailed in 1895.
The motivation for D’Arcy Cresswell’s blackmailing of Mackay is unclear. Historians have speculated that Mackay’s political opponents and the RSA were aware of his secret and used Cresswell as a honey trap. Is this what the RSA was referring to when describing Mackay as unfit to attend the concert? Cresswell acknowledged in his police statement that he had purposefully led Mackay on but he never elaborated and there is no hard evidence of a conspiracy, as logical as it is. That Cresswell himself had homosexual relationships, quite openly later in life, simply adds further complexity and another layer of tragedy. It may be that Cresswell was forced to act by a threat of outing, or that he was, as other men had done, denying or concealing his own homosexuality by diverting attention to Mackay.
Mackay’s Remaining Years
From 1923-1924, Mackay was incarcerated in New Plymouth Prison, where sexual offenders, including homosexual men, were imprisoned, and napped stone in the quarry as the hard labour component of his sentence. He also served time in Mount Eden (Auckland), Waikeria (Waikato) and Hautū (Tūrangi). In 1926 the Mount Eden superintendent reported ‘compared with the past Mackay appears to have realised his position and ... has changed for the better. He certainly appears to have much more control of himself’. He was released on 6 August 1926 and went straight to England where he worked as a journalist and advertising agent. In 1929 Mackay moved to Berlin, then an oasis for homosexual people. There he was shot and killed by a police sniper while reporting on May Day (International Workers’ Day) demonstrations on 3 May 1929.
Building’s Later History
In 1960 Duigan’s Buildings was sold to present-day owners Meteor Printers. The Whanganui Printing Company (WPC) had occupied space in the building since 1941. Noel Ruscoe worked for WPC before founding Meteor Printers in 1949; his company took over the premises and subsequently bought the building. Mackay’s office was used as the company’s tearoom and the space occupied by the Waitotara County Council became the bindery. Meteor Printers expanded into stationery and extended next door, into Bon Accord Chambers (1908) in 1972 and D. McFarlane & Co (1900) in 1988. Today the building is mostly used for storage by Meteor Printers.
Mackay’s Legacy
After a flurry of publicity during the trial and following his release from prison, Mackay’s story became one of Whanganui’s secrets. Isobel divorced him and she and the children (who Mackay never saw again) took her maiden name of Duncan; his name was sanded off the Sarjeant Gallery foundation stone and Mackay Street was renamed Jellicoe Street. He was omitted from public histories of Whanganui for decades. In 1965 writer Helen Shaw, who found out about Mackay when researching D’Arcy Cresswell, was told by the Whanganui town clerk, ‘as the incident was not a very savoury one in the history of this city...either tone down the matter in your writings, or omit the incident altogether’. Paul Diamond concludes that Mackay’s erasure was due to his homosexuality rather than his criminal conviction. His sexuality was deemed shameful and shame breeds secrets.
Perversely, the coverage gave other homosexual people a rare opportunity to ‘read about themselves’ but it was a cautionary tale – the homosexual writer Hector Bolitho (1897-1974), who knew Mackay, left New Zealand for England as a result. It was remembered by later generations of gay men. The writer Frank Sargeson (1903-1982) heard about it at the time as a schoolboy; he became fascinated with the story after meeting D’Arcy Cresswell and told many people, thus ensuring that Mackay wasn’t forgotten. Fellow writer Bill Pearson (1922-2002) knew the story and saw it as a demonstration of the type of behaviours closeted homosexuals resorted to in homophobic New Zealand.
In time, Mackay’s sexuality was the source of his rehabilitation, as ‘the association of homosexuality with shame...was transformed into gay pride’ in the late twentieth century. Enough people remembered or knew enough of his story to ensure it would be picked up again. Following the arrival of the gay liberation movement in Aotearoa New Zealand in the early 1970s, members of Whanganui’s Gay Rights Group led by Desmond Bovey placed a pink triangle wreath (the movement’s symbol) at the Sarjeant Gallery foundation stone in honour of Mackay in 1978 and called for the reinstatement of his name.
This came to fruition in 1985, the year before the Homosexual Law Reform Act, which removed criminal sanctions against consensual homosexual acts between men, was passed. The town clerk noted, ‘in view of the time that has passed and a change of social attitudes it is believed that his name should be reinstated’. In 2012, photographer Ann Shelton had the name gilded as part of her exhibition The City of Gold and Lead and Mackay’s story has inspired a number of other artworks, novels and plays. His Ridgway Street office was a leading attraction of walking tours held to celebrate the 2022 publication of Paul Diamond’s book Downfall: the Destruction of Charles Mackay (short-listed for the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards general non-fiction award), and was open for tours during Whanganui’s Pride Week in 2023. The proposal by Heritage New Zealand to recognise its heritage values through this history elicited supportive submissions highlighting its importance to queer people; in the words of one submitter: ‘This building represents an important part of rainbow history…our rainbow stories are our heritage, our rainbow culture, and we seek them out’. The proposal was described by Pride Whanganui as ‘an incredible step forward, not only for NZ but for Whanganui’. Desmond Bovey of the city’s Gay Rights Group of the 1970s was another supporter.
The criminalisation of male homosexuality and the social stigma attached to all sexualities beyond mainstream heterosexuality necessarily meant homosexual lives were lived discreetly, leaving relatively few recorded traces for their historians. Yet criminalisation also means the creation of records when transgressors are caught or otherwise come to the attention of authorities. Charles Mackay is a tragically perfect example. His life story was dramatically shaped by these forces and was simultaneously placed on record and nearly erased because of them. Duigan’s Building is the place which holds this story.
