90 years on: Where were they the morning of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake?

AFTER: The Cosy Theatre in Hastings after the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake where eight people died, including the Haxton sisters. Photo / File

Ninety years ago to the day, it was business as usual for Hawke's Bay residents.

The day dawned a beautiful Tuesday morning, with the sea off the coast of Napier described by those at the time as being a "most peculiar colour".

None could have known that at 10.47am on February 3, 1931, a deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake would strike leaving a wake of destruction across the region and leading to the deaths of 247 people.

The morning of the quake, sisters Doris Emma Haxton and Sabina May Haxton were busy inside the family business - Haxton's Home Cookery in the Cosy Theatre Building, on the corner of Heretaunga St and King St.

The sisters were both pastry cooks, and both single. They lived together at their 806 Nelson St home just a few kilometres away from the bakery.

Originally from Carterton, they were the only daughters of Armond and Emma Haxton (nee Kemp).

The family were no strangers to tragedy - the sisters' eldest brother, George William Haxton, died in 1918 while fighting in World War I and another brother, Wishart Mitchell Haxton, died the same year Sabina was born, aged just 1.

Sabina, the eldest, had celebrated her 28th birthday a few days after Christmas.

Doris was just a few months shy of her own birthday in April - she would have turned 26.

Both were killed when the Cosy Theatre Building collapsed during the magnitude 7.8 quake.

Despite having lived together and shared a business, the two were buried in separate plots at the Hastings Cemetery the day after the quake.

Their headstones describe both as "dearly beloved" daughters.

A death notice in the Horowhenua Chronicle states their father died just a few years later in October 1935, likely having mourned the tragic loss of the young women and their eldest brother.

It was reported their father had been "in ill health for some time past" before he died at the age of 68.

BEFORE: The Cosy Theatre, circa 1920s, how it stood before the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake. Photo / File

The sisters were not the only young women to lose their lives while working in the Cosy Theatre Building on the day of the earthquake.

Hastings woman Margaret Terea O'Neill, a 36-year-old dressmaker, also died when the building collapsed.

Alica Mary "Molly" Wells, a 17-year-old shop assistant, Emma Clara Cockerill, a 78-year-old widow and 33-year-old Ethel Rose Cole, along with her two boys Peter Henry, 3, and William Edwin Francis "Billy", 4, were also found outside the building and later buried.

The impacts of the quake were widely felt across the greater Hawke's Bay region for many years - not all who died as a result of the quake were killed immediately.

While the Haxton sisters were busy with their baked goods and customers, 47-year-old Stephen Burkin was hard at work in his boot repair shop on Ruataniwha St in Waipawa.

The father of four was badly injured in the quake when the building in which his shop was situated collapsed.

A later newspaper obituary describes, "the end wall of Bibby's building f[alling] on to the roof of Mr Burkin's shop, smash[ing] through the iron and pinn[ing] him under the debris".

When he was pulled from the debris, "willing hands having speedily responded to his cries for help", it became apparent that he had received a very serious injury.

His spine was broken, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

This spinal injury caused further health complications and Burkin later died at the Waipukurau Hospital in January 1933 - just shy of the two-year anniversary of the quake.

He was 49 years old.

His cause of death was listed as pyar nephritis and suspected pyelonephritis - a type of kidney infection.

The obituary described Burkin as maintaining a "spirit of cheery optimism" throughout his long illness, attributed to the years he spent serving in World War I, where he is believed to have met his wife Helen Elizabeth Wilkins in Croyden, Surrey, England.

He was buried in Waipawa where he was born.

Three others died several years after the fact from injuries sustained during the quake.

Anna May Morgan Henderson, a 58-year-old Napier woman, died in October 1935.

Laura Carroll, a 56-year-old widow also from Napier, died in September 1936.

Lorna Katherine Williamson, 32 of Williamson's Tailors in Napier, died in October 1944, more than 10 years after the devastating quake.