The life and death of chief reporter Arthur Lever Ryan, a rare example of a New Zealand journalist killed on duty

A 1923 caricature of respected journalist Arthur “Darby” Ryan created eight years before his death. Photo / Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank Lovell-Smith 878

On February 3, 1931, a slight-statured, bespectacled man, with a modest wispy moustache, stands waiting in the Hastings post office lobby.

He clutches a notepad and pencil, anticipating the arrival of Tom Devoy from the Pacific Hotel.

He’s 65-year-old Arthur Lever Ryan, chief reporter of the Hawke’s Bay Tribune (now Hawke’s Bay Today), a man renowned as one of Hawke’s Bay’s best – if not the best – investigative journalist of his time.

Arthur is affectionately known around Hastings as “Darby”. His newspaper colleagues affectionately gave their chief reporter this nickname after the Irish poet and patriot, Darby Ryan. This was bestowed due to Darby’s 1865 birth in Waterford, Ireland, and his literary talents.

His father Roderick Ryan was a successful merchant and tobacconist in Waterford, and Arthur followed his father by having his own tobacconist shop.

Around 1885, aged 20, he left for New Zealand, and settled on the West Coast. He would find employment with the Greymouth Argus.

His move to Hastings came when his employer John Arnott and his son, William, with another Greymouth resident, Anthony Cashion, established the Hastings Standard in 1896, taking Arthur with them.

He was appointed as Napier representative for the newspaper and was described as a commission agent. It appears from a history of the Hastings Standard written in 1926 that he was also a reporter.

The Hastings Standard struggled financially, and its owners Arnott and Cashion sold in 1898. William Arnott’s bad health was also a factor in the demise, and he passed away of consumption (tuberculosis) in June 1898.

Arthur then returned to Greymouth and joined the Greymouth Evening Star.

It was a fortunate move romantically at least. He would marry in January 1901, to Ada Tomkies from Brunner, near Greymouth.

His newspaper employer in Greymouth announced that same January that Arthur would once again move to the Hastings Standard, now under new ownership.

While in Greymouth, Arthur had an active interest in the Literary Institute and amateur theatrical and was described as “always foremost in good works for the advancement of the people or the district”.

Arthur would also get heavily involved in dramatical, singing and community groups in Hastings.

Two children were born to Arthur and Ada in Hastings – Doreen (1902) and Aileen (1906).

Both girls were given Māori names – Owhiti for Doreen and a West Coast connection, Otira, for Aileen. They would train to be nurses.

When Arthur left the now Hawke’s Bay Tribune in the early 1910s to be the Hastings correspondent for Napier’s Daily Telegraph, his employers still recorded his comings and goings on holidays in the newspaper and there appeared to be no ill-will towards him.

He would rejoin the Hawke’s Bay Tribune by 1920.

In May 1930, Arthur and Ada announced that they would making a trip to England and Ireland – the places of their birth.

When they arrived in Waterford, Arthur was somewhat of a celebrity, and recalling his friendships of earlier years, he stated “the greater number of them were now to be found Ballygunner cemetery”.

In respect of his own health, the good people of Waterford were amazed that Arthur of “three score years and six [66, but he was actually 64] …looks extremely fresh and complimented on his youthful appearance.”

Arthur replied that “New Zealand’s delightful climate is the finest in the world for keeping one rejuvenated”.

The couple returned to Hastings in November 1930.

The wreckage at the Hastings post office after the destructive 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. The body of chief reporter of the Hawke’s Bay Herald, Arthur Lever Ryan, was found under the rubble on the outside corner on February 6. Photo / Liz Rea

Just over two months later, the 1931, 7.8 magnitude, Hawke’s Bay earthquake struck.

I was told by a member of Devoy family in 2006 that Tom Devoy had to go back to his Pacific Hotel to sort out a disturbance, leaving Arthur waiting in the Hastings post office lobby when the earthquake struck. Hotel owners – especially fellow Irishmen – were then great sources of news.

The Hastings post office had a tall clock tower – re-engineered after a 1911 earthquake to fall on to the street, not on to the building.

Along with several others, Arthur was killed by the falling masonry from the tower. His body was found on February 6.

Tributes flowed from his newspaper colleagues and the Hastings community and Arthur was buried in the Hastings cemetery.

Both his daughters Dorothy and Aileen were working at the Waipukurau hospital and had come back to Hastings to nurse the earthquake wounded.

Together with their mother Ada, they left for England in June 1931 for a holiday. They would stay away for two years, returning to Hastings in June 1933.

While in England, Doreen Ryan had met Guy Sansom. She would sail in September 1933 to the Federated Malay States (Malaya), then under British rule, where he now worked, to marry him in November. The Hawke’s Bay Herald covered the wedding in some detail. Her mother and sister did not attend, likely due to the cost.

It would be younger daughter Aileen’s turn to get married, when in January 1936 she got engaged to Alexander Edgar in Malaya. She had travelled with her mother Ada to see her sister in Malaya in March 1935, and had met Alexander there.

It appears that Ada then lived in Malaya to be near her two daughters.

When Japan entered World War II, it invaded Malaya in December 1941.

Both Dorothy and Aileen’s husbands, Guy Sansom and Alexander Edgar were then volunteers in the British Army and fought against the invading Japanese.

Before the invasion, Ada and her daughters Dorothy and Aileen had escaped to Australia, and in 1943 “took an air flight back to New Zealand to take up residence in Auckland.” (A son had been born in Malaya to Guy and Doreen in 1934, but it could not be determined if the boy had survived and gone to Australia).

Alexander Edgar and Guy Sansom were taken prisoner by the Japanese, and upon their release at the end of the war settled in New Zealand with their wives.

But neither Ada Ryan nor her two daughters would return to Hastings and lived north of Auckland.

Ada passed away in 1963, aged 94; Aileen in 1984, aged 78; and Doreen in 1991, aged 89.

Today, Arthur “Darby” Ryan’s tombstone would likely have had no visitors, without the publicity this article will likely generate.

His colleagues at the Hawke’s Bay Herald remembered him with a memorial notice in the paper every year until the mid-1960s – likely until the last person who remembered him had left employment.

But we remember you today, Darby, and the other approximate 256 victims of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. You are not forgotten.

Michael Fowler is a Hawke’s Bay historian and writer mfhistory@gmail.com. Fowler and Hawke’s Bay Today editor Chris Hyde will be meeting at the Orchard Rd entrance of the Hastings cemetery at 1pm today (Saturday, Feb 3) to pay our respects to Arthur Lever Ryan. Readers who are interested in doing the same are welcome to join us.