Steve Braunias
Hamilton City Council, as the world now knows, has cancelled the statue of Captain John Hamilton. The decision to remove it from Civic Square was made after a request from Waikato-Tainui. As well, Huntly kaumātua Taitimu Maipi threatened to tear it down during a Black Lives Matter march.
I've once or twice eaten sandwiches and drank good, rich instant coffee from my thermos at Civic Square and kept my eye on the statue of Captain John Hamilton. It was a strange-looking thing. It looked furtive. There was nothing around it, just space; Civic Square exists as a vacant lot. Many visitors to Hamilton mistakenly regard the city as very boring.
In 2012, Hamilton City Council voted in secret to accept the statue of Captain John Hamilton. It was offered to the city by the Gallagher Group to mark the company's 75th anniversary. (Bill Gallagher invented that thrilling symbol of New Zealand life: the electric fence.) The public were excluded when council voted in favour of it. "I don't recall anyone saying, 'Oh, this is terrible, this is going to cause all kinds of ructions,' because it was about the history of how the city got named," former mayor Gordon Chesterman told the Waikato Times.
Gallagher commissioned sculptor Margriet Windhausen to make the statue of Captain John Hamilton. She cast it in bronze. The very nature of statues is their aristocracy, their regal bearing; Hamilton descended from the old Derbyshire family of Heathcote, including Sir Gilbert Heathcote (1652-1733), who amassed fabulous wealth – he began business as a trader of Spanish wines – but history records him as a cheapskate. Biographical detail includes the gossip that he complained of the charge of a few lousy shillings as fees for the burial of his brother. Alexander Pope immortalised him in mocking verse: "The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule/ That every man in want is knave or fool."