Brian Rudman: Tales from Auckland's past show too much dancing can be deadly

On a wet and wild Saturday, what better place to escape to. Photo / APN

Rain again, This is said to be the sixth Queen's Birthday which has been wet. 'Queens weather,' in New Zealand now bears exactly the opposite meaning to what it does in England."

That was an Auckland Star columnist in May 1876, struggling to find something to write about, what with "all the outdoor amusements" being "knocked on the head" including an intriguing "walking match" between Mrs Wiltshire who "seems in fine condition and expects to astonish her most confident admirers," and person or persons unnamed.

The above comes from the information treasure trove just released online, by the National and Auckland libraries, of the first 33 years of the Auckland Star. Available now is the full searchable text of the afternoon daily from 1870 to 1903. And on a wet and wild Saturday, what better place to escape to.

The 1873 festivities were much more jolly.

"Early in the morning martial sounds filled the air and gay uniforms flashed and glistened in the sunlight" as volunteers and cadets went marching along Queen St to Albert Barracks to fire off royal salutes.

"The Cadets, with their drums and fifes tripped cheerfully on to 'death and glory,' their looks, death to every traitor slave. Oh! That the Maori King could have seen today's display and trembled."

Then it was all aboard excursion ferries for picnics at Riverhead and Takapuna and Devonport.

With the addition of the Auckland Star, and also the Rodney Times (from 1901 to 1945) the National Library is now claiming to have almost two million pages of digitised historic New Zealand newspapers available online at http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast. The site gets more than 100 million hits annually and the popularity comes as no surprise. With the ability to search every word on the two million pages, it's like Googling from a time machine.

Not sure where to start? I tried the family name and there on March 2 1895, by telegraph from Napier came news of a "serious accident" - my grandfather, "a young man named Edgar Rudman had one of his legs broken this morning by being thrown off a horse."

My street's been in the news, too, from the day in April 1903, that the cheapest tender of 1005 pounds 13 shilling and two pence, won A. Parsons and Son the contract to lay it out.

In 1910, we star in a death by overdose of chlorodyne, then nothing until 1928, when Mr G Phillips, of the Trocadero Restaurant is mugged as he walks from the tram.

Luckily, the thief snatched a bag containing a bottle of oysters and a pound of dog's meat, not the one containing the day's taking of over £100.

The saga of the original Onehunga rail link has a familiar ring. There were the rows over cost and usefulness. The grand opening of the line on December 22, 1873 was marred by the failure to invite any Onehungians to the festivities.

The Star's Onehunga correspondent reports the first locals knew for certain of the opening was the bunting suddenly erected by the local hotel keeper that morning and "by the appetising odours which proceeded from [the hotel's] capricious kitchens".

The Chief Justice arrived on the first train, with the Auckland Superintendent, the Auckland Mayor and assorted dignatories and their wives. "On arrival at the mud hole which at present does duty at the terminus" they disappeared into the hotel.

"The Mayor of Auckland was to have proposed 'The Prosperity of the town and trade of Onehunga' but just as he was about to it was discovered that not a single inhabitant of the town had been invited to be present, and therefore the toast was left out, there being no person to respond to it."

Maybe the organisers feared they'd catch the local disease. Around this time, the Star shocked readers with news of "Death at Onehunga from Excessive Dancing".

Poor Catherine Matilda Nixon, 19, of a respectable local family went off to the Hiberian Ball at the Onehunga Hall, "and danced through the hours of the night until nature gave way and she sank completely exhausted".

She was carried to her parent's house but despite best medical advice, died two days later. The paper warned that "several young ladies in Auckland have had a narrow escape of their lives through over-indulgence in this otherwise healthful exercise".