His parents retired to Masterton in about 1876, living in Kuripuni and continuing to be active in church affairs. John Rayner died in 1881, following an accident, leaving behind 11 children. His widow was living in Villa St when she died in November 1885. In accordance with her wishes, her funeral service was conducted by the Presbyterian David Fulton, with the Salvation Army, of which she had been an active member, also involved. She was buried alongside her husband in the family plot at the Masterton Cemetery. Their unmarried daughter Alice was also buried in the plot in 1903, but long before then the burial plot became the focus of national attention in a bizarre fraud case.
Disappearance
It all started with the disappearance of Christchurch railway worker Arthur Howard in October 1885. He had supposedly gone missing while swimming at Sumner Beach but, when his "widow" claimed insurance on his life, the companies involved - there were three - declined to pay as the value was excessive and they were not convinced of Howard's demise. They said they would pay out when his body "or a portion thereof" was found.
A portion showed up at Taylor's Mistake in December, a hand with a ring on one finger, inscribed "AH". The men who found the hand passed it over to the widow, who again claimed the money.
She was to be disappointed - a jeweller said the engraving had been very amateur and probably done with a nail, while medical experts said the hand (which had been removed from the rest of the body by a sharp instrument rather than a shark) definitely belonged to a woman. Mrs Howard was arrested, as were the men who found the body, and the public was asked to keep an eye out for Arthur Howard.
The new year brought remarkable news - Arthur Howard had been found in Petone, wearing a wig and sporting a dyed moustache. It did not take long for people to realise that the man arrested had been living in the Masterton area, working as a cook for the Camerons at Te Ore Ore. From there, it did not take long before rumours starting racing around the town.
People recalled that Howard had befriended the local undertaker Thomas Jago, and that he had made a nuisance of himself at Mrs Rayner's funeral. He had even secured an empty varnish tin from Jago. People were sure he had dug up Mrs Rayner's body and sawn off the hand, which he then kept in the tin, before heading south to deposit it on the beach.
The Rayner family was distraught, and the authorities were under pressure to exhume Mrs Rayner's body and check that it was still intact. A special exhumation order was telegraphed up from Wellington, and at 10.30 at night a small party went to Masterton Cemetery to open the Rayner grave. By midnight, the body had been checked and found to be entire.
Exhumations
A fellow worker from the Camerons came forward with startling news. He said Arthur Howard had asked him to go to the cemetery one night, to assist in digging up a body, as he wanted to check that a recently deceased man was a friend of his from Christchurch. He said he had refused. With that news, the police went back to the cemetery and exhumed some more bodies, but all were found to be complete. Police never discovered where Howard had obtained his hand.
The case went to trial later in the year, Howard, his wife and the two brothers who had found the hand on the beach charged with conspiracy to defraud. The brothers were found not guilty, as was Mrs Howard. Arthur Howard was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to two years' jail with hard labour. At the end of his sentence, he was sent back to Australia, the land of his birth.
In a strange way, karma caught up with Arthur Howard. His wife ran away to San Francisco with a Christchurch butcher while he was in prison, then he was crushed to death in a shunting accident in July 1889. It is not recorded whether his life was insured.
