Horatio Ramsden was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in Mt Eden January 1916. Photo / Auckland Star
Horatio Ramsden was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in Mt Eden January 1916. Photo / Auckland Star
Witnesses heard crashing sounds and cries of "Help, help" from bushes beside a path.
It was after dark on a summer Saturday evening and several people were still about on the western slopes of Maungawhau/Mount Eden.
Labourer Charles Niccolls, of Hillside Cres, was on his way to the pictures justafter 9pm on January 22, 1916, when he heard the shrill cries as he passed near a gate and path leading up the hill.
"I think someone has been hurt," Niccolls called to his aunt Georgiana Smelt, who was on the veranda of their house.
He saw a man running fast from the bushes down Hillside Cres to Mt Eden Rd. He called "Stop", but the man sped away.
The streetside gas lamp hadn't lit - its clockwork mechanism was wound down - so he struck matches and, with Smelt, went to investigate under the bushes.
Amongst a tangle of yellow nasturtiums they found the body of a young man whose shirt was saturated with blood. He was dead.
Horatio Heywood Frecherville Ramsden had been stabbed and slashed repeatedly. Doctors found 11 knife wounds in his chest and side, a contused wound on the top of his head, and a deep cut in the palm of each hand.
Horatio Ramsden was murdered on Maungawhau/Mt Eden, near Hillside Cres, in January 1916. Photo / Google
The wounds on the dead man's hands were thought to indicate he had fought for his life.
Ramsden, 25, was single and lived with his mother and brother William, a timber worker, in Nelson St.
Originally from Sydney, Horatio Ramsden had also lived in Canada. He had worked as a land agent but at the time of his death he was a waterside worker.
Described as quiet and inoffensive, he was learning to play the piano. Until several months before his death, his habit had been to spend his evenings at home but then he began to go out, generally with his brother.
On the night of his death, when he intimated he was going out, his brother asked if he could come. Horatio replied: "No, I have to keep an appointment with a man, and you cannot come."
He walked and caught a tram from Grafton Bridge. A tram conductor saw him and a woman get off together on Mt Eden Rd near Hillside Cres.
But people who had been walking on Mt Eden said they saw him alone.
Robbery was ruled out as a motive, as Ramsden's pockets didn't appear to have disturbed. One contained a letter from a woman, adding weight to the idea that jealousy was behind the killing.
A friend of Ramsden's who worked in a piano shop and was teaching him to play the piano had in the week before the killing suggested they spend the coming Saturday evening together. Ramsden declined, saying he had an appointment with a man who had promised to introduce him to a young woman.
"It is stated," the Herald wrote, "that Ramsden had for some time past and until very recently been courting a young woman. The couple agreed, however, to break off the acquaintance, and this, it is stated, was done without any ill-feeling on either side."
The young woman had said she had no knowledge of Ramsden's movements on the Saturday evening.
One detective told Ramsden's inquest that the police found his overcoat and hat about 60m uphill of where his body was found. The coat was spread out as if someone had been sitting on it.
Another detective said that despite thorough searching, no weapon was found.
The coroner, Mr F. V. Frazer, ruled that Ramsden was murdered.
