One hundred years ago today Wanganui people reacted to the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania by smashing up a German pork butcher's shop in Victoria Avenue.
Alison Brockway is the granddaughter of the butcher, Conrad Heinold, and her memory was jogged by a television comment about the riot on Sunday night - to the effect that a pork butcher was unlikely to be passing New Zealand's state secrets to the Germans.
Anti-German sentiment ran high in New Zealand during World War I, and any foreigner was suspect.
Mr Heinold had emigrated to New Zealand as a teenager, and met and married a german woman after he got here. His first butcher shop was on the corner of Maria Place and Victoria Ave. Newspaper records say it was thronged with people who wanted the delicacies he made - his Ormskirk pork brawn was a favourite.
When the RMS Lusitania was sunk on May 7, anti-German anger boiled over a week later.