Whanganui Regional Museum door opens to a dark side of history

Museum director Bronwyn Labrum with the door from the Rutland Stockade. Photo / Paul Brooks

On the first floor of the Whanganui Regional Museum, there is a door. Actually, there are many doors, but this door hangs as part of an exhibit illustrating some interesting aspects of Whanganui’s past.

It is an intact, genuine door that once hung by its large iron hinges in the Rutland Stockade atop Queens Park hill. Museum director Bronwyn Labrum has chosen the door for this month’s WRM Showcase.

“Look at the huge bolt ... and huge hinges,” says Bronwyn, and her point is plain. “I would say this is one of the most poignant [exhibits]; I wouldn’t say it is my favourite, because it is not something you can like.”

Alongside the exhibit is a glass case in which are displayed a cat-o-nine tails and a set of manacles, also from the stockade. Together, they tell a story not for the fainthearted.

“The stockade was kept for Māori prisoners,” says Bronwyn.

She says it was used as such while the garrison was in residence and after they left in 1870 it became a prison. The stockade was built in 1847.

“Part of the reason I think this is worth drawing attention to is that we don’t really know that history very well.”

That’s a part of Whanganui’s past we don’t tend to shout about.

“There was also a stockade in Cooks Gardens — York Stockade, then there’s Cameron Blockhouse, then there were redoubts all around the region.

“I think people are hungry to know more about our past,” says Bronwyn. “I think it’s a really stark object: it reminds me of when I was travelling overseas, I went to the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow and they had a door that was scratched and beaten in, and that door was on a house where women were beaten up. It was in a display about domestic violence.

“So, doors, I think are really important, not only because you can go in and out, but also what they stop and hold in. This one was holding in Māori prisoners who were taken captive in the 1850s and 60s.

“Some of those Māori prisoners were sent down to Wellington, then down to Dunedin, so they were completely cut off from their whānau, their hapū. And when you put [the door] beside the cat-o-nine-tails and the chains, this is part of our dark history that we need to know. We need to understand why contemporary Māori feel the way they do and why we need to know about the past.

“This is really great for kids coming in for education programmes to have these literal, tangible connections, through these objects, to our early history.

“It’s silent and still, but I can look at that and imagine noise, shouting, screaming, clanging, the sounds of shots in the area, the regiment marching up and down ...”

Bronwyn says objects like this are important because while you can talk about things and see pictures, there is nothing like the real thing.

The door is thick, heavy and stained dark brown. The outside bolt is large and forbidding in aspect, but, curiously enough, there is a smaller bolt on what was the inside of the door.

The shackles and whip give her goosebumps, she says. The cat-o-nine-tails has a couple of tails missing, but the remainder are still knotted to deliver maximum pain and flesh damage. The workmanship on the chains is rough and ready, but fit for purpose.

On the wall by the door, in an upright glass case, are two muskets of similar vintage, both elaborately carved.

“They don’t look like the lethal killing machines they are,” says Bronwyn, “They’re beautifully carved works of art ... but they weren’t at the time.

“So we’ve got these now still, quiet objects, but actually they’re lethal and terrifying.”