When I first heard of Papamoa

 Papamoa farmland - typical flat land that the Baylys farmed in the 1920s.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo gca-20628

I can remember my parents talking about Elsie Walker when I was a child.  In fact, it might even have been part of a ‘stranger danger’ conversation with them.  The year before I was born, my father had heard on the radio that Bill Bayly had been hanged.  What does this have to do with Papamoa, my current home, you may well ask?

Elsie Walker, Auckland Weekly News, 28 February 1929, p.50 

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19290228-50-05

Elsie, an Opotiki girl, lived with her aunt and uncle, the Baylys, on their farm in Papamoa in 1928 when she disappeared.  Coincidentally, so did their car.  Some days later, her body was found in Auckland at Panmure, and the car was discovered with an empty petrol tank at Papatoetoe. Elsie did not drive.  The sandshoes she was wearing were worn out as though she had walked the seven miles from Papatoetoe to Panmure. The police and coroner could not establish her cause of death, with opinions varying from exposure to accidental. A witness claimed to have seen the car being driven to Auckland by a man with a woman sitting in the back seat, already dead, but the accuracy of this information was not conclusive. Some suspicion arose about Bill Bayly, Elsie's cousin, but he claimed to have been in Auckland all along, and the police believed him.

Mr F K Hunt, a Stipendiary Magistrate, spoke at the inquest stating that the public were entitled to a better service from the Police than they received in that case.  He referred to mistakes and described the enquiries as inefficient. No person ever faced trial for the murder of Elsie Walker.

William Alfred (Bill) Bayly, NZ Truth, Issue 1246, 17 October 1929, Page 7
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTR19291017.2.33.1.2

Five years later William Alfred Bayly, a married man with two children by then, was farming at Ruawaro near Huntly.  Bill Bayly lived on an adjacent farm to Christobel and Samuel Lakey. Other neighbours noticed one day in October 1934 that the Lakey’s cows had not been milked that morning and set about doing so. The Lakey’s 110-acre farm carried 51 dairy cows. The neighbours were concerned to find no sign of the Lakeys in their house and it was not long before they found the body of Christobel Lakey dead with her face in the duckpond.  As soon as this news spread around the district people assumed Samuel Lakey had murdered his wife.  

The search for Samuel Lakey, Auckland Weekly News, 8 November 1933, p.46 

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19331108-46-02

Police searched for his body, with the help of local people, expecting that it might be a murder/suicide.  Lakey’s shotgun was found in a creek on Bill Bayly’s farm and blood was found on items at his place.  The two farmers had fallen out and argued over a fencing issue when Bayly’s bull got into the paddock with Lakey’s cows, and they did not get on generally.  Mrs Lakey has said she believed he had killed Elsie Walker and could well kill them. Police used chemical tests that revealed that there were charred bone fragments on his shovel, for he had tried to burn Samuel Lakey’s body in a drum.  On 10 January 1934, Bayly was charged with Samuel Lakey's murder and he hanged for it in the following July. Gossip spread around the country and the version that I heard a decade later was that he fed the body to his pigs.  The guilty verdict reinforced the suspicion that he had murdered his cousin in Papamoa.

Burial of Samuel Lakey with his wife
Photo: KELLY HODEL / Waikato Times by kind permission

Christobel was buried in an unmarked grave in Huntly while Samuel's remains became part of the police's investigative and forensic training exhibits collection.  It was not until 2015 that the Police released the remains for burial and arranged to have a name plaque placed on the joint grave. The Lakeys were English and had no family in New Zealand.

Lemon House, 21 Willow Street, Tauranga

21 Willow Street, 1997
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library, Ref 00-593

The house at 21 Willow Street is one of the few in central Tauranga that is still a dwelling. It is believed to have been on the site since 1886 and is a good example of the simple square pioneer home with a rectangular hip roof. The materials are the corrugated iron and timber weatherboards of the period. Joseph Hall, police constable, is listed at this address on the Tauranga Burgess Roll of 1886/1887. This was the electoral roll for the Tauranga Borough.

George Lemon, born in Plymouth, Devon and his wife Catherine (nee Meagher/Maher) married on a ship in New York harbour in 1850 and their first son, George Henry was born in the USA. The family moved to Australia and in 1863 George enlisted in the 1st Waikato Regiment No 3 Company of the militia in Melbourne and came to New Zealand on the Golden Age to fight in the New Zealand Wars. George received the New Zealand Medal which proved he had taken part in active service and he died in Tauranga in 1899. He fought at the Battles of Gate Pa and Te Ranga in 1864 and he also served during the Tauranga Bush Campaign of 1867. George Lemon served on the Tauranga Borough Council from 1887 to 1895.

George Henry Lemon's bugle, Waikato Militia. Tauranga Heritage Collection

George Henry Lemon who was fourteen years old when he enlisted in the Militia with his father, was sworn in as a bugler. Army details record his height at the time as three feet ten inches. He married Elizabeth Mannix of Tauranga and farmed at Paengaroa for many years. Lemon Road there is named after the family. A descendant presented his bugle to the Tauranga Heritage Collection.

Cayley Gore Robinson a farmer, later a builder, from Greerton bought the house in the early 20th century and his widow Florence resided there during the twentieth century.

Sources
Archaeological Report on Tauranga CBD Phillips & Arabin; Jenni Palmer, Lists of Waikato Militia; Tauranga Memories – Kete; Lyn Harpham notes THC.