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Settler Kaponga 1881–1914 — A Frontier Fragment of the Western World

A Swiss Tragedy

A Swiss Tragedy

The quiet, hard-working, law-abiding presence of the Swiss immigrant milkers was proving such a godsend to the district that when a fatal quarrel occurred between two of them on the evening of Saturday, 30 June 1906, it was met with real shock, almost incredulity.1 The inquest and the trials that followed throw some light on the lives and circumstances of this community of recent arrivals.

Karl Schicker, the accused in the trials, was born at Zug, Switzerland, on 29 June 1880. He arrived in New Zealand around the turn of the century and at the time of the incident was working for William Martin on lower Palmer Road. Six miles away, on the farm of G.B. Hill, Rowan Road, lived three other Swiss immigrants: Albert Ulrich, his sister Annie, and their lodger John Rollins, the victim in the case. Schicker became the sweetheart of Annie, they became engaged, and he made the 12-mile round trip to see his francèe twice each week. But John Rollins also developed an affection for Annie with the result that, according to her brother, there had been bad feeling between Schicker and Rollins for two years before the tragedy.

Rollins was a heavily built, muscular man, and several witnesses, including relatives and friends, agreed that he was very quick-tempered. It was therefore a real problem for this little community when Rollins began making wild death threats against the much more lightly built Schicker. There were one or two earlier short fights between the two, in which Schicker compensated for his slight build by grabbing some kind of a cudgel. Eventually Rollins's anger became so deep that Annie Ulrich wrote to Schicker asking him to stop away for a few days as Rollins was threatening that either he or Schicker would have to die. So Schicker stayed away. Then Rollins came to see him in the middle of the night to ask why he did not come to the Ulrichs' any more. Schicker told him of the letter he had had from Annie. Rollins wanted Schicker to resume his visits because, he said, ‘If you don't come up, Annie will go away.’ Schicker complied. Unfortunately Rollins's anger and threats continued. To escape from the situation Annie broke off her engagement to Schicker and left for Switzerland about six weeks before the tragedy.

It is clear even from this brief outline that the situation developed page 325 largely as a result of the immigrant position of this small Swiss community. The intensity of the rivalry between Schicker and Rollins must have owed a good deal to the strong sex imbalance, with only 53 Swiss females in Taranaki to 135 males. Furthermore, had a similar situation arisen in the Swiss homeland setting, all three protagonists would have had mature counsellors, whether parents, relatives, friends or community figures, to whom they could have turned, or who would have initiated individual or community responses to meet the situation. In Taranaki no such help was available; even at the Roman Catholic church, to which most of them seem to have belonged, they would still have felt themselves aliens speaking a foreign tongue, rather than insiders able easily to seek understanding and help. One envisages that in the hearthland Rollins's situation as the Ulrichs' lodger would have been quickly ended. Why no such move was made on Rowan Road is not clear, but it is easy to envisage the difficulties relating to the employment contract with G.B. Hill, the need to maintain a united front vis-à-vis the wider community, and the likelihood of repercussions should forthright action be taken against the volatile Rollins. Annie's stopping of Schicker's visits by a letter, rather than in face-to-face discussion, gives some indication of how tricky she felt the situation to be.

Witnesses told of the prolonged tension between the two men, with accounts of two earlier fights as well as the final one. From all this comes a picture of a scatter of mainly unmarried labouring Swiss, as yet little involved socially with the wider community, and therefore heavily dependent on each other for companionship in leisure hours. At the Magistrate's Court Jacob Gaecal, who had known Schicker in Switzerland, and was working for settler Perry of Mangatoki, told of events on the last Sunday of 1905. After meeting at the Kaponga Roman Catholic church, he and Rollins, a cousin whom he had got to know only since coming to New Zealand, had gone out to the Ulrichs' place on Rowan Road. On arrival, as he was tying up his horse at the gate while Rollins went in ahead, he heard a row and saw Schicker, Annie Ulrich and Pinseck come out of the house. Although it was dark he could see that Rollins and Schicker were involved in a fight. Rollins called for Gaecal's help but he did not go in. The fight lasted about three minutes. Gaecal told the court:

Schicker had the best of the fight and afterwards told Rollins that he could have killed him if he wanted to. Rollins said then, ‘I am not frightened of you, Charlie.’ Charlie Schicker then held up a poker and said, ‘Come on, and I will knock you down.’ From that time on Schicker and Rollins were enemies.

[To Mr Wake, counsel for Schicker] … Rollins … was a very quick tempered man. Going home that night after the quarrel Rollins said to witness, I will buy a revolver and shoot Charlie.’ He was a much bigger man than Schicker. Rollins afterwards told witness that he (Rollins) started the fight that night.

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Giving evidence on his own behalf at the Supreme Court trial, Schicker told of another, apparently later, incident.

One Sunday night in Kaponga he heard Rollins was looking for him to kill him…. He had hardly been there five minutes, when they heard ‘someone coming up like mad.’ He and Miss Ulrich went out to see who it was. Rollins jumped off his horse and rushed at witness, Pensech [another Swiss]2 getting between them. Rollins kicked Pensech, and then the two got Rollins on the ground. Goessi came up from the gate. They went in, and Rollins started to threaten. Thinking that both Rollins and Goessi were going to tackle him, he seized a piece of iron to defend himself. He told Rollins there was nothing to prevent him coming into the house if he would only behave himself. They all spent the evening together amicably.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 30 June, Rollins and Albert Ulrich rode in from Rowan Road to Kaponga. They left their horses at a Kaponga stable and set out to walk to Prestidge's place, about a mile and a half from town. From his whare on Daniel Fitzgerald's place Joseph Steiner, another Swiss, saw them walking by on this moonlit evening. He went out and persuaded them to come and help him finish his tasks for Fitzgerald so that they could all go into the township together. Coming back from these chores past Fitzgerald's house, between 7 and 8pm, they saw Schicker come in at the front gate and go towards Steiner's whare. Steiner and Ulrich both shook hands with Schicker but Rollins and Schicker did not speak to each other. Schicker had an axe handle in his hand. Steiner and Ulrich went into the whare while Schicker and Rollins stayed outside. Steiner came out again to show Schicker and Rollins a postcard he had received and found them talking about postcards that Rollins had received and claimed were in Schicker's handwriting but Schicker denied this. Rollins had burned the cards as soon as he received them. What the various cards contained is not reported, but it makes good sense to infer that Annie Ulrich had sent cards to hei Kaponga friends while on her voyage home. As he turned to lock his whare Steiner heard the two getting into a loud dispute, each calling the other a liar. Turning back he saw Rollins falling to the ground. It was Albert Ulrich who witnessed the fatal blow. Rollins had just accused Schicker of making ‘a very offensive remark’ about Annie Ulrich in the hotel and Schicker then said, ‘If you say that again you are a liar, and I will hit you with this axe handle.’ On Rollins repeating the statement Schicker lifted the axe handle with both hands, Rollins moved towards him, and was struck on the head and knocked down on his hands and knees. He got up again, said a few words, walked a short distance, and then fell down again and began shaking. Ulrich and Schicker carried him inside the whare.

Rollins did not regain consciousness. Schicker proposed that he should go for a doctor but the others persuaded him not to as they thought there was no danger. Eventually, after about two hours, Schicker went, but there was further delay as he had to wait for half an hour for Dr Maclagan.

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Arriving at about 11pm, Maclagan found the victim unconscious, paralysed in all his limbs, and with troubled breathing and a rapid, irregular pulse. Nothing could be done and he died shortly after. In his post mortem examination Maclagan found that death was due to pressure on the brain of a clot of blood under a depressed fracture. Schicker waited at Maclagan's surgery to be taken into custody by the Eltham constable.

At the inquest in the Commercial Hotel on the Monday afternoon the jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing, but added a rider expressing the opinion that Schicker had struck the blow ‘in defending himself in a quarrel’. At the conclusion of the Magistrate's Court hearing in Eltham on 10 July 1906 Schicker was committed to stand trial in the Supreme Court. Bail was fixed at £100 on his own recognisance, and two sureties of £200 each were forthcoming. At the New Plymouth Supreme Court on 25 September the grand jury reduced the charge from murder to manslaughter. Schicker's defence was led by New Plymouth's leading barrister, Oliver Samuel. Schicker gave detailed evidence in his own defence and said that he thought the Crown witnesses had told the truth. In describing his situation he said

‘I was always frightened about him. I thought he would knock me down and kill me. I only wanted to stop him.’ He did not think he could have escaped Rollins. ‘I was in dread of my life at the time, and my only reason for striking was to keep him from seizing me, and doing me some great hurt.’

The Taranaki News reported that ‘His Honor summed up lucidly and favourably to the prisoner’, and the jury did not take long to bring in its verdict of ‘not guilty’.

Schicker went on to a career as a dairy farmer in the Kaponga district. He apparently did not seek to renew his relationship with Annie. He made a trip home to Switzerland in 1911 and it was probably then that he married his wife, Mathilde. This tragic story from his early life gives us some insight into the tensions of this small alien immigrant community. There were to be added tensions a few years later when their new homeland became embroiled in the Great War against the empire that spoke their mother tongue. But their qualities as settlers and citizens saw them through the hard years and quickly gained them full acceptance as neighbours and friends.