*New Zealand competed

Croquet was for many years a social sport in New Zealand played only on the wide lawns of the spacious nineteenth-century homesteads. Club and association croquet began in the essentially English province of Canterbury; hence the first major clubs and associations were formed in Christchurch and South Canterbury. The sport is now administered by the New Zealand Croquet Council, which is responsible to over 4,000 members. In 1964 20 associations were affiliated to the Council. In 1925 the English publication Croquet expressed surprise that New Zealand “with a population scarcely one-thirtieth of our own” had a membership at least 800 in excess of the sport in England.

Although the game flourished in the early 1900s in the South Island, it was not until 1920 that a national council could be formed. South Island associations were anxious to form a New Zealand organisation, but the North Island was not, as many districts did not even possess an association. Canterbury and South Canterbury began working for a New Zealand Council with national championships in 1912 and in desperation, instituted a New Zealand title croquet in 1913. Championships were held in 1914 and 1915, but the First World War led to their abandonment until 1920. By this time six North Island associations had been formed and the New Zealand Croquet Council came into being. From this time croquet became increasingly popular, especially among women who, with a financial membership of 4,000 members, soon took their place on the executive of the council.

Croquet in New Zealand probably received its greatest encouragement in 1928 and 1935, when English test teams competed here after the MacRobertson International Shield series in Australia. In 1930 New Zealand also became eligible to challenge for the MacRobertson Shield and in 1950 won the trophy from a visiting English team. Up to this time England and Australia had held the shield between them. New Zealand took the MacRobertson Shield to England in 1956, but lost.

Early champions were K. W. Izard, E. Whitaker, H. J. Williams, Mrs J. W. Lill, Mrs L. Rutherford, and A. G. F. Ross who won the New Zealand open championship 11 times between 1915 and 1953. Other outstanding open champions have been Colonel Du Pre, of England (twice), A. J. Gibbs (twice), Mrs C. Watkins (three times), A. D. Heenan (four times), and C. La Roche (twice). The team that won the MacRobertson Shield from England in 1950 comprised A. G. F. Ross (captain), Miss M. Claughton, Mrs W. H. Kirk, F. C. Bryan, A. D. Heenan, and C. Watkins. In 1960 the outstanding player was the 16-year-old A. J. Stephens, who played perfect croquet in his first championship tournament to win the New Zealand open title, the men's championship, the handicaps singles, and (with A. D. Heenan) the men's doubles championship.

Cromwell is situated in Central Otago, in the fork of the Kawarau and Clutha Rivers, on wide flat terraces. The town is surrounded by mountains. By road Cromwell is 35 miles south of Wanaka, 40 miles east of Queenstown, and 19½ miles northwest of Alexandra. Dunedin is 144 miles south-east by road and 155 miles by rail. The main rural activities of the district are sheep farming and fruitgrowing. Stone fruits, especially peaches, apricots, and plums, and wheat, barley, and grass seed, are also produced in the district. Much of the timber produced and large numbers of the cattle raised in Southern Westland are brought over the Haast Pass to the railhead at Cromwell. Cromwell is a servicing and distributing centre for a large but sparsely populated district. There are wool stores, a seed-cleaning plant, and stock saleyards in the town.

Nathaniel Chalmers, with two Maori guides, traversed the district in September 1853 and was probably the first European to visit the area. Official explorations of the northern and western parts of Central Otago began in the late 1850s, but detailed surveys did not commence until 1861. In the meantime all the easier country had been explored and occupied by sheep farmers seeking runs. During the winter of 1862 Horatio Hartley and Christopher Reilly made rich gold discoveries on the western bank of the Clutha, just below its junction with the Kawarau. A rush of miners to the district followed, and the wonderfully rich goldfield was proclaimed on 23 September 1862. A township sprang up which became known as The Junction, but about the middle of 1863 the name of Cromwell was given to the town, apparently on the suggestion of J. A. Connell, a surveyor from the north of Ireland. Gold mining activities expanded in the district and the town became the main service and distribution centre for diggings at Bannockburn and Bendigo, and in the Cardrona, Arrow, Shotover, and Nevis Valleys. The gold-dredging boom of the late nineties was shortlived, and inevitably the population of the town declined. Desultory mining activities continued until the late 1930s, and gold dredging on the Clutha survived a few years longer. In the early 1920s an irrigation scheme, using water diverted from the Kawarau River, brought a large area of semi-arid land into production at Ripponvale (4 miles west). Cromwell was constituted a borough on 17 August 1866.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 838; 1956 census, 885; 1961 census, 942.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

The generic name in New Zealand for an act or omission for which anyone can be punished is offence. Offences are classified as summary offences, which the prosecution can bring to trial only in the Magistrate's Court, and indictable offences or crimes, which may be prosecuted on indictment in the Supreme Court before a jury of 12. Where, however, the maximum punishment for a summary offence exceeds three months' imprisonment (as it does in a few cases), the person charged can elect to be tried by a jury in the Supreme Court. The distinction between felonies and misdemeanours does not exist in New Zealand.

Before 1840, Europeans in New Zealand were subject to no effective criminal law, either among themselves or in their dealings with the Maoris. It was indeed the evils proceeding from this state of anarchy that largely led to the establishment of British sovereignty. On becoming a British colony, New Zealand acquired the general criminal law of England as it existed on 14 January 1840. This law was liberal in spirit, complicated in procedure, and chaotic in form. I. D. Campbell points out in New Zealand, the Development of its Laws and Constitution that the opportunity to simplify and rationalise the criminal law from the beginning was not taken, although in the field of property law a like chance was firmly grasped. It is perhaps significant that Martin and Swainson were conveyancers with no experience on the criminal side. During the early decades of the colony, changes in the criminal law came mainly from the adoption of various United Kingdom statutes. In 1883, however, following a report by Mr Justice Johnston and the then Solicitor-General, W. S. Reid, a Bill codifying the criminal law was introduced. It was based on a draft code prepared in England by the famous jurist Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and revised there by a commission in 1879. The Bill passed the Legislative Council but was held up in the Lower House. The same fate befell several subsequent Bills, but in 1893 the decisive and wholly successful step of codification was taken.

The present code is contained in the Crimes Act 1961. There are no common law offences in New Zealand, and no one can be punished except for the breach of some enactment. Many common law defences are also codified, but those not covered are preserved. The Crimes Act defines a large number of crimes and prescribes the penalties for them, but some crimes and all summary offences are created by other statutes. The rules in the code, however, relating to jurisdiction, matters of justification or excuse, parties, powers of arrest, and the granting of bail apply to all offences.

New Zealand criminal law has few unique features, its substance following the parent law of England and, more closely, that of other Commonwealth countries whose law is codified, such as in Canada. The definitions of crimes tend to be at once more precise and more comprehensive than those in English law, and thereby reduce the scope for technical defences, notably in the sphere of crimes against property. Larceny and embezzlement are included in a comprehensive definition of theft, and the crime of burglary now covers housebreaking and all other types of breaking and entering.

Generally, criminal liability requires not only the doing of a prohibited act but also either an intention to do the harm proscribed or recklessness whether it ensues. In other words, there must be a guilty mind (mens rea) as well as an unlawful act. There are, however, many exceptions to this in New Zealand, especially in the case of regulatory offences. Moreover, some crimes, notably manslaughter, are based on negligence. This country differs from most others in that the test of criminal negligence is, in many cases, the same as that for civil negligence – failure to observe the standard of care of a reasonable man – and even a slight degree of negligence can give rise to criminal liability.

The minimum age of criminal responsibility is 10 years, having been raised from seven by the 1961 code. A child between 10 and 14 is criminally responsible if he knew that what he did was wrong or contrary to law.

Under the criminal code, an accused pleading insanity must show that, by reason of natural imbecility or disease of the mind, he was incapable of understanding the nature and quality of his act or of knowing that it was morally wrong by accepted standards. This is substantially the formula laid down by the McNaughten rules in England in 1843. It is a test of legal responsibility and not of medical sanity, and although the rules have been criticised by many psychiatrists, they have the merit in their New Zealand form of relating responsibility to capacity to form a moral judgment. They are, however, unhappily expressed and make no allowance for incapacity to act on a moral judgment. In practice, however, anyone clearly insane in the medical sense is almost invariably acquitted. Diminished responsibility is not a defence under New Zealand law. In cases other than murder, where there is a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, diminished responsibility can find reflection in the sentence imposed, since this is at the sentencing authority's discretion within the legal maximum.

Even in 1893 there was opposition to the severity of some of the maximum penalties in the code. One object of the 1961 revision was to bring penalties for particular crimes into better relation with one another and with the gravity of the evil prohibited. Apart from the death penalty for treason, and life imprisonment for piracy, murder and manslaughter, the heaviest sentence that can be imposed is 14 years' imprisonment. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1954, however, a Judge may impose preventive detention for an indefinite period (virtually a life sentence) for a second conviction of a sexual offence against a child, or of rape.

Criminal proceedings begin with the filing of an information in a Magistrate's Court. The person charged comes before that Court either on a summons or on arrest. If the case may go on to the Supreme Court, there is a preliminary hearing before a Magistrate or two Justices, who discharge the accused if a prima facie case has not been established against him. Otherwise he is committed for trial at the next sessions of the Supreme Court in the district, unless he pleads guilty, in which event he is committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. An indictment may be presented for any crime disclosed by the depositions, and if the Judge considers there is a case to go to the jury the accused stands his trial.

The lower Courts have a wide jurisdiction in indictable cases. Since 1952 Magistrates have had power to deal summarily with almost all crimes against property, and all but the most serious of other crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, rape, aggravated robbery, and perjury. There are three qualifications. The prosecution may take any such case to the Supreme Court if it chooses, which it usually will in difficult or very serious cases. The Magistrate may himself decline to deal summarily with the case. Finally, the accused must consent to be dealt with summarily. Magistrates trying indictable cases may impose up to three years' imprisonment for each offence, or the maximum prescribed for the offence, whichever is the less.

Anyone convicted of any offence in a Magistrate's Court may appeal to the Supreme Court against conviction or sentence. A person found guilty in the Supreme Court may appeal to the Court of Appeal against conviction or sentence, and there is a right to appeal against a sentence of the Supreme Court following a plea of guilty in the lower Court. Except on a point of law, the prosecution cannot appeal against an acquittal or against a sentence it considers too lenient.

by Bruce James Cameron, B.A., LL.M., Legal Adviser, Department of Justice, Wellington.

• Garrow s Criminal Law in New Zealand, Spence, W. S. (4th ed. 1962)
• New Zealand, the Development of its Laws and Constitution, (ed.) Robson, J. L. (1954).

At 9 a.m. on 5 February 1962 James Patrick Ward a well-known Dunedin barrister, received a parcel in his office. A few minutes later the building was shaken by an explosion. Ward was rushed to the Dominican Tertiary Hospital, where he died six hours later. Although the police, in the course of their investigations, established the method by which death was inflicted, they were unable to discover any motive for the crime or to gather sufficient evidence to justify an arrest. From an examination of the debris in Ward's office, the police found that the parcel had been posted in Dunedin during the preceding weekend. It contained a roughly made wooden box in which were two torch batteries, a pull-through switch, an electric detonator, a quantity of explosive, electrical wiring, and pieces of tin. Apparently the opening of the parcel completed an electrical circuit which detonated the explosive.

An incident similar to the Ward case occurred in 1937 when a bomb was thrown at R. A. Singer, an Auckland lawyer. The Singer case has never been solved.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.

On Friday, 15 September 1961, Wendy Catherine Mayes, an attractive 16-year-old girl, answered an advertisement in a Wellington newspaper for a photographer's model, and an interview was arranged. At 7.30 a.m. the following Monday morning she left home for work in the city. This was the last time her parents saw her. At 5 p.m. on Monday she met in a city coffee bar a man who was later identified as John Frederick Maltby, aged 30. After a brief interview she and Maltby drove off in his car. When their daughter did not return home on Monday night, her parents reported her disappearance to the police. Investigations led to Maltby, but there was insufficient evidence to hold him. Arrangements were then made to search the scrub behind Maltby's house and a 24-hour watch was set. Early in the morning of Thursday, 21 September, Maltby was seen to run into the scrub and, although the area was searched, no sign of the man was found. The police extended the scope of the search and large patrols combed the beaches and hills in the Wellington and Hutt Valley districts. On Sunday, 24 September, two fishermen found Maltby's body, which had been washed ashore at Island Bay. The fate of Wendy Mayes remains a mystery.

On 28 September 1949 at Moa Creek, Central Otago, the body of a man named William Peter McIntosh, aged 62 years, was found in the wool shed on his property. He was a married man with a grown-up family. According to the evidence given by his wife at the inquest, McIntosh had left the house in the early afternoon of 28 September to work on the farm. Before leaving he told her that he would return in time to listen-in to a radio broadcast of a rugby match beginning at 3 o'clock. He did not return, however, and at about 7 p.m. that evening Mrs McIntosh telephoned a neighbour and told her that her husband was missing. A search was immediately organised and at about 8 p.m. the party found McIntosh's body in his wool shed. It was obvious that he had been murdered as his head had been battered with some implement, presumably an axe belonging to the deceased. The axe, which was not found until some time later, had blood stains on it but they were so faint that it could not be established whether or not the blood was human. Mrs McIntosh told the police that some time after her husband left the house on the afternoon of the murder she heard the gate click and saw a stranger coming to the back door. He asked to be directed to the house of a person who lived in the neighbourhood. But he never appeared there. Intensive investigations by the police disclosed that no stranger had been seen in the locality on the afternoon of the murder nor did the person whom the stranger was seeking have any idea who it could be. The murdered man had no known enemies in the district.

Despite intensive inquiries and the offer by Government of a reward of £500 for information that might lead to the apprehension of the alleged murderer, the police were unable to discover who committed the murder.

A curious and baffling mystery was the case of Marie Emily West, who disappeared from her home at 13 McIntyre Avenue, Wellington, on 7 July 1947. Her body was found on the scrub-covered slopes of Mt. Victoria three months later. She was a young woman in her teens, and the question was then, as it is today, how did she die, and how was her body conveyed to where it was found and concealed. The complexities of the affair may be measured from the fact that officially it has never been conclusively determined whether it was a matter of murder or suicide, but all the indications point to suicide. The police investigations were so exhaustive that the file of the case in the Headquarters Office in Wellington stands about 30 in. high. Abundant evidence was disclosed to support the theory of suicide, while on the other hand the official opinion was that there was not “one jot or tittle” of testimony to suggest murder. The suicide conclusion was based on the considered opinions of two noted pathologists. But if suicide it was, how did the body get to Mt. Victoria? That was one of the perplexing problems. A Mr X came very much into the calculations of both police and public, but the police were finally satisfied that there was not an iota of evidence to connect him with the disappearance of the girl.

On 8 April 1945 Jean Marie Martin, a dark, attractive, 23-year-old girl, a laboratory technician and part-time student, went for a walk in Wilton's Bush, Wadestown, Wellington. She was accompanied by a male student friend who later stated that they had parted on a path in the bush. When her disappearance was reported, the police organised a full-scale search that began in the Wilton's Bush area and gradually extended to Makara Beach and Ohariu Valley. Despite every effort, no trace of Jean Martin was ever found.