Sitting in storage in Archives New Zealand’s Wellington collection, alongside numerous seemingly identical materials, is the Treasury Civil Pensions Ledger, 1878-1886. This ledger is part of a wider series of Imperial Pension records, but there is something that makes the Civil Pensions ledger special – it’s entries primarily list Indian servicemen receiving pensions in New Zealand.[1] It is a clear record of the imperial connection between British India and New Zealand, a connection that has been obscured in our own popular remembering.

That information may just seem like a series of names and numbers, but it is all part of a much richer personal tapestry. James Ranald Martin was born 30 September 1831 in the East Indies, Calcutta, in his family home to parents James Ranald Martin Senior and Jane Maria Martin. [3] His father, James Snr, was an accomplished surgeon in the Indian Medical Service. At various points in his career, James Snr worked as the Garrison Surgeon at Fort William, Presidency Surgeon at the Native Hospital in Calcutta, and Surgeon to the Governor-General.[4]

When James Ranald Martin Jr joined the Indian service is unclear, though he quickly obtained the position of Major – perhaps due to his father’s standing. James Jr married Elizabeth Nash 17 August 1854, and the pair had four healthy children together.[5] In 1859 the couple had their first child – Rose Eveleen Emma Martin. Rose was born 14 July 1859 in Ghazeepore, Bengal. Their second child, Viva Mary Cunliffe Martin, was born a few years later, on 2 February 1861 in Allahabad, Bengal.[6] George Harry Stewart Martin arrived a year later, born 21 October 1862 in Goruckpore, Bengal.[7] The couple’s fourth child was Lesley Wallace Ranald Martin, born in Dhurmsalla, Bengal, on 20 September 1864.[8]

In May, along the Tuapeka River in Central Otago, Tasmanian miner Gabriel Read strikes gold in the wintry Clutha Valley. To the dismay, though not surprise, of the founders of the Scottish Presbyterian settlement of Dunedin, the discovery prompts a rush of diggers. The colony is now playing host to two large and vastly different groups of men. In the north, the regimented, rifle carrying enforcers of empire contrast sharply with a fundamentally transient population of ‘footloose, single, drunken’ and ‘assertively egalitarian’ prospectors in the south.[1]

The 70th regiment, colloquially known as the Glasgow Greys, had been dispatched to New Zealand as war in Taranaki escalated. Following twelve years of service in India, they were ordered to leave Allahabad in late 1860 and set sail for New Zealand from Calcutta in January 1861.
​
Travelling in three transport ships, the regiment sailed into Waitematā harbour in May 1861. ‘A fine body of men, rather sallow from protracted exposure to an Indian sun’ but with the ‘look of trained and resolute soldiers’, the regiment was stationed first at the large military camp at Otahuhu. In November, a detachment of 100 rank and file, led by Captain A. Saltmarshe, sailed from Otahuhu bound for Dunedin to assist in keeping order in the region overrun with thousands of men en route to the glitter and wealth of the Otago goldfields. 

In the south, agitation among Otago’s pastoralists over the potential ill-discipline of the goldfield camps was causing a headache for local authorities. Taking these protests into account, and lobbied by Otago Superintendent Major Richardson desperate to prevent an outbreak of disorder equivalent to the Eureka Rebellion at Ballarat, Victoria in 1854, the General Government had acquiesced and agreed to send a detachment of the 70th south. In doing so, saddling Otago with the full expense, an ‘exorbitant and unjust affliction’ which Provincial Councillors and the editors of the Colonist felt entirely justified in complaining about. 

​As it turned out, the detachment of the 70th regiment stationed in Dunedin between November 1861 and June 1863 did not get to experience the glitter and hubbub of the goldfields, at least not in any official capacity. Men of the Victoria gold escort, established by St John Branigan, arrived in Otago in August 1861 to ensure the safety of the gold brought from the fields up country to Dunedin. Restructuring the force to mirror the methods employed by the goldfield police in Victoria, which he admired, Richardson’s employment of experienced gold field escorts rendered the regiment’s expected role redundant.

While the men of the British Imperial Army may have been applauded by the colonial press as a ‘fine body of men’ they lived a fairly brutal existence, subject to a fierce disciplinary regime and entitled to basic rations. Instances of desertion, drunkenness and theft were commonplace. A brief assessment of the court martials at which men of the 70th regiment appeared during their term of service in New Zealand paints a colourful picture. Charges of drunkenness were particularly common, accompanied by violence, theft, fraud, black market dealings in tobacco and commissariat rum, and ‘indecent conduct’. Garrison life in the nineteenth century was often rough and tough.

Stationed so close to the glitter and glamour of the goldfields with comparatively little to do, desertions from the Dunedin detachment were only to be expected. Desertion was not rare. Several soldiers appeared in the WO12 muster rolls for multiple counts of desertion.[2] It was, nonetheless, a serious offence which could be punished with hard labour, sentences of up to 50 lashes, and, most commonly, the permanent branding of a D on the upper chest.
 
With a total force numbering just 100, more than a quarter of the men, 26 in total, deserted at some point during the detachment’s tenure in Dunedin. Some disappeared successfully and do not appear in any further military records. Some rejoined of their own accord, perhaps finding that life on the goldfields was not as glamorous as it had appeared. Others were less fortunate, apprehended by local police and, often, court martialled for their offence. One deserter, Private James Hughes, was apprehended on his way to the Dunedin racecourse in March 1863, but the vast majority of deserters from the Dunedin detachment set about joining the steady stream of prospectors heading for the diggings at Tuapeka, Waitahuna, and (from mid-1862) further north along the Dunstan Creek.
 
That a number of men of the 70th set out for the diggings is evident. Records of apprehension in the Otago Police Gazette place several deserters in these localities. Alexander Ferguson, John Hodkinson and Thomas Duckworth were all arrested by the Dunstan Police in February 1863 and returned to their regiment by the Dunstan Gold Escort. George Hale was arrested in 1864, after his regiment had returned to Auckland, by the Mount Ida police near St Bathans. Elsewhere, Private Michael Coffey, a fair haired native of County Tipperary who spoke with a stammer, was ‘supposed to have gone to the Dunstan Diggings’ when he deserted in 1862.
 
While the prospect of accruing some flashy material wealth was genuinely possible in goldrush Otago, in Taranaki no such temptation existed and alcohol served as the most popular distraction from the routine of garrison life.
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Of the 14 court martials held in Dunedin between 1861 and 1863, ten were for charges of desertion. By comparison, a similar number of hearings held for the men of the 70th stationed in New Plymouth during the same period did not include a single charge of desertion, instead dominated by 11 charges of drunkenness.

Full map of 70th regiment court martials can be viewed here 
For a map of the 70th regiment desertions, deaths and discharges click here
 
The majority of the regiment was stationed at Otahuhu where desertion was also fairly common, accounting for 40 of the 83 court martials held there for the 70th between 1861 and 1863. In contrast to Dunedin, where just 100 men were stationed, the number of 70th regiment men at Otahuhu exceeded 400, significantly diminishing the ratio of desertions to total men in the north compared with the gold-crazed south.  

Across the country, soldiers in the 70th were most likely to desert between 1862 and 1863 when 63 individuals were charged. With hostilities suspended in the north, and gold fever spreading through the south, it is little surprise that the regiment grew restless. Desertion rates soared in Dunedin and Otahuhu, where the men were relatively sedentary. In New Plymouth, by contrast, where tensions continued to bubble over the land at Waitara, desertion was a less enticing prospect.

Where the potential for riches on the goldfields was present, desertion rates were particularly high. More than a quarter of the Dunedin-based rank and file saw some benefit in chasing that glittering prospect. Despite their relative discipline, gold proved as powerful a temptation for the soldiers stationed in Dunedin in 1861 as it did for the diggers who had crossed the country, the Tasman, even the Pacific in pursuit of it.

By June 1863, the shaky peace treaty in the north had run its course with the resumption of hostilities in Taranaki and the Crown push to challenge the Kīngitanga in the Waikato. The Dunedin detachment, excluding those who had either purchased their discharge or successfully disappeared into the bustle of the goldfields, returned to their regiment at Otahuhu, leaving the temptation of gold behind them.

The regiment went on to fight in the main Waikato, Taranaki and Bay of Plenty campaigns in the New Zealand Wars before receiving orders to return to England. The last transport of troops left in 1866, bringing the regiment’s 15 years of overseas service to an end.

Notes

​[1] Erik Olssen, A History of Otago, (Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1984), p.56. ​
​[2] War Office Muster Rolls, The National Archives, London (relevant excerpts from large series available online through the National Library of Australia.)

It’s 1860 and the Crown has just declared war on its Māori subjects in the province of Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand. In response, thousands of men from throughout the British Empire come to New Zealand as soldiers of the British Imperial Army. Over the next few years the Army fights battles all over the North Island and bolsters the white settler presence in the South Island. While the majority of these men leave Aotearoa with their regiments, others are officially discharged and stay as settlers. Yet another group left their regiments unofficially – the deserters. Elusive in the archives as they often were in life, most simply disappear from the records. Some became infamous, while others rose to positions of prominence in settler society. 

Desertion from the military was a serious crime in the nineteenth century, which could be punished with imprisonment or branding on the skin.[1]  So naturally the last thing any deserter wanted was to be found under his real name by the authorities. This makes tracking men through the archives difficult. Out of the over 800 men who deserted the British Army while stationed in New Zealand, sixty-six men were selected for further research.[2]  Of the sixty-six men researched for this project, under half had any information about them in the archives after they deserted. Changing their names to avoid detection was one tactic used by deserters. Samuel Lupton of the 65th regiment went by the name Leonard Clare after deserting the British Army on 15 June 1865 at Te Awamutu.[3]  Lupton developed an elaborate story to go with the alias. The New Zealand Herald reported: “He says his name is Leonard Clare, that he is a native of Queen's County, Ireland and that he came to Auckland in the ship Bombay. He says he is a tailor by trade and that he has been up the country as far as Drury."[4] In fact, he was a former sailor from Durham, England.[5] The New Zealand Herald it seems, was suspicious of his claims, noting “[a]lthough a tailor, he has never asked anyone in Auckland for work. He declined to mention the names of any of the passengers of the ship Bombay.”[6] So too were the police: "The police...say they know his face. They disbelieve his story about coming in the Bombay. He certainly has nothing of the softness of the "new chum." He has what the late Sergeant Mirehouse used to call the "philosophy of crime" at his fingers' end."[7]  Unfortunately for him, his pseudonym wasn’t any help when he was recognised in court by a sergeant from his regiment after attempting to steal some gold pins from a shop window display in Queen Street on 21 June 1865.[8]
 
Deserters frequently committed crimes. Of the 31 men where some trace exists in the archives, 17 left some indication of their lives beyond the army. Of these 17 men, eight had been accused of or charged with a crime besides desertion. Michael Hemsley of the 65th regiment was the most violent criminal of the researched men. He committed armed robbery against fellow soldiers, settlers and even a prison guard.[9] He attempted to escape prison three times and succeeded once.[10] Theft and drunkenness were recurring offences of which deserters were accused, to the point some deserters are traceable wholly through the reports of their trials at the police court or supreme court in the newspapers. William Candy of the 40th regiment is one such deserter. On 12 April 1860, before coming to New Zealand, Candy was accused of stealing a watch belonging to Robert Owens in Melbourne, Australia.[11]  He was later charged with stealing a purse containing five pounds from Robert H. McRae on 12 March 1863 in Auckland.[12] He escaped from prison with a man called William James on the night of 15 – 16 July 1863 by hiding in “the place used for storing coal”.[13]  After the final departure of the last British troops in 1870, Candy appears twice more in the newspapers. In June 1876 he was charged with “attempting to rescue a prisoner from legal custody” after trying to intervene when his friend Alexander Beain, a sailor, was arrested.[14] Beain was discharged and “advised to keep better company.”[15] The last trace of William Candy in the archives is in June 1876 when he was actually the victim of crime after another man stole his clothes.[16]
 
Men like Samuel Lupton, Michael Hemsley and William Candy conform to some contemporary perceptions of the disreputableness of army life. Many believed that men who joined the army  – notorious for its bad conditions, harsh discipline and poor pay – were dishonest characters attracted by the opportunity to run away from responsibility, as well as the rum ration.[17]