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Joseph BURNS
Auckland Naval Base
Murders
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Robbery - Arson - Mutilation
Number of victims: 3
Date of murder: October 22,
1847
Date of birth:1805/1806?
Victims profile: Lieutenant
Robert Snow, his wife, and their baby daughter Mary
Method of murder: Tomahawked and stabbed to death
Location: Devonport, Auckland,
New Zealand
Status:
Executed by
hanging on June 17, 1848
Joseph Burns
1805/1806?–1848
By Janice C.
Mogford
Joseph Burns was born in Liverpool, England, in 1805
or 1806 of Irish parents. He joined the Royal Navy as a ship's carpenter
at about the age of 20, and arrived at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand,
on the Buffalo in 1840. On 28 July the ship was wrecked at
Mercury Bay, and Burns took his discharge; he was then employed by the
government. He later moved to Auckland, where his first employment was
with a local boatbuilder.
Burns won a reputation for heavy drinking, which he
maintained was necessary to dull the pain of severe headaches caused by
head injuries suffered previously in a fall from a mast. He and Margaret
Reardon, a married woman separated from her husband, lived in a shack
Burns had built in Mechanics Bay. Two sons resulted from this liaison.
In 1845 Burns worked in a market garden until he was dismissed for
assaulting the foreman.
Settlers were reluctant to employ him but he finally
found work on the North Shore as a farm labourer for James Harp. Early
in 1847 Harp dismissed Burns for stealing and butchering his stock. He
was evicted from the farm cottage and subsequently built a rough
dwelling for his family at Shoal Bay; they survived on what Burns earned
in casual labour for the chief Patuone, supplemented by vegetables grown
by Margaret Reardon.
On 22 October 1847 Burns, desperate for money,
murdered a naval lieutenant, Robert Snow, his wife and daughter, for the
sake of £12 in naval pay kept in their house. The bodies were mutilated
to suggest a Maori attack, and the house burned. Maori camped in the
vicinity were suspected but at the inquest Dr John Johnson, coroner,
returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. The case
raised fears of an imminent Maori attack on Auckland.
Margaret Reardon left Burns as a result of the
murders, and took the children to her sister, Sophia Aldwell, in
Shortland Crescent. Burns then joined the naval steamer Inflexible,
which departed for Australia on 6 November 1847 and returned to Auckland
on 11 December. On 28 December he visited Margaret Reardon to persuade
her to marry him so that she could not be compelled to give evidence
against him; she refused. In a drunken fury he savagely attacked her and
then attempted suicide. He was arrested and at the Supreme Court
criminal sessions on 1 March 1848, he was convicted of grievous bodily
harm and sentenced the following day to transportation for life.
Burns was now fearful that Margaret Reardon would
implicate him in the Snow murders. He asked her to visit him with the
two boys and coerced her into backing up a false confession in which he
accused Thomas Duder and William Oliver, his former shipmates from the
Buffalo, of the crime. They were exonerated after Burns retracted.
On 1 June he was charged with murder, and accused Margaret Reardon, the
chief prosecution witness, of inciting him to make the false confession.
She admitted perjury and recounted the true sequence of events.
Burns was pronounced guilty of wilful murder by Chief
Justice William Martin and sentenced to hang. On 17 June 1848, having
made a full confession, which unfairly implicated Margaret Reardon, he
was taken under escort from the gaol, across the harbour to the site of
his crime and hanged before a large crowd of settlers and Maori. He was
the first European in the colony to be executed for a capital crime.
In September 1848 Margaret Reardon was convicted of
perjury and sentenced to seven years' transportation.
Teara.govt.nz
Auckland Naval Base
Murders
This triple
murder was the first case in Auckland where a Pakeha was found guilty
since the founding of the city, one hundred years before. Even though
there would have been murders by the score before this, this murder was
on a New Zealand Naval Base so it drew attention from both the Navy and
the police.
In 1841,
Lieutenant Robert Snow was the officer in charge when the Royal Navy
founded it's first naval base in Devonport, on the North Shore in
Auckland. Lt. Snow lived on the base with his wife, Hannah, and their
two daughters.
Six years later they still resided in the same cottage
with their neighbours being a few local Maoris and European settlers. A
shipping signal station manned by Able Seaman Thomas Duder could be seen
on Mount Victoria.
On Friday,
October 22, 1847, the ship named HMS Dido was anchored off the North
Shore. Benjamin Baker, the ship's quartermaster, was on watch duty and
at around 1am spotted a fire on the North Shore Naval Base. He reported
this to his Captain who ordered they go ashore with a crew to assist if
needed.
On arrival at the scene, they found Lt. Snow's cottage ablaze.
They could not vanquish the flames and saw no sign of the occupants of
the house. Unable to locate the family anywhere on the base, the worse
was feared.
After the flames had died down, the wreckage was sifted
through and the searchers came across an horrific sight. The burnt and
mutilated bodies of Lt. Snow, his wife, and their baby daughter Mary.
This now became a case of murder.
It was alleged that Lt. Snow had been
known to have run-ins with the local Maoris and one had threatened to
burn down his cottage. Able Seaman Thomas Duder testified that he had
seen the cottage on fire from the signal station and he also saw two
Maori canoes nearby. He also helped identify the Snows' bodies.
The Snows had
been brutally tomahawked and stabbed before their house was set on fire.
Through a long trail of deception the crime was attributed to Joseph
Burns. His statement was that he paid too much attention to bad women
and drink.
At his trial Joseph Burns was found guilty of the murders of
Lieutenant Robert Snow, his wife and baby daughter. One of the two
children was away at the time and survived.
A scaffold was
built over the site of the crime where Joseph Burns was hanged, a
practice which was afforded highwaymen in England.
