A few years ago, New Plymouth Prison staff found an old, brittle business card concealed behind the tin sheathing of a cell door.
A prisoner named HH had used the back of the card to leave a quickly written message to his cellmate (see below ).
Bearing the name William Baker, Dr Barnardo’s Homes, London, the card had no information that dated the message or explained the connection between William Baker and prisoner HH.
Intrigued, Assets and Property Officer Mark Goodwin contacted Barnardo’s Children’s Charity who told him, because Baker had died in office in 1920, both the card and message on it probably pre-dated that year.
Barnardo’s was unable to confirm any connection between the two men but Mark says it’s probably safe to assume that HH was a Barnardo’s boy who had lived under William Baker’s care.
“The fact the card remained in the cell door for almost 100 years after the author had implored its intended recipient to destroy it, does suggest that HH’s cellmate didn’t find it,” Mark says.
William Baker’s business card is kept in a file of ‘treasures’ from Taranaki’s penal history - a history that Prison Manager Peter Madsen is keen to preserve in a secure public display, perhaps by offering them to Taranaki’s Puke Ariki Museum.
Originally built as an army hospital during the Taranaki Wars of the 1860s, New Plymouth Prison was designated a prison in the 1870s.
As New Zealand’s oldest penal institution, there’s growing interest in it, but regrettably, many items of historic importance have been lost over the years.
“I bitterly regret not holding onto the document proclaiming the prison as a place of execution. Fortunately we have the 22 December 1870 proclamation that the military hospital on Marshall Hill would be the Taranaki District’s Public Gaol. The gallows and straight jacket designs are in the prison’s historical file and, among the prison plans, I have a 1909 parchment drawing of the prison, the warders’ houses and the drainage layout,” says Mark.
Letter from "HH" believed to date pre-1920
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