William seems to have had some problems with debt - something not mentioned in the stories handed down by his daughter Emma to my mother and her siblings. The first incident occurred before she was born, and the second when she was 9 or 10, which might account for the omissions - possibly not something widely the discussed in the family in later times ("remember the year when Dad went bankrupt?" - I don't think so!)
Anyway, trawling through the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, I found an advertisement on 15 November 1845 :
IN THE COURT OF REQUESTS
Harry Hughlings, Plantiff : and
William Norgrove, Defendant.
By virtue of a writ of execution against the
goods and chattels of the above named
Defendant, the Bailiff will sell on Monday, the
17th inst, at one o'clock, on Defendant's pre-
mises, Lambton Quay, a quantity of Window
Glass, Oker, Whiting, some Lead Piping,
Painters' Implements, &c. Also, the interest of
the said William Norgrove in a dwelling house
and Premises.
John Barry
Officer of the Court
Wellington, November 15. 1845.
Whoa! This does not look good. The Court of Requests was a small claims court, for the recovery of debts of less than 20 pounds. The Court had a Commissioner who made the judgement after hearing both parties - or only the plaintiff's version, if the defendant didn't turn up. The Commissioner, if finding against the defendant, would issue a warrant of execution against the defendant's goods and chattels. The bailiff could then sell these to raise the sum owed plus any costs. If an insufficient sum was raised, the court could issue a warrant against the body- meaning the defendant went to jail - for a month, if the debt was less than 5 pounds; two months for 5 - 10 pounds; or 3 months for 10 - 20 pounds. The creditor had to pay 4 shillings a week towards the maintenance of the prisoner, which would certainly make you think twice before leaping into litigation!
I haven't found any more about this yet, so as usual, I have more questions than answers. I know times were bad in the mid-1840s - lots of the settlers were out of work; it certainly looks as though William was struggling with his painting business, and there seemed to be no shortage of other painters in Wellington, likewise plumbers, which was his other trade. Earlier in the year there was a period where his mail was unclaimed at the Post Office - so did he go out of town to get work? Was he out of town when all of this happened? Did he even make it to the court hearing? Was everything sold, and he and Sarah had to start over? Who was Harry Hughlings and why did William owe him money? I suspect he might have been the owner of the land William's house was on - Hughlings appeared to have interests in several town acres in Wellington, as well as owning land in Australia. Did William even spend time in prison?
Then there was the bankruptcy, which I discovered a couple of days ago in the Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle. At the beginning of 1859, William, now in Nelson, had to assign all of his property to bankruptcy trustees. By June, the trustees were selling everything. By 1860, William was reduced to working as a painter again, and in 1861 the family packed up and moved to Blenheim. What went wrong in Nelson? Everything seemed to go so well at the start - William was active in local affairs, elected to the local Board of Works and the Education Committee. The plumbing business seemed to be going well. Then, in 1858, the youngest daughter, Alice, died of croup at the age of 13 months. One month later, the eldest son Ovid, died at 18 of TB. Towards the end of the year, William and a couple of friends or business partners had the brilliant idea that what Nelson really needed was a public bath house. They advertised the following prospectus :
It is proposed to erect a BATHING
ESTABLISHMENT in Nelson, combining
Hot, Cold, Vapour, and Swimming Baths, with all
necessary conveniences, both for ladies and gentlemen.
The subscription to the baths will be--
Family tickets, per annum 2 pounds
Single tickets, per annum, 1 pound
Single tickets, per quarter, 7/6
Paid in advance
Warm baths, 2s 6d extra; to non-subscribers, 3s 6d.
The baths were up and running within a couple of months, open daily from 6am to sunset during the week, and 6am to 9am on Sundays (presumably so everyone could be nice and clean for church). William seems to have been running the baths, which were just along the road from his plumbing business. But just two months later, he was bankrupt, so it seems likely that it was the baths that pushed him over the edge financially. It doesn't look as if anyone took over the baths - the materials from the building were also later sold to meet William's debts, so the citizens of Nelson were bath-less from August that year.
The financial disaster doesn't seemed to have harmed marital relations - babies had been coming along at a steady rate of one every two years, except in the mid-1850s when William was in Australian goldfields, but the last baby had been born in 1857 - this was Alice, who died a year later. In the midst of the financial crisis in 1859, Sarah, at the age of 40, became pregnant with Sidney, the last child to be born to the couple. William went back to painting, and carving the odd gravestone to provide for his wife and seven children, and in May 1861, the family packed up and moved over the hill to Blenheim to start again.
