Tales from the passed
“So far this has been a very trying winter,” noted the Ōhaupō correspondent for the Waikato Times in July 1894.
“It gives one the cold shivers to see comparatively young people stepping into the grave, one after the other, apparently from trivial causes.”
There was a great deal of sickness about, one of the sufferers being 55-year-old Ralph Shaw, who had recently been taken to hospital suffering from a chest complaint.
Ralph, an Irishman, had arrived in Invercargill when he was in his early 20s. He opened the Alhambra Café with Edward Culnane, soon turning it into the Alhambra Hotel.
Considerable expense went into elegantly fitting the hotel up with bedrooms, public and private sitting rooms and a large commercial room for the convenience of mercantile gentleman.
A few months later, however, they were in debt, the partnership dissolved and they went their separate ways.
Ralph later settled at Switzers (now Waikaia) and lived in a thatched house on Five Acre Spur. He worked as a miner and was secretary to the mining association and the hospital. In 1875 he left Switzers and married Mary Thompson at Dunedin. Times were hard and Ralph had to take a job on the railways as a porter. By 1882 they had four children, but that year six-year-old Ralph died. Another Ralph was born in 1884 and around this time the family moved north to Ōhaupō.
Ralph took employment as a contractor, a clerk and then became stationmaster at Ōhaupō. In 1889 tragedy struck when two-year-old Catherine died. She had been suffering from worms for some time, making it unnecessary, the coroner decided, to hold an inquest. The last of the family’s eight children was born in 1892 and to support his family Ralph tried farming but this did not prove lucrative. The family’s troubles were worsened when Ralph’s chest complaint led to his death.
His demise left Mary and their six surviving children in dire straits. A meeting of Ralph’s creditors expressed great sympathy for the family, and it was unanimously decided to forego all claims against the estate.
“Mrs Shaw has a large family of young children depending upon her,” reported the Ōhaupō correspondent, “and from what I can learn they are next door to absolute want.” In response the local Band of Hope, a Christian Temperance society, organised an entertainment to raise funds for the family.
Those who could not attend were encouraged to forward donations to the Band of Hope’s chairman. The entertainment raised a little over four pounds for the Shaws, which for the average working class person represented several weeks’ wages.
“I had a very pleasant surprise,” Mary wrote to the Waikato Times, “when a young lady from Paterangi called a few days ago and gave me a purse of money, the result of a concert… I beg to offer my heartfelt thanks to the young people of Paterangi and the many friends who have helped me since the death of my husband.”
Ralph is buried at Paterangi cemetery.
