The riches in the river are not for such as Joe

MURDER AND MAYHEM AT MILLER’S FLAT

At 6.20 pm on Sunday 28 May 1882, a 40 year-old Texan miner was relaxing after working at dredging gold from the nearby Clutha River in Central Otago, New Zealand. While his wife cleared the dinner table and washed up the dishes, he sat in the rocking chair in the living room of his small wooden cottage, cradling his fifth child Joseph, who was four months old.

Suddenly a shot rang out.

We can pick up the story from the report of the subsequent trial in the local newspaper the Tuapeka Times: ‘The Miller’s Flat Murder – Coroner’s Inquiry Verdict of Wilful Murder returned against Kitto’:

‘An inquiry was held before Jonas Harrop, Esq., J.P., acting-Coroner, on Tuesday last, touching the death of Joseph Augustus Roggiero. After the jury had been sworn, the body of the murdered man Roggiero was viewed, and the adjournment was made to the residence of Peter Kloogh.

Neils Peter Kloogh, the wounded man, whose evidence was taken in bed, deposed (Nils and his wife Tamar are pictured in the lead-in to this story):

‘I am a miner, residing on the east bank of the river at Millers Flat. I was in my house, and about twenty minutes pasty 6 pm I heard the report of a gun. It was moonlight. I heard a scream, and then went outside, I saw two of William Kitto’s children coming towards my house. They were running. They told me that there had been an accidentally shooting. The children are about ten and eleven years of age.

I then ran as hard as I could towards Roggiero’s. On the way I met Betsy Ann Roggiero, wife of the deceased, near John Kitto’s fence, and near his house. She said that the old man (meaning John Kitto) had shot Joe (meaning her husband), now deceased.

When I had proceeded about ten or twelve steps, I received a bullet wound in my right arm. Mrs Roggiero went in the opposite direction. I was shot on the path near John Kitto’s house – the man was about twenty yards distant from me. The man appeared to have dark clothing.

I am acquainted with John Kitto – he is my father-in-law - and he answers the description of the man whom I saw and who wounded me. I am not aware of any ill-feeling, but we have not been speaking for some time. I heard from his family that he did not care to converse with anyone. At the time I received my wound my dog was with me’.

Betsy Ann Roggiero, wife of the deceased deposed:

I remember Sunday evening last. My husband was sitting in the rocking-chair, putting the baby to sleep, at twenty minutes past 6 o’clock by our clock. The child was four months old. I was standing at the end of the table washing up after tea. A shot was fired through the kitchen window, which struck my husband in the breast.

He exclaimed, “My God, Annie, someone has shot me!’. I said “Oh no, Joe it is only someone playing a lark” and I ran out thinking it was someone with Chinese firecrackers. I saw my father John Kitto, walk away frtom the window with his back towards me. I said “You wretch, what did you do that for?”

As I re-entered the door, I met the deceased, with his hand across his chest and saw the infant fall from his arms on to the floor. I then put my arms around his neck. He said. “Don’t stay with me Annoe – run for help – I’m shot”. I then ran out and called my brother-in-law, Nils Peter Kloogh.

I requested him to go to my husband, and was returning with him when I saw my father John Kitto standing between his own house and the wire fence. He held up a gun to his shoulder and deliberately took aim and fired at Peter. The time father put the gun to his shoulder, I saw the flash.

About 10 o’clock, I returned to my own house and my husband expired at about 2 0’clock on the following morning. I have been nine years married in June, and have five children, the youngest four months, and the eldest seven years. So far as I know, my husband and father were on good terms”.

The accused was then brought in and identified by the witness as the man who had shot her husband.

In further evidence, the accused man’s son John Francis Kitto Junior (who was an 18 year old miner) commented that:

“I know of nothing to cause father to shoot the deceased. My father was an inmate of the Lunatic Asylum for six weeks, about four years ago. He appears sulky at times and will not speak. He appears troubled with religious mania as he is frequently talking about religious subjects. When I saw the gun on Sunday, the nipple was on, but now it appears to have been blown out”.

William Poole, constable of the New Zealand Armed Constabulary, in charge of Roxburgh Police Station deposed:

“Last Sunday night at quarter past nine, a man named John Kitto called at the Roxburgh Station and informed me he wished to give himself in charge. I asked him his reason. He replied. “for shooting my two sons-in-law. He had a gun in his left hand, which he handed to me at may request, saying “This is the gun I did it with – take care of it – it is loaded.”

I asked him who his sons-in-law were. He replied “I do not know” - but knowing the accused. I asked if he meant Peter Kloogh and ‘Mexican Joe’. He said I suppose so”. I then locked him up, asking him ‘What brought this about?”. He replied, “I will answer before a Judge.”

Samuel Moore also deposed:

‘I am Sergeant-Major of Constabulary, stationed at Lawrence. On interviewing Kitto, he said: ‘After I shot Roggiero, I went to my own house, and I saw Kloogh running to catch me. He hunted a dog on me – but the dog turned on himself and prevented him getting away when I shot him near the fence.”

The brother of the accused, James Kitto deposed:

‘The accused John Francis Kitto is my brother. He is about 50 years of age, a married man with a wife and ten children, six being at home. When my brother was 15 years of age, he had a severe fall of seven fathoms in a coalmine which injured his head – and since that time he has never appeared to be the same, always appearing light-headed. He was in the Lunatic Asylum four years ago but now appears to be worse than ever I saw him before – and he says he glories in what he has done’.

The Jury then retired and returned with a verdict of “Wilful Murder” against the accused John Francis Kitto.

The trial records note that John Francis Kitto:

‘had been more unsettled than usual for a month past, and that on the day in question he was decidedly worse. He believed himself to be the Saviour (or Joseph), his brothers and son-in-law being imps of Satan, Roggiero being Satan himself’, detailing the following exchange'.

‘Prisoner: I should like to have an explanation from someone to show whether I am a lunatic or not.

Witness: He considers his son-in-law, Roggiero, was possessed of a devil.
Prisoner: Not possessed, but was.
Witness: Was the devil?
His Honor : Anything else?

Witness: That his son-in-law who is wounded is also the devil.
His Honor: Is there anything else, doctor?
Witness: All his delusions, consist of that character.
His Honor : Does he imagine himself to be any particular person?

Witness: l am not aware of his imagining himself to be other than a Jew.

Prisoner: I am professing to be the Christ’.

THE FAMILY CONNECTION – RISKS FOR SONS-IN-LAW

I was reminded of the Miller’s Flat Murder by my own father-in-law during the weekend that he recently spent with us here in Island Bay. He is the grandson of Nils Peter Kloogh and the great grandson of the unfortunate perpetrator of the crimes John Francis Kitto. Happily though for me, there are ample circumstances that offer protection – for a start Air New Zealand does not allow the carriage of guns but more importantly, my father-in-law is a religious sceptic who is demonstrably sane.

According to the family’s oral history Nils Peter Kloogh was the son of Joachim Christian Kloogh. Joachim Kloogh (perhaps originally Kluch) had been born in Pomerania (North Germany) in 1810 but migrated to southern Sweden as a young man where he was employed as a shepherd. There he married Inga Oldsdotter and they had 6 children.
The four girls remained in Sweden but both of the boys eventually found homes in the Southern Hemisphere - Olaf in Australia and Nils in New Zealand.

Nils Peter who was born in 1853 first migrated to Denmark and then to New Zealand by way of Glasgow and Australia. He arrived in Lyttleton, New Zealand on 16th December 1872 on the ‘Palmerston’. at the age of 19.

We still have the little Book of Household Prayers 'Boner for Andakt i Hemmet' that Nils' mother gave him when he was 15 years old to comfort him during his travels and travails. But gold was the big attraction for young Nils.

In May 1861, Gabriel Read had discovered alluvial gold in a creek bed, close to the banks of the Tuapeka River near the settlement of Lawrence in Central Otago:

"At a place where a kind of road crossed on a shallow bar I shovelled away about two and a half feet of gravel, arrived at a beautiful soft slate and saw the gold shining like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night".

By the Christmas of 1861, 14,000 prospectors were on the Tuapeka and Waipori fields, and a second major discovery in 1862 at Cromwell led to a further influx of miners from Australia and all points of the compass. By February 1864, there were 18,000 miners but thereafter activity declined rapidly as the main deposits became exhausted.

By the time that Nils arrived, there were around 5,000 miners. He settled in Miller’s Flat as a long period of reworking the Clutha river gravels began, using more highly mechanized processes. Eventually, he and his mates constructed a wheel dredge which harnessed the power of the river but these machines were ineffective in shallow water.

Efforts to develop new techniques culminated in the development of the world’s first steam-powered mechanical gold dredge ‘Dunedin’ in 1881. The Dunedin continued operation until 1901, recovering a total of 17,000 ounces (530 kg) of gold. And Nils and his Kitto brothers-in-law were long associated with the dredge mining business along the Clutha River.

Not surprisingly, the mining had a considerable environmental impact. In 1920, the Rivers Commission estimated that 300 million cubic yards of material had been moved by mining activity in the Clutha river catchment. At that time an estimated 40 million cubic yards had been washed out to sea with a further 60 million in the river.

Getting back to the Family History, John Francis Kitto came from a long line of Cornish miners. The family has been traced back to Thomas Kitto (born Gwennup, a major copper-tin mining area, Cornwall around 1700 – married Margaret Madron). John Francis himself was born in 1832 in East Newlyn, Cornwall and he married Ann Clements in Leicestershire, arriving in New Zealand in 1866. The intervening generations were John Kitto (born 1780, Redruth, married Elizabeth Teague) and Richard Kitto (born 1752, Gwennup, married Mary Trewena).

No doubt John Francis' wife Ann, and her daughters Betsy Ann and Tamar had many a quiet refection on the livelihoods that their men had chosen:

"Spend it in the winter
Or die in the cold.
One a pecker, Tuapeka
Bright fine gold

Some are sons of fortune,
And my man came to see
That the riches in the river
Are not for such as he.

I'm weary of Otago
I'm weary of the snow,
Let my man strike it rich
And then we'll go.

But they stayed and shared their descendants with Central and its marvellous landscapes.

The New Zealand Kitto families have been extensively researched by Joyce Reardon and this material is available on line.

Nowadays, Miller’s Flat is a very sleepy hollow but one that bursts into bucking fits for the annual ‘Miller’s Flat Rodeo’.