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The Tragic End of Thomas Kidd the Mailman
Rivers rose and trees crashed when Taranaki was hit by spring storms last week.
101mm of rain fell in just 12 hours and farmers and road contractors were left cleaning up the damage.
Thomas Kidd and his coach
Similar spring rains hit Taranaki one hundred years ago and for Thomas Kidd the mailman, the results were disastrous.
REWIND...to 1903
True or false? In 1903
1. Taranaki has more dairy factories than in Otago/Southland, where the dairy industry had started.
2. The main trunk railway runs all the way from Auckland to Taumarunui in the north and from Wellington to Mangaweka in the south. By 1908 it be joined and will stretch from Auckland to Wellington.
3. The sealing of all New Zealand's major roads has begun.
4. Passengers enjoy a journey on a coach in surprising comfort. It is cool in summer and warm in winter.
5. The first motor driven coaches have arrived on the main routes throughout New Zealand.
Starter 1 - Shutter bug
Find out more about life in these times by looking closely at these two photos:
The first shows Devon St New Plymouth around 1900 and the second is from Stratford in 1906 at the celebration of a new railway line.
Handy hint
Use the minimise and maximise buttons in the top right hand corner of your screen to drop the photos on to the bar below. That lets you flick back to TreasureLink. Just double click on the title sitting on the bar when you want your photo back.
Look for all the evidence that tells us:
1. Horses were as common on Taranaki streets in the early 1900s, as cars and trucks are now.
2. Electricity had arrived in Taranaki by the early 1900s.
3. Gumboots would have been handy on the wet Taranaki roads.
4. People drove on the left.
5. A good blacksmith would do a roaring trade.
6. People were either sun-smart then or hats were in!
7. People dressed up for important occasions.
8. The horse and buggy could carry a whole family.
Starter 2 - Thumbs up or thumbs down?
This activity tells you about England's Royal Mail Service. The mail coach service in New Zealand was a bit like this one but didn't begin in the 1600s.
1. A public postal service began in England in 1635 and post-boys carried the mail on horseback between posts. The postmaster would take out the letters for his area and hand the rest to a new post-boy to take to the next post.
Thumbs up or down for (a) robbers (b) fast delivery?
2. The post-boys stayed for 150 years until John Palmer told the British government that it would be faster to take the mail by coach. The Post Office said, "No it wouldn't be faster," but William Pitt from the government said "give it a go," and they did. The mail
journey was cut from 38 hours to 16!
Thumbs up or down for (a) William (b) John (c) Post-boys (d) The Post Office?
3. The mail coach, horses and the driver where all provided by the contractors.
Thumbs up or thumbs down for (a) the contractors?
4. The average speed of the coaches was 7-8 mph in summer and about 5 mph in winter. It rose to about 10 mph as the roads got better.
Thumbs up or thumbs down for (a) people waiting for the mail?
5. The only Post Office employee on the British mail coach was the guard and he carried two pistols and a blunderbuss. It was a bit like a shotgun but probably blew a bigger hole in a robber. The guard would throw out the bags of letters to the postmaster and snatch up the outgoing mail from him at the same time. Thomas Kidd, the Taranaki mailman didn't carry a guard on his coach.
Thumbs up or thumbs down for (a) the guard (b) the robber?
Want more?
Click here for some great pictures of stagecoaches and click here if you want to read about Cobb & Co stagecoaches in New Zealand. It's quite interesting.
Read the story
Read with purpose. Search for this as you read.
1. Was Thomas Kidd good with horses?
2. What time did he leave each day and where did his coach go to?
3 What sort of things could slow Tom down?
4 Was Tom Kidd a wreckless or dedicated coach driver?
Click here for the story.
Know your words?
These words are all in the story. Choose (a) or (b) to show what each one means in "The Tragic End of Thomas Kidd the Mailman".
Reputation (a) good name (b) bad name
Persuade (a) talk into (b) discourage
Dedication (a) poor attitude (b) devotion
High esteem (a) high regard (b) high temper
Tribute (a) homage (b) honour
Map the mail route
Show Tom's mail route on your own map of Taranaki. Label the main places you read about in the story and mark the place where you think Thomas drowned.
Write your epitaph
An epitaph is a short message written on a gravestone. It tells the reader a little about the character or personality of the person buried below. Finish writing this epitaph.
Here lies Thomas Kidd...
Think, pair and share
Work out for yourself what might have happened. Tell someone else your ideas then both share the ideas with another pair.
What if Tom had taken Charles' advice and not crossed the river that morning?
1. How long would it have been before he could have safely crossed?
2. How would a delay affect the people who were waiting for their mail?
3. Would Tom keep thinking "This is just wasting time. I've crossed bigger streams than this one before."
4. Would a bridge at this treacherous spot have been built just as soon?
Headlines through time
Write the newspaper headlines to match the stories and the time.
The story tells of:
1. How good Tom was at his job and how much he was liked by the people along his mail route. Write the headline.
2. Tom's tragic accident. Write the headline.
3. Tom's funeral. Write the headline.
4. The opening of a bridge across the dangerous stream. Write the headline.
In the hot seat
Even today it is often only a tragic accident that leads to a trouble spot on the road being made safer. In this story the Minister of Public Works was asked to do something, "in the interests of safety" and one year after the event a bridge was finished. This Minister was put in the hot seat.
In pairs list some reasons against building the bridge. (Think of some of the other things that would need government money in those
days.)
List some reasons for building the bridge.
Share your ideas with others.
Snail mail letters
Letters to and from Britain were quite common in 1903. New settlers had friends and family living there. Thomas Kidd's delivery would have been the last or the first part of a very long journey for a letter. Check out these two letters (links below) from the 1870s and 80s. Find out how long they took to get to there and which way they went. Is the service getting faster? How fast do you think it would have been by 1903?
10 years on
It's 1913 and 10 years after Thomas Kidd died. The main trunk railway line between Auckland and Wellington is finished. A train runs between Stratford and Taumarunui. Sketch an outline of the North Island and use it in a diagram to show how a letter posted in Auckland now gets to Opunake.
Fast forward to 2003
New Zealand often gets high winds in spring. The sun gets directly over the equator and it starts to shine on and stir the air which has been chilled in the six months of Antarctic darkness. We get big differences in temperatures between the tropics and Antarctica and that causes the westerly winds to bulk up!
With the chilly polar winds comes rain and sometimes snow. Look what has happened in Taranaki in recent days:
(The three sisters are the rock pinnacles just off the beach.)
Stormy seas have gouged big chunks out of the Oakura and Urenui beach land. Some Oakura houses are now quite close to the sea and in Urenui a whole section of land near the holiday baches has just disappeared. Urenui man Duncan Elliot says the council should have made the rock wall much longer to protect the land. The council doesn't have any plans to do this - not yet anyway. The wall has already cost $614,000.
Urenui rock wall
People versus nature
100 years ago the Minister of Lands decided it was worth building a bridge across the stream. Now the council has to decide whether it is worth spending money trying to protect Taranaki's coastline from the sea. Can it be done or is it as silly as trying to protect the two rocky sisters left at Tongaporutu?
What do you think? Draw up a chart in a small group, listing arguments for and arguments against this land protection idea. Compare your ideas with others.
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