Two Kihikihi women who wandered off and disappeared two years apart initially had their community baffled.
Pen and ink sketch of woman walking away, 1800s.
When Arthur White returned home from work one August evening in 1895 and found his wife Jane missing, he lost no time in searching for her through the township, along the roads and all round the neighbourhood.
He continued his search nearly the whole night. The next morning, he was still looking for her when he was told by a young lad named Harris that Jane had been found by boy named Sibley. She was deceased in a drain on the lower Kihikihi-Te Awamutu Road. Jane was taken by Constable Carroll to the White’s home to await a coroner’s inquest.
The Whites had moved to Kihikihi from Te Awamutu two years previously and Jane, 56, had been in declining health. She started to wander away from home and had a weak memory.
At the inquest, held at the Star Hotel, J Fratis said he had seen and spoken to Jane when he was rambling about the roads the evening, she went missing. This was the last time she was seen alive. Constable Carroll testified to the somewhat eccentric and roaming habits of Jane all of which went to show that she had accidentally fallen into the drain, which contained some two feet of water and weedy growth. After a short deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of ‘found drowned.’
Newspapers erroneously called her old, about 70 years of age, which wasn’t the only reporting mistake, the Waikato Times having to issue an apology – “Owing to a telegraphic blunder, we represented that the late Mrs Jane White had committed suicide. This has caused pain to her relatives. We can only rectify matters by calling attention to the evidence given at the coroner’s inquest, which clearly demonstrates that her death was accidental and due mainly to physical incapacity to rescue herself from a dangerous position into which she had accidentally fallen.”
The sudden disappearance on a March evening in 1897 of Bertha Jennings again caused much alarm and anxiety at Kihikihi. She was last seen by her two sons Walter, 13, and Albert, 11, at 9pm. Before they went to bed Bertha had been reading to them, her husband George having retired about eight o’clock.
He woke up at one the next morning, and finding Bertha not in bed got up and discovered a lighted candle in the scullery but no Bertha. He woke his boys and searched for his wife, but without success. Constable Carroll was alerted and he and some of Bertha’s friends and relations started searching at daylight but there was no trace of her.
“The affair is a complete mystery as yet. The hope that she may yet be found safe and uninjured is a universal expression here,” said the Waikato Argus.
Bertha was found about noon that day in the Mangaohoi Creek, some two hundred yards below the bridge on the Kihikihi – Rangiaowhia Road. There was nothing to show how she got into the water. The melancholy outcome caused a great shock to very many people at Kihikihi. No one could believe it. Bertha, who had married George Jennings in 1883 when she was 22 and he 69, had a lively manner and cheerful disposition.
Another newspaper jumped the gun and called it a “sad suicide” noting that Bertha was ordinarily of a happy demeanour. At the inquest, held in the Jennings home, Alberta Wilson, sister of Bertha, said that Bertha had been suffering from headaches lately, but to no one had she expressed any intention to make away with herself.
Dr Brewis, of Hamilton, certified that death had been caused by drowning. An open verdict was returned.
Due to uncertainty over when the inquest would be held, Bertha’s relatives were unable to fix a time for the funeral until late in the day. Consequently, the funeral was hastily arranged, with little notice given and many weren’t able to attend.
Jane and Bertha, who both suddenly up and vanished, are buried at Kihikihi cemetery.
