The plucky Mary Hall

Mary Hall was 15 when she and her family left Oxfordshire and boarded the Scimitar, bound for Port Chalmers, Otago. The family arrived in March 1874 and quickly moved to Invercargill, where Mary gained employment as a domestic at the Harp of Erin Hotel, Dee Street.

One of the seamen on board the ship was John Brennan, aka Roach, from London. He was 45 and left the ship, taking on a job as cook in the same hotel for a while. He had intended to leave the region and left to board the City of Dublin. Something made him change his mind and he returned and became a lodger at the hotel.

John had been in the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and served on at least three ships. However, he was also recorded as being imprisoned in the Naval Prison as well as two other prisons and the Wandsworth House of Correction. I have yet to locate any prison records for him to uncover his activities before coming to New Zealand.

Certainly, drink was a problem for him. Only a few days after the ship arrived in Port Chalmers he was arrested for drunkenness. His ‘defence’ was that he must have been drunk as he awoke to find all his money had gone.

On the 15^th June, he attacked Mary with a Tomahawk, hitting her twice on the head.  The reason for the attack was never clearly explained. Speculation from newspapers was rife and Brennan himself gave several conflicting accounts.

An early reason he gave was that she would not give him a drink (he was reported as saying a sixpence would have saved her life). Mrs Anne Connell, the housekeeper, recalled that she overheard Mary saying, ‘Mind your own business’ when she was serving in the dining room, to which Brennan replied, ‘I’d think no more of cutting your throat than a young suckling pig’s’.

Mary herself stated that she herself was unaware of why he attacked her. She had gone to the theatre with him once, but that she had not encouraged anything. Brennan had attempted to take liberties with her which she refused.

 

Whatever the cause he followed Mary into the kitchen and hit her while her back was turned and then calmly walked out into the dining room and announced he had killed her. He told Ann Connell to look after her as his life depended on Mary. He told others to go for the police ad he would wait. Did he attack her in a fit of madness or passion and then regret it immediately afterwards??  It seems likely. When the landlord Mr McCarthy and another man entered the kitchen and lifted a lifeless Mary up, Brennan hugged and kissed her

Mary was attended to by doctors and her parents sent for. Her recovery was thought unlikely. While Southland newspapers only mentioned the seriousness of the wounds, The Lake County Press explained graphically that her brains were protruding for the holes in her head.

However, plucky Mary did recover and after 8 days on lying unconscious awoke and gave evidence. Unbelievably Brennan was present at her bedside to hear her evidence (this was common practice at the time) and after Mary said she forgave him, she was quoted as saying,  ‘God Bless you’.

After he was arrested Mary’s father came to visit him, to understand why he had committed the crime, he said he wanted a drink and she refused, but also, he had wanted to do her good but she has stopped speaking to him for a few weeks. ‘I loved the girl better than my life and I must have been mad at the time’.

 

Mary was still hovering between life and death. Pieces of her brain continued to come away for a number of days and she was paralysed down the left side. For many weeks she was unbale to see or hear and could barely swallow and suffered a number of convulsions.  Slowly, however she began to regain her facilities, even being able to move around her room and speak distinctly. After being paralysed she later felt acute pain in her legs and head (not surprisingly). By December, however she was well enough to attend the supreme court hearing and give evidence.

 

We hear nothing more of Mary and hope that she did indeed make as full a recovery as she could after the horrific physical and emotional attack. Her family remained in the area, so perhaps someone knows what happened to her..

Brennan’s story is more easily uncovered. The case was straightforward, he did not deny attacking her. In his summing up the Judge said: ‘Never in the course of my legal experience have I met with a more cruel, barbarous or revolting crime. To have done to a cat or dog what you have done to a helpless girls would have been the mark of a cruel and depraved mind’. He assumed that Brennan, a heavy drinker had had his mind been disordered and corrupted by alcohol. However, his actions could not be excused, and he was sentenced to life in prison

Brennan was sent to Dunedin prison soon after his sentencing and began working on Bell Hill. On 2 September 1879 his life sentenced ended when he died from inflammation of the left lung. Some early reports suggested he died of heart issues and certainly in the 1883 inquiry into the Dunedin prison, one prison, Charles Coleman said that Brennan had been sent out to work when he was unfit and died three days later.

Brennan is buried in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery