MURDER IN VERSE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 28 June 1943, Page 3

MURDER IN VERSE

HAINING STREET PROVOKES A POEM Not often does Wellington's Haining Street and its Chinatown provide a theme for verse Robert Solway, who w r rote a tribute to the late Mr Savage, uses it thus in "Murder at 13 Haining Street,” published not far away from the locality of the scene it depicts by Stewart. Lawrence, Ltd. A preface explains that Lionel Terry was a Kentishman who came to New Zealand 40 years ago to become a popular eccentric with a considerable circle of acquaintances. One of his deep prejudices took the form of a dead set against Chinese. On 24th September, 1905. without any special apparent motive, he shot dead a Haining Street Chinaman Guilty of murder, but with a strong recommendation to mercy because of mental instability was the verdict of the jury. He was admitted to Seacliff and died there about 30 years later. Mr Solway perceives some significance in his strange life for us to-day when we are fighting the Japanese and sets out to develop it in indifferent verse. If there is anything about Lionel Terry worth chronicling a rhort story in prose might prove a more successful vehicle. As it is the preface is much more interesting than the poem.